The state of Minnesota can now see your credit and debit card histories, your every transaction, and you'll never know whether they're looking or not.
The Department of Revenue started using Accurint for Government's new online tools a couple months ago, for extreme scrutiny during its collections processes.
You can always request a credit report to find out who is checking on your credit and how often, and you can always file a Freedom of Information Act request to learn what a government agency is saying about you. You can get all records with your name mentioned in them for a very small fee, but it won't include who is looking at your credit or debit card or EBT card purchases, or how often or why.
At present the public has no idea that someone collecting their fine for a speeding ticket or calling about their sales tax that is due can also know what groceries they purchased and when.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
The Bare Buildings of Fall
A couple of my friends are so much quicker at seeing animals than
I-- I have a better eye for special effects in films but they have
better eyes for reality. Like all the deer left in the ditches at the
side of the road, or running along fields hundreds of yards away. Like
eagles and raptors in the sky and squirrels on the road. I am
learning, starting to see animals a little more quickly and clearly --
sadly they are easily overlooked because the modern mind prioritizes
other things.
This morning dawn broke slowly & elegantly, colors rippling across
the thin cloud canvas that protects my bit of sky.
A delicate violet blanketed the western horizon, covering the lake,
and above me easing into orange. The pale orange clouds bubbled into
bright orange up by the eastern hill, and below them a bold yellow
stripe broke the gentle cloud cover with its uncommonly optimistic
tint. Birds in the sky stripe seemed to be suspended there, still,
just basking in that beautiful yellow until all was unveiled as the
clear blue of day, unyielding.
The lake, mysterious as ever, mimicked the sky by showing one
unexpected stripe of calm-- right down the middle, the waters had a
different texture from the waters on either side of the elliptical
lake, in their unnoticed choppy flow. Phalen's contents are unknown,
and they stir the body into inexplicable currents sometimes. Likely
its underwater landscape is like a Cartesian graph, quartered into
four basins, more evident now that the water level is so low.
The bushes and trees are also revealing more today, more today than
yesterday. The boughs are bare and through them I see large stone
structures on the other side of the railroad tracks which I'd never
noticed before.
The manmade structures absorb early sunlight, and they stand out to
me as the landscape that's left for the freezing fall. Suddenly I see
that Regions Hospital is a series of angles and curves: spiraling
parking ramp, two rectangles, a curve outward, a bisecting rectangle,
a curve inward. Very artistic-- and for whose benefit?
The Economy Motel is as ugly as ever, but Gillette Children's Hospital
is angled glass like an accordion-folded note unfurling. The law
enforcement building at the end of the street is mysteriously blue
meeting oxidized iron. Why? Why is there a thin rectangular awning of
iron intersecting the front of the building like something alien,
something sliding in from another plane?
Why is the fence along the sidewalk on the overpass curving cast
iron? It's lovely and black, geometric and dramatic, featuring a
design of squares within squares that's reminiscent of the black
accents on a windowless brown office building: circles within circles,
which hardly anyone ever sees.
Who has gone out of their way to add curves, designs, and needlessly
tall jutting shapes to the buildings that line the route to work? Such
importance is given to the overpass by its tall smooth fence of
squares, when it could've just been a chain-link precaution there. I
couldn't stop turning my head round & looking everywhere this morning.
We're so fortunate to live where people have once and will again
value art and architecture.
I-- I have a better eye for special effects in films but they have
better eyes for reality. Like all the deer left in the ditches at the
side of the road, or running along fields hundreds of yards away. Like
eagles and raptors in the sky and squirrels on the road. I am
learning, starting to see animals a little more quickly and clearly --
sadly they are easily overlooked because the modern mind prioritizes
other things.
This morning dawn broke slowly & elegantly, colors rippling across
the thin cloud canvas that protects my bit of sky.
A delicate violet blanketed the western horizon, covering the lake,
and above me easing into orange. The pale orange clouds bubbled into
bright orange up by the eastern hill, and below them a bold yellow
stripe broke the gentle cloud cover with its uncommonly optimistic
tint. Birds in the sky stripe seemed to be suspended there, still,
just basking in that beautiful yellow until all was unveiled as the
clear blue of day, unyielding.
The lake, mysterious as ever, mimicked the sky by showing one
unexpected stripe of calm-- right down the middle, the waters had a
different texture from the waters on either side of the elliptical
lake, in their unnoticed choppy flow. Phalen's contents are unknown,
and they stir the body into inexplicable currents sometimes. Likely
its underwater landscape is like a Cartesian graph, quartered into
four basins, more evident now that the water level is so low.
The bushes and trees are also revealing more today, more today than
yesterday. The boughs are bare and through them I see large stone
structures on the other side of the railroad tracks which I'd never
noticed before.
The manmade structures absorb early sunlight, and they stand out to
me as the landscape that's left for the freezing fall. Suddenly I see
that Regions Hospital is a series of angles and curves: spiraling
parking ramp, two rectangles, a curve outward, a bisecting rectangle,
a curve inward. Very artistic-- and for whose benefit?
The Economy Motel is as ugly as ever, but Gillette Children's Hospital
is angled glass like an accordion-folded note unfurling. The law
enforcement building at the end of the street is mysteriously blue
meeting oxidized iron. Why? Why is there a thin rectangular awning of
iron intersecting the front of the building like something alien,
something sliding in from another plane?
Why is the fence along the sidewalk on the overpass curving cast
iron? It's lovely and black, geometric and dramatic, featuring a
design of squares within squares that's reminiscent of the black
accents on a windowless brown office building: circles within circles,
which hardly anyone ever sees.
Who has gone out of their way to add curves, designs, and needlessly
tall jutting shapes to the buildings that line the route to work? Such
importance is given to the overpass by its tall smooth fence of
squares, when it could've just been a chain-link precaution there. I
couldn't stop turning my head round & looking everywhere this morning.
We're so fortunate to live where people have once and will again
value art and architecture.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)