Cash for Clunkers Program Takes Ownership of Your PC

Yesterday Glenn Beck was looking around on the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) aka “Cash for Clunkers” aka “Another Taxpayer Ripoff” website and discovered a very disturbing notice on the website.

From what I understand from the video below and from other things I have read about the system, this doesn’t just happen casually when you go on the website (I’ve been on the site several times myself, but haven’t plugged any of my information in).  You can look up cash for clunkers requirements, look at the FAQ, and learn a lot about why they want to fleece the taxpayers as a religious contribution to their religion of global warming, but that won’t trigger this shocking notice.

When you input your information to take advantage of the CARS taxpayer fleecing, at some point in the application and confirmation process, a notice pops up:

“This application provides access to the DoT CARS system. When logged on to the CARS system, your computer is considered a Federal computer system and is the property of the U.S. government. Any or all uses of this system and all files on this system may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected and disclosed to authorized CARS, DoT, and law enforcement personnel, as well as authorized officials of other agencies, both domestic and foreign.”

Now doesn’t that just make you feel special?

Since this program is coming in under the Obama administration, perhaps they think everyone who applies for taxpayer cash to finance their new car purchase are the typical Obama voter and maybe they’ll think they’re getting a “special upgrade” to their computer,  making it a super-duper government computer, so that–like the almighty federal government–it will be more powerful than ever before.

For real, thinking Americans, however, this constitutes an egregious intrusion into personal freedom and privacy.

I have worked with internet technologies fairly deeply for several years, and it would be fairly easy for someone knowledgeable to effect any number of levels of monitoring your activities.  They could range from a simple cookie to track where you go and what sites you visit after you leave CARS, to embedding software on your machine that will allow them to utilize your IP address to connect with your computer at will. Most reputable websites would never think of doing something like the latter…but you have to remember that this is the federal government we’re talking about, and many in our government firmly believe they are entitled to know your activities and to tell you what to do.

Isn’t it interesting that when President Bush was in office, liberals had a whole litter of kittens because we were monitoring the activities of terrorists and terrorist associates…but under President Obama,  it’s just all fine and dandy to monitor the activities of average Americans.

No wonder Newt Gingrich told Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) a few months ago that our government seems to think of American citizens the way they should think of foreign dictators.  I become more and more convinced all the time that the socialists in our government (otherwise known as liberals) really do see average, freedom-loving patriotic Americans as more of an enemy than foreign terrorists and despots.

We really must clean house in 2010 and 2012, and clean house big-time.  It needs to be a top-to-bottom cleanup with no nook or cranny missed. These people who are the enemies of American citizens, American freedom and the American Constitution must be removed from power in order to save our nation and preserve our freedoms.

UPDATE: This seems to have been a dealer area where the notice popped up, rather than a consumer area, but the same privacy and property issues would still apply to the dealer’s computer.  The government has since admitted this language was improper and has removed it.  (But would they have if they hadn’t been slammed publicly for it?…)

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