Since October, news accounts have disclosed a burgeoning Pentagon campaign for "detecting, identifying and engaging" internal enemies that included a database with information on peace protesters. A debate has roiled over the FBI's use of national security letters to obtain secret access to the personal records of tens of thousands of Americans. And now come revelations of the National Security Agency's interception of telephone calls and e-mails from the United States -- without notice to the federal court that has held jurisdiction over domestic spying since 1978.
An article in today's Washington Post discusses in greater detail the Pentagon's newest programs:
The Pentagon's newest counterterrorism agency, charged with protecting military facilities and personnel wherever they are, is carrying out intelligence collection, analysis and operations within the United States and abroad, according to a Pentagon fact sheet on the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, provided to The Washington Post.
Its Directorate of Field Activities (DX) "assists in preserving the most critical defense assets, disrupting adversaries and helping control the intelligence domain," the fact sheet said. Those roles can range from running roving patrols around military bases and facilities to surveillance of potentially threatening people or organizations inside the United States. The DX also provides "on-site, real time . . . support in hostile areas worldwide to protect both U.S. and host nation personnel from a variety of threats," the fact sheet said.
Another CIFA directorate, the Counterintelligence and Law Enforcement Center, "identifies and assesses threats" to Defense personnel, operations and infrastructure from "insider threats, foreign intelligence services, terrorists, and other clandestine or covert entities," according to the Pentagon.
CIFA manages the Pentagon database that includes Talon reports, consisting of raw, unverified information picked up by the military services on suspicious activities that could involve terrorist threats. The Pentagon acknowledged last week that the Talon database contained reports on peaceful civilian protests and demonstrations that should have been purged long ago under Defense Department regulations.
Now to be fair, it's not unreasonable for to expect the Pentagon to manage some domestic intelligence gathering, especially if it's aimed at the protection of U.S. military personnel and material in the United States. However a problem presents itself when we see the Pentagon collecting "intelligence" on anti-war protesters. The reasoning of course is that these protesters could prove in some way a threat to the U.S. military...which of course has never made any sense, and even if it did, could not justy widespread spying on any and all anti-war protesters.
Essentially, Bush has authorized greater and greater intrustion into the lives of average American civilians, in a supposed to effort to find terrorists living and plotting in our midst. If one were the trusting sort, one might believe this claim. The problem is, as history has shown us repeatedly, is that if you concentrate too much power in the hands of too few people, allow them to keep secret their purposes and methods, and provide no check by another group of people in power, you will-abolutely, 100% of the time-see this power abused. It's simply invetable. The spying on anti-war groups is the only absue we know about. If you think it's the only once that's occurred so far...well, I have a fine ski slope down here in Texas I'd like to sell you. The reason there are checks and balances in our system of government is because the Framers knew precisly what happens when you give one branch too much power, and require too little oversight. Bush has forgotten this lesson (if he ever knew it) and betrayed the Constitution of our nation as a result.
Update: The FBI is also engaging in the classic "investigating" of anti-war and other left of center groups, including the ever dangerous PETA.
2 comments:
Domestic spying isn't cool - however, the part about the NSA is nothing new. The NSA has been spying on Americans (and everyone else) since the 1980s.
Through a system known as "Echelon," pretty much all forms of electronic communication are monitored including phone calls (land-line and mobile), e-mails, internet traffic, radio communications, ect.Echelon is a multi-national project with the NSA handling the US end of it. How it works is there are numerous sites around the globe that take in all of these signals. It is truly a massive amount of information and for intelligence purposes most of it is garbage. Large banks of computers hash through this mountain of information looking for certain keywords and phrases that are determined by the people running the system. When these are detected those intercepts are pulled and processed further. If they make it far enough they'll end up in front of a human being who will make the final determination of whether it is useful or not.
Yes, domestic spying is illegal; but, that has not been a problem to get around. Friendly countries whose intelligence services are a part of the system simply do the "spying" on Americans (because for them it is not illegal), and then pass the information back to US authorities. Partner countries include the US, Britain, Austrailia, New Zealand, and Canada. This is basically information laundering and that makes it completely legal.
In response to your comment on my blog:
I don't think that it is a revalation at all because this system has been "known" for some time now. However, it is a problem for the agency because they are one of the quieter agencies within the government. Before now people probably though that NSA was a typo for NASA. You don't see an "NSA spokesperson" coming out and doing a press conference about these allegations. Thats probably because they do not even have a PR department. Becoming a household name is exactly what the NSA wanted to avoid and the same can be said of ECHELON. Although, ECHELON is not receiving any attention from the main-stream media. The only place that buzz about it seems to be occuring is in blogspace.
No, this system is most definetly ECHELON, that is just what the NSA does. When we are talking about wire-taps we are talking about specific targets such as an individual or a group of individuals. These are carried about by police departments, the FBI, ect.
I do not approve of domestic spying because I think it is probably the first step to becoming a police-state. Freedom and democracy requires that we are able to express ourselves and our opinions freely and monitoring by the government can very easily lead to suppression by the government. One might say something like "oh, well the government would never do that." That belief assumes that the officials in the government will "do the right thing." I tend to have a more cynical view of governance. I feel that if the government is given a power it will probably lead to abuse at some point because human nature tends to lean towards one's own personal gain over giving to the collective.
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