RightIsWrong
Diamond Member
Where is the impeachment petition? I'm sure that there is one out there already for this. I want on it, damn it.
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Bush authorized NSA to spy on private citizens
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totalcommand
Platinum Member
Cmon dude, I gave you an actual reasonable situation. Yours is just preposterous. There is no 1-800-al-qaida number, and if there was, it would have been shut down already.
I think it's more like this:
Person A is a foreigner from Saudi Arabia who's under surveillence because he has possible ties with Al Quaeda.
Person B is an Arab-American U.S. citizen, who has some sort of relationship with Person A (let's say, a random acquaintance, met because they are both part Arab).
Person B makes a phone call to his mother country (maybe Egypt? Pakistan? or some other place), and the NSA decides to listen in on his call. NSA begins surveillence of U.S. citizen Person B without a warrant.
Now, Bush said in his radio address that he's trying to improve things as a result of the 9/11 panel, which said that the hijackers may have been caught if their calls from San Diego to overseas had been monitored.
What he fails to say is that the 9/11 hijackers were NOT U.S. citizens. What he has authorized is action AGAINST U.S. citizens.
totalcommand
Platinum Member
Here is a copy an article on Bush's response to critics from his radio address for reference:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051217/ap_...w_IE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE-
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051217/ap_...w_IE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE-
OrByte
Diamond Member
again how sad. You can call it whatever yuo wish, hand-wringing, tin foil conspiracy..whatever makes you feel better when you go to bed at night. I simply call it accountability. There are LAWS in place to defend against this sort of thing and this adminstration is skirting a very fine line in breaking the law. Some officials are openly questioning these actions and you know that wouldnt happen unless there is a damn good reason to.
your pathetic attempt to justify these activites only demonstrate how easy it is for simple minds in this county to fall under the spell of the "terror agenda" wake up!!
and as soon as the the presidential orders are disclosed to congress and the media then we can debate the legality and constitutionality of it all...but the adminstration hasnt yet released that information. I am sure it will take a congressional investigation to do so.
And as for evidence that this isn't targeting anything else but terror, well....there doesnt have to be any evidence!!! again there are laws that protect american citizens from this BS and those laws are being challenged and as americans we have to get involved and demand that folks in power abide by the law! its that simple. again wake up!
edit* its so easy to dismiss any argument against you by saying "hand-wringing"
whooopdeedoo! I tell you what, you leave the actual thinking to those that have the ability, we will look after you, because you are an american.
even though you forgot what that means.
DealMonkey
Lifer
This latest revelation with regards to the NSA just builds a stronger case showing that the administration desired various no-holds barred surveillence programs in order to spy on ordinary U.S. citizens EVEN IF THERE IS NO CONNECTION TO TERRORISM and with NO WARRANTS and ZERO OVERSIGHT whatsoever. This sort of Orwellian behavior and blatent disregard for our country's laws, our civil rights and the protections in the U.S. Constitution, should anger everyone regardless of party or political persuasion.
:|
What I want to know is, how can this be legal? How can this be constitutional? And who can I donate $ to in order to bring a suit against the federal government?
:|
What I want to know is, how can this be legal? How can this be constitutional? And who can I donate $ to in order to bring a suit against the federal government?
RightIsWrong
Diamond Member
For the idiots that are actually trying to pretend that Bush has the legal authority to do this and are protecting him, I want to ask you to respond as honestly as you can to this simple article:
Remember, be as honest as you can be. I doubt very much that you will be because your blatant hypocrisy will show through, but I am willing to give you a shot to prove me wrong.
Remember, be as honest as you can be. I doubt very much that you will be because your blatant hypocrisy will show through, but I am willing to give you a shot to prove me wrong.
nihilaxiom
Junior Member
It amazes me. Just how did the Republican party get hijacked by a police state,totaltarian,big brother,( dare i say, talibanian/fascist/etc ) mentality/ideology? And how is it that republicans ( at least those who call themselves "true" republicans ) don't (or are unwilling) to see this? And why can't people see that history is repeating itself? Read up on germany before WWII (Their "Jews" are are "terrorist" and how willingly many of their people were willing to give up their rights to combat the "evil Jews" and how they were willingly believing whatever hitler told them. Where are the "real" Republicans"? ( Opps, maybe i shouldn"t have compaired Bush to Hitler, baaad me...)
I think that comparison has some wrong elements, because I think the terrorists, unlike the Jews, actually are bad guys and need to be dealt with. Your comparison is unfair in that respect.
However, this current problem we are facing does have some similarities to the past, and in many ways it is unique. I find the accusations flung at anyone who opposes anything Bush does very similar to the red-scare nonsense of not too many years ago, for example. And people willing to give up civil liberties to be protected are never absent any dangerous situation. However, what's unique about the War on Terror is that the threat is far different from in the past. For one thing, the terrorists lack the ability to destroy our country the way the USSR could have. That's why they are terrorists, they need our help to destroy our society. If we refuse to be terrorized, they've lost much of their power.
The other big differences is that terrorists are an asymetrical threat. The Cold War, for example, was very much a contest of equals. We fought the same way, with similar weapons and similar tactics. They had tanks, planes, ships and nukes, and so did we. If the war had ever happened, our forces were ideal for countering their forces. Now though, an aircraft carrier is a poor weapon for fighting terrorists. It is certainly useful at taking out state sponsors, but not so much for stopping the terrorists themselves. 9/11 could have been stopped by a handful of airport rent-a-cops if they knew where to look. This new conflict is much more about intelligence and police work than the Army and the Navy. And even more specifically, good analysis of intelligence information by people who are able to think like a terrorist.
DickFnTracy
Banned
Did you even read the article or are you another headline reader that likes to read three words and start yapping? Did you read the part about Congressional leadership being briefed? Did you read the part where it said when they had concerns they were addressed and changes occured. That's called oversight. Did you read the part that said only outgoing international calls were being monitored and only being monitored based on inteeligence gathered from Al Queda, specifically seized computers containing specific phone numbers and contacts? That's called probable cause. Did you read the part about them obtaining warrants when it appeared the investigation was going to be ongoing? Did you read the part about them stopping at least two probable terrorist attacks based on the info obtained as part of this program? Did you read anything but the headline?
The administration acted appropriately and prudently in this situation. They quickly recognized that our nomal methods of collecting intel had failed us badly and took the appropriate steps with the appropriate oversight to correct the deficiencies. Yes, this resulted in a few US citizens being monitored without our preferred and normal methods being followed but it was done so with the oversight of the Congressional leadership and Intelligence commitees which is what is appropriate in sensitive intelligence such as this. It also produced and is producing actionable intelligence, intelligence I might add that was so significant that it convinced one of the worlds biggest critics of the Bush admin. , the New York Times, to not print this story a full year after they could have in order to preserve the ongoing operations.
So it's not the end of the world, you're right. And perhaps 1984 isn't quite here. But that doesn't mean it's a good idea to pretend everything is all super and nothing bad happened. Given the current laws, I don't believe they acted appropriately. And I don't believe that THIS is a solution to our intelligence problems, as collecting was not the problem identified in the wake of 9/11. We'll see how this all plays out of course, but you're as bad as the people over-reacting to it.
totalcommand
Platinum Member
That is not oversight. The only people who ruled on the Consitutionality of this action is the President and his lawyers. The Senators who knew of this should be ashamed of themselves, yet I doubt they could have done anything to stop this other than revealing that the program existed (maybe they were one of the leakers in this case?).
We cannot have the President making his own controversial laws without the sanction of the entire government, especially when it concerns U.S. citizens. Bush publicly has said that no domestic spying is needed in the Patriot Act, yet privately he has made his own law to do just that.
By the way, that is not called probable cause, because if they had it, they could have gone to FISA and gotten a secret warrant. There *is* infrastructure in place for them to obtain secret warrants, yet this is an attempt to get around that infrastructure. If Bush had thought this was inadequate, he would have been more than welcome to pass a law through Congress to change this. But he used an executive order to hide it from scrutiny.
The results of the program are irrelevent, since its legality itself is in question. It is quite possible that these probable terrorist attacks could have been stopped by obtaining a warrant from FISA.
He acted rashly by avoiding passage of a law sanctioning his ideas. He knew that such a law could not pass, and that is the only reason he used a secret executive order. Limited "oversight" by a few members of the Intelligence Committee is insufficient, as there is no means for them to stop the executive order, only means for them to ask that certain ways it is carried out are changed.
The reason the NYT delayed publication was to do further reporting to confirm, for themselves, that they would *not* hurt ongoing operations by publishing their story. And in the end, they concluded just that, and published the story.
nihilaxiom
Junior Member
I agree and understand rainsford that the jews of pre-WW II germany were nothing like the terrorist of our day but look at the mentality of the people in those days regarding the jews. They ( not all but most ) believed that the jews had an agenda to control/take over the german government ( if not the world)with their "jewish philosophy" . Which was such total bull but Hitler used the fear of this to do away with most pre-existing WWII social rights of their people. When fear is used to control a population, fascism is not far behind. I didn't mean to equate jews to terrorist. Only how the people of the times perceived the threat and how they acted upon it. I only see that the Bush ideology doesn't fall far from that to the Hitler ideology in the beginnings of nazism. Even to this day most surviving germans of those days cannot understand how they could have fallen for Hitlers ideology. Through slowly dismantaling of peoples rights with the tools of fear (etc). Just me trying to understand the mystery of Bush and his co.
OrByte
Diamond Member
I read the article, so congressional leadership was made aware, some oversight changes were made (implying that the administration wanted even MORE intrusive policy established) and as a result only a teeny tiny little bit of our american rights were being violated in the name of getting those terrorists. AND as long as no one knew about it, they conducted their business. yeah I feel real good about all of this... :roll:
I do not think the administration acted appropriately at all. Lines may have been crossed, and there needs to be an investigation to see if laws were broken. This was policy established in backrooms and behind closed doors and that shouldn't be the case when US civil rights are in question.
I am with the others here when I ask where are the real republicans at??? Its like the twilight zone.
imported_Aelius
Golden Member
I used to live under Communism for 11 years You can't possibly understand what that means and I hope you never have to.
Sadly if this keeps up you may eventually will.
A great man once said "If it walks like it, talks like it, call it for what it is... fascism".
I say the day you can no longer call your leader a fascist is the day democracy dies outright. Thankfully we aren't there... yet.
Sadly if this keeps up you may eventually will.
A great man once said "If it walks like it, talks like it, call it for what it is... fascism".
I say the day you can no longer call your leader a fascist is the day democracy dies outright. Thankfully we aren't there... yet.
sandorski
No Lifer
If he's so concerned about Al Queda, why does/did he pussyfoot around Afghanistan and Pakistan? Not only has Iraq been mismanaged, but the whole WoT is being mismanaged. Al Queda seems to be a great excuse to do all sorts of things, except taking decisive action against Al Queda.
I think you hit on the main drive behind those kinds of ideas, fear. From imprisoning Japanese Americans in WWII, to McCarthy's red-scare to the Patriot Act and torture, it's all driven by and overwhelming fear that prevents people from thinking clearly. Just listening to the supporters of those kinds of things makes that clear enough.
nihilaxiom
Junior Member
Quate :
Does NSA/CSS unconstitutionally spy on Americans?
No. NSA/CSS performs SIGINT operations against foreign powers or agents of foreign powers. It strictly follows laws and regulations designed to preserve every American's privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Fourth Amendment protects U.S. persons from unreasonable searches and seizures by the U.S. government or any person or agency acting on behalf of the U.S. government.
From the NSA's FQA page :
http://www.nsa.gov/about/about00020.cfm
Does NSA/CSS unconstitutionally spy on Americans?
No. NSA/CSS performs SIGINT operations against foreign powers or agents of foreign powers. It strictly follows laws and regulations designed to preserve every American's privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Fourth Amendment protects U.S. persons from unreasonable searches and seizures by the U.S. government or any person or agency acting on behalf of the U.S. government.
From the NSA's FQA page :
http://www.nsa.gov/about/about00020.cfm
nihilaxiom
Junior Member
MSNBC.com
Is the Pentagon spying on Americans?
Secret database obtained by NBC News tracks 'suspicious' domestic groups
By Lisa Myers, Douglas Pasternak, Rich Gardella and the NBC Investigative Unit
Updated: 6:18 p.m. ET Dec. 14, 2005
WASHINGTON - A year ago, at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., a small group of activists met to plan a protest of military recruiting at local high schools. What they didn't know was that their meeting had come to the attention of the U.S. military.
A secret 400-page Defense Department document obtained by NBC News lists the Lake Worth meeting as a "threat" and one of more than 1,500 "suspicious incidents" across the country over a recent 10-month period.
"This peaceful, educationally oriented group being a threat is incredible," says Evy Grachow, a member of the Florida group called The Truth Project.
"This is incredible," adds group member Rich Hersh. "It's an example of paranoia by our government," he says. "We're not doing anything illegal."
The Defense Department document is the first inside look at how the U.S. military has stepped up intelligence collection inside this country since 9/11, which now includes the monitoring of peaceful anti-war and counter-military recruitment groups.
"I think Americans should be concerned that the military, in fact, has reached too far," says NBC News military analyst Bill Arkin.
The Department of Defense declined repeated requests by NBC News for an interview. A spokesman said that all domestic intelligence information is "properly collected" and involves "protection of Defense Department installations, interests and personnel." The military has always had a legitimate "force protection" mission inside the U.S. to protect its personnel and facilities from potential violence. But the Pentagon now collects domestic intelligence that goes beyond legitimate concerns about terrorism or protecting U.S. military installations, say critics.
Four dozen anti-war meetings
The DOD database obtained by NBC News includes nearly four dozen anti-war meetings or protests, including some that have taken place far from any military installation, post or recruitment center. One "incident" included in the database is a large anti-war protest at Hollywood and Vine in Los Angeles last March that included effigies of President Bush and anti-war protest banners. Another incident mentions a planned protest against military recruiters last December in Boston and a planned protest last April at McDonald's National Salute to America's Heroes - a military air and sea show in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
The Fort Lauderdale protest was deemed not to be a credible threat and a column in the database concludes: "US group exercising constitutional rights." Two-hundred and forty-three other incidents in the database were discounted because they had no connection to the Department of Defense - yet they all remained in the database.
The DOD has strict guidelines (.PDF link), adopted in December 1982, that limit the extent to which they can collect and retain information on U.S. citizens.
Still, the DOD database includes at least 20 references to U.S. citizens or U.S. persons. Other documents obtained by NBC News show that the Defense Department is clearly increasing its domestic monitoring activities. One DOD briefing document stamped "secret" concludes: "[W]e have noted increased communication and encouragement between protest groups using the nternet," but no "significant connection" between incidents, such as "reoccurring instigators at protests" or "vehicle descriptions."
The increased monitoring disturbs some military observers.
"It means that they're actually collecting information about who's at those protests, the descriptions of vehicles at those protests," says Arkin. "On the domestic level, this is unprecedented," he says. "I think it's the beginning of enormous problems and enormous mischief for the military."
Some former senior DOD intelligence officials share his concern. George Lotz, a 30-year career DOD official and former U.S. Air Force colonel, held the post of Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Oversight from 1998 until his retirement last May. Lotz, who recently began a consulting business to help train and educate intelligence agencies and improve oversight of their collection process, believes some of the information the DOD has been collecting is not justified.
Make sure they are not just going crazy
"Somebody needs to be monitoring to make sure they are just not going crazy and reporting things on U.S. citizens without any kind of reasoning or rationale," says Lotz. "I demonstrated with Martin Luther King in 1963 in Washington," he says, "and I certainly didn't want anybody putting my name on any kind of list. I wasn't any threat to the government," he adds.
The military's penchant for collecting domestic intelligence is disturbing - but familiar - to Christopher Pyle, a former Army intelligence officer.
"Some people never learn," he says. During the Vietnam War, Pyle blew the whistle on the Defense Department for monitoring and infiltrating anti-war and civil rights protests when he published an article in the Washington Monthly in January 1970.
The public was outraged and a lengthy congressional investigation followed that revealed that the military had conducted investigations on at least 100,000 American citizens. Pyle got more than 100 military agents to testify that they had been ordered to spy on U.S. citizens - many of them anti-war protestors and civil rights advocates. In the wake of the investigations, Pyle helped Congress write a law placing new limits on military spying inside the U.S.
But Pyle, now a professor at Mt. Holyoke College in Massachusetts, says some of the information in the database suggests the military may be dangerously close to repeating its past mistakes.
"The documents tell me that military intelligence is back conducting investigations and maintaining records on civilian political activity. The military made promises that it would not do this again," he says.
Too much data?
Some Pentagon observers worry that in the effort to thwart the next 9/11, the U.S. military is now collecting too much data, both undermining its own analysis efforts by forcing analysts to wade through a mountain of rubble in order to obtain potentially key nuggets of intelligence and entangling U.S. citizens in the U.S. military's expanding and quiet collection of domestic threat data.
Two years ago, the Defense Department directed a little known agency, Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, to establish and "maintain a domestic law enforcement database that includes information related to potential terrorist threats directed against the Department of Defense." Then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz also established a new reporting mechanism known as a TALON or Threat and Local Observation Notice report. TALONs now provide "non-validated domestic threat information" from military units throughout the United States that are collected and retained in a CIFA database. The reports include details on potential surveillance of military bases, stolen vehicles, bomb threats and planned anti-war protests. In the program's first year, the agency received more than 5,000 TALON reports. The database obtained by NBC News is generated by Counterintelligence Field Activity.
CIFA is becoming the superpower of data mining within the U.S. national security community. Its "operational and analytical records" include "reports of investigation, collection reports, statements of individuals, affidavits, correspondence, and other documentation pertaining to investigative or analytical efforts" by the DOD and other U.S. government agencies to identify terrorist and other threats. Since March 2004, CIFA has awarded at least $33 million in contracts to corporate giants Lockheed Martin, Unisys Corporation, Computer Sciences Corporation and Northrop Grumman to develop databases that comb through classified and unclassified government data, commercial information and Internet chatter to help sniff out terrorists, saboteurs and spies.
One of the CIFA-funded database projects being developed by Northrop Grumman and dubbed "Person Search," is designed "to provide comprehensive information about people of interest." It will include the ability to search government as well as commercial databases. Another project, "The Insider Threat Initiative," intends to "develop systems able to detect, mitigate and investigate insider threats," as well as the ability to "identify and document normal and abnormal activities and 'behaviors,'" according to the Computer Sciences Corp. contract. A separate CIFA contract with a small Virginia-based defense contractor seeks to develop methods "to track and monitor activities of suspect individuals."
"The military has the right to protect its installations, and to protect its recruiting services," says Pyle. "It does not have the right to maintain extensive files on lawful protests of their recruiting activities, or of their base activities," he argues.
Lotz agrees.
"The harm in my view is that these people ought to be allowed to demonstrate, to hold a banner, to peacefully assemble whether they agree or disagree with the government's policies," the former DOD intelligence official says.
'Slippery slope'
Bert Tussing, director of Homeland Defense and Security Issues at the U.S. Army War College and a former Marine, says "there is very little that could justify the collection of domestic intelligence by the Unites States military. If we start going down this slippery slope it would be too easy to go back to a place we never want to see again," he says.
Some of the targets of the U.S. military's recent collection efforts say they have already gone too far.
"It's absolute paranoia - at the highest levels of our government," says Hersh of The Truth Project.
"I mean, we're based here at the Quaker Meeting House," says Truth Project member Marie Zwicker, "and several of us are Quakers."
The Defense Department refused to comment on how it obtained information on the Lake Worth meeting or why it considers a dozen or so anti-war activists a "threat."
© 2005 MSNBC.com
URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10454316/
And of course now the NSA.. Yet another means of undermining peoples freedoms and rights by this administration. I thought America fought the cold war because of these same ideologies of the Soviet Union. --->place your favorite dictator here<---- would be proud.
Is the Pentagon spying on Americans?
Secret database obtained by NBC News tracks 'suspicious' domestic groups
By Lisa Myers, Douglas Pasternak, Rich Gardella and the NBC Investigative Unit
Updated: 6:18 p.m. ET Dec. 14, 2005
WASHINGTON - A year ago, at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., a small group of activists met to plan a protest of military recruiting at local high schools. What they didn't know was that their meeting had come to the attention of the U.S. military.
A secret 400-page Defense Department document obtained by NBC News lists the Lake Worth meeting as a "threat" and one of more than 1,500 "suspicious incidents" across the country over a recent 10-month period.
"This peaceful, educationally oriented group being a threat is incredible," says Evy Grachow, a member of the Florida group called The Truth Project.
"This is incredible," adds group member Rich Hersh. "It's an example of paranoia by our government," he says. "We're not doing anything illegal."
The Defense Department document is the first inside look at how the U.S. military has stepped up intelligence collection inside this country since 9/11, which now includes the monitoring of peaceful anti-war and counter-military recruitment groups.
"I think Americans should be concerned that the military, in fact, has reached too far," says NBC News military analyst Bill Arkin.
The Department of Defense declined repeated requests by NBC News for an interview. A spokesman said that all domestic intelligence information is "properly collected" and involves "protection of Defense Department installations, interests and personnel." The military has always had a legitimate "force protection" mission inside the U.S. to protect its personnel and facilities from potential violence. But the Pentagon now collects domestic intelligence that goes beyond legitimate concerns about terrorism or protecting U.S. military installations, say critics.
Four dozen anti-war meetings
The DOD database obtained by NBC News includes nearly four dozen anti-war meetings or protests, including some that have taken place far from any military installation, post or recruitment center. One "incident" included in the database is a large anti-war protest at Hollywood and Vine in Los Angeles last March that included effigies of President Bush and anti-war protest banners. Another incident mentions a planned protest against military recruiters last December in Boston and a planned protest last April at McDonald's National Salute to America's Heroes - a military air and sea show in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
The Fort Lauderdale protest was deemed not to be a credible threat and a column in the database concludes: "US group exercising constitutional rights." Two-hundred and forty-three other incidents in the database were discounted because they had no connection to the Department of Defense - yet they all remained in the database.
The DOD has strict guidelines (.PDF link), adopted in December 1982, that limit the extent to which they can collect and retain information on U.S. citizens.
Still, the DOD database includes at least 20 references to U.S. citizens or U.S. persons. Other documents obtained by NBC News show that the Defense Department is clearly increasing its domestic monitoring activities. One DOD briefing document stamped "secret" concludes: "[W]e have noted increased communication and encouragement between protest groups using the nternet," but no "significant connection" between incidents, such as "reoccurring instigators at protests" or "vehicle descriptions."
The increased monitoring disturbs some military observers.
"It means that they're actually collecting information about who's at those protests, the descriptions of vehicles at those protests," says Arkin. "On the domestic level, this is unprecedented," he says. "I think it's the beginning of enormous problems and enormous mischief for the military."
Some former senior DOD intelligence officials share his concern. George Lotz, a 30-year career DOD official and former U.S. Air Force colonel, held the post of Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Oversight from 1998 until his retirement last May. Lotz, who recently began a consulting business to help train and educate intelligence agencies and improve oversight of their collection process, believes some of the information the DOD has been collecting is not justified.
Make sure they are not just going crazy
"Somebody needs to be monitoring to make sure they are just not going crazy and reporting things on U.S. citizens without any kind of reasoning or rationale," says Lotz. "I demonstrated with Martin Luther King in 1963 in Washington," he says, "and I certainly didn't want anybody putting my name on any kind of list. I wasn't any threat to the government," he adds.
The military's penchant for collecting domestic intelligence is disturbing - but familiar - to Christopher Pyle, a former Army intelligence officer.
"Some people never learn," he says. During the Vietnam War, Pyle blew the whistle on the Defense Department for monitoring and infiltrating anti-war and civil rights protests when he published an article in the Washington Monthly in January 1970.
The public was outraged and a lengthy congressional investigation followed that revealed that the military had conducted investigations on at least 100,000 American citizens. Pyle got more than 100 military agents to testify that they had been ordered to spy on U.S. citizens - many of them anti-war protestors and civil rights advocates. In the wake of the investigations, Pyle helped Congress write a law placing new limits on military spying inside the U.S.
But Pyle, now a professor at Mt. Holyoke College in Massachusetts, says some of the information in the database suggests the military may be dangerously close to repeating its past mistakes.
"The documents tell me that military intelligence is back conducting investigations and maintaining records on civilian political activity. The military made promises that it would not do this again," he says.
Too much data?
Some Pentagon observers worry that in the effort to thwart the next 9/11, the U.S. military is now collecting too much data, both undermining its own analysis efforts by forcing analysts to wade through a mountain of rubble in order to obtain potentially key nuggets of intelligence and entangling U.S. citizens in the U.S. military's expanding and quiet collection of domestic threat data.
Two years ago, the Defense Department directed a little known agency, Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, to establish and "maintain a domestic law enforcement database that includes information related to potential terrorist threats directed against the Department of Defense." Then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz also established a new reporting mechanism known as a TALON or Threat and Local Observation Notice report. TALONs now provide "non-validated domestic threat information" from military units throughout the United States that are collected and retained in a CIFA database. The reports include details on potential surveillance of military bases, stolen vehicles, bomb threats and planned anti-war protests. In the program's first year, the agency received more than 5,000 TALON reports. The database obtained by NBC News is generated by Counterintelligence Field Activity.
CIFA is becoming the superpower of data mining within the U.S. national security community. Its "operational and analytical records" include "reports of investigation, collection reports, statements of individuals, affidavits, correspondence, and other documentation pertaining to investigative or analytical efforts" by the DOD and other U.S. government agencies to identify terrorist and other threats. Since March 2004, CIFA has awarded at least $33 million in contracts to corporate giants Lockheed Martin, Unisys Corporation, Computer Sciences Corporation and Northrop Grumman to develop databases that comb through classified and unclassified government data, commercial information and Internet chatter to help sniff out terrorists, saboteurs and spies.
One of the CIFA-funded database projects being developed by Northrop Grumman and dubbed "Person Search," is designed "to provide comprehensive information about people of interest." It will include the ability to search government as well as commercial databases. Another project, "The Insider Threat Initiative," intends to "develop systems able to detect, mitigate and investigate insider threats," as well as the ability to "identify and document normal and abnormal activities and 'behaviors,'" according to the Computer Sciences Corp. contract. A separate CIFA contract with a small Virginia-based defense contractor seeks to develop methods "to track and monitor activities of suspect individuals."
"The military has the right to protect its installations, and to protect its recruiting services," says Pyle. "It does not have the right to maintain extensive files on lawful protests of their recruiting activities, or of their base activities," he argues.
Lotz agrees.
"The harm in my view is that these people ought to be allowed to demonstrate, to hold a banner, to peacefully assemble whether they agree or disagree with the government's policies," the former DOD intelligence official says.
'Slippery slope'
Bert Tussing, director of Homeland Defense and Security Issues at the U.S. Army War College and a former Marine, says "there is very little that could justify the collection of domestic intelligence by the Unites States military. If we start going down this slippery slope it would be too easy to go back to a place we never want to see again," he says.
Some of the targets of the U.S. military's recent collection efforts say they have already gone too far.
"It's absolute paranoia - at the highest levels of our government," says Hersh of The Truth Project.
"I mean, we're based here at the Quaker Meeting House," says Truth Project member Marie Zwicker, "and several of us are Quakers."
The Defense Department refused to comment on how it obtained information on the Lake Worth meeting or why it considers a dozen or so anti-war activists a "threat."
© 2005 MSNBC.com
URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10454316/
And of course now the NSA.. Yet another means of undermining peoples freedoms and rights by this administration. I thought America fought the cold war because of these same ideologies of the Soviet Union. --->place your favorite dictator here<---- would be proud.
I think for the most part that is true. People distrust the NSA because of the secretive nature of what they do, far more so than the secrecy surrounding the CIA, for example, but I think that overall they follow the rules. All the more reason to bring this kind of illegal activity to light. It's in their best interest as well, because this kind of thing will result in greater restraints placed on the NSA and other intelligence and police organizations. If they are smart, they will work within the letter and spirit of the law, it just makes good sense from their point of view as well.
miketheidiot
Lifer
the public has the right to know everything. The government has no right to keep secrets from the people it supposedly represents.
nihilaxiom
Junior Member
http://img438.imageshack.us/img438/3382/denial1oz.gif
A little off topic but i found this to be so funny ( and sad but true ). Especially Osama on the left.
A little off topic but i found this to be so funny ( and sad but true ). Especially Osama on the left.
nihilaxiom
Junior Member
Opps. Osama is on the right. ( just where the hell is Osama?? )
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