Large-scale data mining has long been controversial in the US, due to its potential for infringement on basic civil liberties. One post-9/11 effort, the Pentagon's Information Awareness Office, had its funds cut off by Congress in 2003 following criticism by the American Civil Liberties Union and others that it went too far.
The publicly admitted outlines of the terrorist surveillance program are "only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the NSA's spying on the American public,"...
What is the rest of the iceberg?
Is there any logical reasoning behind the surveillance programs from the point of view of intercepting terrorist communications? Robert Parry points out some fundamental incongruencies -
Can anyone really imagine a conversation like “Gee, Osama, since Bush has to get FISA approval, we can now call our sleeper agents and plan the next attack.”
Similarly, there’s no reason to think terrorists would change their behavior significantly if they knew that the U.S. government was engaged in massive data-mining operations, poring through electronic records of citizens and non-citizens alike.
The 9/11 attackers mostly stayed off the grid and many of their transactions, such as renting housing, would not alone have raised suspicions. Indeed, the patterns that deserved more attention, such as enrollment in flight-training classes and the arrival of known al-Qaeda operatives, were detected by alert FBI agents in the field but ignored by FBI officials in Washington – and by Bush while on a month-long vacation in Texas.
The 9/11 attacks were less a failure of intelligence than a failure of political attention by Bush’s national security team.
Bush's Secret Spying on Americans By Robert Parry August 2, 2007
3 comments:
9/11 just gave Cheney and the rest of the fascist group still in power the excuse they needed to pick up where Nixon left off only now with the aid of vastly improved computers and communications nets they could now finish the job. The job being keeping a very close tab on your political foes and friends. Data mining being used for political and economic advantage. I would guess much of the Timidity being shown by the hapless gutless Demos. is probably partially due to these programs. Get to close to these animals and u get a little taste of what they know about u and everyone you've ever spoken too. These are people who play rough and data is power and they sit at the nexus of that info. Think their prepared to give up that position any time soon? I doubt it.
The quote in the PNAC document about a need for a new Pearl Harbor in order to implement the neo-conservative agenda, makes many of us speculate that 9-11 was much more than the work of a few Saudis. The authoritarians want complete control, they reject democracy, and have mastered the P.R. skills to relabel fascist policy as if it were democratic. policy. Americans seen to be wising up slowly. They don't follow the news with precision, but they are aware that something is really wrong.
Yes, The BV$HIVIKS have taken Orwell's Newspeak to a whole different level. They've effectively taken words and ideas gutted them leaving them as shells with whole new meanings. WAR is INDEED PEACE but they've moved beyond simple phrases, way beyond. We have entered Orwell's world and are living it. Fascism thought dead in 1945 has evolved into something that wears sheep's clothing over its Iron visage. But Fascists never wear a Velvet glove comfortably for very long. They're "inner rage" is just too strong. Their blood lust too central too what they are. Like Vampires they long too suck our blood in the daylight!
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