Collusion for Tyranny: The Media is just as guilty as Bush

Kucinich has introduced the Articles of Impeachment against Bush

...and the Media hasn't said shit.

"Liberal Media" my ass! The Media is fucking fascist, end of story. They are utterly controlled by the same corporate interests that control both major political parties. That's why Dennis Kucinich is a pariah in his own party -- he actually looks out for the Constitution and the rights of We The People. Such dedication to Liberty is considered treason in the bowels of both the Democratic and Republican parties.

A few mainstream outlets picked up the story and managed to spend an approximate average of less than 200 words describing the measure. They couldn't even be bothered to list more than a few of the 35 articles of impeachment.

I've seen better reporting in a fucking high school newspaper.

I don't blame the beat reporters; if their editors said "give me 2,000 words" they would have. As is, they probably had to fight to get 200.

But it's disgusting. I mean, jeeze, it's only the impeachment of the goddamn President of the United States of America. They all managed to mention that it's not politically feasible. Well I wonder why that is, you jackasses! It's because you won't cover it! If you did, everything would change, no matter how shitty and biased your coverage. Mr. 25% Approval Rating would not find many advocates in the populace, even if he would in the dominant press. And then you'd look pretty stupid, wouldn't you, defending the murdering megalomaniac who launched an illegal war. Those of us who still remember the impeachment of Bill Clinton know that it takes very little to whip the Media into a frothing frenzy of obsessive, inane coverage. Surely you could do the same for Bush. But you won't.

Because you're traitors.

Yeah, that's right. I said it. And it's true. This president is the most evil, diabolical man ever elected and you, the supposed Fourth Estate, won't criticize him in a voice above a whisper. It's fucking pathetic.

Look at Kucinich's 35 articles of impeachment. There's a lot of red meat here:

#1: Creating a secret propaganda campaign to manufacture a false case for war against Iraq

#2 Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the Attacks of September 11, 2001, With Misrepresentation of Iraq as a Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of Aggression

#3 Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, to Manufacture a False Case for War

#4 Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Posed an Imminent Threat to the United States

#14: Misprision of a felony, misuse and exposure of classified information and cover up (Plame outing)

#15: Providing immunity from prosecution for criminal conduct for contractors in Iraq

#17: Illegal detention – detaining indefinitely, and without charge, American citizens and foreign captives (suspension of habeus)

#18: Torture – secretly authorizing and encouraging use of torture, as matter of official policy

#19 Rendition

#24 Spying on citizens violating 4th Amendment

#26 Announcing intent to violate laws w/signing statements, and then violating those laws.

#27 Failing to comply with congressional subpoenas, and instructing others to do so.

#29: Conspiracy to violate voting rights act of 1965, Ohio Sec of State 2004-06

#34: Obstruction into the investigation of 9/11

That's just a few of them. And this isn't wing-nut stuff, this is all stuff that has been discussed at one time or another in the mainstream press. Much of it was hushed up (the NSA spying scandal, election fraud, 9/11 obstruction) but some of it was loud and clear (torture, Plame, illegal Iraq War). Far from being left-wing lunacy, this is the last 7.5 years, distilled into 35 bullet points.

And yet the Media won't cover a congressman trying to hold Bush/Cheney accountable for their crimes.

I already told you why. But let it sink in. The Mainstream Media are the ones who made the Bush/Cheney disaster possible. They're the ones who greased the wheels, regurgitated the lies, jumped on the bandwagon and hushed up the really bad shit. Bush, without a fawning press corps, is just another partisan nutcase with a rich daddy. He wouldn't've been re-elected, let alone "elected" in the first place (another coverup there).

Let me lay it down for ya, real simple: If Bush hangs, Brian Williams should hang, too. If Cheney hangs, Tim Russert needs to swing from the same pole. If Rumsfeld goes down to the gallows, Charles Krauthammer and David Brooks need to die too. The blood of OVER ONE MILLION IRAQI INNOCENTS is on their hands.

Maybe that's why the Media is so protective of the Bush regime: They know if Bush goes down, they all go down. They've all bloodied their hands and sullied their souls together. Might as well stick together until the bitter end.

But if we don't stop them, they'll turn this nation into a fascist state and make you and I into criminals for believing in justice, peace and freedom. Somehow we've got to stop them, but I just don't know how. I'm just some random guy with a blog. What can I do? There's no one representing my interests in Washington except Dennis Kucinich.

One man, standing up against the Forces of Evil, spitting in the wind and calling for change. This doesn't look good for the underdogs.

Meanwhile, the supposed hope of mankind is cozying up to Israel, possibly attending the secret Bilderberg meeting (another media coverup) and generally doing whatever it takes to get elected. Fair enough. But Barack Obama had better watch out that he doesn't sell his soul in the process.

Maybe the whole Obama campaign is just a mirage, a hallucination by those of us who have dreamed of someone who could bring our government back from the brink of tyranny and outright fascism.

I hope I'm wrong, but it's hard to believe in anything or anybody anymore. We've been utterly betrayed by the government, the media and the elite. It just hurts too much to care anymore. The audacity of hope, indeed.

I'd feel a lot more hopeful if I knew somebody out there was fighting the good fight. I sleep a little sounder knowing Kucinich has the balls of a man twice his size, but he's only one man. We need a few hundred more like him in Congress.

Dennis Kucinich: I salute you. You are a true American patriot.

Continuity of Totalitarianism

There exists, somewhere deep in the belly of the NSA, a database so large, so secret, and so illegal, that few government officials will dare talk about it, even off the record.

Sources familiar with the program say that the government's data gathering has been overzealous and probably conducted in violation of federal law and the protection from unreasonable search and seizure guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.

According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, "There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived 'enemies of the state' almost instantaneously." He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention. [emphasis mine]

Are you on the list? You have no way of knowing. There's no way to reason with them, to tell them you're not a threat. There's no recourse, no due process, no rights.

This is the dark heart of our government, silently beating away in the darkest corner of a military base somewhere deep underground. There are people in position who long for (or at least plan for) the chance to take power in the next emergency. The Constitution would be suspended, Congress rendered impotent, martial law declared and cities locked down.

For what?

Fear. This government fears its citizens, not because they're all terrorists, but because many of them still believe in democracy. Such people are dangerous. Believing in the Constitution might be enough to get you on the list.

Let's imagine a harrowing scenario: coordinated bombings in several American cities culminating in a major blast—say, a suitcase nuke—in New York City. Thousands of civilians are dead. Commerce is paralyzed. A state of emergency is declared by the president. Continuity of Governance plans that were developed during the Cold War and aggressively revised since 9/11 go into effect. Surviving government officials are shuttled to protected underground complexes carved into the hills of Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Power shifts to a "parallel government" that consists of scores of secretly preselected officials. (As far back as the 1980s, Donald Rumsfeld, then CEO of a pharmaceutical company, and Dick Cheney, then a congressman from Wyoming, were slated to step into key positions during a declared emergency.) The executive branch is the sole and absolute seat of authority, with Congress and the judiciary relegated to advisory roles at best. The country becomes, within a matter of hours, a police state.

Why? Why do we need to become a police state in order to become "secure"? Well, I already mentioned it above; the people who put these COG plans together are not patriots. They are traitors who wish to dispense with the annoyances of representative government and move instead to a system where everything is much smoother... for those in power.

It's strange that they would throw 200 years of liberty at the first sign of trouble ... if you don't know who these people are. Notice who gets protected in the scenario above. They aren't saving the Constitution, they're saving their own asses. They don't have contingency plans in place to ensure that citizens' rights are upheld; no, they're only concerned with maintaining their power and their control over us.

It's not necessary that the government be saved. We can start a new one and Lord knows it'll be better than the one we've got. But the one we've got is intent on saving its own skin, Constitution and Bill of Rights be damned. This isn't a Continuity of Liberty plan. This is a Discontinuation of Liberty plan.

The totality of this plan, the way every tactically-important aspect has been planned for seizure and "continuity", is to me indicative of Totalitarianism. The state and those in power can't even imagine why we wouldn't want the government to control everything. The idea that we could survive just fine without a bloated Federal government doesn't even occur to them.

You know, the United States of America was originally supposed to be an alliance amongst soveriegn states. If something bad happens in Washington D.C. that shouldn't directly affect Arizona or Minnesota, except as far as Federal money is concerned (the main tool by which the Federal government has tightened its control over the states).

Realize this: We don't need a strong Federal government! We have state and local governments to take care of things important to every American; things like roads, power, water, communications and other services.

And who's planning all this stuff anyway? Surely a competent agency with a devotion to civil liberties, right?

Haha, just kidding. You know we're fucked: It's FEMA!

Under law, during a national emergency, FEMA and its parent organization, the Department of Homeland Security, would be empowered to seize private and public property, all forms of transport, and all food supplies. The agency could dispatch military commanders to run state and local governments, and it could order the arrest of citizens without a warrant, holding them without trial for as long as the acting government deems necessary.

Seriously.

Well, I guess I should look at the silver lining: FEMA will probably be just an incompetent at taking our liberties away as at helping those in need... But that's probably optimistic on my part. The reason FEMA sucks at disaster relief is because it was never really set up to be a benevolent agency; the idea behind FEMA was always this: Seizing control of the nation during an emergency.

This is the real purpose of the War on Terror. It's to get us used to the idea that the government needs to step in and take over when things get rough. What they don't tell you is that they're intentionally creating a culture of fear to make the poisonous medecine go down easier, and they're probably working the other end of things too, creating the conditions for terrorists to thrive so they'll launch attacks and trigger the COG plans that were the whole point of the War on Terror in the first place. So, like the War on Drugs, the WOT is reall just a War on Liberty.

All this brings us back to the Main Core database:

Another well-informed source—a former military operative regularly briefed by members of the intelligence community—says this particular program has roots going back at least to the 1980s and was set up with help from the Defense Intelligence Agency. He has been told that the program utilizes software that makes predictive judgments of targets' behavior and tracks their circle of associations with "social network analysis" and artificial intelligence modeling tools.

"The more data you have on a particular target, the better [the software] can predict what the target will do, where the target will go, who it will turn to for help," he says. "Main Core is the table of contents for all the illegal information that the U.S. government has [compiled] on specific targets." An intelligence expert who has been briefed by high-level contacts in the Department of Homeland Security confirms that a database of this sort exists, but adds that "it is less a mega-database than a way to search numerous other agency databases at the same time."

The fact that there are 8 million of us in this database is nothing less than horrifying. If there were really 8 million terrorists in the USA we'd have people exploding with Baghdad-like regularity... but we don't. Nope, it's far more likely that the people in this database are those like myself who believe in liberty and democracy. We are the true threat a tyrannical government would face in an emergency because we would want the Constitution to be reinstated. The COGers won't let that happen.

That is why we need to be monitored. All of us. All the time. For no reason other than we might be a threat some time in the future. Maybe. The pesky 4th amendment makes this so much more difficult than the government would like, but after years of merciless attack there's not much left of it in the public consciousness or on the law books. Here's a look at what they monitor:

The following information seems to be fair game for collection without a warrant: the e-mail addresses you send to and receive from, and the subject lines of those messages; the phone numbers you dial, the numbers that dial in to your line, and the durations of the calls; the Internet sites you visit and the keywords in your Web searches; the destinations of the airline tickets you buy; the amounts and locations of your ATM withdrawals; and the goods and services you purchase on credit cards. All of this information is archived on government supercomputers and, according to sources, also fed into the Main Core database.

Basically, you are being monitored at all times. The NSA has been scooping up anything and everything on the internet for years. They already had phone conversations and financial transactions.

The privacy concerns are horrifying enough, but what's worse is that the database is probably useless at preventing terrorism:

In any case, mass watch lists of domestic citizens may do nothing to make us safer from terrorism. Jeff Jonas, chief scientist at IBM, a world-renowned expert in data mining, contends that such efforts won't prevent terrorist conspiracies. "Because there is so little historical terrorist event data," Jonas tells Radar, "there is not enough volume to create precise predictions."

But there is a lot of data on regular Americans who aren't planning any attacks. And that data can be misused, and it probably will be at the first opportunity.

NSA wiretapping program deemed unconstitutional by federal judge!

Yes! Best news I've heard all day! Think Progress has the scoop:

Fox News reports a federal district court in Detroit has ruled that the Bush administration’s NSA warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to it.

Hell yeah!! I wonder what the neocons' next move will be. The judge has issued an injunction (pdf) (I'm glad to see James Bamford is one of the plaintiffs).

Only problem is: How will we ever know for sure that they've stopped the program? We didn't know when they started it -- it was revealed only recently. What mechanism do we have for ensuring that the NSA doesn't simply change the name of the program and ignore the judge's order?

The NSA is a rogue agency. We need Congress to crack it wide open and see what it's been hiding all these years.

More spying programs? Bush lied about informing Congress

It seems that Bush isn't really telling Congress everything. One of his major supporters wrote him a letter to complain about his committee being left out of the loop on several new spying programs which presumably have not been made public yet:

In a sharply worded letter, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee has told President Bush that the administration is angering lawmakers, and possibly violating the law, by giving Congress too little information about domestic surveillance programs.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (Mich.) has been a staunch defender of the administration's anti-terrorism tactics. But seven weeks ago, he wrote to Bush to report that he had heard of "alleged Intelligence Community activities" not outlined to committee members in classified briefings.

"If these allegations are true," he wrote, "they may represent a breach of responsibility by the Administration, a violation of law and . . . a direct affront to me and the Members of this committee."

Hoekstra's four-page letter of May 18 was posted yesterday on the New York Times' Web site. His staff confirmed the letter's authenticity but said it was meant to remain private. Spokesman Jamal D. Ware said Hoekstra "has raised these concerns, and they are being addressed. He will continue to push for full disclosure so the committee can conduct vigorous oversight."

The letter is significant because few congressional Republicans have complained publicly about Bush's surveillance programs, which include warrantless wiretaps of some Americans' international phone calls and e-mails as well as the massive collection of telephone records involving U.S. homes and businesses.

Well, nice of them to finally speak up. Or one of them, I guess. He seems pretty steamed about being left out of the loop:

In his letter, Hoekstra complained of unspecified alleged surveillance operations that had not become public at the time and that, perhaps, remain undisclosed. It was written five weeks before newspapers divulged that the administration has been secretly tapping into a vast global database of confidential financial transactions for nearly five years. It was unclear yesterday whether Hoekstra and other top-ranking lawmakers had been briefed on that program by the date of the letter.

So I guess the Bush administration was lying when it said that it keeps Congress well-informed of it various spying programs. One more lie to add to the growing pile.

I wonder what those undisclosed spying programs entail? Maybe it's only the SWIFT financial records spying program, but it could be a whole new one, or a bunch of new ones. Either way, Bush lied. Let me say it again: Bush Lied.

But when he says, "trust me" some people still believe him. How stupid can you get? The man is a habitual liar and a politician. He cannot be trusted. Let's not keeping making that mistake, okay?

The Shadow Government

It now sounds like the NSA approached AT&T about setting up a domestic spying ring well before 9/11. Bush previously claimed that 9/11 was the impetus behind the decision, but it sounds like he's just a fascist by nature:

The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court.

The allegation is part of a court filing adding AT&T, the nation's largest telephone company, as a defendant in a breach of privacy case filed earlier this month on behalf of Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. customers. The suit alleges that the three carriers, the NSA and President George W. Bush violated the Telecommunications Act of 1934 and the U.S. Constitution, and seeks money damages.

"The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11," plaintiff's lawyer Carl Mayer said in a telephone interview. "This undermines that assertion."

The lawsuit is related to an alleged NSA program to record and store data on calls placed by subscribers. More than 30 suits have been filed over claims that the carriers, the three biggest U.S. telephone companies, violated the privacy rights of their customers by cooperating with the NSA in an effort to track alleged terrorists.

Well, this probably comes as a surprise to anyone who thinks Bush is a real conservative. The neocons are called neo-conservatives because they're not really conservative. They're actually quite a radical bunch and they came into office with a very forward-looking plan to reshape the world and America's place in it. While you certainly can't call them liberals, the conservative label doesn't fit either. That's why I like to call them neo-fascists. It describes their intent and their methods so much better than the other, more conventional terms.

So let there be no doubt: Spying on us and taking away our liberties was the plan from day one. They didn't suddenly become radicalized by 9/11 -- they claim that continually and that's bullshit. They hope that we were changed by 9/11, but it didn't affect them in the same way. Shit, the neocons probably threw a party after 9/11 because suddenly everything they've ever wanted was within reach. They can continue building their American Empire without a lot of whiny opposition (or so they thought! Bloggers can whine better than anyone!) and they no longer had to pretend to care about the Constitution. When you look at who benefited most from 9/11 the neocons are on the top of the list. They certainly faired better than the mythical Al Qaeda (which is CIA anyway).
We live in dark times. Can't trust our own government. Our government has been stolen out from under our noses and most people have no idea why or how. I can answer that quite easily. Why? Power. How? The Federal Reserve System. That's a gross oversimplification, but the fact remains that the Fed enabled the private banking class to control our government from afar. Just think about it: A private institution, in the middle of our government (inaccurately named "Federal") that controls our money supply. The government depends on the Fed for it's power because in the capitalist system the bankers are king. Shit, you'd be king too if you could take a dollar and turn it into ten dollars just by loaning it out ten times. That's the way banks work; fractional reserve banking is a huge scam:

Banks make money by literally creating money out of thin air, nowadays exclusively deposits rather than bank notes. This sort of swindling or counterfeiting is dignified by the term "fractional-reserve banking," which means that bank deposits are backed by only a small fraction of the cash they promise to have at hand and redeem. (Right now, in the United States, this minimum fraction is fixed by the Federal Reserve System at 10 percent.)

Fractional Reserve Banking

Let's see how the fractional reserve process works, in the absence of a central bank. I set up a Rothbard Bank, and invest $1,000 of cash (whether gold or government paper does not matter here). Then I "lend out" $10,000 to someone, either for consumer spending or to invest in his business. How can I "lend out" far more than I have? Ahh, that's the magic of the "fraction" in the fractional reserve. I simply open up a checking account of $10,000 which I am happy to lend to Mr. Jones. Why does Jones borrow from me? Well, for one thing, I can charge a lower rate of interest than savers would. I don't have to save up the money myself, but simply can counterfeit it out of thin air. (In the nineteenth century, I would have been able to issue bank notes, but the Federal Reserve now monopolizes note issues.) Since demand deposits at the Rothbard Bank function as equivalent to cash, the nation's money supply has just, by magic, increased by $10,000. The inflationary, counterfeiting process is under way.

The nineteenth-century English economist Thomas Tooke correctly stated that "free trade in banking is tantamount to free trade in swindling."

Read the whole article. It's a great primer on how inflated and fake our whole economy is. Anytime there's inflation your money is suddenly worth less. But whoever created that new money just got a sweet deal. He just swindled you and it's all completely legal. He can swindle you again and again and you'll never know his name or look him in the eye. You'll never get a chance to get your money back either. Our entire economy is one big scam.

So, who benefits from all of this? Bankers and criminals, of course (is there a difference?). Over the years they have grown powerful and they are getting extremely tired of the constitutional roadblocks in place and they would very much like to be rid of our pesky civil liberties. So it should come as no surprise that Bush has been a tyrannical, fascist, wanna-be dictator from day one -- he is very much a scion of the criminal banking class (he was born in Connecticut, not Texas) and his goal has always been to increase the power of the Shadow Government that sprung up after the creation of the Fed. The Shadow Government includes the military-industrial-complex (which itself includes the NSA, CIA, the Pentagon as a whole and Congress) along with the Fed, the FBI, the ATF and various other tentacles of control (like the media). Not everyone who works at the NSA is part of this Shadow Government, but the problem is that most people don't even know it exists -- so how can they fight against it?

Spread the word. The Shadow Government is basically a takeover attempt by the banking cartel and their criminal buddies. Events like 9/11 will continue to happen until they are removed from power.

Bush rips revelation of financial transaction spying story

Dear Leader, fresh from his daily manicure, his daily jog, his daily 3 hour prayer session, his leisurely breakfast and his daily rimjob, got off his ass to yell at the press for bothering to do their job (for once):

President Bush on Monday sharply condemned the disclosure of a program to secretly monitor the financial transactions of suspected terrorists. "The disclosure of this program is disgraceful," he said.

"For people to leak that program and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America," Bush said, jabbing his finger for emphasis. He said the disclosure of the program "makes it harder to win this war on terror."

Meanwhile, hiding in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan, a terrorist foot soldier for Al-Qaeda known as Habib al-Durka al-Alallalli had this to say about the financial records spying story: "Oh my Allah (peace be upon him)! I had no idea that the infidels were watching financial transactions within their own western banking institutions! What a shocker. I guess I will now have to be closing my Wells Fargo account. But what will I do about free checking? Oh, I hope this doesn't affect my credit rating!"

Other terrorists were similarly concerned about the spying revelations. Several expressed concerns about whether their recent orders from The Pottery Barn were tracked. Remarked al-Alallalli, "Between this and the NSA's internet datamining I am pretty sure the infidels know what kind of floral patterns I prefer, making it easy to distinguish my cave from Akbar the goat-herder's. Curse the infidels and their irresistable deals on hand-sewn tufted cushions!!"

Specter to write blank check for Bush administration spying

That's basically what's happening here. Specter is determined to please his masters (the neocons, not the American people you silly!) by retroactively making what they did legal:

But Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and other critics contend the program skirted a 1978 law that required the government to get approval from a secretive federal court before Americans could be monitored.

"We're getting close with the discussions with the White House, I think, to having the wiretapping issue submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court," Specter told "Fox New Sunday."

What needs to be done? Looks like there's some behind the scenes clean-up or cover-up going on here. Why not just submit it? Because it wouldn't fly.

The administration has asserted that a post-Sept. 11, 2001, congressional resolution approving the use of military force covered the surveillance of some domestic communications.

Specter has said that the president "does not have a blank check" and he has sought to have administration ask the special court to review the program.

At least not until you write them one, right Arlen? Specter should be using his power as chairman to nail this administration's balls to the wall, but instead he's trying to play both sides and get them out of a serious constitutional jam.

Meanwhile, Rep. Peter King is saying that the New York Times should be prosecuted for daring to reveal the financial records spying program:

King, R-N.Y., said he would write Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urging that the nation's chief law enforcer "begin an investigation and prosecution of The New York Times— the reporters, the editors and the publisher."

"We're at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous," King told The Associated Press.

No, treasonous is destroying Americans' 4th amendment rights for some sort of secret spying program that wasn't approved by the full Congress or by any federal court.

Persecuting the press for revealing abuses of power: Sounds exactly like fascism to me!

AT&T and NSA spying claims corroborated

Salon has a new article about the NSA spying scandal (icky day pass thing required). It adds to earlier reports by whistleblower Mark Klein, and it includes the same type "secret room" that requires top secret access:

The details provided by the two former workers about the Bridgeton room bear the distinctive earmarks of an operation run by the National Security Agency, according to two intelligence experts with extensive knowledge of the NSA and its operations. In addition to the room's high-tech security, those intelligence experts told Salon, the exhaustive vetting process AT&T workers were put through before being granted top-secret security clearance points to the NSA, an agency known as much for its intense secrecy as its technological sophistication.

"It was very hush-hush," said one of the former AT&T workers. "We were told there was going to be some government personnel working in that room. We were told, 'Do not try to speak to them. Do not hamper their work. Do not impede anything that they're doing.'"

The importance of the Bridgeton facility is its role in managing the "common backbone" for all of AT&T's Internet operations. According to one of the former workers, Bridgeton serves as the technical command center from which the company manages all the routers and circuits carrying the company's domestic and international Internet traffic. Therefore, Bridgeton could be instrumental for conducting surveillance or collecting data.

They're listening in on a backbone, so that means they're catching a massive amount of internet traffic. It's no doubt being filtered and entered into a database for later search and retrieval. Scary stuff. The government should not be allowed to do this without explicit congressional approval. But this is George Bush's America, and he's considered to be above the law by his allies. Personally, I think this is either insanity and paranoia or a deliberate step towards dictatorship and totalitarianism.

ACLU hauls the Bush administration into court

The ACLU is claiming that the NSA wirtapping program is illegal under the Constitution. Silly ACLU; they think we still have a Constitution. What we really is have is a ruling cabal of fascists pretending they believe in freedom:

The parties in the ACLU lawsuit, who include journalists, scholars and lawyers, say the program has hampered their ability to do their jobs because it has made international contacts, such as sources and potential witnesses, wary of sharing information over the phone.

Ann Beeson, the ACLU's associate legal director, said the administration's arguments in defense of the program don't square with the Constitution.

"The framers never intended to give the president the power to ignore the laws of Congress even during wartime and emergencies," she said last week during a conference call with reporters.

She said no state secrets need to be revealed to litigate the case because the administration has already acknowledged the program exists. The Center for Constitutional Rights has filed a similar lawsuit on the eavesdropping in federal court in New York.

Everytime the government uses the old "state secrets" line, democracy dies a little more. "State secrets" is their version of a "Get out of jail free" card. Like the "national security" red herring, it works everytime. I expect this case to dismissed soon.

We no longer live in a Constitutional Republic. Democracy was fun while it lasted.

Hayden sworn in at CIA; Plans huge spying effort -- on Americans

This is not getting out of hand. It's way beyond that now. We are watching our rights, our privacy, our Constitution, our nation -- crumble before our very eyes. So this is what the death of democracy feels like. For me it feels like numb, helpless outrage. Are you ready for the latest outrage?

Here it is, from Capitol Hill Blue:

Now that he is officially sworn in as the new head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gen. Michael Hayden plans to build a vast domestic spying network that will pry into the lives of most Americans around the clock.

President George W. Bush told Hayden to "take whatever steps necessary" to monitor Americans 24/7 by listening in on their phone calls, bugging their homes and offices, probing their private lives, snooping into their financial records and watching their travel habits.

Can I prove this in a court of law? No. Do I know it is happening? Yes, without a doubt. Enough sources within the CIA, FBI, NSA and Pentagon have come forward in recent days to warn about Hayden's plans for an expanded, consolidated spy network aimed at Americans, not terrorists, and violating numerous laws that prohibit such activities against citizens of this country.

"What Hayden plans to do is not only illegal, it is immoral," says a longtime CIA operative who may retire early rather than participate in what he sees as an illegal extension of the spy agency's activities.

The article goes on to mention that resignations are at an all-time high at The Agency. The reporter, Doug Thompson, wishes he could prove this to us. I guess we have to take his word for it for now. But would I be surpised if every word were true? Not one bit.

I wish I could prove this. I wish one, just one, source on the inside was willing to come forward and allow his or her name to be used but those who might be tempted see what happened to Mary McCarthy, the CIA employee fired and under threat of prosecution for leaking information about CIA torture camps in Europe.

But I know it is happening. People I've known for years and trust tell me it is happening and the past record of spying, lies and deceit by the Bush administration point to just such an operation.

This nation is under attack. We, the people, are under attack. And the enemy in this case is not an Islamic radical hiding in a cave in Afghanistan but a cabal of truly evil men and women at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and on Capitol Hill aided by carefully-picked, law-ignoring appointees at the Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, a black glass-walled building at Fort Meade, MD, and a complex in Langley, Virginia.

Not the normally sedate language we're used to reading in the press. But he's right. We are under attack. Let me say it again:

We Are Under Attack. By Our Own Government.

So, we catch any terrorists yet?

...Or have we only managed to infringe on the rights of 300 million Americans?

The NSA surveillance program is not about catching terrorists. Don't ever let anybody tell you otherwise. It's not going to work if they don't listen to the calls themselves (they do). Their data mining is worthless unless they attach to it other information such as your social security number, medical records, financial records and criminal history.

No, the reason why they're monitoring all of us is because the paranoid, fascist, psychopaths in charge of the country think that there are 300 million potential terrorists out there. Of course, when they say "terrorist" they mean anybody who doesn't agree with the Bush clan. That means, Democrats, libertarians, academics, certain members of the media, teachers, those crazy Hollywood liberals, anybody who uses the internet, and of course, grandmothers. Ooohhh!! What a scary bunch!

Of course, with Bush's polls in the lower 30s, you can add a good chunk of his Republican base to the list. As his numbers continue to spiral downwards Bush will get more and more paranoid and he will actually turn on his base and attack former friends. It should be amusing to watch.

The whole immigration debate is a good example of how Bush will be forced to choose one side of his base over the other. Corporations love illegal immigration because it provides cheap labor. Social conservatives hate illegal immigration because they don't like brown people and they think those brown people might be stealing their jobs (and they're probably right, since the corporations love cheap labor, like I said). So, who will Bush side with? He's gonna piss off somebody; that's a given. But in the end, I think Bush will side with the corporations since they are his bread and butter. The social conservatives thought he was one of them; they thought wrong. Again.

Personally, I could give a fuck as long as they don't build a Great Wall of Terror between the US and Mexico. That would just be stupid. Yes, illegal immigration is a problem, but let's not overreact here. What we need are more workers visas for Mexico. Most illegal immigrants actually return home after sending a bunch of cash back to Mexico. This creates economic problems in Mexico, of course. I really don't know what the ideal solution is; I just hope GW doesn't annex Mexico.

Trying to get your records from the NSA...

...is not easy. However, I wish this guy a lot of luck in his endeavour. I hope he appeals and wins. I think the justification he needs to use is pretty obvious: It's his data.

Desperate, Grasping, Insanity of the Bush Administration

Okay, check this gallant argument out:

The Bush administration has asked federal judges in New York and Michigan to dismiss a pair of lawsuits filed over the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, saying litigating them would jeopardize state secrets.

In papers filed late Friday, Justice Department lawyers said it would be impossible to defend the legality of the spying program without disclosing classified information that could be of value to suspected terrorists.

National Intelligence Director John Negroponte invoked the state secrets privilege on behalf of the administration, writing that disclosure of such information would cause "exceptionally grave damage" to national security.

The administration laid out some of its supporting arguments in classified memos that were filed under seal.

So lemme get this straight. Not only is Bush saying that the spying program is so secret that they can't tell us what it's for, their legal justifications are themselves secret. WTF?!

That says to me that this adminstration is so desperate that they would sink to nothing more than a lowly tug-of-war over power. And that is not a good sign.

The possibility of a Bush coup has occurred to me on more than one occasion. They're such a slimy bunch I consider it a disturbingly likely scenario. I hope it won't come to that. But their line of argument (which is that their argument is classified!) is patently ridiculous. I smell a rat. What are they hiding from us?

What if the truth of why they're spying on us is too horrible for them to ever reveal? Just like the true reason we went to war in Iraq. Or the truth of the 2001 anthrax attacks? Who knows? Not me. But I have my suspicions. I mean, the Bush gang hasn't exactly been the most trustworthy; ever, really. They pulled some dirty tricks to get into power in the first place, like what they did to John McCain in 2000.

I hope it's hot in DC this summer. Sweltering hot. I hope the full power of the awful stink in Washington is revealed to everyone there, because the only people who seem to be in the dark about Washington corruption are the Washington insiders who are so often turning out the lights. In this case the Bush Administration is not only turning off every light it can find, it's also smashing them so we can't turn them back on. The shards of the lights of truth will surely cut the Constitution to shreds if we let that beast continue to attack the light. You know what I'm sayin'?

FCC Refuses to Investigate NSA Spying Claims

Is it any wonder why I hate and distrust our government? Raw Story has details about yet another nail in the coffin of democracy. At least they're being honest and saying, "nope, we're not gonna even try to investigate." I suppose that's slightly better than the sham investigation of intelligence failures leading to the Iraq War, led by Mr. Coverup, Pat Roberts.

Roberts is nothing more than a tool of Bush cabal, helpfully blocking serious investigations into matters of the utmost importance. His toadying has helped Bush stay above the fray and continue to make policy when he should be fending off impeachment charges. Without Roberts standing in the way we would have much clearer picture of why we went to war in 2003. Of course, we already know the general outline. Bush is building an American Empire. Iran is next.

The fact that the FCC will vigorously investigate the Janet Jackson SuperBowl nipplegate fiasco, but refuses to even try and investigate the worldwide NSA-spying ring, shows just how depraved they really are. The FCC has clearly been packed with hardcore Bush loyalists (as has nearly every part of the government), who care nothing for our constitutional principles. Covering Bush's ass is their only role.

It seems nothing has changed since Michael Powell left. Not that we can say that Clinton was at all innocent in this deadly game. His recent schmoozing with Bush Sr. shows that he is very much a party to this criminal enterprise and I'm sure he helped lay the groundwork for the present travesty when he was in office. The only difference is that Clinton operated with some subtlety, whereas the Bush clan seems to have taken off the gloves. A question to ponder: Why is the Bush cabal so desperate? They don't even do a half-assed job of covering up their crimes. Of course, they rarely get nailed for it, so I guess there's your answer right there. They own the government, top to bottom. 9/11 bought it for them, and they intend to keep it. But why are they so determined to cause trouble? How did such a driven group of fascists manage to attain power in America, anyway?

Well, it certainly has nothing to do with the fact that Americans are overworked, stressed out, or vegged out in front of the TV, does it? A recurring theme in my posts, for sure. But an important point if you wish to understand why we're in the middle of a constitutional crisis.

A Nation of Criminals. A Government of Kings.

Wired has pried open Door 641A and taken a good long look. Here is a document from whistle-blower Mark Klein (pdf) who previously worked for AT&T as a technician. He fears the secret room was splitting the fiber optic cables carrying our internet data and sending the other half to the NSA for monitoring. He figured the project started with the Total Information Awareness program, which was supposedly defunded. Well, now the NSA is holding our electronic leash. Boy, they sure do wish to control us, don't they? What's with the desperation on their part? The whole government spying deal was supposed to be a conspiracy theory.... one that just about everyone believed. Well, now it's true and it has been revealed as such and it's staring us right in the face.

What are we gonna do about it?

What could they possibly want such an enormous information-burden for? There's no need to spy on ALL of us! The government already knows what risk factors to look for when it comes to identifying terrorists, criminals, revolutionaries, you name it. Why would they decide to cast the net so far and wide unless their goal was to criminalize all of us?

Do you know the best way to get a person to act like a criminal?

Treat them like one.

... That's my suspicion anyway. You know, a firefighter only has a job when fires are burning. In the same way, a cop only has a job if there's crime and a warrior only has a job if there's a war on. Are you pickin' up what I'm layin' down?

It wouldn't be the first time; politicians are known to create problems so they have something to solve... after the election... assuming they are elected. And if they aren't, why solve it? Why not create problems for your opponent? Then he does the same thing for you. Pretty soon, while you're squabbling like dogs, the public is drowning in a sea of problems that you were supposed to solve, not create!

That's how we get the super-bad problems like the War on Drugs problem. The problem of the fact that demagogues and idiots made a war on drug-users, is far worse than the problem of simple drug use and abuse. The War on Terror is similar in that it will never end, it is not intended to end, and even though war has been declared on an object (drugs) or tactic (terrorism), the things that suffer most in the war are people -- mostly innocent bystanders in a war between shadowy groups who both fight and support each other. The collateral damage is mostly the result of people getting caught in the middle of those two groups (the government and the criminals) and paying the ultimate price in a war that did not need to be fought.

We are ruled by a political class that rule us as if they were kings, walking amongst the mere mortal peasants. They are sheltered from the world's injustices and deprivations. They are inducted into a society of the well-to-do because there is no other social class for which they are fit. They have never really grown up, and so we peasants must suffer through the elite's tiresome games, such as the war on drugs and the supposed war on terror, which seem to be much more of a war on the people. Another thing both of these demagogic wars have in common is that they are designed to erode our freedoms and our privacy by justifying it with the old saw, "need the tools to catch the bad guys." Cops and Robbers for adults. Innocents are arrested so that the cops can have their fun. Meanwhile the criminals get away with it. The justice system spits them back out on the streets. After all, we'd have to lay off cops if there was no crime. The cycle goes on endlessly. Meanwhile, the rest of us are caught in the middle of this evil maelstrom, rocked about on waves of uncertainty and strife.

They're building a system of control, people! Wake up before it's too late!! They want to include all of us in their little game! Run and hide if you want, but they can still catch you; they have the technology. Fiber optic splitters to steal our communications, and televisions to assure us that it's alright, no need to worry....

[szghk]

bszzzzzzshshh! |/<>\| [crackle]

[wavy lines].... you are feeling.... sleepy. Content. Open. Let us in.....

Things are fine. We're here to protect you... from the terrorists. The terrorists hate your freedom. They're coming for you; only we can protect you from an enemy that exists all around you. Any one of your neighbors could be a spy or a terrorist or a commie, or even Irish. Be sure to turn them in at your local FBI office.

We're listening anyway, so you might as well.

Coming up next, a pitbull dances with a lobster and a hyena! Wait 'til you see this!. ., After these messages.--

Schneier on Privacy

Wired has an article by Bruce Schneier on the topic of surveillance and privacy. He makes the argument that NSA spying is tyranny and that privacy is such a basic human need that the framers of the Constitution & Bill of Rights didn't think there would be a need to spell it out beyond the language of the 4th amendment.

Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." Watch someone long enough, and you'll find something to arrest -- or just blackmail -- with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies -- whoever they happen to be at the time.

Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.

We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need.

A future in which privacy would face constant assault was so alien to the framers of the Constitution that it never occurred to them to call out privacy as an explicit right. Privacy was inherent to the nobility of their being and their cause. Of course being watched in your own home was unreasonable. Watching at all was an act so unseemly as to be inconceivable among gentlemen in their day. You watched convicted criminals, not free citizens. You ruled your own home. It's intrinsic to the concept of liberty.

I want to be the master of my domain, but it appears that George Bush would prefer to be master of my domain (and his). Isn't it ironic that a guy who is supposedly so concerned with the plight of those poor, downtrodden Iraqis, is quickly - nay, desperately - building a fascist state far more frightening and controlling than anything Saddam ever had? How strange. It's almost as if every justification for invading Iraq was a lie. But that couldn't be true? The mainstream media still treats him like a president, worshipfully talking about his every decision as if it was delivered from on high. Certainly they would treat him like that if it turned out he was a tyrannical psychopath bent on world domination through control of oil supply (and oil routes). Unless the media is in on the plan....

This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us. This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. And it's our future as we allow an ever-intrusive eye into our personal, private lives.

Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.

Yes, he basically called Bush as bad as Saddam. While that may not be the case (yet), it's not for lack of trying. Don't fool yourself into thinking Bush shares the democratic ideals that he so often claims to defend. No, Bush is a fascist to his core, just like Saddam. There's no rule that says that just because you were born in America that you automatically believe in freedom and democracy. Everyone believes in freedom...for themselves. Whether they believe in freedom for everyone else is a completely different question. Bush's NSA spying plan is a slap in the face of 300 million Americans and the ideals of Libery, Freedom and Democracy for which thousands of men and women have died throughout American history. He has made a mockery of our democratic traditions while relentlessly expanding the power of the presidency by making Congress nothing more than a rubber stamp parliament. He's let his corporate buddies run wild, with lobbyists writing laws and lawmakers not even reading them before voting in favor of them. He's launched wars of conquest and invasion. He's started spying programs that violate the letter and the spirit of the Constitution. This man is a menace. He should be impeached immediately, and imprisoned thereafter.

Such a man deserves death for his crimes. There are others, you know. We've only scratched the surface of this administration's malfeasance.

NSA Spying - The big picture

Reporter Greg Palast has an insightful post on his website that takes a wider view of the NSA spying scandal. Here's a taste:

Worried about Dick Cheney listening in Sunday on your call to Mom? That ain't nothing. You should be more concerned that they are linking this info to your medical records, your bill purchases and your entire personal profile including, not incidentally, your voting registration. Five years ago, I discovered that ChoicePoint had already gathered 16 billion data files on Americans -- and I know they've expanded their ops at an explosive rate.

They are paid to keep an eye on you -- because the FBI can't. For the government to collect this stuff is against the law unless you're suspected of a crime. (The law in question is the Constitution.) But ChoicePoint can collect it for "commercial" purchases -- and under the Bush Administration's suspect reading of the Patriot Act -- our domestic spying apparatchiks can then BUY the info from ChoicePoint.

He's right. The government simply outsources or contracts out work that it doesn't want to or (in this case) can't do. I'm extremely concerned about the privacy of my medical and financial records, as I know most Americans are. But it's worse than that. Much worse:

And now ChoicePoint and George Bush want your blood. Forget your phone bill. ChoicePoint, a sickened executive of the company told us in confidence, "hope[s] to build a database of DNA samples from every person in the United States ...linked to all the other information held by CP [ChoicePoint]" from medical to voting records.

And ChoicePoint lied about that too. The company publicly denied they gave DNA to the Feds -- but then told our investigator, pretending to seek work, that ChoicePoint was "the number one" provider of DNA info to the FBI.

This is just fucking evil. There's no excuse for this. There's no, "Oh we need it to fight the terrorists!" bullshit. Those excuses simply do not fly. This is evil. This is Orwellian. This is downright SATANIC!

It's bad enough to try and get our DNA, but the fact that they want their databases to talk to each other is extremely frightening. If they succeed at this, the government will know everything about you from the day you're born to the day you die. There won't be any discussion of 4th amendment rights, because there won't be a 4th amendment. What if there's no more privacy left to defend?

Repost from Slashdot

Before my earlier posts on the NSA spying scandal slip behind the wall of the 24 post limit on Slashdot, I wanted to repost a couple here.

Here's one from when AT&T was accused of forwarding all traffic to the NSA:

Now, are they talking about forwarding ALL AT&T traffic to NSA? I find that really really hard to believe. How much data is that? Can someone point to some known tech that can handle that....ALL that data? I'm not asking for "secret-I-bet-they-have-cold-fusion-computers" BS tech that someone *thinks* the NSA has.

You had it right in your first sentence. AT&T is forwarding all of their call data to the NSA. The NSA doesn't need any super-cool tech in order to intercept this data since AT&T (and the other telecom companies) simply send this data directly to them. Don't get me wrong, though - the NSA has some amazing technology. All of this data is processed, filtered, tagged and entered into a massive database.

I'm currently reading Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency [amazon.com] by James Bamford. It's not light reading, but it's fascinating....and extremely disturbing. The fascinating part is that we've been here before. This exact scenario already happened in the 60's and 70's, until information about it was leaked (by the NY Times, no less) and it was investigated by the Church Committee [wikipedia.org] circa 1975. It was called Project SHAMROCK [wikipedia.org] then, and it involved the phone companies and Western Union delivering huge magnetic tape reels to the NSA on a regular basis. The project was so secret that only a few people within the NSA where even aware of it.

Until the Congressional investigation, hardly anybody within the White House or Justice Department had even heard whispers of it. Congress, of course, was completely out of the loop. This obsession with secrecy goes back to the very founding of the NSA. The NSA operated with no Congressional oversight for decades (it was called "No Such Agency"), and its existance probably wasn't even constitutionally legal/valid, but the information that it provided to other agencies (mostly the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff) was so good that by the time Congress found out about it, it was indispensible. Today the NSA is the largest of the intelligence agencies (yes you read that right - larger than the CIA), although its exact budget is classified.

Second, this is just an accusation. There's one guy that has some documents that say that's what AT&T is doing. For all we know, this guy could be wearing tin-foil hats and singing to his dog about the aliens.

The only loonies around here are the people who think that the government isn't spying on Americans every single day. Now, that doesn't mean that they are listening to you in real time, and hanging on your every word. But all/most of your calls are recorded, digitized and handed to the NSA. From there, it is probably entered into a massive database. From there they can filter out unimportant calls and use data mining techniques to pull up relevant information. They use the ECHELON [wikipedia.org] computer software to sift through information, which probably works similar to Google, with keyword searches and a list of search results.

If you still don't believe me, why don't you have a conversation with a friend, where you discuss planting bombs around town. See how long it takes the feds to show up.

The stuff in italics is another poster who I am quoting. Here's another from later on in the thread:

That would only require AT&T to spend millions of dollars on additional infrastructure. AT&T being a business, they would fight the order tooth and nail. Has that happened?

Doubt it. The companies involved the first time around (during the Cold War) apparently did it for free. The government simply appealed to their patriotism (the military was the group that actually asked them - would you say no to the military?) and apparently never compensated them, though that may not really be the case. There was probably some tit-for-tat going on. Besides, any company wants to be on the government's good side, right? They probably see it as a cost of doing business. See the recent Google Goes to China fiasco for more insight into that mindset. As long as it's not prohibitively expensive (read: difficult to make a profit) most companies probably wouldn't have a problem with it. It's all to save us from Teh Terr'rists after all.

I don't doubt that the NSA has massive surveillance resources, but they're not the fuckin' Illuminati for christ's sake. They're a government organization staffed by human beings, and as such they probably don't have their shit together enough to do all the shadowy things you think they're doing.

You're right, they're not omnipotent, but they're not idiots either. They own and operate what is probably the largest supercomputer on the planet. They operate in the shadows, with virtually no oversight from Congress, and the current administration is obsessed with secrecy and spying. Whether they can spy successfully is an open question, but there's no question that they are trying. I think it's actually much more likely that you are the deluded one. They are probably doing way more stuff than I have mentioned so far, and probably doing it well. Their foreign surveillance work is top-notch; we didn't become the sole superpower by sucking at signals intelligence, that's for sure. I would encourage you to do some research on the matter before falling back into that "teh guvmint is incompetent and they sux"-style of "logic." I've provided facts, links and insight. Now it's your turn to follow up.

Sorry for the indulgence, but I thought I made some good points. :-)

More spying news

The Baltimore Sun has a story about a pre-9/11 NSA program to spy on Americans. According to the paper, the earlier program was more protective of our privacy, but it was ultimately rejected because of bureaucratic squabbling. The NSA is notorious for their turf wars, probably because it's easier for a secretive agency to disguise the fact that they're crawling with little dictators who are more interested in protecting their personal status and budget than they are about protecting Americans. And our liberties must trail a distant third in this sad little game.

You can find more at slashdot. Meanwhile, the lawsuits are already flying. Forbes has a story on the EFF's early victory in a lawsuit against AT&T. They also comment on the weasel words used by Bell South & Verizon in their denials concerning the illegal spying program, "...But the telephone companies' denials give them plenty of wiggle room." Damn right. I hope you like being lied to, folks, because your government is lying to you, your phone company is lying to you, and your media is lying to you. Luckily, there are bloggers like me to save the world. ;-) My audience of 2 will be very grateful, I'm sure.

No Such Agency

There's a new article over at Salon (an interview with historian Matthew Aid), concerning the recent revelations of NSA wiretapping. I've been following the controversy pretty closely. In fact, I just finished reading James Bamford's opus, Body of Secrets, which is basically a history of the NSA from it's humble beginnings to it massive pre-9/11 decline. A new chapter is being written as we speak. After 9/11 the agency was given a new lease on life and huge influxes of cash and technology. The agency now has the capability to monitor, record and (well, this is the tricky part) analyze the phone calls of every single American citizen. Landlines and cellphones. Oh, and don't forget your internet usage. If this blog isn't in their database somewhere, I'd be a bit surprised.

So, that's it; we're fucked, right?

Not quite. You see, even though the NSA is the size of medium-sized city (around 60,000 people last I heard), and they measure their computing power in acres, not in flops, the NSA is not omniscient. The problem is that they're drowning in data. Their intelligence gathering capabilities far outstrip their ability to actually analyze all that data and decide its usefulness.

That's not to say I'm okay with the NSA spying on Americans. I'm not. It's illegal, unconstitutional, immoral, repugnant and downright fascist. We need to end the spying programs immediately, and make sure they're not simply transferred to another agency like the Total Information Awareness program was.

But we also shouldn't lose our heads and assume that the government is hanging on our every word. In fact, they probably don't have a human listen to your calls unless it's been flagged for some reason or another.

Oh, and the whole bit about the NSA only logging the phone numbers you've called? Bullshit. They're getting the whole enchilada. I'm betting that the calls themselves are captured, digitized, organized in a gigantic database, and voice-analyzed into searchable text. Then the agency's "consumers" (the White House, FBI, CIA, DOD, etc.) can use the Echelon software to search for specific keywords. If they want to hear more, they can probably pull up the entire audio clip of the call. I don't know if they can do this from their PC, or if they need approval from agency guard higher-ups. Knowing the Bush administration, I'd bet Cheney has access to everything under the sun, available at his fingertips. I hope he liked my previous post.

This whole fiasco is not even a new occurrence. Read up on Project Shamrock if you want to know more. The Church Committee shut Shamrock down 30 years ago, but it's back and worse than before. Now the NSA has much more powerful computers to contend with an even greater influx of data. Their methodology for gathering data remains the same. They leaned heavily on telecom companies to voluntarily hand over the data. The abuses of power during Nixon's time, as well as the revelations concerning Shamrock and COINTELPRO led to the creation of the FISA Court and accompanying laws, which Bush is now ignoring. History does indeed repeat itself.

Anyway, back to that Salon article I mentioned above. It seems that Matthew Aid disagrees with Bamford about what Echelon is. He claims it's just a VAX microcomputer from the 70's, made by DEC, that was used at various satellite intercept stations. This could be the case, but Bamford was quite clear that Echelon was a software program used by the UKUSA alliance to share and analyze intercept data. I think the confusion could be caused by the fact there are two different Echelons. It's unclear to me if this is the case, however.

Aid goes on to explain how the Justice Department was systematically kept out of the loop and in the dark:

It's all coming out now in dribs and drabs, but when it all becomes clear, we'll find out that the key oversight functions -- those functions that were put in place to protect the rights of Americans -- were deliberately circumvented. Key components of the Justice Department that would have rightly objected to this were never consulted or told about the program. Alberto Gonzales when he was the White House counsel knew about it, as did Attorney General Ashcroft and his deputy, but outside of that I don't think there were many others who knew all the details.

Perhaps somebody within Justice still has a conscience. That seems unlikely, but it's our best hope if we want accountability. We need to investigate this program thoroughly. We can't just believe Bush when he says, "trust me." Trust is the last thing on my mind when I hear Bush speak.

Aid then discusses how Congress was also kept in the dark and hamstrung:

They can claim that they briefed individual members of Congress but there's a difference between briefing a few members of Congress and briefing a full committee. Only a few members of the intelligence committee were told and they were told in a way in which they couldn't do anything about it. And the briefings were very general and lacking in specifics, as I understand.

What happens is that you're [privately] briefed about the program, and then even if you object to the program, you can't do anything about it because you can't tell the whole committee. Our system only works when information is given to the full committee. But the way they did it effectively handcuffed any opposition because you can't go to the full committee and say I object to this program and we ought to call some hearings and examine the legalistic background and justification for the program. Even if Senator Rockefeller or Congresswoman Pelosi had some issues with it, they couldn't even tell their own staff, much less other members of the committee. They deliberately did it this way so the intelligence committees couldn’t do anything about it.

Sounds pretty nasty, right? This way they can claim the Congress consented, when 99% of Congress was not even briefed and the 1% that was briefed has no chance to exercise any oversight. It's a pretty good political trick. And I wonder how detailed those briefings were. Somehow I doubt they said, "We're spying on Americans." I bet it was more like, "In the interests of protecting the homeland from terrorists, we are enlarging the scope of our clandestine sigint monitoring programs in such a way to gather more accurate and up-to-the-minute intel on potential terrorist activities. Terror. Terrorist. Terrorism. Boo!!"

Of course, how would we ever know? The congresspeople in question are sworn to secrecy. Isn't it great how secrecy eats away at democracy? We need secrets, yet by embracing secrecy we stray further and further from democracy because an uninformed population is unable to exercise sound judgment in electing its leaders. We have to remember that we are the true leaders of this country, not Bush and his ilk. Democracy is for us, not the leaders. Here we are surrenduring our liberty and privacy (without even knowing it) and this is what Aid says about the effectiveness of the wiretapping program:

To the best of my knowledge, in the five years in which the program has been running, it has not caught a single person.

Pretty much says it all.

Government Spying on ABC News's Phone Calls

A government source has informed ABC News that the government is spying on the phone records of journalists at ABC News, along with the NY Times and Washington Post.

"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.

ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.

Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.

One former official was asked to sign a document stating he was not a confidential source for New York Times reporter James Risen.

Our reports on the CIA's secret prisons in Romania and Poland were known to have upset CIA officials.

So, what kind of government spies on journalists in an effort to conceal their own abuses of power? That's right kids: A neo-fascist government. The CIA leak investigation mentioned above is not Plamegate, but the leak concerning the secret (illegal) CIA prisons abroad. Instead of cleaning house and getting within the law the CIA has decided to harrass the people who exposed their law-breaking. You know you've got problems when you have unrepentant criminals at every level within the ruling administration. These people don't give a fuck about the law. They consider themselves above the law. The law is for peasants, like you and me.

We've got some serious problems in this country, and this story is just a taste. We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis and the only acceptable solution is the impeachment of Bush, Cheney and all of their collaborators. There are so many widening scandals it's hard to know which way investigators will go. One thing is for sure; this administration must be held accountable for its crimes.

Stop harrassing journalists! Stop spying on Americans! Stop waging war in Iraq!

Will they listen? Of course not. That's why we the people have to take the power back. A government that doesn't listen to its citizens does not qualify as a democracy. Bush seems to think that after his supposed re-election in '04 that he doesn't have to take any shit from anybody. I got news for ya, Bushie: The people are the rulers here. This is America, dammit. We are in charge, not you. We are the government, not you. You are just a custodian, and we don't appreciate your arrogance or your contempt for the law and the will of the people. Your time in office is nearing an end, far more quickly than you imagine.

To all the real (i.e. "not on the government payroll") journalists out there: keep up the good work. Don't let them silence you. Don't let your own news organizations silence you either. The truth is more frightening than most Americans could possibly imagine at this point, but that very fact is the reason why you must not stop digging and reporting until the truth is revealed. If you're running into problems getting the story out, make sure you harness the power of blogs. I'll publish anything you got.

Republicans are Lying, Cheating, Conspiring and Warmongering at a Rate Unprecedented in All of American History

The Democrats are pulling in a distant second, but not for lack of trying. The Republicans are just so much better at it. They're so incredibly bold about their mendacity that it gives them incredible latitude in dealing with any situation. Their actions seem to indicate a sort of controlled panic, bordering on insanity, with enough self-righteousness to detonate a building. The Democrats seem to be aware of this paranoid urgency, and to effectively tolerate it.

Kinda makes you wonder what they know that we don't.

I was just reading about Arlen Specter's latest scandal. And I've been reading about the continuing Katrina incompetence™ along with the Abramoff scandal, Plamegate, the NSA Spying!!! scandal and the whole thing where DICK CHENEY SHOT SOME DUDE IN THE FACE!!! Holy shit! I've joked about that shit happening, but I never thought it would actually happen...well at least, not that the media would ever find out.

Jesus, as if you didn't have enough reasons to be scared of Dick Cheney he goes and shoots a friend in the face. I mean seriously, the guy is creepy. He's like the Emperor from Star Wars, except instead of shooting lightning bolts out of his hands, he just shoots you in the face with a 28 gauge.

Damn, dude. We put this guy in charge of a country and he can't even manage to not shoot his friends in the face??!?//?11one!!!!¡¡¡!! ...I mean, that's the first rule in hunting, isn't it?

Thou Shalt Not Shoot Thine Friends in the Face While Hunting (or ever, really)

But Dick. Oh Dick. He's a different one. They call him Dead-eye Dick. I'm not sure if that's because he's half blind, or because you are after he shoots you in the face. Either way, stay the fuck away from Dead-eye Dick Cheney. Don't make him wanna hafta DROP a muthafucka.

Anyway, I digress. But this whole Shotgun-gate thing is a comedic goldmine. Seriously. Comedians all over the world just had a collective jizz of laughter when they heard the news. They're still cleaning it off the carpet. I mean, I feel bad for the guy and all, but I figure he must be kind of dumb. If Dick Cheney asked me if I wanted to go hunting, I would run-the-fuck-the other way.

If you're smart, you'll do the same.