Imagine a country: After 9-11, the military concluded that citizens might be working with Al Qaeda so they began to use their resources to spy on civilian activities. Foremost among them were the so-called "peace" protests. Monitoring phone calls of millions were also used to observe people.
Where am I?
Nepal? nope. Afghanistan? nope. Iraq? no again.
This strategy is the one used by our own Department of Defense and it is really scary. (Maybe Michael Moore wasnt so paranoid after all.)
I havent heard anyone in the press talking about this issue but it appears that this monitoring of 200 million US phone numbers is not a fluke - it is part of White House strategy. They believe that US citizens who dont agree with the war in Iraq are a threat. I know the President doesnt read but he's doing a darn fine impression of George Orwell..
This is a good article and worth a read.
The sad part is that this is not a sexy issue that resonates with voters; it is hard to explain why people should be afraid of their own government until it is too late. The article mentions civil libertarians but what do you do when the civil libertarians that oppose government power are the ones that voted for the very government that is abusing its power? Some days it feels like the only freedom we have left is the freedom to decide which luxury SUV we want to buy.
Pentagon Steps Up Intelligence Efforts Inside U.S. Borders
Post-9/11 Campaign Includes Tracking Antiwar Protests, Mining Large Databases 'Collecting' vs. 'Receiving'
April 27, 2006
AKRON, Ohio -- On March 19, 2005, about 200 mainly middle-aged peace marchers made their way through the streets of this city, stopping outside a Marine Corps recruiting center and a Federal Bureau of Investigation office to listen to speeches against the Iraq war. Close behind, police in unmarked cars followed them -- acting on a tip from the Pentagon.
For weeks prior to the demonstration, analysts at the Army's 902nd Military Intelligence Group in Fort Meade, Md., were downloading information from activist Web sites, intercepting emails and cross-referencing this with information in police databases.
The Army's conclusion, contained in an alert to Akron police: "Even though these demonstrations are advertised as 'peaceful,' they are assessed to present a potential force protection threat."
The government's monitoring of the protests is one example of how the 9/11 terror attacks have sparked a broad effort by the Pentagon to gather intelligence within U.S. borders. Its goals are both to protect military facilities and keep an eye out for any threat on American soil.
After 9/11, the Bush administration declared the continental U.S. a theater of military operations for the first time since the Civil War, creating a demand to better research potential threats to American forces at home. Now several parts of the vast Pentagon bureaucracy are building large databases of information from sources including local police, military personnel and the Internet. In doing so, the military is edging toward a sensitive area that has been off-limits to it since the 1970s: domestic surveillance and law enforcement.
