"Domestic spying quietly goes on, NSA faces new limits, but surveillance thrives"

[G_j]

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-te.fisa07jul07,0,2783557.story?track=rss

Domestic spying quietly goes on
NSA faces new limits, but surveillance thrives

By Bradley Olson | Sun reporter
July 7, 2008

With Congress on the verge of outlining new parameters for National Security Agency eavesdropping between suspicious foreigners and Americans, lawmakers are leaving largely untouched a host of government programs that critics say involves far more domestic surveillance than the wiretaps they sought to remedy.

These programs - most of them highly classified - are run by an alphabet soup of federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies. They sift, store and analyze the communications, spending habits and travel patterns of U.S. citizens, searching for suspicious activity.

The surveillance includes data-mining programs that allow the NSA and the FBI to sift through large databanks of e-mails, phone calls and other communications, not for selective information, but in search of suspicious patterns.

Other information, like routine bank transactions, is kept in databases similarly monitored by the Central Intelligence Agency.


"There's virtually no branch of the U.S. government that isn't in some way involved in monitoring or surveillance," said Matthew Aid, an intelligence historian and fellow at the National Security Archives at The George Washington University. "We're operating in a brave new world."

Federal rules limit the ways some of the information can be used and shared among government agencies. Pending changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act contain numerous provisions set up to safeguard the privacy of Americans. But there are few similar protections with other types of surveillance.

[The2ndWheel]

1. It's not called the Information Age because you get play around on the internet

If it were because of that, there probably wouldn't be an internet.

[Hydra]

2. The internet is a great tool for them

People talk about EVERYTHING in the seeming anonymity. It's an easy way to gauge how pissed off the proles are and who is organizing them.

Heh. And people think they know the score. They have NO clue!

[G_j]

3. those who are aware, knowingly decide

if they are willing to expose their political views to Big Brother.
I've made the choice, and decided it is worth it.

[Hydra]

4. I was talking with a friend the other day

Via IRC, and I realized I had a direct line to the NSA. I take every opportunity to tell them my opinion on various matters now, especially about how much money we are wasting paying them to be professional voyeurs.

I am also painfully aware of how little power I have to affect things, so I have no problem doing this. They would have to be exceptionally bored to bother coming to get me to send me to Gitmo when I can be an annoyed wage-slave instead.

[G_j]

5. yes, another annoyed wage-slave here..

I still like to remember though, what Abbie Hoffman said, something to effect of, if you don't have an FBI file, you must not be doing enough.