Privacy.security

A sweeping new computer monitoring system, similar to the NSA's Echelon but targeted at the American public, is under development by the DOD. The current Administration's total disregard for basic civil liberties and Constitutional protection, embodied in the massive Homeland Security Act, is an unprecedented power grab that may be more dangerous to America than the terrorists it was supposedly crafted to defeat.

The sad truth is that those charged with protecting us no longer have any regard for us as individuals, seeing us only as powerless sheep who must be cared for and monitored like dumb herd animals. Welcome to Empire...

New York Times via Arizona Daily Star - Anti-terror computer system plans wide, warrantless access.
The Pentagon is constructing a computer system that could create a vast electronic dragnet, searching personal information as part of the hunt for terrorists around the world - including the United States.

The program director, Vice Adm. John Poindexter, says the system would provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement with instant access to information from e-mail and calling records to credit card, banking transactions and travel records - without a search warrant.

Historically, military and intelligence agencies have not been allowed to spy on Americans without legal authorization. But Poindexter, national security adviser in the Reagan administration, has said the government needs broad new powers to process, store and mine billions of electronic details of life in the United States.

[ ... ]

To deploy such a system, known as Total Information Awareness, new legislation would be needed, some of which has been proposed by the Bush administration in the Homeland Security Act now before Congress. That legislation would amend the Privacy Act of 1974, which was intended to limit what government agencies could do with private information.

The possibility that the system might be deployed domestically to let intelligence officials look into commercial transactions worried civil liberties proponents.

"This could be the Perfect Storm for civil liberties in America," said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. "The vehicle is the Homeland Security Act, the technology is DARPA and the agency is the FBI. The outcome is a system of national surveillance of the American public."

Some background from our archives:

August 08,2002 - US Military (DARPA) - Total Information Awareness(TIA) Systems.

August 08,2002 - Conflict News from Wired News - Feds Open 'Total' Tech Spy System.

August 11,2002 - Slashdot | Your Rights Online - Feds Open 'Total' Tech Spy System.

[Privacy Digest]