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Government: Cult of Surveillance
Posted by: Chris Abraham on Dec 30, 2002 - 06:08 PM
The ACLU cited a long list of privacy-leeching programs that seem to indicate a "cult of surveillance" in the current administration.
These include:
* Total Information Awareness - Developing in the Pentagon's secretive research and development wing, Total Information Awareness is the brainchild of former Reagan National Security Advisor John Poindexter. The Pentagon-funded project aims to create the most expansive electronic surveillance network in human history. It would record and monitor every American's Internet surfing, reading habits, financial transactions, travel plans and mental health histories in the hope of predicting future behavior. Conservative New York Times columnist William Safire has called the program a "supersnoop's dream."
* Operation TIPS - As envisioned by the Department of Justice, Operation TIPS would have systematically recruited a network of government informants among everyday American workers with ea!
! sy access to private homes. This army of snoops would have been composed of postal workers, utility technicians and the proverbial "cable guy." Popular outcry forced the administration to scale back its plans for its corps of what the ACLU called "government-sanctioned peeping Toms" but the government is pressing forward with a more limited version of the scheme.
* Domestic CIA - Last week, the advisory Gilmore Commission recommended to Congress that it create a intelligence agency similar to the CIA, but for use on American soil. Such an agency would, the ACLU said, inevitably engage in covert activities similar to the smear campaigns waged against political dissidents - most notably the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - by the Hoover-era FBI.
* Sweeping New Surveillance Powers for the Department of Justice - Earlier this week, the Justice Department gained vast new powers to monitor the lawful activity of Americans. The new powers were granted when a the !
ul! tra-secret, espionage-specific Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review ruled that information gathered by warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act could be used in criminal proceedings. Significantly, the Justice Department need only meet a standard far less than probable cause in order to obtain these warrants.
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An aggressive year-long European investigation into al Qaeda financing has found evidence that two West African governments hosted the senior terrorist operatives who oversaw a $20 million diamond-buying spree that effectively cornered the market on the region's precious stones.
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