The Dusty Dog

Wiretapping on a Grand Scale

Here's an interesting question: What is the biggest database in the world?

Here's and interesting answer: The US Government's warrantless domestic wiretapping program.

Amazingly enough, in spite of previous reports, and carried today by USAToday, apparently a few nameless whistleblowers have come forward to report that the US has indeed been collecting a vast database of domestic phone calls.

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

The three telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA, which launched the program in 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the sources said. The program is aimed at identifying and tracking suspected terrorists, they said.

The sources would talk only under a guarantee of anonymity because the NSA program is secret. ........ (much more at USAToday)

This latest piece about the US wiretapping program points out two things: first, dubya is a lying sack of shit, along with the rest of the neocon cockroaches, and secondly, it's a fairly safe bet that your calls are included in this program. So, if you thought you may be exempt from the wiretapping scheme because of your rather benign activities, you are likely very wrong.

On top of this very dubious and legally troubling endeavor by the neocons to dismantle the Constitution, dubya nominates none other than "Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden to lead the embattled Central Intelligence Agency, re-igniting a debate over the domestic surveillance program that the onetime head of the National Security Agency once ran." according to the Huffington Post article called Bush Wants Domestic Wiretapping Tsar To Run CIA... And, at Yahoo News, "Talk of Hayden's nomination rekindled debate over the administration's domestic surveillance program, which Hayden used to oversee as the former head of the National Security Agency."

In an article by Deep Intelligence Index,

NEW YORK -- Former National Security Agency director Bobby Ray Inman lashed out at the Bush administration Monday night over its continued use of warrantless domestic wiretaps, making him one of the highest-ranking former intelligence officials to criticize the program in public, analysts say.

"This activity is not authorized," Inman said, as part of a panel discussion on eavesdropping that was sponsored by The New York Public Library. The Bush administration "need(s) to get away from the idea that they can continue doing it."

Goddamm, it's all coming together for the neocons. Make no mistake, these guys are fascists. The neocons running this country fit every one of the 14 Points of Fascism that are listed at Old American Century.

posted by Dusty Dog at 5/11/2006