U.S. Citizen Terrorist surveillance Program
 
By Michael Webster
 
 
Personal security and citizen privacy is under attack by the Bush 
administration under the guise of the so called Terrorist surveillance
program. When examined more carefully it really should be called
the U.S. Citizen Terrorist Surveillance program.
 
The American public appears to be being hoodwinked into believing
the Terrorist Surveillance program is good for us and protects us
from the terrorist. What it really does is takes away many of our
constitutional rights guaranteed by our founding fathers which
protected us and separated us for so many years from totalitarian and
other forms of governments like the old Soviet Union and the current
regime in North Korea. According to professor J. Femia of Privacy World “The public is just not concerned or is uninformed.” 
 

According to Wikipedia and many legal experts the warrant less surveillance controversy concerns surveillance of persons within the United States incident to the collection of foreign intelligence by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) as part of the war on terror. Under this program, referred to by the Bush administration as the" terrorist surveillance program", NSA is authorized by president Bush’s executive order to monitor, without warrants, phone calls, e-mails, text messaging, cell phone and faxes through the secret and now not so secret Echelon and Carnivore world-wide surveillance monitoring systems known as America's Global Surveillance Network. It also covers most other communication involving any party believed by NSA or other agencies to be outside the U.S., or any U.S Citizen even if the other end of the communication lies outside or within the U.S. or anywhere else in the world. The exact true scope of the program is secret and is not known.

Shortly before Congress passed a new law in August of 2007 that legalized warrant less surveillance, the Protect America Act of 2007, critics stated that such "domestic" intercepts required The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (or FISC) authorization under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,. The Bush administration maintains that the authorized intercepts are not domestic but rather "foreign intelligence" integral to the conduct of war and that the warrant requirements of FISC were implicitly superseded by the subsequent passage of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF). And the president claims it is to time consuming to effectively pursue the enemy. 

Due to technological innovations, the government can now identify and watch everyone from birth to death. The citizen, without his or her national ID number (your Social Security number has been preempted for this purpose), cannot even renew his or her driver's license without it, yet non-citizens can. 
 
Some naive, innocent people continue to believe in the government's good intentions toward them. These deluded individuals conveniently forget the untold millions who have been killed in this century by their own governments in suppressed places like Germany, China, North Korea, Soviet Union and some Middle Eastern countries. These millions all died for the stated good of society, their country and who knows what else.
 
The founding fathers of the United States were fully aware of the
Potential for abuse by government and that is why they intentionally
created a weak central government. However, government, like any
institution always acts in its own best interests, and so, since the
founding of the current constitutional democratic republic, the federal
government has slowly and steadily encroached upon the powers of both the states and the individual's rights and privacy. The government truly believes you do not have a right to privacy and if you are not guilty of any "crime," we should not complain about it monitoring all our activities including personal and compiling dossier files on us and all of our activities here at home and abroad.
 
Of course, what constitutes potential terrorist activities for any American nowadays is what ever any government investigator or agency wants to claim it is, and should that claim be made against you or a loved one it’s just too bad. It is absolutely amazing that is all it will take to take away all of our God given and constitutional rights that we Americans benefit from for so long and took for granted.
 
Nowadays almost every aspect of all of our lives is already controlled, regulated or supervised by the state through some law, ordinance or regulation or other government rules that they say has the same effect as law.
 
It is a daunting challenge to find any aspect of life that is free
from either direct or indirect government intrusion. In fact, it is
almost impossible to find any such area. The abridgement of those
individual liberties upon which a free society is based is almost

Completely gone.

 

Our four Fathers not only would be appalled, but many of our own Fathers, Mothers and grandparents would find it hard to believe how many of our rights have been taken away through these new laws and rules of the government. Freedom and privacy have become hazy memories of a way of life that very few people today can honestly recollect. We need to take a hard look before we allow this to become a permanent law in the name of fighting terrorist.

 

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

 

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

 

Secret cell phone surveillance

Info on ECHELON http://cryptome.org/cryptout.htm#echelon 

ECHELON: America's Secret Global Surveillance Network
 http://fly.hiwaay.net/~pspoole/echelon.html    Patrick S. Poole

Info on CARNIVORE

Privacy Watch - Carnivore (aka DCS-1000) open http://www.cotse.net/privacy/carnivore.htm in new window

 

 

INTELLIGENCE ESPIONAGE AND TERRORIST NEWS 

 

www.lagunajournal.com