Feeling a little distressed over this whole violation of civil liberties business, I went over to read what Tim F. at Balloon Juice had to say about it all. Well, confession, I went to see what John Cole had to say, but Tim F. has the goods on both the domestic spying and the circumventing FISA stuff. The domestic spying had the desired effect, reminding us of that chasing commies (and their substitutes) is old business that we can handle. The wiretap story, however, scared the shit out of me, mostly because of the link to this site:
A few current and former signals intelligence guys have been checking in since this NSA domestic spying story broke. Their reactions range between midly creeped out and completely pissed off.
All of the sigint specialists emphasized repeatedly that keeping tabs on Americans is way beyond the bounds of what they ordinarily do -- no matter what the conspiracy crowd may think.
"It's drilled into you from minute one that you should not ever, ever, ever, under any fucking circumstances turn this massive apparatus on an American citizen," one source says. "You do a lot of weird shit. But at least you don't fuck with your own people."
snip
That points to a diferent type of technology at work, as I suggested the other day. Senator Jay Rockefeller, in a remarkable pair of handwritten letters (one kept for safe keeping, in case someone tried to say later on that he approved of the program) seems to back this point of view.
As I reflected on the meeting today, and the future we face, John Poindexter's TIA project sprung to mind, exacerbating my concern regarding the direction the Administration is moving with regard to security, technology, and surveillance.
TIA, of course, would be "Total Information Awareness," Darpa's effort to find potential enemies of the state in the data trails of ordinary folks. The program was cancelled a few years back. But a whole bunch of similar efforts continue throughout the government.
A former sigint type -- who also talked to Ryan, apparently -- suggests a different technological approach: the NSA "may have compromised a hardware manufacturer -- say Motorola or a satellite phone manufacturer, a telecom carrier or a satellite(s)."
Shit!
Posted by binky at December 20, 2005 01:57 PM | TrackBack | Posted to J. Edgar Hoover | The Ever Shrinking ConstitutionUPDATE: The always fantastic Laura Rozen has several nice posts:
FISA and strict constructionists.
The shift in direction at NSA.
Posted by: binky at December 20, 2005 02:14 PM | PERMALINK