George Made the Bed, He Should Have No Problem LYING In It

Confirmed by the New York Times on Christmas Eve, the NSA has been spying on everyone all the time. Every email and phone call US citizens have made since 2002 may have been recorded and mined. Additionally, even International correspondence without Americans has been intercepted if the data packets were switched through US Telcos. We have speculated all week about this, but this is a douzy. The President has been maintaining since the story broke that only communications directly tied to Al Qaida has been intercepted. But then, bloggers were wondering well, if you already have a suspect with ties to Al Qaida, why not get FISA court approval, arrest and convict? You've got 72 hours retroactive to the event, to secure a warrant, and your chances are pretty good, 15624 to 4, that you will not be denied.

The President did not ask Congress to update the FISA to be more efficient after communications have migrated to the Internet. He ran an end-around the sleeping legislative body and maybe he did what he had to do to keep "America Safe." But, he clearly violated every written and unwritten privacy law in order to accomplish this. Good luck keeping control of the Internet, America. The International Backlash, I assume, will be vociferous. A "Global Test" which we have failed miserably. With Iraqis protesting the results of the election and stories of US funded payola corrupting their journalists, its hard to keep up the lie. There can be no argument that we have killed thousands of innocent civilians with this misguided war, and now, the freedom and liberty that has justified its execution eludes our own citizenry.

Will President Bush's inevitable defense of his latest un-truths about the domestic wiretapping be that he was merely protecting "Classified" information? And without it, we would had suffered from other attacks? David Brooks on NewsHour claimed tonight that the Administration rightly could not trust Congress to have drafted a law without leaking it to the press. You see, the irony is everywhere. As we assumed the PlameGate affair would be the final straw to bring down this government, we realize that it is merely an important rejection to the notion that the Administration can be trusted not to leak classified information themselves.

Total Information Awareness

On Thursday, February 14, 2002, John Poindexter (former National Security Advisor and Iran-Contra Ringleader) was appointed by President George W. Bush to lead the Information Assurance Office at the Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
It was here that he conceived of Total Information Awareness (TIA). This is germaine today because there is speculation from the uber-nerds at Ars Technica that the NYT decision to print the Wiretap story results from a technical perspective. TIA is a massive electronic intelligence gathering program designed to mechanically sift through phone calls, emails, and other electronic communications in order to track possible Terrorist activity. Soon after Congress was made aware of this program in 2003, Senator Feingold successfully introduced and passed legislation to suspend the program. It was about that time when the secret Executive Order was signed. The logistics of achieving a FISA court approval could not keep up with the process of recording everything and filtering the results with certain keyword, location, context and other factors. Its a tremendous investment in technology today in order to sift through all this data. If this speculation turns out to be true, then, in fact the NSA is wiretapping everyone all the time.

Conspiracy theorists have postulated for years about this practice. The Will Smith/Gene Hackman movie, Enemy of the State, may have seemed fanciful at the time, but there were some amazing similarities in the technology the NSA was employing. So, we're back to the original question of "How much privacy are you willing to forfeit for security." Indeed, it is understandable that GW Bush secretly allowed this program to survive Congressional death. It was a brave choice which, I personally eventually endorse because I believe that Patrick Henry's infamous quotation, "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" is a tad bit extreme in today's geo-political environment. Unfortunately for Mr. Bush, the Administrative Branch is required to make its case to the Legislative Branch before they proceed with such a program. Ultimately, as a nation, we must decide what measures we are willing to accept before the Government proceeds as it sees fit.

Zero Comments Thus Far

Okay, the interface isn't the easiest. I can improve that. But still, you don't have to register or anything to comment. Just click on the comment link beneath the featured story.

Planted PR Stories Not News to Military

From LA Times: December 18, 2005


U.S. officials in Iraq knew that a contractor was paying local papers. Discretion was the key. U.S. military officials in Iraq were fully aware that a Pentagon contractor regularly paid Iraqi newspapers to publish positive stories about the war, and made it clear that none of the stories should be traced to the United States, according to several current and former employees of Lincoln Group, the Washington-based contractor.

In contrast to assertions by military officials in Baghdad and Washington, interviews and Lincoln Group documents show that the information campaign waged over the last year was designed to cloak any connection to the U.S. military.

A number of workers who carried out Lincoln Group's offensive, including a $20-million two-month contract to influence public opinion in Iraq's restive Al Anbar province, describe a campaign that was unnecessarily costly, poorly run and largely ineffective at improving America's image in Iraq.Turns out Karen Hughes was just the public face of our propaganda efforts. And yes, it can be argued that influencing public opinion is intrinsic to fighting every war, but has it ever failed so completely as this. Undermining the Free Press in Iraq, paying these ridiculous amounts to Iraqi journalists further reinforce an inpenatratable cloud of suspicion we will not be able to clear for generations.

Cato Institute Latest to Suffer from Abramoff Investigation

From New York Times: Dec 17, 2005

A senior scholar at the Cato Institute, the respected libertarian research organization, has resigned after revelations that he took payments from the lobbyist Jack Abramoff in exchange for writing columns favorable to his clients.

The scholar, Doug Bandow, who wrote a column for the Copley News Service in addition to serving as a Cato fellow, acknowledged to executives at the organization that he had taken money from Mr. Abramoff after he was confronted about the payments by a reporter from BusinessWeek Online.

This shocking admission reveals the depths of financial corruption that reaches its tentacles not only in all three Branches of Government, but also in its think tanks, its trusted research and idea centers. For Bandow to extol the indefensible supporters of sweatshop, prison-like, labor on Northern Mariana as a shining example of free market seems to be a stretch even for the Cato Institute. Are the oft-quoted, Copley News Service really anti-government regulation enough to support this off shore embarrassment without tampering? Surely, Libertarians do not support the intimidative, neo-indentured servitude corporations over the rights of oppressed laborers unable to escape their situation.

Hear All Sides

Okay, since John Williams is the center of so many politically charged Americans, I figured why not start a blog that lets his friends and family members argue with each other in a safe and equitable place. I figure, at least, we all don't have to get mass emails blasted, at most, we can create a dynamic place for our own brand of political debate and discourse. So, World of John Williams, are you up for it?