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The NSA has spent six years and hundreds of millions of dollars trying to kick-start a program, intended to help protect the United States against terrorism, that many experts say was doomed from the start.

I’m a database programmer, and have long been suspicious of the alleged ability of NSA to monitor millions of communications a day in multiple formats, plucking out the relevant (i.e. possible terrorist) information, then presenting it nearly real-time in a way it can be used effectively.

Looks like I was right. Their project to do this has the usual lack of financial controls and is way over budget - someone is getting rich while taxpayers get hosed, but the real problem is that the task is too massive, it simply can’t be done, and those close to the project say it never will.

The best way to get intelligence of course, is to have people on the ground infiltrating groups you want to watch. This NSA project echoes the same mistaken strategem the US used in Vietnam and now Iraq. Watch them, bomb them from the air. Use technology in the sky instead of people on the ground. The belief is, the US can win by using super high tech weapons and monitoring alone.

Meanwhile, al Qaida, I’ve read, passes their truly important messages by messenger, by voice, face-to-face, an Old School technique totally immune from NSA spying.
[tags] NSA [/tags]

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Empire Burlesque on creeping fascism and the compliance of the ruling class in the Bush agenda.

It won’t come with jackboots and book burnings, with mass rallies and fevered harangues. It won’t come with “black helicopters” or tanks on the street. It won’t come like a storm – but like a break in the weather, that sudden change of season you might feel when the wind shifts on an October evening: everything is the same, but everything has changed. Something has gone, departed from the world, and a new reality has taken its place.

As in Rome, all the old forms will still be there; legislatures, elections, campaigns – plenty of bread and circuses for the folks. But the “consent of the governed” will no longer apply; actual control of the state will have passed to a small group of nobles who rule largely for the benefit of their wealthy peers and corporate patrons.

We The People can stop this from happening. That’s not bravado, it’s simple truth. The time to act is now. Get involved. Redouble your efforts. “The only thing neccessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing.”

So whenever some big media beast or Democratic “leader” steps forward now to say, “Gee, we were misled by these guys” or “Boy, if I’d only known before,” or some other craven, mealy-mouthed expression of self-justifying ignorance – tell them to their face that they lie. If they were ignorant, it was a willful ignorance, a co-opted ignorance, a bribed and bought ignorance, born from their desire to keep on feeding from the trough of power and privilege just as long as the slops keep coming. Wadded with power, privilege and nice pay packets, they were willingly deceived.

Well put indeed. The lack of action in DC by Democrats can best be explained in class terms. In fact, I think that’s the only real explanation. They aren’t cowards, they are complicit.

The Right blogosphere of late has been foaming in rage at the Left. Why? Because the Left is waking up and mobilizing. It’s the domestic spying that did it. When the final history of Bush and his fall are written, his illegal domestic spying will be seen to be the tipping point. Yes, I said Bush will fall.

I’m optimistic. The winds are now blowing our way. The Technorati Top 100 most popular blogs now has liberal blogs in the ascendant over rightwing blogs. This is quite new and signifies a sea change in opinion. The ruling class doesn’t get it yet, the people do.

So, I disagree a bit with Empire Burlesque. The weather forecast doesn’t have to be tyranny. Yes, these are scary times, so it’s time to “Get up/stand up/Stand up for your rights.” We can do it.

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Google is refusing a US government request to turn over records of searches made.

Google has refused to comply with a US government subpoena for information about how people use its search engine, opening one of the first legal battles over whether law enforcement agencies should have access to the increasingly far-reaching data held by search engine companies.

Yahoo and Microsoft were not so courageous.

Yahoo and Microsoft have complied with the request, turning over millions of search queries to the government, although both firms insist they did not violate their users’ privacy.

The real issue is not this particular data, which the government specifically said should not identify the searcher, but what the next governmental request could be if they get away with this one.

Google keeps data identifying searchers. Maybe the government will request it one day. If you use Google and Google Mail, you’ve left a huge and easily trackable data trail. This is true of Yahoo, MSN, and AOL too. 

This is just more of the idiot neocon approach to problems. Instead of carefully selecting the information they want (people seeking porno), they instead demanded Google provide a list of EVERY search made one one week last June, plus one million random cached pages. How does this help stop kiddie porn? It doesn’t, is the answer.

It’s the same brute force approach the neocons always try. It doesn’t work, but it’s all they know how to do. Look at the war in Iraq. They thought they could win by overwhelming force. Instead, they are losing. They illegally monitor thousands and thousands of Americans, hoping to find terrorist links by sifting through millions of phone calls and emails. This hasn’t worked either.

Google was getting 250 million searches a day in 2003. It’s certainly way more than that now. Call it 750 million a day now * 7 days (what the Feds want.) That’s 5.25 billion searches. This will help the government find kiddie porn? Just analyzing it will take months and massive computer resources and time. And to what end? Not much that I can see.

Instead of thinking smart and acting smart they instead use brute force. And create ugly precedents as they go.

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Gore’s speech blasting Bush for illegal spying on citizens spawned huge commentary and reaction in newspapers, blogs, and websites.

However, as noted yesterday and it’s still apparently true, not a single Democrat in Congress has supported what Gore said. Not one.

Polls show the public strongly opposed to such spying, yet Congressional Democrats refuse to act. Many rank and file Democrats are screaming for their ‘leaders’ to act on this (and other issues like the war) but the response from D.C. Dems continues to be nothing, nothing at all.

Are they cowards, complicit, or just comatose? This is a perfect issue for them to attack Bush on. All they need to do is take action.

Update: Kerry has supported Gore. 

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Former Vice President Al Gore, charging that President Bush’s record on civil liberties posed a "grave danger" to America’s constitutional freedoms, on Monday urged the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Bush’s authorization of warrantless domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency.

In a detailed and impassioned speech sponsored by liberal and conservative groups, Gore said that although much remained unknown about the spying program, "what we do know … virtually compels the conclusion that the president of the United States has been breaking the law, repeatedly and insistently."

The Republicans responded with their usual slime attack. Democratic leadership sadly but predictably have done nothing to support Gore. I’ve not seen a single news report of a ranking Democrat standing by Gore and defending him on this, instead their reaction has been … crickets. Bush shreds liberties, a leading Democrat finally stands up and says this is wrong, and not one of his colleagues can watch his back? 

What is wrong with Democratic leadership? Why aren’t they standing up too and fighting against these most obvious and serious of abuses?

PS. Gore mentioned the Tashkent telegrams. Democrats should be doing the same from the floors of Congress.

"The President has also claimed that he has the authority to kidnap individuals in foreign countries and deliver them for imprisonment and interrogation on our behalf by autocratic regimes in nations that are infamous for the cruelty of their techniques for torture.

Some of our traditional allies have been shocked by these new practices on the part of our nation. The British Ambassador to Uzbekistan - one of those nations with the worst reputations for torture in its prisons - registered a complaint to his home office about the senselessness and cruelty of the new U.S. practice: "This material is useless - we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful."

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From reader Melanie

Read this letter from the mother of an Iraqi soldier. It’s more shameful behavior on the part of our government.

It wasn’t that long ago that the military command in Iraq started pulling computer access to various units. Seems some of the troops were writing emails home to family, to friends, to various anti-war groups and the like, and the military was getting a bit disconcerted by that. After all, can’t have your own troops pretty much turning the “official news” on its head now can you? So what do you do? You shut them up and any way that you can. Let them know they are monitored works pretty good.

But, what about the "moms" back home that are writing on the Internet? Moms like Robin Vaughan, whose letter detailing her recent experiences with the Department of Defense and the Army is below.

Robin Vaughan started an MSN space for families and friends of those in her son’s deployed unit. It was a support group. The military tried to shut it down and told other families not to use it.

We were a group of 77 families from all over the country, at the time of the call. Every single family was phoned and told not to use the site; and I believe some 150 other families were phoned as well, as it was an official order from a commanding officer.

Robin is not in the military. This is a private website. Not that the Pentagon bully boys who hate freedom care.

There are literally hundreds of military family, private support groups on the Internet. I truly believe we were singled out because of my refusal to hand the site over to the local F.R.G., as well as my outspoken political beliefs.

It’s simply amazing that my son and others risk their lives for ”Freedom" in Iraq, when his own mother’s civil liberties are threatened, and families are intimidated into silence, by the very same Army he is serving. I am hoping after reading this you may direct me as to where I can at least have this concern heard. Basically, are the following common practice, and legal?

-The Armed services can order families from communicating in a private forum?
-The Armed services can threaten private citizens’ first amendment rights?

I want to make sure this is not happening to other service member’s families. We live in a hell everyday during the deployment of our loved ones; we don’t need the added bullying or stripping away our means of helping one another.
 
Robin Vaughan
MomRobin7@msn.com 

 Outrageous. And probably not even legal. What is the military so afraid of? The people, that’s who.

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George Bush, rather then apologize for ordering illegal wiretapping by the NSA, has ordered an investigation to find the evildoers who leaked the data. How Nixonian of him.

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Defense lawyers in some of the country’s biggest terrorism cases say they plan to bring legal challenges to determine whether the National Security Agency used illegal wiretaps against several dozen Muslim men tied to Al Qaeda.

The lawyers said in interviews that they wanted to learn whether the men were monitored by the agency and, if so, whether the government withheld critical information or misled judges and defense lawyers about how and why the men were singled out.

The expected legal challenges, in cases from Florida, Ohio, Oregon and Virginia, add another dimension to the growing controversy over the agency’s domestic surveillance program and could jeopardize some of the Bush administration’s most important courtroom victories in terror cases, legal analysts say.

When Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn of the Weather Underground surfaced from ten years underground and turned themselves into the FBI, the FBI was forced to drop all charges against them because the FBI had broken so many laws trying to find them that none of their ‘evidence’ could be used in court.

History may be about to repeat itself.

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President Bush has acknowledged that several hundred targeted Americans were wiretapped without warrants under the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program, and now some U.S. officials and outside experts say they suspect that the government is engaged in a far broader U.S. surveillance operation.

When governments start wiretapping without warrants, at the behest of those in power, then that government is no longer democratic nor does it respect the rule of law.

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 The Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim rights organisation in the United States, has described the revelation that Muslim gatherings and homes around Washington have been electronically "sniffed" for radiation as "disturbing."

In a statement on Friday, CAIR said, "This disturbing revelation, coupled with recent reports of domestic surveillance without warrant, could lead to the perception that we are no longer a nation ruled by law, but instead one in which fear trumps constitutional rights. All Americans should be concerned about the apparent trend toward a two-tiered system of justice system, with full rights for most citizens, and another diminished set of rights for Muslims."

This is racial profiling. Orwellian too. Not to mention being idiotic. Like anyone who had radioactive devices would be dumb enough to store them at home. Like there couldn’t be vastly more intelligent ways to look for possible threats.

This seems absurd until you realize such surveillance demonstrates that our government is out of control. It’s time for regime change in DC.

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Barron’s editorial: Congress should consider impeaching Bush.

Barron’s is a Wall Street magazine about finance and investing. For them to say this is quite extraordinary.

Powerful segments of the ruling class are now turning against Bush. He can not last.

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Spy agency mined vast data trove,

The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001.

The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged.

Wow, you mean BushCo has lied and misled us yet again?. What a surprise.

As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications.

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From AmericaBlog

Newsweek: Bush’s illegal domestic spying has echoes of "apartheid"

Hey, cool, we’re now being compared to one of the most loathed, oppressive, vile governments in the history of mankind. You gotta admit, it takes a real special gift to take us from a shining city on the hill to apartheid in only 5 years.

"For anyone who has lived under an authoritarian regime, phone tapping—or at least the threat of it—is always a given. But U.S. citizens have always been lucky enough to believe themselves protected from such government intrusion. So why have they reacted so insipidly to yet another post-9/11 erosion of U.S. civil liberties?

I’m sure there are many well-meaning Americans who agree with their president’s explanation that it’s all a necessary evil (and that patriotic citizens will not be spied on unless they dial up Osama bin Laden). But the nasty echoes of apartheid South Africa should at least give them pause." 

They have more. Read on.

Bush will not survive. When mainstream media shifts this hard and this fast against someone, they are doomed. Yes, the fall of Dubya may get messy. But he is falling, and nothing can stop him from cratering. He’s lied too often to too many people, and made far too many enemies.

I lived through this same process when Nixon fell. For months there was no mainstream criticism, then finally, a tiny bit, then the dam cracked. It was the NSA spying that finally did Dubya in. Americans of all political persuasions are geniunely revolted by it and by the government and president that ordered it.

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It’s the same mindset, isn’t it, those who watch us at home and those wage war overseas. They think all they need is advanced technology. We will monitor all email and watch who remotely disagrees with us. This is the same mindset that said the US will win in Iraq by air war alone. We will pound them into submission using advanced technology from the air and never need get our hands dirty. That’s precisely what they thought in Vietnam too. A war they also lost.

They can monitor all the email and take all the videos they want, thinking yet again they will succeed by technology alone, and never have to get in the field. And they’ll be wrong again. Arrogance and ignorance.

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The presiding judge of a secret court that oversees government surveillance in espionage and terrorism cases is arranging a classified briefing for her fellow judges to address their concerns about the legality of President Bush’s domestic spying program, according to several intelligence and government sources.

Several members of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said in interviews that they want to know why the administration believed secretly listening in on telephone calls and reading e-mails of U.S. citizens without court authorization was legal.

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Undercover New York City police officers have conducted covert surveillance in the last 16 months of people protesting the Iraq war, bicycle riders taking part in mass rallies and even mourners at a street vigil for a cyclist killed in an accident, a series of videotapes show.

In glimpses and in glaring detail, the videotape images reveal the robust presence of disguised officers or others working with them at seven public gatherings since August 2004.

August 2004, eh? That’s was the RNC protests. I was there too. It appears police, feds, NSA, and who knows who else have been watching me and my activist friends peacefully and legally assemble in the streets in NYC, LA, and elsewhere. Truly, the US is a beacon of freedom.

The government in Britain is getting even more unhinged

Britain will be first country to monitor every car journey

From 2006 Britain will be the first country where every journey by every car will be monitored.

Sure, while such bizarre measures are attempts  at intimidation, they also seem paranoid and clueless. Our authorities may have massive power, they also don’t appear to know what they’re doing.

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The US government has been spying on the public for decades. None of this is new. What is new is that the Bushies have gone so far over the top that they’ve blunderingly exposed this ugly ‘national security apparatus’ to a now horrified and increasingly enraged populace.

Previous administrations were more circumspect about this. They hid their spying better. Not Dubya though. Our testosterone-addled president who thinks Jesus whispers instructions in his ear hasn’t a clue how to be circumspect.

Good. Now the whole country is becoming aware of what those on the hard left (and the hard right) have known for years. The government often is not your friend. It is out of control and needs to be put back in its cage.

As Americablog has pointed out, the hard right wants their guns primarily because they don’t trust the government. And a government that sees gay kiss-ins as a ‘credible threat’ of terrorism is completely Looney Tunes and no longer beholden to the people.

As Blase Bonpane pointed out in his speech (podcast available) at the antiwar vigil on Saturay, militarism is the problem. It’s not only that the US just been invading other countries for decades, that same militarism is now infecting things at home. Schools and workplaces are increasingly militarized. You are the enemy. Piss into this bottle, punk, then take the lie detector test.

It can’t last. It won’t last. At some point the people will rise up and take the country back from the thugs. But we need to do it now, not later. These are not normal times. Get involved. Fight back. Do it now.

PS People who are involved feel more optimistic about the outcome.

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Jurist worried that Bush order tainted work of secret panel

How can you taint the work of a court that meets in secret, makes decisions that can’t be overruled, and rubber-stamps government requests for surveillance? But you gotta hand it to Dubya, he’s so repulsive even CIA/NSA-types can’t stomach him any more.

It’s important to understand that in this ongoing battle between the White House and the CIA/etc. that both sides are slime. The CIA/Valerie Plame’s etc. are not the Good Guys because there are no Good Guys.

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Conservative scholars argue Bush’s wiretapping is an impeachable offense

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Pentagon anti-terror investigators labeled gay law school groups a "credible threat" of terrorism.

Jesus f-in Christ. This has gone far beyond the pale. We need to do something now, and in massive numbers. I’ve been talking with several of the blogs and politicos in the last few days. This is even worse than I thought. 

The neocons are losing power and influence. Their kingdom is crumbling. Now is the time for non-stop organizing. In twenty years, you’ll want to look back and say, yes I did something to stop them.

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