One of the darkest eras in American history (or, you better turn off your Blackberry)
when the full truth finally comes out - and it will - we will be completely astounded at the extent and length of time that our government has been spying on us... (hint: it didn't start with bush...)
sorry, but you can't tell me there aren't already means to capture that traffic... maybe the sophisticated, next-generation "trailblazer" is the supposed cutting edge, but you can bet they've been gathering data from those technologies for as long as the technologies have been available...
(thanks to raw story...) Submit To Propeller
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Salon's Kim Zetter asks intelligence historian Matthew Aid about the latest reports on the National Security Agency's wiretap program.
The fact that the federal government has my phone records scares the living daylights out of me. They won't learn much from them other than I like ordering pizza on Friday night and I don't call my mother as often as I should. But it should scare the living daylights out of everybody, even if you're willing to permit the government certain leeways to conduct the war on terrorism.
We should be terrified that Congress has not been doing its job and because all of the checks and balances put in place to prevent this have been deliberately obviated. In order to get this done, the NSA and White House went around all of the checks and balances. I'm convinced that 20 years from now we, as historians, will be looking back at this as one of the darkest eras in American history. And we're just beginning to sort of peel back the first layers of the onion. We're hoping against hope that it's not as bad as I suspect it will be, but reality sets in every time a new article is published and the first thing the Bush administration tries to do is quash the story.
[...]
The newest system being added to the NSA infrastructure, by the way, is called Project Trailblazer, which was initiated in 2002 and which was supposed to go online about now but is fantastically over budget and way behind schedule. Trailblazer is designed to copy the new forms of telecommunications -- fiber optic cable traffic, cellphone communication, BlackBerry and Internet e-mail traffic.
sorry, but you can't tell me there aren't already means to capture that traffic... maybe the sophisticated, next-generation "trailblazer" is the supposed cutting edge, but you can bet they've been gathering data from those technologies for as long as the technologies have been available...
(thanks to raw story...) Submit To Propeller
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posted by profmarcus at
5/16/2006
