With the police state literally biting them in the ass, the WaPo pretends all is well

once again, the wapo eschews context, a shame really, since all it would have taken is to link up a page one story and a page two story from today's edition with a page one story from december...

page one today...

National Dragnet Is a Click Away
Authorities to Gain Fast and Expansive Access to Records

Several thousand law enforcement agencies are creating the foundation of a domestic intelligence system through computer networks that analyze vast amounts of police information to fight crime and root out terror plots.

[...]

Those network efforts will begin expanding further this month, as some local and state agencies connect to a fledgling Justice Department system called the National Data Exchange, or N-DEx.

[...]

[T]he Tucson police department [is] one of almost 1,600 law enforcement agencies that uses a commercial data-mining system called Coplink.

With Coplink, police investigators can pinpoint suspects by searching on scraps of information such as nicknames, height, weight, color of hair and the placement of a tattoo. They can find hidden relationships among suspects and instantly map links among people, places and events. Searches that might have taken weeks or months -- or which might not have been attempted, because of the amount of paper and analysis involved -- are now done in seconds.

page two today...

FBI Chief Confirms Misuse of Subpoenas
Security Letters Used to Get Personal Data

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told senators yesterday that agents improperly used a type of administrative subpoena to obtain personal data about Americans until internal reforms were enacted last year.

[...]

Inspector General Glenn A. Fine reported a year ago that the FBI used such letters -- which are not subject to a court's review -- to improperly obtain telephone logs, banking records and other personal records of thousands of Americans from 2003 to 2005. An internal FBI audit also found that the bureau potentially violated laws or agency rules more than 1,000 times in such cases.

page one from december 22...

FBI Prepares Vast Database Of Biometrics
$1 Billion Project to Include Images of Irises and Faces

The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world's largest computer database of peoples' physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad.

Digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns are already flowing into FBI systems in a climate-controlled, secure basement [in Clarksburg, West Virginia].

[...]

[I]n the coming years, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to rely on iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps even the unique ways people walk and talk, to solve crimes and identify criminals and terrorists. The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.

now see, that wasn't so hard, was it...? the overlapping is beyond obvious, and i didn't have to do anything more than excerpt from three of the wapo's own stories...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet