The hideous excrescence that is domestic spying

glenn greenwald offers us a few glimpses of the very scarey allegations (here and here, both PDF files) pending against the federal government for illegal domesting spying and the telecom companies who aided and abetted the crimes...

And:

And:

he also shares a number of observations about the current brouhaha surrounding the documents that were released as part of the criminal prosecution of former qwest ceo joseph nacchio...

• The cooperation between the various military/intelligence branches of the Federal Government -- particularly the Pentagon and the NSA -- and the private telecommunications corporations is extraordinary and endless.

• [T]he nation's telecoms are recipients of enormous amounts of revenues by virtue of turning themselves into branches of the Federal Government.

• The top telecom officials are devoting substantial amounts of their energy to working on highly classified telecom projects with the Bush administration, including projects to develop whole new joint networks and ensure unfettered governmental access to those networks.

• The private/public distinction here has eroded almost completely. There is no governmental oversight or regulation of these companies.

• All of this takes place completely in the dark, in total secrecy, with no oversight and no checks.

• That is what is so extraordinary -- and so absolutely appalling -- about the casual advocacy on the part of our nation's "journalists" for Congressional amnesty for telecoms. The amnesty [journalists like Fred Hiatt, David Ignatius and Joe Klein] advocate would result in the complete and permanent dismissal of all of the pending lawsuits arising out of this joint telecom-government lawbreaking, which would, in turn, ensure that this lawbreaking remains concealed.

just when it seems that the excrescences of the bush administration can't possibly grow any larger or more hideous, guess what...?

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The WaPo finds the nut - domestic spying underway BEFORE 9/11

i've been waiting for a major news outlet, ANY news outlet, to put 2 and 2 together and come up with the oh-so-obvious conclusion that the bush administration, no doubt like the clinton administration before it, has been spying on u.s. citizens for a very long time, and that 9/11 was a very useful event for ratcheting it all up several notches and convincing us that being under constant surveillance was only for our own good...

the wapo highlights this "well-duh" insight in paragraph 6 of a page 1 story in today's edition...

Nacchio's [Joseph P. Nacchio, former CEO of Qwest Communications International] account, which places the NSA proposal at a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, suggests that the Bush administration was seeking to enlist telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The Sept. 11 attacks have been cited by the government as the main impetus for its warrantless surveillance efforts.

so...? where's the outcry...? where's the outrage...? where are the calls for resignation or impeachment...? where's congress...? oh, wait... congress is deliberating about whether to give telecom companies retroactive immunity to prosecution for anything illegal they might have done by allowing the government to spy on u.s. citizens... nice to know SOMEBODY'S out there looking out for our civil liberties and the united states constitution...

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