Saturday, May 13, 2006

Weekend Spy Update

  • NSA Whistle-Blower Will Go Before Congress
    Chris Strohm, CongressDaily: "A former intelligence officer for the National Security Agency said he plans to tell Senate staffers next week that unlawful activity occurred at the agency under the supervision of Gen. Michael Hayden beyond what has been publicly reported, while hinting that it might have involved the illegal use of space-based satellites and systems to spy on U.S. citizens."
  • Spy Agency Watching Americans From Space

  • The NSA has your number | Chicago Tribune
    The Chicago Tribune asserts that "President Bush's assurance Thursday that the privacy of Americans was being 'fiercely protected' was not at all convincing" in light of the "vast, secret database with records of tens of millions of telephone calls made by Americans" that the NSA has gathered.
  • TIME.com: Inside Bush's Secret Spy Net
    Your phone records have been enlisted in the war on terrorism. Should that make you worry more or less?
  • NEW: NSA Stymies Justice Dept. Spying Probe
    The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter.
  • NEW: Cheney Pushed U.S. to Widen Eavesdropping

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wonder how the NSA would handle it if Americans started making frivolous phone calls as a protest of their illegal spying efforts? Let's see, if just half of the country's 295 million people made 5 extra phone calls a day, that would be an extra 487 million entries in their database everyday. A small effort for quite a bold statement, perhaps.

The Unknown Candidate said...

Interesting idea, Libertyforall. Worth a shot. The problem becomes how to get everyone to do it--not an easy task.

I think individual lawsuits against the phone companies would have more impact--by stating that we will not stand for our privacy rights being ignored by big business. Quest set the example of good corporate conduct by asking the U.S. government to prove that what they are up to is legal. When the government failed to do so, Quest rightfully said, "No."

Americans need to say "no" in every way, shape and form in order to stop BushCo from eroding our rights by using fear tactics in the bogus name of "fighting terrorism."