Former Top NSA Official: “We Are Now In A Police State”

[Th1onein]

110. They started this crap BEFORE 911

They went after Nacchio, from Qwest, because he wouldn't agree to handing them over what they wanted, and the judge suppressed the evidence that they started this whole spying thing right when Bush came into office. From Harper's:

But the documents unsealed Wednesday in federal court in Denver, first reported in The Rocky Mountain News on Thursday, claim for the first time that pressure on the company to participate in activities it saw as improper came as early as February, nearly seven months before the terrorist attacks. The significance of the claim is hard to assess, because the court documents are heavily redacted and N.S.A. officials will not comment on the agency’s secret surveillance programs. Other government officials have said that the agency’s eavesdropping without warrants began only after Sept. 11, 2001, under an order from President Bush. But the court filings in Mr. Nacchio’s case illustrate what is well known inside the telecommunications industry but little appreciated by the public: that the N.S.A. has for some time worked closely with phone companies, whose networks carry the telephone and Internet traffic the agency seeks out for intercept.

The key news here is that the surveillance program goes back to the arrival of the Bush Administration; it seems that the events of 9/11 were quickly taken as a justification for the Administration’s programs—but they was not a causal relationship. And this means, in turn, that the Administration’s characterization of the program, as a hurried response to the disastrous events of 9/11, is a complete fiction.

http://harpers.org/blog/2007/10/qwest-another-political-prosecution/

Combine these facts with the rumor that the Patriot Act was written BEFORE 911 even happened and you really have to wonder about the ideas of MIHOP and LIHOP.