Washington Post details vast growth of US domestic spying

[Hannah Bell]

The Washington Post published Monday the second installment of an investigation into the enormous scale of the US domestic intelligence apparatus built up since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The article brings together valuable information about the police buildup, presented in both written and graphical form, including an interactive web-based map.

(See: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/monitoring-america/)

The Post survey is well worth careful examination, along with the first article in the series, which profiles the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies devoted to domestic spying.

(See: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/)

Some of the most important revelations include the following:

•The federal government is carrying out the collection and integration of personal information on hundreds of thousands, and eventually millions, of Americans, most of whom have committed no criminal offense and are certainly not engaged in anything that could reasonably be considered “terrorism.”

•A total of 4,058 federal, state and local organizations now have “counterterrorism” functions, with one quarter of these either newly created since 9/11 or involved in counterterrorist activities for the first time since then.

•US police agencies are deploying technologies tested on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan and using them to monitor and target American citizens.

•State and local police agencies are monitoring legal political activities, including protests over environmental, immigration and other issues, and filing reports with counterterrorism “fusion centers” in the 50 states.

•The Obama administration is spearheading the expansion of domestic counterterrorism well beyond the level carried out under the Bush administration. In 2010 alone, the Department of Homeland Security provided $3.8 billion in counterterrorism grants to state and local agencies.

•Uses of military technology include biometric facial recognition equipment, now used in Maricopa County, Arizona (Phoenix) to record 9,000 digital mug shots each month, as well as the use of Predator drones along both the Mexican and Canadian borders.

In one of the most chilling passages, the Post notes: “The special operations units deployed overseas to kill the al-Qaeda leadership drove technological advances that are now expanding in use across the United States.” In other words, the same methods used by military and CIA hunter-killer squads in the mountains of Afghanistan are being transferred to domestic policing operations inside the United States.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/dec2010/post-d21.shtml

[EFerrari]

1. Well, it's looks like we're all with the terrorists.

lol

[msongs]

2. you know who is presiding over the development of the police state n net strangulation lol nt

[snot]

3. K&R'd

[elias49]

4. Can't underestimate the trove of info from social networking sites

that's a big gimme. What an amazing database people are so willing to provide to spying eyes.

[mmonk]

5. Recommended and bookmarked.