Shadow Factory Revelations: The Illegal NSA Domestic Spy Dragnet

January 23, 2009 in Free Information and Media, Human Rights, I doubt, I think, The Big Brother
Tags: Domestic Spying, nsa

Recently, additional news has surfaced regarding the government’s unlawful domestic surveillance operations. A former NSA analyst and whistle-blower, Russell Tice, has revealed that the government’s illegal spying on Americans is far more pervasive than previously known. In a brazen display of arrogance, government officials who have sworn to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution, are routinely violating their duties and responsibilities to the American people.

Information regarding the unconstitutional NSA surveillance program has been steadily trickling out for the past several years. Of particular import is the 2005 New York Times story that broke the news of illegal domestic spying, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s lawsuit detailing information that AT&T allowed the government to surreptitiously monitor the phone and internet communications of AT&T customers without warrants, and the revelations in James Bamford’s books uncovering the widespread incompetence and illegality of NSA domestic intelligence gathering operations.

Russell Tice, the NSA whistle-blower, recently appeared on Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC program and provided shocking details about information he uncovered during his tenure at the spy agency. According to Tice, organizations, news agencies, and journalists were targeted with a 24/7 data-collection dragnet despite evidence of criminal or terror-related involvement. Compartmentalization procedures were employed to prevent him (and other analysts) from knowing the full extent of the unlawful NSA domestic spying operations.

According to Tice, “The National Security Agency had access to all Americans’ communications — faxes, phone calls, and their computer communications. It didn’t matter whether you were in Kansas, in the middle of the country, and you never made foreign communications at all. They monitored all communications.”

Tice revealed that the information gathered by the NSA sweep is “digitized and put on databases.” A $130 million, the 470,000-square-foot facility in San Antonio is being built to warehouse the spy data. NSA’s new Texas Cryptology Center will employ 1,500 people and “may eventually be able to hold all the information in the world.” According to James Bamford, the author of “Shadow Factory“, the goal is to know “exactly what Americans were doing day by day, hour by hour, and second by second… where they shopped, what they bought, what movies they saw, what books they read, the toll booths they went through, the plane tickets they purchased, the hotels they stayed in… In other words, Total Information Awareness, the same Orwellian concept that John Poindexter had tried to develop while working for the Pentagon’s [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency].”

Despite George W. Bush’s previous assurances to the contrary, The NSA has been violating the rights of American (non-terrorist) citizens for years. The false-flag 9-11 attack on America was a pretext for legislation and unconstitutional executive actions designed to erode the rights of average Americans. With Osama bin Laden still on the loose (wink-wink), the military submerged in two far-and-away imperialist quagmires, and the economy in free-fall, the blatant assault on individual rights and privacy is, unfortunately, a minor blip on most Americans’ radar screens.

Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious ~ George Orwell (1984)