Everyone Knows They're SPying....

[Soup]

I don't give a damn what civil liberties are being broken in this situation, I dislike what unregulated goverment activities mean: bank.

 

I was reffering to the trainees from South America that went to SOA. Most of the problems SOA has had has been with SOA trainees running death squads, death squads on the other side of the planet from this discussion, this discussion which currently running around somewhere between Pakistan and Russia... right yonder.

 

However I have a suspicion that if you worry Echelon's spying on you, you should be thinking of where someone that high up in Intelligence is finding the time.

[richard_vagina]

echelon is monitoring every phone conversation, every email, etc (any communications) all over this world right now. it's computers seek out keywords. keywords used in conversations are tagged and investigated by a real live agent. wow. all of us have something to worry about.

 

 

yes, the SOA trains death squads. nothing new.

[Soup]

post #120 - okay this is officially eggrolling. Do you watch the news? I assume not since the fight over this, is on TV daily.

[richard_vagina]

i do watch the news. it's all b/s.

whether it's biased to the left or right.

 

did you know that the cia was caught in the early 80's for planting agents in the news orgs? all of them, papers and tv..

 

what were they doing there? you tell me.

[BURLAP]

^how much evidence do you have of cia infiltrating major news sources?

i'm just sayin', during the first gulf war cnn employed a psyops unit, however

that doesn't mean every major news source from then on has been compromised

by intelligence agents and whatnot. that may not be your point, so please excuse..

anyhow, i tend to agree..lots of news is not really news. but not because crafty intel

guys are behind a curtain...

there's an industry that is enormous and nobody really knows about it, but it's

everywhere. it's called PR. you can read all sorts of very interesting things about

it in business literature and such.

[richard_vagina]

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/o...la-news-comment

 

there ya go

 

"According to a 1977 New York Times investigative series, the CIA owned or subsidized, at various times, more than 50 newspapers, news services, radio stations, periodicals and other communications facilities, most of them overseas. In some cases, these were used for propaganda efforts; in other cases, they served as covers for other operations.

 

Paid CIA agents infiltrated a dozen more foreign news organizations, and at least 22 U.S. news organizations employed American journalists who were also working for the CIA. Nearly a dozen U.S. publishing houses printed some of the more than 1,000 books that had been produced or subsidized by the CIA."

 

 

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/P...ockingbird.html

more

 

 

 

you guys must think i'm just some fucked up conspiracy nut,

but what i'm saying isn't far-fetched, off the top of my head, or out of my ass.

 

check for yourselves. http://www.google.com

[BURLAP]

hmmm..

thanks.

right off, i wouldn't recommend whatreallyhappened as a source of info.

and i don't doubt this stuff happened...but "In some cases, these were used for propaganda efforts; in other cases, they served as covers for other operations"...

"in some cases"...which is what? 1 case? 2? a dozen? which is it? it sounds like it's

rampant, yet there's no concrete figures. not a very good investigation without

concrete figures, wouldn't you say?

btw, the latimes article isn't coming through, and i don't have time to register, so

i'm making the assumption it's article offers no concrete figures.

[richard_vagina]

probably hard to ahve concrete figures whenever you discuss the cia

 

here's the article

 

 

It's propaganda time

By Walter Jajko

CRITICS OF THE Iraq war are outraged over the revelation that the U.S. military has been paying millions of dollars to plant pro-American, Pentagon-written propaganda articles in Iraqi newspapers and to buy off Iraqi journalists with monthly stipends.

 

But in my opinion, it's about time. Information is a critical part of any war, and the U.S. has for too long — to its own detriment — ignored this powerful and essential tool, a tool especially well-suited to the globalized Information Age.

 

ADVERTISEMENT

Even third-rate countries routinely use information and disinformation as an instrument of foreign policy, often against the United States. The U.S., in turn, cannot win the war of ideas by speaking softly or keeping its mouth shut. But we have been doing just that.

 

The United States Information Agency, the only open, global information organization run by the U.S. government, was abolished in 1999, supposedly because it served no purpose in the post-Cold War world. It has not been replaced. U.S.-sponsored entities such as Radio and TV Marti (which broadcast to Cuba) and Al Hurra, the U.S. television station broadcasting to the Arabs, have proven ineffective.

 

We need to be using all the means available in the war of ideas: public diplomacy, psychological operations, influence agents, disinformation and computer information warfare — from open and overt to clandestine and covert, from public explanation of policy to secret subversion of enemies. All of these must be well-orchestrated.

 

Our current situation is quite a turnaround from the Cold War years. In 1953, the CIA's celebrated Cold War information and disinformation arm — centered in the "Mighty Wurlitzer" propaganda offices of OSS veteran Frank Wisner — was an enormous operation, with thousands of employees adept at planting press and radio stories, engaging with labor unions, applying economic pressure, offering direct monetary payments and waging political and cultural warfare in an all-out effort to prevent European countries from falling to the communists.

 

According to a 1977 New York Times investigative series, the CIA owned or subsidized, at various times, more than 50 newspapers, news services, radio stations, periodicals and other communications facilities, most of them overseas. In some cases, these were used for propaganda efforts; in other cases, they served as covers for other operations.

 

Paid CIA agents infiltrated a dozen more foreign news organizations, and at least 22 U.S. news organizations employed American journalists who were also working for the CIA. Nearly a dozen U.S. publishing houses printed some of the more than 1,000 books that had been produced or subsidized by the CIA.

 

Today, this kind of effort has ended, and it is now unimaginable. Few American officials know how to play this game, and fewer would risk doing so. The left has argued that this shouldn't be done — that it's unethical, it's dishonest, it's a violation of journalistic standards. Our use of information today is insufficient, limited to disjointed efforts: the State Department's passive, reactive and defensive public diplomacy; the Defense Department's tactical, battlefield psychological operations; and the CIA's limited covert influence operations.

 

Examples abound. The State Department only seldom (and belatedly) has provided Arabic-speaking interviewees to refute stories on Al Jazeera. The CIA never did establish a clandestine radio station to propagandize against the Iranian mullahs.

 

Each of the few weak, unconnected information efforts has been undertaken episodically, coordinated haphazardly and funded poorly. Each ekes out its existence as transient tools accepted only in extremis, facing resistance from apathetic agencies, clueless congressmen and misinformed media.

 

A permanent leadership is needed in the form of a new Cabinet department that can knock together heads to force integrated influence activities — a Ministry of Propaganda, if you will.

 

Some influence operations are cheap, such as distribution of opinion pieces to newspapers; some are expensive, such as setting up a satellite television station; some are technically sophisticated, such as spreading disinformation into government computer networks; many are simple, such as immediate, vigorous, undiplomatic rebuttals by U.S. ambassadors to false accusations. But all require commitment by the national leadership.

 

In the war against Al Qaeda and its sympathizers, aggressive, relentless and exhaustive attacks are needed, including arguing against the terrorists' theological heresies, rebutting their lies, undermining their popularity, blackening their reputations, falsifying their public and private communications, publicizing intelligence against their fellow-traveler friends and jamming their radio, television and computer networks.

 

America's failure to use the indispensable instrument of information to protect its own national interests is inexcusable, especially as it wages a protracted war to the death against Islamic terrorists to preserve democratic governance, a free society and Western civilization.

[richard_vagina]

Carl Bernstein, "The CIA & The Media

Rolling Stone, October 27, 1977

 

 

there's a source for you

[lord_casek]

lookit this: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/?&db...&sel=TOC_208072

 

sorry, nothing to do with what i was talking about earlier....still scary

[lord_casek]

11 reasons the u.s. is spying on you:

 

11. Accidentally searched for "how to build a nuclear weapon and blow up the Super Bowl"

10. Never downloaded Star Spangled Banner MP3.

9. Tendency to choose terrorist side in Counter-Strike.

8. If you're not with us or against us then we're not so sure about you.

7. A good friend of yours tried to get into the NSA but failed. Miserably.

6. Wacky parents named you Ima Terrorist.

5. Lots of email from prominent African dignitaries' widows and brothers .

4. Encyclopedic knowledge of Constitution and Bill of Rights is just scary.

3. You created a top 11 list which is now the #1 search result for "how to build a nuclear weapon and blow up the Super Bowl".

2. "Vote for Pedro" t-shirt too subversive.

1. You don't live in the USA.

[Stereotype V.001]

Ricardo, I checked those links and none said that bin Laden was trained at the school of the Americas. If you have a reputable link proving he did, please feel free to share. The sites all stated what I previously assumed, it is a center for South/latin American friendly govts, and the wikipedia link did not post him in the list of graduates (I would think if it could be confirmed he was there they would list him). I don't doubt the ISI trained bin Laden's people on America's bill during the soviet invasion, like what was stated in the links. We obviously didn't know what he would become, and at the time a nuclear war was much more of a threat than Islamic extremism could potentially become. If you genuinely think we are still in contact with him in some sort of nefarious government plot, you should probably turn off the immortal technique CD, take down the newspapers that are blocking the windows, and strongly consider getting a prescription to some form of anti-schizophrenic medication.

 

The SOA grads have been in death squads, the most famous example being the El Salvador catastrophe. The part the SOA "watch" people don't tell you is how we sent down several hundred American military advisors after hearing about them doing fucked up shit, and the execution/torture of protestors and civilians dropped off to basically none and eventually stopped all together. The country became the government you can see down there today, where there actually is a middle class and the poor have a voice in the government. Definitely getting off topic here, and its sort of pointless for me to mention any of that since most people have their minds set already.

 

BTW, journalism is almost as popular a cover for intelligence officers as being "archaeologists"(lawrence of arabia, anyone?) They both serve as excuses for being a foreigner in a war torn, third world country or pretty much anywhere. That doesn't necessarily mean all archaeologists are under the government's control, or the media. Although it could.......

[John Birch]

hey soup (the one who thinks irregardless isn't a word):

 

 

why excatly do you think my use of hyperbole to make a point is gay? if you look at my screen name and my posts from the last 6 months, its quit obvious that I make make frequent use of hyperbole on crossfire... is there something wrong with that?

[Soup]

WHAT THE FUCK IS WALTER JALKO TALKING ABOUT?! He starts out claiming that we're pushing Pro-America in the arab media, then reports sources from the late 70's?! Disregard the article unless you can back it up yourself cus Jalko didn't do a goddamn thing.

 

Vagina, you're talking out of your ass. I hate to say it but you're an annoyance since not only do you post ill-fated unsourced repsonses that not only got us WAY the fuck off topic, but you keep it up without bringing anything more than information thirty years old. As far as the CIA goes their spying policies over a span of thirty years have obviously changed as the global political climate changes.

 

You're running around spewing a lot of shit man, keep it to the facts.

 

 

"Irregardless is a word that many mistakenly believe to be correct usage in formal style, when in fact it is used chiefly in nonstandard speech or casual writing. Coined in the United States in the early 20th century, it has met with a blizzard of condemnation for being an improper yoking of irrespective and regardless and for the logical absurdity of combining the negative ir– prefix and –less suffix in a single term. Although one might reasonably argue that it is no different from words with redundant affixes like debone and unravel, it has been considered a blunder for decades and will probably continue to be so."

 

John Birch, you can have it.

[Soup]

As I feel I need to reiterate since noone payed it any mind, the CIA has no connection with Bin Laden. We funded ISI and told them to support militant groups attacking the Soviet Union. In this situation, there is nothing else to it.

 

If you choose to bring up Osama Bin Laden's Connection to the Bush family, George Bush Sr was a private citizen at the time he began working with Saudis, his Son George Bush Jr was a private citizen when he worked with his father's partners. As hungry as you are to nail the Bush Administration by connecting them to Osama, you'll have to find another reason to hate them. It shouldn't be too hard.

[John Birch]

Thank you soup...btw if you want to have a philology discussion start a thread...lingusitics is one of my favorite subjects...I bet we could argue for hours about this shit, lol...

 

 

btw that top 11 is hella funny...reminds of Battlefield: Desert Command. I play the Iraqi side...

 

 

btw, did anyone ever think if maybe 12oz is on this terror watch shit? Besides posting flix of numerous felonies, and selling felony supplies and forums how to commit said felonies, there also a forum for some crazy felon to spout anti-american and pro-islam shit all day, lol...

[lord_casek]

"Post #102 - Before you walk down this road of what we did for Bin Laden, know that Bin Laden didn't turn to fundemental Islam until the 90's when there was a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan resulting in a call to arms by religious leaders all over the Muslim world to liberate the country from pro-Soviet rule. This was when Bin Laden sent money, supplies, and weapons to the militant jihadis in Afghanistan. Like we would with anyone else, had we known we were raising a monster, America would've done something sooner." _soup

 

 

calling bullshit on soup's post.

 

Osama bin Laden joined our call for resistance to the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan and accepted our military training and equipment along with countless other mujahedeen "freedom fighters." It was only after the Russians bombed Afghanistan back into the stone age and suffered a Vietnam-like defeat, and we turned our backs on the death and destruction we had helped cause, that he turned against us. The last straw as far as bin Laden was concerned was that, after the Gulf War, we based "infidel" American troops in Saudi Arabia to prop up its decadent, fiercely authoritarian regime. Ever since, bin Laden has been attempting to bring the things the CIA taught him home to the teachers. On September 11, he appears to have returned to his deadly project with a vengeance.

 

 

also: from bin laden bio...

 

"Osama was exposed very early on his age to this experience but he lost his father when he was 13. He married at the age of 17 to a Syrian girl who was a relative. He grew up as religiously committed boy and the early marriage was another factor of protecting him from corruption.

 

Osama had his primary, secondary and even university education in Jeddah. He had a degree in public administration 1981 from King Abdul-Aziz university in Jeddah. Countries of the Arabian Peninsula, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Sudan are the only countries he has been to. All stories of trips to Switzerland, Philippines, and London are all unfounded. "

[Stereotype V.001]

Originally posted by Soup@Jan 24 2006, 09:13 PM

As I feel I need to reiterate since noone payed it any mind, the CIA has no connection with Bin Laden. We funded ISI and told them to support militant groups attacking the Soviet Union. In this situation, there is nothing else to it.

No man, George Dubya flew out to Afghanistan to train them himself!!! Haven't you seen f911 yet? They have pictures of him with arabs, maaan!! Honest to god arabs! Seriously, it doesn't matter if you could prove that point(among others)beyond a shadow of a doubt, most of the people on here still wouldn't buy it. Although I commend you on your attempts! Whats ironic is how any step the government takes to prevent terrorism is seen as the destruction of our rights and values (it wasn't when clinton and gore did the same thing only less effectively), yet when we get struck by another terror attack I'm sure the same people will twist their previous arguments around to blame the government for that too. I'm personally suprised Bush hasn't been accused of masterminding the miner tragedy that happened a few weeks back.

[lord_casek]

don't you ever feel like a bitch being a little lapdog for the

bush administration?

[Guest imported_El Mamerro]

Why does everyone insist on jamming Stereotype into the pro-Bush category? I haven't read anything by him that would lead me to that, yet every time he argues something remotely against the left, all of a sudden everyone thinks he's on the Dubya dick.

[!@#$%]

The Other Big Brother

The Pentagon has its own domestic spying program. Even its leaders say the outfit may have gone too far.

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10965509/site/newsweek/

 

.........

Created three years ago by the Defense Department, CIFA's role is "force protection"—tracking threats and terrorist plots against military installations and personnel inside the United States. In May 2003, Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy Defense secretary, authorized a fact-gathering operation code-named TALON—short for Threat and Local Observation Notice—that would collect "raw information" about "suspicious incidents." The data would be fed to CIFA to help the Pentagon's "terrorism threat warning process," according to an internal Pentagon memo.

 

A Defense document shows that Army analysts wrote a report on the Halliburton protest and stored it in CIFA's database. It's not clear why the Pentagon considered the protest worthy of attention—although organizer Parkin had previously been arrested while demonstrating at ExxonMobil headquarters (the charges were dropped). But there are now questions about whether CIFA exceeded its authority and conducted unauthorized spying on innocent people and organizations. A Pentagon memo obtained by NEWSWEEK shows that the deputy Defense secretary now acknowledges that some TALON reports may have contained information on U.S. citizens and groups that never should have been retained. The number of reports with names of U.S. persons could be in the thousands, says a senior Pentagon official who asked not be named because of the sensitivity of the subject.

 

CIFA's activities are the latest in a series of disclosures about secret government programs that spy on Americans in the name of national security. In December, the ACLU obtained documents showing the FBI had investigated several activist groups, including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Greenpeace, supposedly in an effort to discover possible ecoterror connections. At the same time, the White House has spent weeks in damage-control mode, defending the controversial program that allowed the National Security Agency to monitor the telephone conversationsof U.S. persons suspected of terror links, without obtaining warrants.

 

Last Thursday, Cheney called the program "vital" to the country's defense against Al Qaeda. "Either we are serious about fighting this war on terror or not," he said in a speech to the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. But as the new information about CIFA shows, the scope of the U.S. government's spying on Americans may be far more extensive than the public realizes...........

 

 

 

 

 

 

American armed forces are assuming major new domestic policing and surveillance roles.

Sunday 23 November 2003

http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/112503A.shtml

 

.............

CIFA, moreover, has been given a domestic "data mining" mission: figuring out a way to process massive sets of public records, intercepted communications, credit card accounts, etc., to find "actionable intelligence." "Homeland defense relies on the sharing of actionable intelligence among the appropriate federal, state, and local agencies," says Lt. Gen. Edward G. Anderson III, Eberhart's deputy.

 

Another ambitious domestic project is being undertaken by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which is gathering "geospatial information" about 133 cities, the borders and seaports. This "urban data inventory" combines unclassified and classified data (including such things as the location of emergency services, communications, transportation and food supplies) with a high-resolution satellite map of the United States. When the mapping efforts are completed, a national "spatial data infrastructure" will be created down to the house level. Intelligence analysts speak of one day being able to identify individual occupants, as well as their national background and political affiliations. Though the military is just getting its systems in place, there can be no other conclusion: Domestic surveillance is back.

 

 

 

 

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/colu...lly_awards.html

 

 

This new counterterrorism agency grew in three brief years from a small coordinating office located in a five-sided broom closet into "an analytic and operational organization with nine directorates and ever-widening authority" (as well as a sizeable secret budget). Without oversight itself, it now oversees a data-mining operation including a database codenamed Talon that contained surveillance reports on peaceful American civilian protests and demonstrations.

 

According to our panel of judges, this was the most hotly contested category in the competition. After all, as the year ended, we learned that the National Security Agency (NSA) was warrantlessly harvesting unknown but vast numbers of domestic conversations and emails via the American telecommunication system's main arteries (and passing some of the information gleaned on to other government agencies); that FBI and Department of Energy teams were trolling Washington DC Muslim communities and institutions (and entering private property without warrants) looking for nuclear bombs, while the FBI was obtaining controversial "national security letters" to gain secret access to the personal records of tens of thousands of Americans (and depositing anything learned, even from those not suspected of wrongdoing, in permanent government data banks); that the New York City Police Department was conducting illegal surveillance of "people protesting the Iraq war, bicycle riders taking part in mass rallies and even mourners at a street vigil for a cyclist killed in an accident"; and that, despite much negative publicity this year, the CIA program known as GST, which includes the Agency's "extraordinary rendition" or kidnapping operations, its secret fleet of planes to transport kidnapped terror suspects around the globe, its network of secret prisons outside the U.S., and its enhanced ability to mine financial records and eavesdrop on suspects, has not even been slightly dented. For this, according to A. John Radsan, assistant general counsel at the CIA from 2002 to 2004, the CIA can thank the "personal commitment" of a President who "seems to relish the secret findings and the dirty details of operations."

[lord_casek]

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29269

 

US government subpoenas Hotmail account

 

THE USA government has issued a subpoena to an individual and to Microsoft to view the contents of a Hotmail account.

 

John C. Gurganus jr, assistant US attorney at the Department of Justice (DoJ), applied for the subpoena on the 24th of January at the middle district of Pennsylvania (Scranton).

 

The individual concerned is one Michael Curtis Reynolds.

 

No details of why the subpoena was issued are in the public domain. µ

[!@#$%]

Google Refuses Demand for Search Information

Government Asked 4 Firms for Data in Effort to Revive Anti-Porn Law

 

By Arshad Mohammed

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, January 20, 2006

 

The Justice Department said yesterday that it subpoenaed four major Internet companies for data on what people search for on the Web as part of an eight-year battle over a federal law designed to shield children from online pornography.

 

Three of the companies responded to some degree, but Google Inc. said it was resisting the demand. Privacy advocates said the subpoenas raised deep concerns about the government's ability to track what ordinary people view on the Internet.

 

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...logy/techpolicy

 

 

 

public relations? or real legal battle? you be the judge

[lord_casek]

do any of you know what google is doing?

 

they aren't standing up for your rights, they are making you feel more comfortable with their data mining habits.

 

you see, if they make a stand right now, it makes it look like google is the good guy. google is not the good guy. they know what every single one of us searches for, they have access to our email (gmail account holders), they know what pages we go to after being on google (trackback), and they can match your searches and email records to a specific ip address. yay internet.

 

thanks DARPA.

[lord_casek]

Mclellan:domestic spying is what it is

[Mainter]

Originally posted by lord_casek@Jan 26 2006, 12:27 PM

do any of you know what google is doing?

 

they aren't standing up for your rights, they are making you feel more comfortable with their data mining habits.

 

you see, if they make a stand right now, it makes it look like google is the good guy. google is not the good guy. they know what every single one of us searches for, they have access to our email (gmail account holders), they know what pages we go to after being on google (trackback), and they can match your searches and email records to a specific ip address. yay internet.

 

thanks DARPA.

Quoted post

 

 

thats why when you sign up for anything or search for anything use a proxy server with an IP blocker

[!@#$%]

or you log in somewhere that cannot be traced directly to you

ie public library

 

yeah, it's public relations.

whatever, google's CEO was at burning man last year, he's gotta be some kinda scum sucking hippie liberal.

 

 

 

Google CEO Eric Schmidt doesn't reveal much about himself on his home page.

 

But spending 30 minutes on the Google search engine lets one discover that Schmidt, 50, was worth an estimated $1.5 billion last year. Earlier this year, he pulled in almost $90 million from sales of Google stock and made at least another $50 million selling shares in the past two months as the stock leaped to more than $300 a share.

 

He and his wife Wendy live in the affluent town of Atherton, Calif., where, at a $10,000-a-plate political fund-raiser five years ago, presidential candidate Al Gore and his wife Tipper danced as Elton John belted out "Bennie and the Jets."

 

Schmidt has also roamed the desert at the Burning Man art festival in Nevada, and is an avid amateur pilot.

 

That such detailed personal information is so readily available on public Web sites makes most people uncomfortable. But it's nothing compared with the information Google collects and doesn't make public.

 

........

 

http://news.com.com/Google+balances+privac..._3-5787483.html

[angelofdeath]

i know this is off topic, but what does everyone think about what the UN is trying to do with the internet?

[Stereotype V.001]

Originally posted by El Mamerro@Jan 26 2006, 09:33 AM

Why does everyone insist on jamming Stereotype into the pro-Bush category? I haven't read anything by him that would lead me to that, yet every time he argues something remotely against the left, all of a sudden everyone thinks he's on the Dubya dick.

Quoted post

 

Because when you have an extremely flawed argument, your only step is to make assumptions and personal attacks.

 

And guys, the library isn't safe anymore either. I went to the computer to log onto my fav sites "whatreallyhappened.com" and "truthout.org", which are the most objective sites that tell me what to think. And there was this guy with sunglasses, his shirt said "janitorial service" but I knew better. Obviously the CIA is trying to kill me. So I hid in my basement and my tin foil hat kept them from domesto-spying on my brain waves, but then my cat mittens walked over but I was like "YOU AINT NO MITTENS" and I judo-chopped his ass then ran. Mittens is a CIA operative, so if you see him just run like hell. This police state is getting out of hand, but I am a pretty big player in the anti war movement so they are obviously trying to get me.

[!@#$%]

Late on a June afternoon in 2004, a motley group of about 10 peace activists showed up outside the Houston headquarters of Halliburton, the giant military contractor once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.

 

They were there to protest the corporation's supposed "war profiteering." The demonstrators wore papier-mache masks and handed out free peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches to Halliburton employees as they left work...

 

To U.S. Army analysts at the top-secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), the peanut-butter protest was regarded as a potential threat to national security.

 

A Defense document shows that Army analysts wrote a report on the Halliburton protest and stored it in CIFA's database.

 

 

 

 

 

US Librarians See 'Big Brother' in Monitoring of Library Patrons Under 'USA Patriot Act'

By David B. Caruso

The Associated Press

January 25, 2003

 

...The USA Patriot Act, passed after the Sept. 11 attacks, gave the FBI new powers to investigate terrorism, including the ability to look at library records and computer hard drives to see what books patrons have checked out, what Web pages they've visited, and where they've sent e-mails...

 

But some librarians, who were meeting in Philadelphia for an American Library Association convention, worry that the FBI has returned to routinely checking on the reading habits of intellectuals, civil rights leaders and other Americans.

 

Those tactics, common in the 1950s and 1960s, were occasionally used to brand people as Communists.

 

Speaking to reporters in Philadelphia last week, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller sought to play down concerns that the bureau would abuse its powers.