NSA just one of many federal agencies spying on Americans

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By Doug Thompson, Posted by Amanda Lang (about the submitter) Page 2 of 2 page(s)

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During World War I, concerns about German saboteurs led to unrestrained domestic spying by U.S. Army intelligence operatives, says Healy. Army spies were given free reign to gather information on potential subversives, and were often empowered to make arrests as special police officers. Occasionally, they carried false identification as employees of public utilities to allow them, as the chief intelligence officer for the Western Department put it, 'to enter offices or residences of suspects gracefully, and thereby obtain data.'

There's a long and troubling history of military surveillance in this country, Healy adds. That history suggests that we should loathe allowing the Pentagon access to our personal information.

In her book Army Surveillance in America, historian Joan M. Jensen noted, What began as a system to protect the government from enemy agents became a vast surveillance system to watch civilians who violated no law but who objected to wartime policies or to the war itself.

It's a fucking nightmare, says a Congressional aide who recently obtained information on the program for his boss but asked not to be identified because he fears retaliation from the Bush administration. We're collecting more information on Americans than on real enemies of our country.

Sen. John Rockefeller says he raised concerns more than two years ago about increased spying on Americans but as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee could not share that concern with colleagues.

"For the last few days, I have witnessed the President, the Vice-President, the Secretary of State, and the Attorney-General repeatedly misrepresent the facts," Rockefeller said last week. When he was first briefed about the activity in 2003, we sent a handwritten note to Vice President Dick Cheney outlining his concerns.

"I am retaining a copy of this letter in a sealed envelope in the secure spaces of the Senate intelligence committee to ensure that I have a record of this communication," Rockefeller told Cheney. However, Rockefeller says now, my concerns were never addressed, and I was prohibited from sharing my views with my colleagues.

Missouri Congressman William Clay worries that the Bush Adminstration is skirting the law by letting private contractors handle the data mining.

"The agencies involved in data mining are trying to skirt the Privacy Act by claiming that they hold no data," said Clay. Instead, they use private companies to maintain and sift through the data, he said.

"Technically, that gets them out from under the Privacy Act," he said. "Ethically, it does not."

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