Smile, You're on Candid Camera

I have written ad infinitum about the perils of domestic surveillance programs, see, e.g, A Wink, a Blink & a Nod and Peek-a-boo. And everytime a new Bush Administration spy program is revealed, I think that it just can't get worse than that. Wrong -- again.

There is nothing more to add to this article from the LA Times, Hidden Depths to U.S. Monitoring:

As Americans consider whether they are more safe or less five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, one thing is certain: They are being monitored by their own government in ways unforeseen before terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Within minutes of the strikes, U.S. law enforcement and intelligence-gathering authorities mobilized to find the culprits and prevent another attack.

They increased the tapping of Americans' phone calls and voice mails. They watched Internet traffic and e-mails as never before. They tailed greater numbers of people and into places previously deemed off-limits, such as mosques.

They clandestinely accessed bank and credit card transactions and school records. They monitored travel. And they entered homes without notice, looking for signs of terrorist activity and copying the contents of entire file cabinets and computer hard drives.

Authorities even tried to get inside people's heads, using supercomputers and "predictive" software to analyze enormous amounts of personal data about them and their associates in an effort to foretell who might become a terrorist, and when.

In the five years since the attacks, the scope of domestic surveillance has steadily increased, according to interviews with dozens of current and former U.S. officials and privacy experts.

* * * *

The NSA has improved its ability to monitor the entire spectrum of communications, including fiber-optic and wireless transmissions, instant messages, BlackBerry e-mails and voice conversations sent over the Internet, officials and experts say.

They add that the intelligence community may not be breaking any laws because these kinds of communication might not be covered under loosely worded federal laws that don't account for advances in technology.

Several congressional officials and privacy experts said they believed the NSA also tracked the movement of "persons of interest" by the electronic signals emitted by their cellphones and the Global Positioning Systems in the vehicles they drive.

The NSA had no comment on any aspect of its intelligence-gathering efforts.

The FBI has led the way on the low-tech surveillance front, using little-known powers given to it under the Patriot Act and other post-Sept. 11 policies.

Before Sept. 11, virtually all FBI surveillance was authorized by court-approved warrants and subpoenas issued through federal grand juries, which have some measure of oversight by citizen jurors and judges.

Since then, however, the FBI has sharply increased the use of so-called national security letters, which allow agents to obtain information on people they deem suspicious with little probable cause and without seeking judicial approval. Unlike with traditional search warrants, the target does not have to be notified.

Last year, federal agents issued 9,254 substantive national security letters to access financial transactions and personal data, interviews and government records indicate. Privacy experts and congressional staffers say these letters were rarely used before Sept. 11.

FBI agents are also using what are known as "sneak and peek" warrants on a wider scale, entering hundreds of homes clandestinely to gather intelligence and copy files and computer drives, again without notification. And they have conducted surveillance on antiwar, religious, civil rights and environmental groups, including Greenpeace and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. (Emphasis added).

And we were worried about phone taps?

(Via Corrente )

Tags: Bush, Politics, Civil Liberties, NSA, Domestic surveillance