{"id":1838,"date":"2006-05-22T17:05:18","date_gmt":"2006-05-22T23:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/spies-like-us\/"},"modified":"2006-05-22T17:05:18","modified_gmt":"2006-05-22T23:05:18","slug":"spies-like-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/spies-like-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Spies Like Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

Union Leader – Laura K. Donohue: Beware the long arm of. . . the Pentagon? – Saturday, May. 20, 2006<\/a><\/p>\n

For the first time since the Civil War, the United States has been designated a military theater of operations. The Department of Defense \u2014 which includes the NSA \u2014 is focusing its vast resources on the homeland. And it is taking an unprecedented role in domestic spying.<\/p>\n

It may be legal. But it circumvents three decades of efforts by Congress to restrict government surveillance of Americans under the guise of national security. And it represents a profound shift in the role of the military operating inside the United States. What\u2019s at stake here is the erosion of the principle, embedded in the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, that the U.S. military not be used for domestic law enforcement.<\/p>\n

When the administration declared the United States to be a theater of military operations in 2002, it created a U.S. Northern Command, which set up intelligence centers in Colorado and Texas to analyze the domestic threat. But these are not the military\u2019s only domestic intelligence efforts. According to the Congressional Research Service, the Pentagon controls \u201ca substantial portion\u201d of U.S. national intelligence assets, the traditional turf of the FBI and CIA. [mjh: Specifically, at least 80% of money spent on spying is in the Pentagon’s budget. Rumsfeld is our new J. Edgar Hoover.]<\/span> …<\/p>\n

These misguided military forays into domestic surveillance harken back to Vietnam War-era abuses. This time, they are the result of a much broader intelligence-gathering effort by the military on U.S. soil. President Bush said last week, \u201dWe\u2019re not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans.\u201c But a 2004 survey by the General Accounting Office found 199 data-mining operations that collect information ranging from credit-card statements to medical records. The Defense Department had five programs on intelligence and counterterrorism. …<\/p>\n

In 2002, the Defense Department launched the granddaddy of all data-mining efforts, Total Information Awareness, to trawl through all government and commercial databases available worldwide. In 2003, concerned about privacy implications, Congress cut its funding. But many of the projects simply transferred to other Defense Department agencies. Two of the most important, the Information Awareness Prototype System and Genoa II, moved to NSA headquarters.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon argues that its monitoring of U.S. citizens is legal. \u201cContrary to popular belief, there is no absolute ban on intelligence\u201d agencies collecting information on Americans or disseminating it, says a memo by Robert Noonan, deputy chief of staff for intelligence. Military intelligence agents can receive any information \u201cfrom anyone, any time,\u201d Noonan wrote.<\/p>\n

Throughout U.S. history, we have struggled to balance security concerns with the protection of individual rights, and a thick body of law regulates domestic law-enforcement agencies\u2019 behavior. Congress should think twice before it lets the behemoth Defense Department into domestic law enforcement. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Union Leader – Laura K. Donohue: Beware the long arm of. . . the Pentagon? – Saturday, May. 20, 2006 For the first time since the Civil War, the United States has been designated a military theater of operations. The Department of Defense \u2014 which includes the NSA \u2014 is focusing its vast resources on … Continue reading Spies Like Us<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dump-duhbya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}