USA Continues Drift to Police State

Before long, no U.S. citizen will have ANY secrets from the federal government. I have previously done a post about how the USA rates with China and Russia when it comes to privacy abuses. The development discussed in the following article should make that rating even worse. Be afraid if you value your privacy. The Chimperator wants to know your most personal and secret communications. Here are some highlights from a New Yorker article via Raw Story (http://rawstory.com/news/2007/US_drafting_plan_to_allow_government_0114.html):

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell is drawing up plans for cyberspace spying that would make the current debate on warrantless wiretaps look like a "walk in the park," according to an interview published in the New Yorker's print edition today. Debate on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act “will be a walk in the park compared to this,” McConnell said. “this is going to be a goat rope on the Hill. My prediction is that we’re going to screw around with this until something horrendous happens.”

McConnell is developing a Cyber-Security Policy, still in the draft stage, which will closely police Internet activity. "Ed Giorgio, who is working with McConnell on the plan, said that would mean giving the government the autority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer or Web search," author Lawrence Wright pens. “Google has records that could help in a cyber-investigation, he said," Wright adds. "Giorgio warned me, 'We have a saying in this business: ‘Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.'"

The infrastructure to tap into Americans' email and web search history may already be in place. In November, a former technician at AT&T alleged that the telecom forwarded virtually all of its Internet traffic into a "secret room" to facilitate government spying. Whistleblower Mark Klein said that a copy of all Internet traffic passing over AT&T lines was copied into a locked room at the company's San Francisco office -- to which only employees with National Security Agency clearance had access -- via a cable splitting device.

According to Klein, that information included Internet activity about Americans. "We're talking about domestic traffic as well as international traffic," Klein said. Previous Bush administration claims that only international communications were being intercepted aren't accurate, he added. "I know the physical equipment, and I know that statement is not true," he added. "It involves millions of communications, a lot of it domestic communications that they're copying wholesale."