BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING AND LISTENING TO YOU
Copyright: Eric S. Margolis, 2005
December 26, 2005
MIAMI - Americans should not be shocked to learn that Big Brother has been eavesdropping on their telecommunications. It's been an open secret for years that the hush- hush National Security Agency's big electronic ears on the East and West coasts of the USA have been hoovering up all international phone, fax, and email communications.
When you call your aunt in Palermo, or your friend in Egypt, or your girlfriend in Paris, NSA's super computers pick up and process the transmission. State of the art programs search the messages for key words, locations, repetitions and patterns of interest. This process has been going on long before 9/11.
I have always wondered what government listeners do with highly sensitive financial information passing between corporations, banks and securities or commodity markets. Obviously, there is enormous potential for the state listeners to profit from secret information about mergers, acquisitions, large trades of stocks or commodities, and the movement of currencies.
One may expect a huge scandal to erupt one day when it is revealed that US intelligence agencies used secret financial data to speculate in markets and produce huge profits to pay for `black' operations not authorized by Congress.
...
Unfettered government electronic and data mining surveillance of its citizens is a genii that once released from its legal bottle becomes a grave menace to democratic society. So-called terrorism is such a loose and flexible concept that it can easily be applied to just about any activity.
Soviet bloc security agencies knew that the most effective way of monitoring `anti-state' activities was by massive random checking. Stop one thousand citizens, or monitor their calls, and a small percentage of potential malefactors, real or imagined, and enemies will be turned up.
East Germany took this sinister practice to the extreme. Its security agency, the Stasi, monitored at least half of all phone and telex calls, employed an army of informers, ran routine spot checks of pedestrians, and even retained tens of thousands of samples of the body scents of `subjects of interest.'
Give any intelligence or security agency carte blanche to spy on citizens and it will eventually take this power to extremes. It's only a small step from monitoring real subversive activities to spying on anyone who disagrees with current government policies. Their friends and relations will also fall under suspicion.
Read the rest here:
http://www.bigeye.com/foreignc.htm
Copyright: Eric S. Margolis, 2005
December 26, 2005
MIAMI - Americans should not be shocked to learn that Big Brother has been eavesdropping on their telecommunications. It's been an open secret for years that the hush- hush National Security Agency's big electronic ears on the East and West coasts of the USA have been hoovering up all international phone, fax, and email communications.
When you call your aunt in Palermo, or your friend in Egypt, or your girlfriend in Paris, NSA's super computers pick up and process the transmission. State of the art programs search the messages for key words, locations, repetitions and patterns of interest. This process has been going on long before 9/11.
I have always wondered what government listeners do with highly sensitive financial information passing between corporations, banks and securities or commodity markets. Obviously, there is enormous potential for the state listeners to profit from secret information about mergers, acquisitions, large trades of stocks or commodities, and the movement of currencies.
One may expect a huge scandal to erupt one day when it is revealed that US intelligence agencies used secret financial data to speculate in markets and produce huge profits to pay for `black' operations not authorized by Congress.
...
Unfettered government electronic and data mining surveillance of its citizens is a genii that once released from its legal bottle becomes a grave menace to democratic society. So-called terrorism is such a loose and flexible concept that it can easily be applied to just about any activity.
Soviet bloc security agencies knew that the most effective way of monitoring `anti-state' activities was by massive random checking. Stop one thousand citizens, or monitor their calls, and a small percentage of potential malefactors, real or imagined, and enemies will be turned up.
East Germany took this sinister practice to the extreme. Its security agency, the Stasi, monitored at least half of all phone and telex calls, employed an army of informers, ran routine spot checks of pedestrians, and even retained tens of thousands of samples of the body scents of `subjects of interest.'
Give any intelligence or security agency carte blanche to spy on citizens and it will eventually take this power to extremes. It's only a small step from monitoring real subversive activities to spying on anyone who disagrees with current government policies. Their friends and relations will also fall under suspicion.
Read the rest here:
http://www.bigeye.com/foreignc.htm
