exactly why it is better to have a Congress embroiled in impeachment proceedings rather than implementing a despotic agenda.

What are those 75 fusion centrs doing other than intercepting any message they wish to?

Like the recent police-state physical raids by the FBI on anti-war activists, this Internet spying by the global corporate/financial/political/militarist EMPIRE, which hides behind the facade of its two-party Vichy sham of democratic government, is actually a great sign of progress for all working-class Americans who fight for the anti-EMPIRE and pro-democracy movement in the US.

Actions like these two tyrannical oppressions by the ruling EMPIRE here in the US itself actually demonstrates both the absolute truth of Hannah Arendt's prescient Nazi-era warning that "Empire abroad (always) entails tyranny at home", and also clearly demonstrates that the Vichy global corporate/financial/political/militarist EMPIRE that has fully 'captured' the US government (as the Nazi Empire had captured and occupied France) is now apoplectic about the threat that the genuine and fast growing pro-democracy and 'anti-Empire peoples movement' poses to the global Empire directly in its US headquartered lair.

Ralph Nader, Kevin Zeese, and many thousands of other pro-democracy and ANTI-EMPIRE intellectuals and academics are building the totally peaceful Global Anti-EMPIRE Peoples’ Movement within the belly of the US beast and this direct confrontation with the global Vichy Empire that has captured our former US government through the totally corrupt two-party Vichy facade is causing extreme pressure on the Empire --- which in turn is causing the Empire to show its neo-fascist fangs and 'tip of the empire spear' even here in its supposedly safe and placated US home base, and against US citizens themselves.

As Hannah Arendt noted, and as the German people themselves learned too late, an Empire which claims only to practice militarist "empire abroad" will always turn against its own people and expand inward to domestic "tyranny at home".

As these clear signs of tyranny against our own US citizens increase (as they are now drastically increasing) even as the imperial media and entertainment distractions of NASCAR, "Meet the Press", WWF, and "Dancing with the Stars" expand in lunacy, an increasing percentage of non-elite and oppressed US citizens are finally realizing that they are on a path toward feudal Empire, economic oppression, and now 'police-state' tyranny at home ---- and a current 21st century second-generation of American “minute-men” are clearly seeing "which way the wind is blowing” ---- and this throws fear in the heart of darkness, in the heart of Empire.

Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine

They do not want anyone from questioning the basis for the war.

"BIG BROTHER" IS BACK!!!!!

Glenn -

As I understand it, the fusion centers are a related but separate issue.

Vacuuming up electronic digital communications wholesale and simply storing it in massive, relatively unstructured databases (presumably for later retrieval, review, and transcription by law enforcement officials or faceless security clearance holding bureaucrats) is an enormous threat to personal privacy. When news of this "Omnivore" project first leaked into the public domain, the outcry was swift and the wannabe eavesdroppers of NSA, DIA, CIA and FBI ostensibly scuttled the project pending further technological and legal review. If memory serves me right, former Admiral John Poindexter was a key proponent of the effort, which was secretly revived, with splitters installed in joint cooperation with some major American telecoms, in the early months of the Bush/Cheney administration. Shitloads of federal black budget money has been spent already setting up the intercept centers and digital data storage facilities, with shitloads more in the funding pipeline.

The fusion centers literally gobble up and intercept everything, no matter how damning or innocuous. Presumably, a Title III warrant or a FISA warrant could be subsequently obtained, perhaps minutes, days, months or years after the conversation or communication took place, to retrieve the data and reconstruct it. Yes, reconstruct it. Reconstruct a communication after the fact, and place that communication into a context which itself could be manipulated by those entrusted to access and operate the government's fusion eavesdropping system honestly.

Contemporaneous wiretaps by police, civilian spy agencies, or the military are a self-evident threat to civil liberties and privacy, which is why prior judicial approval (a warrant) is mandated in order for a government agent to listen in lawfully and record the content of two-party communications. In contrast, the fusion centers and Orwellian projects like Omnivore constitute an even more pernicious potential intrusion upon the free speech and free expression rights of the citizeny because they seize everything first, and search only later for evidence of wrongdoing.

How you gonna prove the spooks didn't snoop first and seek the judge's warrant approval later, creating their own probable cause paper trail?

Even worse, what's to prevent the government agents with access to the database retrieval mechanism from deleting parts of a past electronic communication's context, or just slightly embellishing the true content of a communication to make it appear to be a criminal act?

Bill from Saginaw

Well, they always have had the authority to listen in on anyone's messages.. they just want the Congress to give them the green light to expand their ability do it easily on a mass scale.
Mass legal cover is what they want.

This is insane, as the ability to spy on citizens on a mass scale is fucking vintage fascism.

The anger this is gonna cause will be great because it will probably pass.

The new Congress will be deadlocked on everything but this endless war.

And this is how Empires fall.

That is the good news... the bad, I will leave to your imagination.

Were talking about lawfully authorized intercepts said FBI lawyer Valerie E. Caproni in order to protect public safety and national security. What she really means: we are talking about unlawfully authorized and legitimized wire taps in order to protect the safety of the oligarchy and the national security of the MIC! The FBI under the Patriot Act, was given plenary powers after 911 to protect the powerful and super wealthy elite, from any threats to their power or wealth, not the average Joe Sixpack from terrorists.

Will our corporate controlled government hire the Israelis to open our most intiment communications?

If the Long War continues, maybe they will just have computers decide... have Microsoft make computers to decide from available data which targets the robots (regular and human) can take out.

Maybe literally, Armageddon will be the big battle of us humans against the machines.

I say wiretap yourself's to death.

You have a mountain of data cloggin your system already.

If anyone found something of value they would be told to keep it secret.... top secret until such time as.... the JFK files are released.

Remember when the Bushwhackers were covertly picking up our phone calls? When the word got out, we all went ballistic. Congress legalized that and gave retroactive immunity to the Telcom Companies that went along with that evil, illegal ploy.

Same thing is happening now, Same rubber-stamp Congress, same voracious "security" gang.

Take it for granted, anything you say or do, in the privacy of your own home or bedroom is being recorded. Every contact you have with a friend, or a business partner is recorded. Every record you have is being scanned and evaluated. No reason for it, but just because they can and it is intimidating to We the Sheeple.

Either live in fear, or just say, "Fuck 'em!" and live life as usual.

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

We're there!!!!

Does anyone remember the Clipper chip? The evils of this type of intrusion are too numerous to write -rest assured it would be used for economic espionage and abused in all manner of other ways.

Most people think that encryption programming methods are kept very secret and that if anything got out it would be a disaster.
The opposite is actually true. The algorithms are published publicly and mathematicians and the world's very few real encryption experts try very hard to break or at least partially break and weaken each others work. Why? Because if nobody can break it then it has strength. Nobody gets upset if their encryption method is broken -they just carry on and fix the weakness or re-design it.

All the algorithms used in business, banking credit card transactions etc. are publicly available and wisely so.

Publishing it and having peer review actually ensures the robustness of the encyption method. "Secret" algorithms that lack that peer review get broken quickly without anyone necessarily knowing it is broken and hackable.

So it was with the government's "secret" Clipper chip. It sounds like that horror has risen from the grave again, all in the name of "national security".

Does anyone have a wooden stake?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip

Americans have never been particularly squeamish about giving up their Constitutional rights so long as doing so hurts the "bad guys," who, of course, are fellow Americans currently out of favor. These people won't be satisfied until they are secure inside their personal cells knowing their government can now better protect them from the "enemy."

Dear Strange Government people:

Now that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney are "private" citizens, does this include e-mails etc. as well?

If it does not, and Congress goes ahead with this, does anyone know any Navajos? We need to create a new language for a new America. I understand that these Native American code talkers saved the nation during WW II. Perhaps they may do it again.

This will make it easier for the FBI to arrest even more terrorist anti-war Quakers and others than the FBI can do now. To fill the quota of captured terrorists, it is much more efficient to round up the people (hiding) under a streetlight than to look in the dark.

Perhaps it's time to avoid space age communications and take a page from the past and write letters and talk to each other. Actually having face to face contact."What a novel idea"!

Remember, any Iraqi, Afghan, Pakistani, Yemeni, or etc., who objects to his country being occupied, raped and pillaged by the US military and its corporate rulers is declared a terrorist or insurgent. Anybody that tries to fight back against that occupation is automatically a target for extermination, even if it means his village, or his family.

We are at the point where any American who objects to the United States raping and pillaging foreign lands; who objects to giving up his freedoms; who lobby's for the return of the Constitution; who demonstrates or writes criticisms of the malignant government policies being pursued at home and abroad; who asserts his right to privacy; these, too, shall become "homegrown terrorists" or supporters. They, too shall be subject to being raided, disappeared into gulags, tortured, shot while trying to escape, etc.

If you read Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," "Berlin Diary," and Sebastian Happner's "Defying Hitler," you will have a taste of our near future. Some of it has already come to pass.

"We're talking about lawfully authorized intercepts," said FBI lawyer Valerie E. Caproni. "We're not talking about expanding authority. We're talking about preserving our ability to execute our existing authority in order to protect the public safety and national security."

This statement coming from the organization, whose history of spying and intimidating Amerikkkan citizens dates to at least World War I, is spectacular in its absurdity.