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August 26, 2006

I don't have anything to hide. Do I?

W
ho is the NSA watching? That seems like a far more central question than the quality of the opinion enjoining the NSA eavesdropping program exposed by the NY Times. Roberto Lovato, after examining FBI records disclosing the surveillance of a friend of his, a Catholic priest active in the 1980's in seeking a peaceful solution to the strife that then eveloped El Salvador, wonders:

Thanks to the expansion of the definitions of “terrorist” and “terrorist sympathizer” under the Patriot Act and other post-9-11 statutes and thanks to the exponential growth of the means that government agencies like the Pentagon can spy on Americans, the number of people who can be spied on has grown dramatically.
The release of the surveillance memos makes me wonder not if but how, the FBI and the Pentagon are spying on those who have joined in the massive immigration marches. Just last week, documents released by the Pentagon revealed that it had been spying on gay and lesbian groups opposed to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Millions marching for immigrants’ rights must be among the more than 200 million whose phone records were given to the NSA by AT&T, Bell South and Verizon.
It’s especially disturbing to hear these ongoing exposés just before Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who spends most of the $45 billion authorized by Congress for intelligence on the greatest expansion of the Pentagon’s foreign and domestic spying capabilities in history, said last Thursday, “I’m not in the intelligence business,” in response to questions asked by protester and former CIA agent, Ray McGovern.

Posted by Peter at August 26, 2006 3:59 PM