Friday, September 29, 2006

A Failure of Imagination


Another spying scandal for Capitol Hill
Hewlett-Packard ex-chairwoman Patricia Dunn got grilled about an unfolding scandal one lawmaker called "a plumbers' operation that would make Richard Nixon blush."

Why do they always say this?

"Never in my worst nightmare did I anticipate that the circumstances currently surrounding HP could ever occur," she said.

Technology Giant Hewlett-Packard Admits to Spying on Journalists, Board Members

When they know that their worst nightmare is to live in a security state, which they are.

Right-wing targets judge who ruled vs. Bush spying

If that doesn't smack of good old fashioned McCarthyism.

Of course the cynical might be forgiven for believing this is a distraction from the real crime of spying....House passes warrantless domestic spying measure

Before it heads home to face the voters, Congress is rushing to legalize warrantless, domestic wiretaps of the sort that this summer were ruled unconstitutional in federal court, with only the barest of nods to preserving civil liberties.



Remember when the worst thing about the Soviet Union was that it was a nation of spies, it had its people spy on each other for the state.

Well all that changed after 9/11 as they say.

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.

Eric Margolis | Foreign Correspondent : December 2005


When abuses of power take away basic freedoms, something has to give. I dare say the Communists were experts at domestic spying, cultural homogenization, closed borders, and propaganda. Let's think about what that means for our own countries. Let's make sure glasnost isn't ushered in as a "new" concept to us someday.New Freedoms in the USSR

Prairie Weather: Domestic spying admitted by Pentagon

Dvorak Uncensored » Domestic Spying Story Continues to get Better ...

Congress Turning the USA Into the USSR

digg - New York Times sues Pentagon over domestic spying



See:

Spying


CIA


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