FTI Yahoo has a disturbing history of posting news from gossip rags (such as weekly world news ... aliens kidnapped my cow and molested it type of stuff) and it's seeminly posed as a legitimate news story unless one looks at the source referenced. However, this is not a conspiracy theory, and in fact, it is much worse than that:

quote:

Pentagon accused of spying on Americans Officials will say they will review program that collects data on opponents of the war. By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com NBC News reported earlier this week that it had obtained a secret US Department of Defense document that shows the department is now monitoring "peaceful anti-war and counter-military recruitment groups." Today, The Washington Post reports that Pentagon officials say they will review the program, since NBC's document shows that information has been collected on "peace protesters and others whose activities posed no threat and should not have been kept on file." Pentagon officials say the information collection was aimed at countering terrorism. quote: "On the surface, it looks like things in the database that were determined not to be viable threats were never deleted but should have been," [a senior defense department official] said. "You can also make the argument that these things should never have been put in the database in the first place until they were confirmed as threats." The program is known as "Talon," and is supposed to compile unconfirmed reports of threats to defense facilities. The Post reports that the program is "part of a broader effort by the Pentagon to gather counterterrorism intelligence within the United States," and has raised concerns for civil libertarians and members of Congress recently. Any information that is not considered threatening is supposed to be removed from the Talon database within 90 days. The Palm Beach Post reports on The Truth Project of Lake Worth, Florida, one of the groups considered a threat according to the Talon database. The group consists of about 20 people, including five Quakers and a 79-year old grandmother. Their original meeting, held in 2004 at the local Quaker meeting house, was one of 1,500 "suspicious" incidents in the database. quote: "When we saw (the database), our eyes fell out of our heads," said [Evelyn Grachow,], of West Palm Beach. "We really couldn't believe what we were seeing, because all we do is give information to the young people in high schools who have been harassed by recruiters. There is never talk of our doing violence." Lisa Stewart, a Quaker who attended the Truth Project meeting, said the Quakers investigated the group before allowing them to use the meetinghouse. She said she shares the group's concern that a draft might be instituted during the Iraq war and wanted to find ways to deter students from enlisting. "I just wanted to make sure this group was on the up and up and they weren't a bunch of hotheads," said Stewart, 68, a member of The Truth Project. "They were very much in keeping with (Quaker) principles." NBC military analyst Bill Arkin says all Americans should be concerned by the Pentagon's actions. quote: “It means that they’re actually collecting information about who’s at those protests, the descriptions of vehicles at those protests,” says Arkin. “On the domestic level, this is unprecedented,” he says. “I think it's the beginning of enormous problems and enormous mischief for the military.” Columnist Arianna Huffington, writing in the Los Angeles Times, notes that it's not just the Pentagon that's been watching antiwar demonstrations, as "documents recently obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force has been recording the names and license plate numbers of peaceful antiwar protesters." quote: It wasn't that long ago that [former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's] notorious COINTELPRO program was illegally infiltrating Students for a Democratic Society and setting out to destroy the reputations and lives of "Negro radicals" such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Our government lied, cheated, harassed, intimidated, burglarized, vandalized, framed and spread false rumors — to say nothing of keeping voluminous files on everyone from John Lennon to Lucille Ball — in an effort to quash legitimate dissent against the Vietnam War and the racist practices of the South. We can't let it happen again. The Associated Press reports that in a statement announcing the review of 'Talon,' the Pentagon stopped short of acknowledging any fault, but hinted that some information had been mishandled. quote: The Pentagon said Stephen Cambone, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, ordered a full review of the system for handling such information to ensure that it complies with Pentagon policies and federal law. Cambone also ordered a review of whether Pentagon polices are being applied properly with respect to reporting and storing information about "US persons" - people, not necessarily US citizens, inside the United States. And he ordered the database to be reviewed "to identify any other information that is improperly in the database," according to the Pentagon statement. Meanwhile, USA Today reports on the Pentagon's $300 million psychological warfare operation includes plans for placing pro-American messages in foreign media outlets without disclosing the US government as the source, according to one of the military officials in charge of the program. quote: Run by psychological warfare experts at the US Special Operations Command, the media campaign is being designed to counter terrorist ideology and sway foreign audiences to support American policies. The military wants to fight the information war against al-Qaeda through newspapers, websites, radio, television and "novelty items" such as T-shirts and bumper stickers. The program will operate throughout the world, including in allied nations and in countries where the United States is not involved in armed conflict. Military officials say that, while they will not plant false stories, they will not always reveal their role in distributing pro-US messages – unless they are directly asked by journalists. USA Today also reports on the three companies that have won five-year contracts from the US military, at $20 million a year, to "develop slogans, advertisements, newspaper articles, radio spots and television programs to build support for US policies overseas." Documents show that companies bidding for the contract were worried about media scrutiny. quote: During the bidding process for federal contracts, potential contractors can ask questions and make suggestions that are answered by contracting officials. One question for this contract was whether the command would "protect them from US and foreign media inquiries into this project." The command said it would follow the law but consult with contractors before answering requests for details filed under the Freedom of Information Act. The media campaign hasn't begun, and the military has spent only $700,000 on the project so far, according to US officials with the project. http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1215/dailyUpdate.html

CS monitor referenced all their sources on their website in case you're unfamiliar with its credibility. My thanks to all the "conservatives" who have supported Bush to make big government such a mainstay in all our lives. It's fucking pathetic that 1984 allusions are becoming less and less hyperbole with each passing day. But by all means, continue to read some more Ayn Rand and wax poetically about your "ideals" while you tangibly support policies that move in opposite directions.

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Last edited by occrider on Dec-16-2005 at 07:29

Oh btw, in case you haven't been noticing a trend, the FBI has already been compiling secret databases on civilians as pointed out in this thread:

http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...hlight=consumer

But it's nice that the military is participating on the habit of spying on us now too.

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Hey, we're just in time for a new newsflash this morning! We have a trifecta folks!!!

quote:

Bush Authorized Domestic Spying Post-9/11 Order Bypassed Special Court By Dan Eggen Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, December 16, 2005; Page A01 President Bush signed a secret order in 2002 authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens and foreign nationals in the United States, despite previous legal prohibitions against such domestic spying, sources with knowledge of the program said last night. The super-secretive NSA, which has generally been barred from domestic spying except in narrow circumstances involving foreign nationals, has monitored the e-mail, telephone calls and other communications of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of people under the program, the New York Times disclosed last night. The aim of the program was to rapidly monitor the phone calls and other communications of people in the United States believed to have contact with suspected associates of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups overseas, according to two former senior administration officials. Authorities, including a former NSA director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, were worried that vital information could be lost in the time it took to secure a warrant from a special surveillance court, sources said. But the program's ramifications also prompted concerns from some quarters, including Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), the ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, and the presiding judge of the surveillance court, which oversees lawful domestic spying, according to the Times. The Times said it held off on publishing its story about the NSA program for a year after administration officials said its disclosure would harm national security. The White House made no comment last night. A senior official reached by telephone said the issue was too sensitive to talk about. None of several press officers responded to telephone or e-mail messages. Congressional sources familiar with limited aspects of the program would not discuss any classified details but made it clear there were serious questions about the legality of the NSA actions. The sources, who demanded anonymity, said there were conditions under which it would be possible to gather and retain information on Americans if the surveillance were part of an investigation into foreign intelligence. But those cases are supposed to be minimized. The sources said the actual work of the NSA is so closely held that it is difficult to determine whether it is acting within the law. The revelations come amid a fierce congressional debate over reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The Patriot Act granted the FBI new powers to conduct secret searches and surveillance in the United States. Most of the powers covered under that law are overseen by a secret court that meets at Justice Department headquarters and must approve applications for wiretaps, searches and other operations. The NSA's operation is outside that court's purview, and according to the Times report, the Justice Department may have sought to limit how much that court was made aware of NSA activities. Public disclosure of the NSA program also comes at a time of mounting concerns about civil liberties over the domestic intelligence operations of the U.S. military, which have also expanded dramatically after the Sept. 11 attacks. For more than four years, the NSA tasked other military intelligence agencies to assist its broad-based surveillance effort directed at people inside the country suspected of having terrorist connections, even before Bush signed the 2002 order that authorized the NSA program, according to an informed U.S. official. The effort, which began within days after the attacks, has consisted partly of monitoring domestic telephone conversations, e-mail and even fax communications of individuals identified by the NSA as having some connection to al Qaeda events or figures, or to potential terrorism-related activities in the United States, the official said. It has also involved teams of Defense Intelligence Agency personnel stationed in major U.S. cities conducting the type of surveillance typically performed by the FBI: monitoring the movements and activities -- through high-tech equipment -- of individuals and vehicles, the official said. The involvement of military personnel in such tasks was provoked by grave anxiety among senior intelligence officials after the 2001 suicide attacks that additional terrorist cells were present within U.S. borders and could only be discovered with the military's help, said the official, who had direct knowledge of the events. Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies at George Washington University, said the secret order may amount to the president authorizing criminal activity. The law governing clandestine surveillance in the United States, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, prohibits conducting electronic surveillance not authorized by statute. A government agent can try to avoid prosecution if he can show he was "engaged in the course of his official duties and the electronic surveillance was authorized by and conducted pursuant to a search warrant or court order of a court of competent jurisdiction," according to the law. "This is as shocking a revelation as we have ever seen from the Bush administration," said Martin, who has been sharply critical of the administration's surveillance and detention policies. "It is, I believe, the first time a president has authorized government agencies to violate a specific criminal prohibition and eavesdrop on Americans." Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union, said she is "dismayed" by the report. "It's clear that the administration has been very willing to sacrifice civil liberties in its effort to exercise its authority on terrorism, to the extent that it authorizes criminal activity," Fredrickson said. The NSA activities were justified by a classified Justice Department legal opinion authored by John C. Yoo, a former deputy in the Office of Legal Counsel who argued that congressional approval of the war on al Qaeda gave broad authority to the president, according to the Times. That legal argument was similar to another 2002 memo authored primarily by Yoo, which outlined an extremely narrow definition of torture. That opinion, which was signed by another Justice official, was formally disavowed after it was disclosed by the Washington Post. Justice Department spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos would not comment on the report last night. Staff writers Dafna Linzer and Peter Baker contributed to this report. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...21600021_2.html

So we have the FBI, the NSA, and the Defense Department spying on us. You would think they could at least cut down on costs by consolidating operations, but that sounds way too fiscally responsible of them. Furthermore, it's no blow job so I don't think there's sufficient cause for alarm just yet.

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quote:

Originally posted by occrider Hey, we're just in time for a new newsflash this morning! We have a trifecta folks!!! So we have the FBI, the NSA, and the Defense Department spying on us. You would think they could at least cut down on costs by consolidating operations, but that sounds way too fiscally responsible of them. Furthermore, it's no blow job so I don't think there's sufficient cause for alarm just yet.

Tell me something I didn't already know.