And We Thought the NSA was Bad
A database managed by a secretive Pentagon intelligence agency called Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, was found last month to contain reports on at least four dozen antiwar meetings or protests, many of them on college campuses. Ten peace activists who handed out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches outside Halliburton's headquarters in Houston in June 2004 were reported as a national security threat. So were people who assembled at a Quaker meeting house in Lake Worth, Fla., or protested military recruiters at sites such as New York University, the State University of New York and campuses of the University of California at Berkeley and at Santa Cruz.
The difference here is that many of those under surveillance found out because they were cited or written up. There were many more who were secretly monitored though who deserve to know that their civil liberties have once again been violated by the Bush administration with its "post 9/11, live-in-fear" mind set.
For those of you who aren't familiar with CIFA it is short for Counterintelligence Field Activity and it secretly monitored war protestors, a group of Quakers and basically others who simply disagreed with the Bush administration. The Post calls them peaceful political dissenters. That could include anyone who has written or spoken out against the Bush administration.
Walter Pincus of The Washington Post first wrote about this in December. You can find his articles here, here and here.
posted by B. Muse at 7:50 AM
1 Comments:
Eric - I have read my Constitution. I keep a copy of it on the wall above my desk, along with a copy of The Declaration of Independence and Patrick Henry's "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" speech. I know what the civil liberties are that are guaranteed by my Constitution and its subsequent articles and amendments. I also know that Big Brother is watching. The problem is that the paranoia of President Bush and his administration has stretched this "spying" to the limits.
Maybe you never felt threatened because you simply don't care. Some people don't care if their medical, internet, phone, mail, library, work and tax records open for review by the government. (Well, tax records are anyway...and work records for SS purposes.) I mean reviewed outside the normal circumstances. Most of us do care.
Your apathy and sarcasm are noted. You aren't a Republican or a Democrat. You think you're a swing voter. You are fooling yourself. Anyone who can't look at the facts of what is happening in our society and feel outraged at the unprecedented loss of our freedoms is either a fascist or a citizen of another country.
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