Cell Phone Users Movements Possibly Being Tracked By NSA Program
NSA whistleblower Russell Tice, is scheduled to speak today with members and staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee about what he is claiming are "illegalities" undertaken by the SIGINT agency that have not yet been made public.
Washington national security cognoscenti have been saying for days that Tice's new revelation involves space-based capabilities of the NSA.
The new scuttlebutt in Washington is that Mr. Tice is going to reveal to the committee a most Big Brother-ish scenario.
According to the speculation, the NSA data-mining program is not limited to pattern analysis of who is calling who. The space-related skullduggery is believed to include the tracking of the movements of everyone who carries a cell phone.
Of course, administration apologists will insist that this is okay. After all, if you are not doing anything wrong, why should you care if the government tracks you around everywhere you go?
Washington national security cognoscenti have been saying for days that Tice's new revelation involves space-based capabilities of the NSA.
The new scuttlebutt in Washington is that Mr. Tice is going to reveal to the committee a most Big Brother-ish scenario.
According to the speculation, the NSA data-mining program is not limited to pattern analysis of who is calling who. The space-related skullduggery is believed to include the tracking of the movements of everyone who carries a cell phone.
Of course, administration apologists will insist that this is okay. After all, if you are not doing anything wrong, why should you care if the government tracks you around everywhere you go?
posted by Effwit at 10:02 AM
6 Comments:
"...administration apologists will insist that this is okay. After all, if you are not doing anything wrong, why should you care if the government tracks you around everywhere you go(?)"
Mm-hmm. I suppose It depends on the definition of "doing anything wrong".
Yeah, you got to hand it to the conservatives. They're really, really splitting Constitutional hairs on this issue, when ten years ago they would have nothing to do with any program of the sort, had it been proposed by a supposedly liberal-Democratic administration and its President, whom they hated--haaaated--so much, if he took a stool in the toilet the wrong way, we'd be shelling out $100 million of taxpayer money to investigate the matter for six months, and find nothing.
I, for one, now believe that anyone, Refakelican or Yellowcrat, who supports this program, then would turn around and fact the voting public on the stump and say, "the government has no right in your public lives" (or have said so in the past), can officially shove it. They no longer have any credibility on the issue of the right to privacy, because they have shown that they are willing to sell out your privacy for their own political (and personal) benefit--that goes for the cheerleading apologists, too.
VCIII:
It sickens me too to see the Bush supporters and the apologists come up with justifications for each instance of wrongdoing that the administration gets caught trying to put over on us.
We have heard the "I don't care if the government does (insert outrage du jour here), because I am not doing anything wrong" so many times that I wonder if these people have recently been released (or escaped) from a mental institution.
And the whole idea that some people can voluntarily give up the privacy rights of everyone else is preposterous.
PS: Thanks for pointing out my missing question mark. It is now fixed.
A Bingo-zone post, baby.
M1:
I get a lot of help.
Interesting how the government has been more than willing to support the re-coupling of any number of telecom companies in recent years. All the better to consolidate data feeds and minimize loose lips.
Let's see, the current incarnation of AT&T includes what was left of the old AT&T plus what will shortly be four of the former baby bells: Southwestern Bell, Pacific Bell, Ameritech and BellSouth. Verizon includes two former baby bells - NYNEX and Bell Atlantic - plus another major local provider - GTE - and now MCI. The only outliers left from the major local and LD companies are Qwest (which bought baby bell US West) and Sprint, which is now merged with Nextel. And the major wireless carriers are tied in to these companies, too: Verizon, Cingular (soon to be renamed AT&T) and Sprint/Nextel.
So, we quash competition while enhancing the government's ability to acquire personal calling data. Brilliant!
Ugh.
DrewL:
Consolodation definitely would help facilitate any large scale spying program. Less people to have to "convince."
More seamless integration, too.
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