The spies down the road
I’ve been hearing a lot of chatter on the radio about the NSA spy scandal that is plaguing the Bush administration. I’m not fully informed about all the details, but what I know is that the central issue is whether or not the government should be allowed to monitor phone conversations of normal Americans, without due warrant, in the name of national security. Apparently major telcos like AT&T are now under the microscope as accomplices to this “spy” scheme. The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has filed a lawsuit against AT&T, accusing the industry leader of collaborating with the government by installing a top-secret “room” in one of its facilities for the purpose of monitoring telecom traffic. According to an article on Arstechnica, the particular facility in question is right here in Bridgeton, MO. Here’s a quote from the article:
In interviews with Salon, the former AT&T workers said that only government officials or AT&T employees with top-secret security clearance are admitted to the room, located inside AT&T’s facility in Bridgeton. The room’s tight security includes a biometric “mantrap” or highly sophisticated double door, secured with retinal and fingerprint scanners. The former workers say company supervisors told them that employees working inside the room were “monitoring network traffic” and that the room was being used by “a government agency.”
4 comments
Here is another article on Wired.com:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70619-0.html
Here is the actual testimony of the former AT&T employee:
http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/att_klein_wired.pdf
How many times does it have to happen before America realizes that compromising in a “war time” situation is still compromising, and we reap the consequences sooner than most would expect?
Lovey,
I read an article in BusinessWeek recently regarding a secret program (since 2001) that’s been going in in the US Treasury– the program is used to track hundreds of thousands of American financial transactions, mostly international ETFs in order to pinpoint terrorist activity in the US. Although the US Treasury secretary claims that this program (albeit an entirely private one until now) is entirely in line with democratic values (!), I struggle to follow his logic. Here is another article I found recently written on this program:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/politics/3997547.html
*mwah*
I need to clarify something here. I was thinking about this on the way to work today because they were talking about this issue on the radio (actually it was a bunch of yelling and accusations, mostly on the part of the *conservative* talk show host, belittling his liberal guest). The conservative was stating how programs like this are necessary to preserve our freedom, and that liberals are not supporting the “war on terror” if they force the Bush administration to reveal secret programs like this. It occurred to me that I don’t necessarily distrust the Bush administration — per se — but rather, other administrations that will follow that will use the Bush administration’s actions as precedent for actually encroaching on our liberties. In other words, if the next President is someone that is blatantly untrustworthy, do I really want him to have the same kind of power to intercept private communications in the name of defending freedom? I think not.