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So who are those thousands of Americans who have been spied on?

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electron_blue Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Mar-19-06 04:03 PM
Original message
So who are those thousands of Americans who have been spied on?
Anyone know?

Anyway to find out if we've been spied on?

Anyway to find out what the trends are - you know, to see what kind of person they're spying on?

I keep reading about thousands - millions of Americans subjected to illegal wiretapping, but I still haven't heard anything about these victims.

Anyone know more about this?
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valerief Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Mar-19-06 04:08 PM
Response to Original message
1. Good question
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HysteryDiagnosis Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Mar-19-06 04:09 PM
Response to Original message
2. Forget the spying... imagine a program written to read every post
you make on DU, catalogue it, ID it... and save it to some govt data bank. I hope they do waste their time doing such nonsense, perhaps they will catch up with the truth however hard it may be for them to face up to it... oh what fun we are going to have when regime change takes place in this country, I can see them running for cover right now.
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Mythsaje Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Mar-19-06 04:11 PM
Response to Original message
3. A question worth asking...
Not like you'll get any answers.

:)
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MissWaverly Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Mar-19-06 04:11 PM
Response to Original message
4. Probably YOU!
Las Vegas Mayor Oscar B. Goodman loves to remind visitors of Sin City's oh-so-discreet tagline: "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." But since the New Year's celebrations ringing in 2004, he has had to modify the motto. Fearing a terrorist attack, the FBI descended on casinos, car rental agencies, storage warehouses, and other Las Vegas businesses with sheaves of "national security letters" demanding financial records covering about 1 million revelers. Startled business owners who questioned the action were told they had one choice: cough up their documents or wind up in court.

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/nov2005/nf20051110_9709_db016.htm
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annabanana Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Mar-19-06 04:15 PM
Response to Original message
5. Here ya go!
Have fun!
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/Press/information/topic.aspx?topic=how_to_FOIA
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oneighty Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Mar-19-06 04:19 PM
Response to Original message
6. A question.
Are you very careful as to what you say/post on this board? If so, why?

If you are more than usually careful then your free speech is in jeopardy.

180
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electron_blue Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Mar-19-06 05:26 PM
Response to Reply #6
9. Yeah, I've always been careful.
But not bcs of Bush's latest spy scandal. I just like my privacy and have been on enough boards over the years to know that it's better in the end to be anonymous (as much as possible).
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Joe Fields Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Mar-19-06 04:45 PM
Response to Original message
7. You won't know if you've been spied on.
Technology is more sophisticated and the government is wiser these days. The government doesn't have to put a bug, or tap on your phone. They just tell Ma Bell that they want to tap at the hub, or the back door portals of connectivity. They can enter keywords into computers and pull tens of thousands of conversations, and no one is the wiser. The keywords are part of a profile of persons that they then scrutinize more closely. And no one person can know what the hell is going on.
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electron_blue Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Mar-19-06 05:30 PM
Response to Reply #7
10. I can believe that. I keep wondering about the drones doing the grunt work
99.5% of it has to be boring beyond belief. And all that database management, what a chore. Unless you're scrutinizing one particularly interesting (or famous) person, you're probably getting an average Joe (or Jane), most of whose conversations are butt-busting boring. Who catalogs all of that? It probably isn't the geniuses in the intelligence community. I can imagine that *if* they have real people going through the data at any part of this, then it's probably avg American types, in other words, those not likely to be able to conduct sophisticated analysis on their own.

I don't get it. I can see Bush believing he's getting something valuable by spying on his political enemies (ie other politicians), or major personalities. But avg Americans? It's a real quagmire.
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globalvillage Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Mar-19-06 05:10 PM
Response to Original message
8. I know the FBI was spying on the Merton Center
Editorial: The Merton file / Dissent was once a cherished American value
Saturday, March 18, 2006

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

In George W. Bush's America, it's hard not to sympathize with the folks at the Thomas Merton Center for Peace and Justice. The Pittsburgh advocacy group, which spends much of its time opposing war and violence, released federal documents this week that it says proves the FBI was spying on peace activists here.

<snip>

The FBI's description of the Merton Center is not some crazed and concocted version from the Red Scare days. It called the group a "left-wing organization advocating, among many political causes, pacifism" and said its efforts in 2002 "focused on its opposition to the potential war with Iraq." It's the kind of boilerplate account one could find on a political Web site, so what's the fuss?

<snip>

That's life, unfortunately, in George W. Bush's America.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06077/672466.stm



They're talking about this on AAR right now.
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