Total Information Awareness is Operational

Many pundits have been assuming that Bush's explanations about spying on Americans has been basically honest. He's said NSA monitoring has been limited to cross border communications where there was reason to believe one side represented a national security risk.
"Once a liar, always a liar" was something I learned in childhood. Total Information Awareness has gone black bag, Poindexter admits, and it appears to be operational.
Capitol Hill Blue

Spying on Americans by the super-secret National Security Agency is not only more widespread than President George W. Bush admits but is part of a concentrated, government-wide effort to gather and catalog information on U.S. citizens, sources close to the administration say. Besides the NSA, the Pentagon, Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security and dozens of private contractors are spying on millions of Americans 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.


[...]“It’s a total effort to build dossiers on as many Americans as possible,” says a former NSA agent who quit in disgust over use of the agency to spy on Americans. “We’re no longer in the business of tracking our enemies. We’re spying on everyday Americans.” “It's really obvious to me that it's a look-at-everything type program,” says cryptology expert Bruce Schneier. Schneier says he suspects that the NSA is turning its massive spy satellites inward on the United States and intentionally gathering vast streams of raw data from many more people than disclosed to date — potentially including all e-mails and phone calls within the United States.


But the NSA spying is just the tip of the iceberg. Although supposedly killed by Congress more than 18 months ago, the Defense Advance Project Research Agency’s Terrorist Information Awareness (TIA) system, formerly called the “Total Information Awareness” program, is alive and well and collecting data in real time on Americans at a computer center located at 3801 Fairfax Drive in Arlington, Virginia.


The system, set up by retired admiral John Poindexter, once convicted of lying to Congress in the Iran-Contra scandal, compiles financial, travel and other data on the day-to-day activities of Americans and then runs that data through a computer model to look for patterns that the agency deems “terrorist-related behavior.”


Poindexter admits the program was quietly moved into the Pentagon’s “black bag” program where it does escapes Congressional oversight.


“TIA builds a profile of every American who travels, has a bank account, uses credit cards and has a credit record,” says security expert Allen Banks. “The profile establishes norms based on the person’s spending and travel habits. Then the system looks for patterns that break from the norms, such of purchases of materials that are considered likely for terrorist activity, travel to specific areas or a change in spending habits.”


The Pentagon has built a massive database of Americans it considers threats, including members of antiwar groups, peace activists and writers opposed to the war in Iraq. Pentagon officials now claim they are “reviewing the files” to see if the information is necessary to the “war on terrorism.” “Given the military's legacy of privacy abuses, such vague assurances are cold comfort,” says Gene Healy, senior editor of the CATO Institute in Washington.


[...]Sen. John Rockefeller says he raised concerns more than two years ago about increased spying on Americans but – as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee – could not share that concern with colleagues. "For the last few days, I have witnessed the President, the Vice-President, the Secretary of State, and the Attorney-General repeatedly misrepresent the facts," Rockefeller said last week. When he was first briefed about the activity in 2003, we sent a handwritten note to Vice President Dick Cheney outlining his concerns. "I am retaining a copy of this letter in a sealed envelope in the secure spaces of the Senate intelligence committee to ensure that I have a record of this communication," Rockefeller told Cheney. However, Rockefeller says now, “my concerns were never addressed, and I was prohibited from sharing my views with my colleagues.”


Missouri Congressman William Clay worries that the Bush Adminstration is skirting the law by letting private contractors handle the data mining. "The agencies involved in data mining are trying to skirt the Privacy Act by claiming that they hold no data," said Clay. Instead, they use private companies to maintain and sift through the data, he said. "Technically, that gets them out from under the Privacy Act," he said. "Ethically, it does not."

Whistle Blowers in the News

Every time I turn around, the Bush Administration outdoes itself with lies covered by gag orders, whistle blowers harassed and gagged from telling their stories, and I think at some point Bush's blank check will run out and America will hold him responsible. Then I look up and they've done something even more obviously inappropriate. And good people in ignorance, swayed by their propaganda, defend them as patriots.
Today is one such day. The Bush Administration has the gall to pursue the whistle blower that exposed their illegal surveillance of Americans.
Newsday.com

The Justice Department has opened another investigation into leaks of classified information, this time to determine who divulged the existence of President Bush's secret domestic spying program. The inquiry focuses on disclosures to The New York Times about warrantless surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, officials said.


[...]Disclosure of the secret spying program two weeks ago unleashed a firestorm of criticism of the administration. Some critics accused the president of breaking the law by authorizing intercepts of conversations -- without prior court approval or oversight -- of people inside the United States and abroad who had suspected ties to al-Qaida or its affiliates. Bush, who publicly acknowledged the program's existence and described how it operates, has argued that the initiative is legal in a time of war.


The inquiry launched Friday is only the most recent effort by the Bush administration to determine who is disclosing information to journalists.


[...]It is unclear whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will recuse himself from the inquiry. He was White House counsel when Bush signed the executive order authorizing the NSA, which is normally confined to overseas operations, to spy on conversations taking place on American soil. For the past two weeks, Gonzales also has been one of the administration's point men in arguing that the president has the constitutional authority to conduct the spying.


"It's pretty stunning that, rather than focus on whether the president broke his oath of office and broke federal law, they are going after the whistleblowers," said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. Romero said a special prosecutor from outside the Justice Department needs to be appointed. "This confirms many of the fears about Gonzales' appointment -- that he would not be sufficiently independent from the president and that he would play the role of a crony," he said.


Duke University law professor Scott Silliman agreed that the Justice Department is taking the wrong approach. "Somebody in the government has enough concern about this program that they are talking to reporters," Silliman said. "I don't think that is something the Justice Department should try to prosecute." Douglas Kmiec, a Pepperdine University law professor, said the Justice probe is the next logical step because the NSA is alleging a violation of a law that prohibits disclosure of classified information. "The Department of Justice has the general obligation to investigate suspected violations of the law," Kmiec said. "It would be extraordinary for the department not to take up this matter."


[...]Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the Plame investigation was about "political gamesmanship." But, she said, the NSA leak probe is frightening. "In this case, there is no question that the public needed to know what the New York Times reported," she said. "It's much more of a classic whistleblower situation. The public needs to know when the government is engaged in things that may well be unconstitutional."


The surveillance program bypassed a nearly 30-year-old secret court established to oversee highly sensitive investigations involving espionage and terrorism. Administration officials insisted that Bush has the power to conduct warrantless surveillance under the Constitution's war powers provision. They argued that Congress also gave Bush the power when it authorized the use of military force against terrorists in a resolution adopted within days of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Meanwhile, Sibel Edmunds, an FBI whistle blower, has been trying to expose possible advanced warning of 9/11 activity, bribery of Republican leader House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois) by foreign agents, illegal drug money finding it's way into campaign coffers but has been prevented from doing so by a Justice Department gag order saying her releases will jeopardize National Security. She supports the release of the NY Times and calls for more whistle blowers to come forward from the NSA to expose the operations of the illegal activity.
THE BRAD BLOG GUEST BLOGGER: Sibel Edmonds

Without whistleblowers the public would never know of the many abuses of constitutional rights by the government. Whistleblowers, Truth Tellers, are responsible for the disclosure that President George W. Bush ordered unconstitutional surveillance of American citizens. These constitutional lifeguards take their patriotic oaths to heart and soul: Rather than complying with classification and secrecy orders designed to protect officials engaging in criminal conduct, whistleblowers chose to risk their livelihoods and the wrath of their agencies to get the truth out. But will they be listened to by those who are charged with accountability?


The Whistleblowers Law of Congressional Hearings holds that the higher ranking the official who testifies the less the likelihood that the truth will be revealed. With this in mind, it is impossible to proceed to the viscera of what happened to whom and when without asking those who are charged with putting policy decisions into the actual stream of practice. High officials have perverse incentives to hide what is done in their orders by the employees below them. It is indispensable that Congress reach deep inside the National Security Agency and other agencies, seeking out employees at the operational level to determine how the President’s illegal order was carried into action. To assure that this occurs, we need for people with information from the agencies involved to come forward and ask to be interviewed by Congress. The National Security Whistleblowers Coalition calls on people with knowledge of unconstitutional surveillance of American citizens to contact NSWBC and let us know that they are willing to provide congress with information and testimony. Anonymity, if desired, will be scrupulously honored.


[...]Now is the time to come forward, not to reveal legitimately classified information, but to make yourselves available as witnesses and to serve the true supervisor of us all: the Constitution. Ordinarily one would expect the congress to be the guardian of our freedom by living up to its storied role as a check and balance to the President and the Executive Branch. But for four years, members of our Congress in supposed oversight committees were aware of illegal spying on American citizens. Co-opted by an unscrupulous commitment to secrecy and the state, intelligence oversight committees in Congress must step out of the way for a People’s hearing on the matter of presidentially ordered illegal surveillance. Congress must engage in a broad, public hearing of these matters.


Accountability, in the end, always comes down to the public’s right to know, the right to have the most basic knowledge about what its servants are doing with its money and its authority. [...]Citizens cannot make informed choices if they do not have the facts. Public servants should not be forced to choose between career and conscience, between commitment to oath and commitment to colleagues, and if we live by our words, laws, and principles they will not have to. Protecting all employees of the People are that:

• Their higher loyalty is to the Constitution and the rule of law;


• Information may never be classified as secret merely because it is embarrassing or incriminating, or to cover up criminal and unlawful conduct;


• There is no agreement that public servants may sign that will require them lie to the Congress or courts;
• 
  
• The United States’ Code of Ethics for Government Service explains carefully and clearly in an assured voice that "Any person in government service should put loyalty to the highest moral principles and to the Country above loyalty to persons, party, or Government department."

Contact: Sibel Edmonds-Director, National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, sedmonds@nswbc.org

Meanwhile, a Bush appointed federal judge who has a checkered past and who has not reported his income sources as required by law, has "randomly" been assigned to both the continuing Edmunds' case and the other major whistle blower case in the courts, indictment of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence Libby in the Valerie Plame leak scandal. Randomly? I wonder just how probable that random assignment was?
The NarcoSphere

What do two of the biggest national-security news stories of the century — the Valerie Plame leak scandal and the legal case of FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds — have in common? They both are being presided over by the same federal judge in the District of Colombia, Reggie Walton, a Bush appointee to the federal court and a man who appears to have a few well-kept secrets of his own.


[...]We already know that Walton has been a Bush-team insider for years. He grew up on the hardscrabble side of life in a steel town in Pennsylvania, and by his own admission was arrested three times as a teenager and even witnessed a stabbing while participating in a street fight. After beating the odds and making it through law school, he rose quickly in the Washington legal establishment, earning an appointment from former President Reagan to a District of Colombia Superior Court judgeship. He was later taken under the wing of the self-styled man of virtue William Bennett, serving as a top gun in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy during Bennett’s tenure there. Then, in 2001, current President Bush appointed him as a federal judge in the District of Columbia. So it would be natural to suppose that Walton has some loyalty to the Bush administration, but that alone is not proof of bias with respect to the Edmonds and Valerie Plame-related cases.


[...]“Walton was the original judge on my case (the Supreme Court case), when we filed our case (in District Court in Washington, D.C.) in July 2002,” Edmonds says. “Another judge was assigned to it, then, mysteriously and with no reason, it was transferred to another judge, and then again, a few weeks later, it was transferred to Walton. “Walton is now assigned to my (new) case, … another random one.”


So Judge Walton seems to be in a critical role in serving as the point man in the federal judicial system for two explosive cases — the Edmonds civil case and Libby’s criminal case — both of which have vast implications for the White House and for the country in general. So shouldn’t we know who’s buttering Walton’s bread in terms of financial backing? Why have ethics rules mandating such disclosures, if the information is not disclosed in cases, such as these, where the stakes are so high? Well, it seems, at least according to the only document that Judicial Watch could shake loose in its public-records quest, that Walton doesn’t think so. His financial disclosure statement, the one released for public inspection through Judicial Watch, is completely redacted, every line of it.

Sibel Edmund articles

NSA Procedures Reveal Gap Between Laws and Technology

Knight Ridder in their interview of a former NSA Director, revealed NSA Sys Ops do routinely intercept US citizen's messages. They have procedures in place to destroy most of that information. Obviously, all of the information is reviewed to determine if it meets criteria to be reviewed further. The Director insists only a small proportion is kept.

In April, then-NSA Director Gen. Michael V. Hayden assured the Senate Intelligence Committee that the NSA is "the most aggressive agency in the intelligence community when it comes to protecting privacy." Hayden, now the deputy director of national intelligence, defended Bush's warrant-less monitoring order during a White House briefing Monday. He was unavailable for further comment, his spokeswoman said. The NSA also declined comment.


But the former top officials said the recently revealed program, which sidestepped a secret court, violated longtime agency practices. Those were established after the revelation of the NSA's earlier abuses in operations code-named Minaret and Shamrock.


After the 1978 law was passed, the NSA issued an internal directive known as U.S. Signals Intelligence Directive 18, barring agency employees from eavesdropping on Americans in the United States, with few exceptions. NSA employees are required to re-read the document every six months and sign a form stating that they've done so. "As a Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) officer, it is continually drilled into us that the very first law chiseled in the SIGINT equivalent of the Ten Commandments is that `Thou shall not spy on American persons without a court order from FISA,'" said former NSA analyst Russell Tice.


If the NSA inadvertently intercepts the communications of a U.S. citizen or communications that mention a U.S. citizen, they are supposed to be destroyed. There are a handful of exceptions. Intercepts of U.S. citizens that aren't destroyed go into a special database - code-named "Body Surf" - and the real names are masked, available only to a handful of people.


Bush, Hayden and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have defended the program to eavesdrop on calls without warrants, saying it involves only individuals suspected of associating with terrorist groups, lasts for a short time and is regularly reviewed.


The former officials and experts said that while the revelations so far come nowhere near the abuse of a generation ago, they fear that the public taint will be the same. Former NSA Director Bobby Ray Inman, who helped push through the 1978 FISA law, said he worried that the agency is being unfairly tarred, with a "huge" impact on morale. "They only act in accordance with law, and an executive order is law," Inman said, referring to the order Bush signed permitting warrant-less domestic surveillance. But he added: "Frankly, my experience over the years is that politicians don't worry about" the impact of their actions on intelligence agencies' morale. "I've talked to a number of people over there since this came out ... and there is none of them that are happy about this and many who are upset," said author James Bamford, whose book "Puzzle Palace" was the first in-depth look at the NSA.

This is not reassuring. Again, it's up to each human operator to respect the privacy of the communication reviewed. And then certain types of messages are kept. In other words, the NSA has been violating the specific requirements of the law for a long time, only covering itself procedurally. I presume the "Body Surf" database is reviewed extensively and warrents may have been obtained after the fact prior to Bush, but now even the procedural protections have broken down.
I'm quite ambivalent with this program in general. Why should the US be able to review all overseas calls anyway? While I like the idea of the kinds of information that has been obtained to protect us, I don't like the precedence. We now see how the technology has crept into illegal territory in a way that many people just shrug their shoulders while our rights to privacy and freedom of speech are curtailed.
Hat tip to The Left Coaster. Mary's comments about the impact on NSA staff are well taken. But I think this sort of stress comes with the turf.

Iraq Seems Headed for Civil War

Perhaps this is all posturing attempting to get the opposition Shia and Sunni to reconsider their positions, but it would appear the Kurds are prepared to take their objectives by force if necessary. They are asking the Shiites to roll over on Kirkuk. Which as Juan Cole points out, seems unlikely.
Informed Comment

Tom Lasseter of Knight Ridder reports that the Kurds have seeded 10,000 peshmerga militiamen into the Iraqi army units in the north of Iraq, and plan to use them to seize control of oil-rich Kirkuk. (Actually, the Kurds already control Kirkuk militarily, since their forces conquered it from Saddam with US air support, and they dominate the city's police force).


Lasseter says that the Kurdish paramilitary leaders believe Iraq is on the verge of disintegration into three states, and are preparing to take and hold Kirkuk when the civil war breaks out. (Kurdish leaders speaking this way will no doubt hurry along the process). The Sunni Arabs have no developed petroleum fields in their region, and most rich undeveloped fields appear to lie in the Shiite south. If a tripartite partition did take place, and if Kirkuk went to the Kurds, the Sunni Arabs would be reduced to dire poverty. For this reason, they are unlikely to go quietly.


[...]Since a large proportion of Turkmen in Kirkuk are Shiites, if al-Hakim goes forward on this basis, he is showing a willingness to sacrifice their interests to those of the southern, Arab Shiites that are his power base. Many Shiite Turkmen, however, follow Muqtada al-Sadr, currently al-Hakim's coalition partner, and it remains to see if al-Hakim can hold his coalition together if he pleases the Kurds as a quid pro quo for Shiite autonomy in the south, while allowing the Shiite Turkmen to be walked all over in the north.

NSA's Monitoring is an Ever Widening Net Since 1990s

Laws are not usually written to fit technology. So it is with NSA evesdropping. Many of the fine points the Bush Administration is insisting on to escape legal action don't match the technology as I understand it. The technology captures billions of messages a day. It has limited ability to filter "unwanted" domestic sources. Has the law been violated by Bush? Clinton? It depends.
Media Matters published a very good Top 12 Media Myths And Falsehoods On The Bush Administration'S Spying Scandal. One of their listed myths calls to question my post on showing evidence Clinton administration conducted domestic eavesdropping. Let me address their assertions.

Conservative media figures have claimed that during the Clinton administration, the NSA used a program known as Echelon to monitor the domestic communications of United States citizens without a warrant. While most have offered no evidence to support this assertion, NewsMax, a right-wing news website, cited a February 27, 2000, CBS News 60 Minutes report that correspondent Steve Kroft introduced by asserting: "If you made a phone call today or sent an email to a friend, there's a good chance what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the country's largest intelligence agency. The top-secret Global Surveillance Network is called Echelon, and it's run by the National Security Agency." NewsMax used the 60 Minutes segment to call into question The New York Times' December 16 report that Bush's "decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad."


On December 19, Limbaugh read the NewsMax article on his nationally syndicated radio show. Limbaugh told listeners that Bush's surveillance program "started in previous administrations. You've heard of the NSA massive computer-gathering program called Echelon. 60 Minutes did a story on this in February of 2000. Bill Clinton still in office." The Echelon claim has also been repeated by Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund and radio host G. Gordon Liddy.


The 60 Minutes report appears to have been based largely on anecdotal evidence provided by a former Canadian intelligence agent and a former intelligence employee who worked at Menwith Hill, the American spy station in Great Britain, in 1979. In addition, the report contained footage of an assertion by then-Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA) that "Project Echelon engages in the interception of literally millions of communications involving United States citizens." But the report also included comments from then-chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Rep. Porter Goss (R-FL), who, Kroft reported, "still believes ... that the NSA does not eavesdrop on innocent American citizens." Kroft asked Goss: "[H]ow can you be sure that no one is listening to those conversations?" Goss responded, "We do have methods for that, and I am relatively sure that those procedures are working very well."


While Goss did not say in his 60 Minutes interview that the NSA does not spy on the domestic communications of Americans without a warrant, then-director of central intelligence George J. Tenet and then-National Security Agency director Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden said exactly that to Goss's committee less than two months later. As ThinkProgress has noted, Tenet testified before the intelligence committee on April 12, 2000. Denying allegations that Echelon was used to spy on Americans in the United States without a warrant, Tenet stated: "We do not target their conversations for collection in the United States unless a FISA warrant has been obtained from the FISA court by the Justice Department." In the same hearing, Hayden testified: "If [an] American person is in the United States of America, I must have a court order before I initiate any collection [of communications] against him or her."

The fine point on which Media Matters seems to be hinging their argument,reflects what I believe is a misunderstanding of the technology involved. Granted, no one but NSA Sys Ops really know the answers here, so I may not have it right. But I think there is no indication that the technology is able to filter out conversations from US citizens and those of foreign nationals inside the United States. If they want, rightfully so, to pull out conversations between potential terrorists on the phone, both within the US, they will have to capture what Rep. Barr called millions of calls of citizens. If one is attempting to catch, as Clinton's NSA was capable, American employees of foreign companies talking overseas to snatch proprietary secrets, they would also catch any phone call originating inside the US destinated outside the US. Those calls could indeed involved US citizens talking to other US citizens outside of the US.
My conclusions are based on assumptions about how our telecommunications systems work. The US government over the years has negotiated access to "switches" where message signals bottleneck. Within the US, I assume such switches were not set up in a particularly planful way to enable sorting of origins and destinations of signals, but to respond to anticipated demand. So they are decentralized and located near population centers. Switches that go overseas, are probably set up a bit more planfully because they rely on relatively limited cable and satelite connections across oceans. So very likely, the NSA can monitor conversations between the US and another country and avoid most US internal communications. But they would not be able to avoid intercepting cross border communications between citizens. However, once the messages are pulled for review, there are ways to review the content to filter out at least some of the unintended communications between citizens, but no way to be entirely sure that what eventually reaches human ears is in fact a targeted message.
Under these assumptions, then both Barr's, Goss's and Tenet's assertions can be techically true. The NSA is intercepting millions of messages of US citizens daily, and most are filtered out before reaching human ears. This would also explain some of the rather outragious exceptions noted in the media. The broader the net is cast, the more likely communications between US citizens, some within the US would be reviewed and inappropriately targeted for investigations. For example, the Economic Espionage Act of 1996, supported by Clinton, provided for routine monitoring of business communications world wide in order to prevent illegal activities, the EU investigation in 2001 of this monitoring points out the opportunity to gather competitive espionage information to give the US an advantage over worldwide companies.

US intelligence services do not merely investigate general economic facts but also intercept detailed communications between firms, particularly where contracts are being awarded, and they justify this on the grounds of combating attempted bribery; whereas detailed interception poses the risk that information may be used for the purpose of competitive intelligence-gathering rather than combating corruption, even though the US and the United Kingdom state that they do not do so;

The EU believed many unintended communications would be intercepted and the US was expecting that they accept assertions that the information would not be used by the US for unfair competitive advantage. Clearly the EU was not inclined to accept this reassurance, but then noted that France and Russia was probably operating a similar system. They stated one should assume their conversation may be monitored. I think the same assumption applies stateside, especially since Bush now targets at least some stateside communications. It seems likely that Clinton's intent captured at least those communications that was cross international borders.
In a nutshell, I believe the technology can't possibly comply with the expections of the law. Therefore, we rely on the good will of the human operators involved in screening the information to ensure the law isn't broken. I would tend to agree with the EU conclusion. If the information is available, it is used, sometimes inappropriately and illegally, just because it's available and the risks are perceived as high. So it seems reasonably likely that both Clinton's and Bush's NSA has been monitoring US citizen's communications. But I bet Bush's intent led to illegal activity, while Clinton's intent, as reflected in the Economic Espionage Act, was legal as provided by that law as I understand it.

Demonstration of the Middle Class Squeeze

Here is a must read post from The Left Coaster. The affluent class in America doesn't have a clue what life is like in the middle, much less the lower half of the the median income. I previously posted on an basic budget for a family of four living at the poverty line. It's apparent that survival with normative American expectations isn't possible. Keep a roof overhead and food on the table is the entire focus.
Now we see that an near the median American income in the US can't provide for retirement. (U.S. median income for 2003 is $43,318.)

[Monthly Totals for a hypothetic man making $40,000 living in San Deigo, CA.]
Gross $769.23
Taxes $182.72
Rent $285.00
Utils $124.56
_____________
Net $176.95


There is yet no provision for a car, a phone, food, entertainment, [medical] or other personal expenses.

MBA Association The 14 Characteristics

MBA Association
The 14 Characteristics of Fascism
The 14 characteristics are:
Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottoes, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
Supremacy of the Military
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
Rampant Sexism
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.
Controlled Mass Media
Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
Obsession with National Security
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
Religion and Government are Intertwined
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
Corporate Power is Protected
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
Labor Power is Suppressed
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed .
Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.
Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
Fraudulent Elections
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
by Lawrence Britt

Where Have Conservative Libertarians' Been?

John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute

“The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year,” writes Barton Gellman in The Washington Post, “a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters—one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people—are extending the bureau’s reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans.” Indeed, according to a previously classified document released recently, the FBI has conducted clandestine surveillance on some U.S. residents for as long as 18 months at a time without proper paperwork or oversight. Thus, the government does not limit its attacks to actual terrorists. Ordinary American citizens are the focus as well.


Take the case of Selena Jarvis, a social studies teacher at Currituck County High School in North Carolina. She assigned her senior civics and economics class to use photographs to illustrate their freedoms as found in the Bill of Rights. One student photographed a picture of George W. Bush next to his own hand in a thumbs-down position as a way to express his freedom to dissent. However, while developing the student’s photographs, a Wal-Mart photo department employee, in obvious need of some education on the Bill of Rights, called the police. They then contacted the Secret Service. But rather than dismissing the case, the Secret Service decided to investigate the matter. The agents interrogated the student and questioned Jarvis. While questioning Jarvis, an agent asked her if she thought the photo was suspicious. Dumbfounded, Jarvis responded, “No, it was a Bill of Rights project!” Jarvis was startled at the claim that the student was a terrorist and called the whole thing “ridiculous.”


Why would the Secret Service, which is not run by incompetent individuals, take the time to investigate a high school student and his class project? It is safe to assume that the Secret Service knew the student was not a terrorist and wanted to make an example of him for others who might be bold enough to use their right to dissent. After the ordeal, Selena Jarvis commented, “I blame Wal-Mart more than anybody. I was really disgusted with them. But everyone was using poor judgment, from Wal-Mart up to the Secret Service.”


Unfortunately, this is not the only “ridiculous” case of individuals tattling on their neighbors. For example, Barry Reingold was questioned by the FBI after he criticized the war in Afghanistan in the locker room of his local health club. In another case, Derek Kjar’s neighbors reported his bumper sticker of George Bush wearing a crown with the heading “KING GEORGE—OFF WITH HIS HEAD.” As a result, Kjar was interrogated by the Secret Service. In both instances, close contacts of the two men reported them to the authorities.


And as if things weren’t bad enough, the military is now spying on us. A secret database obtained by NBC News recently reveals that the Department of Defense and the Pentagon have also increased intelligence collection on American citizens inside the country. This includes monitoring peaceful anti-war groups and protests and involves video taping, monitoring the Internet and collecting the name of anyone critical of the government. There is even a toll-free number for anyone interested to report on fellow Americans to the military. And the spying even includes religious groups such as those attending the Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Florida. “On a domestic level, this is unprecedented,” says NBC News analyst William Arkin. “I think it’s the beginning of enormous problems and enormous mischief for the military.”


Since 9/11, it has been consistently drummed into our heads by the government, with all its alerts and multi-colored alarms, that terrorists are everywhere and even your next door neighbor could be one. As a result, the government’s promotion of fear and paranoia has moved us closer to an Orwellian state where citizens inform on one another. The result is that the citizens often do the job of the police and no longer use good judgment before reporting their neighbors. In the process, such informing citizens are doing away with their own freedoms.


These tactics are not new to the world. The Nazi and Soviet secret police of former regimes were infamous for such tactics. The police controlled the people through fear, and the subsequent result was a totalitarian state. They turned their respective population into a society of informers. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning author and former Soviet dissident, once spoke of how fear destroys the will of the people. He noted how the Russian people would kneel inside the doors of their apartments, pressing their ears to listen when the KGB came at midnight to arrest a neighbor who had spoken out against the government. Solzhenitsyn said that if all the people would have come out and driven off the secret police, sheer public opinion would have demoralized the effort to subdue a free people. But fear and paranoia kept the people at bay.


We should not be afraid of government agents, whether employed by the FBI, the military or local authorities. Their salaries are paid through our tax dollars. Supposedly, they are our servants. Truly free societies do not function that way. Our fear of government servants is a clear indication of ominous things to come. If citizens are too frightened to use their freedoms, then those freedoms will become extinct. And the darkness will be complete.

Welcome words from an organization dedicated to "civil liberties and human rights", conservative or not. However, why has it taken so long? Both the Democrats and Libertarians have been largely silent on topics close to their hearts for nearly three years. Surely there is more to the effects of fear that took hold long before the government agents were authorized to get involved. Seeing the Forest addresses this issue.

The big question, of course, is how this is going to manifest itself in terms of political action within the right, and within the Republican Party... at what point is the level of alarm and dissent going to rise so high as to precipitate real change?


I'm afraid the answer is, "far too late". The Republican Party and the right are reaping the whirlwind of thirty years of extremist propaganda, which has acquired a momentum of its own - a tsunami of rhetoric whose operators broke no dissent from the party line, and whose tactics, in many ways, can be seen as functionally analogous to those used by the Nazi and Soviet secret police referred to above. I have to wonder what type of heat Whitehead is taking from Administration loyalists as a result of this article... it might be interesting to see whether or not the Rutherford Institute's funding is affected over the next few years.

An atmosphere of fear did indeed emerge from the Reagan Administration. Democrats were seen as "tax and spend liberals" and were "soft on defence". Meanwhile, Reagan was running up a deficit that quickly quadrupled the National Debt. I truly thought no Republican would ever dare do that again. "Starving the beast" became the secret methodology of killing the federal government. Grow government until it starves on it's excess.
But this is nothing new in politics. Society has always been quick to pick out scapegoats in times of economic or political stress. But it's been a certain kind of government that has used that tactic effectively, its been those that lean towards an authoritarian bent, be they from the right or the left. As Whitehead says, the Soviets and the Nazi were known for that kind of government excess. It appears life in a authoritarian family lead people to authoritarian attitudes. From a recent psychological study, Psychological Bulletin 2003, Vol. 129, No. 3, 339–375:

Extremely conservative and authoritarian attitudes may lead ... to an actively hostile or dominant approach to dealing with socially sanctioned scapegoats and devalued out-groups (and) may lead to a more passively submissive or deferential posture toward authorities, which would make its subscribers ideal candidates to follow the next Hitler or Mussolini. Thus, extreme right-wing attitudes "lock" people into a "dominance submissive authoritarian embrace".

Every dictator has used this method to control his supporters since the begining of history.

Top 10 Myths About Iraq

Informed Comment
Top Ten Myths about Iraq in 2005
Iraq has unfortunately become a football in the rough and ready, two-party American political arena, generating large numbers of sound bites and so much spin you could clothe all of China in the resulting threads.
Here are what I think are the top ten myths about Iraq, that one sees in print or on television in the United States.
1. The guerrilla war is being waged only in four provinces.
2. Iraqi Sunnis voting in the December 15 election is a sign that they are being drawn into the political process and might give up the armed insurgency
3. The guerrillas are winning the war against US forces.
4. Iraqis are grateful for the US presence and want US forces there to help them build their country.
5. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, born in Iran in 1930, is close to the Iranian regime in Tehran
6. There is a silent majority of middle class, secular-minded Iraqis who reject religious fundamentalism.
7. The new Iraqi constitution is a victory for Western, liberal values in the Middle East.
8. Iraq is already in a civil war, so it does not matter if the US simply withdraws precipitately, since the situation is as bad as it can get.
9. The US can buy off the Iraqis now supporting guerrilla action against US troops.
10. The Bush administration wanted free elections in Iraq.

English Common Law Forbids Torture

The Belgravia Dispatch has a very interesting post excerpting an British court ruling titled Opinions Of The Lords Of Appeal For Judgment For Cause on the subject of torture and it's use under British Law. The roots of the law against torture extend back to "Common Law" which is the basis of both British and American law. Many people may not realize the roots of law in America refer back to English Common Law as it was inherited by our country's forefathers. The reason for reaching back into law that extends all the way to the Middle Ages is that wisdom of the ages is contained in it's depths. Granted that wisdom has to be considered in the context of it's age as well as the current precidents in place. The law in Britain has a history a thousand years older than our own. Often the lessons of history are reflected in law. Here is an except of Djerejian's excerpt:

The use of torture is dishonourable. It corrupts and degrades the state which uses it and the legal system which accepts it. When judicial torture was routine all over Europe, its rejection by the common law was a source of national pride and the admiration of enlightened foreign writers such as Voltaire and Beccaria. In our own century, many people in the United States, heirs to that common law tradition, have felt their country dishonoured by its use of torture outside the jurisdiction and its practice of extra-legal "rendition" of suspects to countries where they would be tortured.


Just as the writ of habeas corpus is not only a special (and nowadays infrequent) remedy for challenging unlawful detention but also carries a symbolic significance as a touchstone of English liberty which influences the rest of our law, so the rejection of torture by the common law has a special iconic importance as the touchstone of a humane and civilised legal system. Not only that: the abolition of torture, which was used by the state in Elizabethan and Jacobean times to obtain evidence admitted in trials before the court of Star Chamber, was achieved as part of the great constitutional struggle and civil war which made the government subject to the law. Its rejection has a constitutional resonance for the English people which cannot be overestimated.


During the last century the idea of torture as a state instrument of special horror came to be accepted all over the world, as is witnessed by the international law materials collected by my noble and learned friend Lord Bingham of Cornhill. Among the many unlawful practices of state officials, torture and genocide are regarded with particular revulsion: crimes against international law which every state is obliged to punish wherever they may have been committed...


Torture, one of most evil practices known to man, is resorted to for a variety of purposes and it may help to identify them to put this case into its historical context. The lesson of history is that, when the law is not there to keep watch over it, the practice is always at risk of being resorted to in one form or another by the executive branch of government. The temptation to use it in times of emergency will be controlled by the law wherever the rule of law is allowed to operate. But where the rule of law is absent, or is reduced to a mere form of words to which those in authority pay no more than lip service, the temptation to use torture is unrestrained. The probability of its use will rise or fall according the scale of the perceived emergency.


[...]The law will not lend its support to the use of torture for any purpose whatever. It has no place in the defence of freedom and democracy, whose very existence depends on the denial of the use of such methods to the executive.


Once torture has become acclimatised in a legal system it spreads like an infectious disease, hardening and brutalising those who have become accustomed to its use: Holdsworth, A History of English Law, vol v, p 194. As Jackson J in his dissenting opinion in Korematsu v United States, 323 US 214 (1944), 246 declared, once judicial approval is given to such conduct, it lies about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need. A single instance, if approved to meet the threat of international terrorism, would establish a principle with the power to grow and expand so that everything that falls within it would be regarded as acceptable.

Bush Intimidating the Press

Bush has taken to intimidating the news media that in publishing information that documents his illegal acts by claiming that information is classified. Isn't that what you want, a President who can cover up his illegal acts by making the information classified?
Bush Presses Editors on Security

President Bush has been summoning newspaper editors lately in an effort to prevent publication of stories he considers damaging to national security. The efforts have failed, but the rare White House sessions with the executive editors of The Washington Post and New York Times are an indication of how seriously the president takes the recent reporting that has raised questions about the administration's anti-terror tactics.


[...]the meetings were confirmed by sources who have been briefed on them but are not authorized to comment because both sides had agreed to keep the sessions off the record. The White House had no comment.


"When senior administration officials raised national security questions about details in Dana's story during her reporting, at their request we met with them on more than one occasion," Downie says. "The meetings were off the record for the purpose of discussing national security issues in her story." At least one of the meetings involved John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, and CIA Director Porter Goss, the sources said.


"This was a matter of concern for intelligence officials, and they sought to address their concerns," an intelligence official said. Some liberals criticized The Post for withholding the location of the prisons at the administration's request.

US Planning Air War Against Iran and Syria?

It would appear so, at least that's what the Bush Administration wants Turkey to believe. Given the fact Turkey has been slipping away from it's connections to the US, and it's EU application is far from secure, one would have to wonder if the Bush administration is trying to extract some concessions from Turkey in the form of access to it's air fields in support of Bush's ambitions in the Middle East. Now an air war in Iran might make some sense to the twisted neo-cons. Unfortunately, it would just drive their nuclear weapon aspirations underground.
Turkish Press

During his recent visit to Ankara, CIA Director Porter Goss reportedly brought three dossiers on Iran to Ankara. Goss is said to have asked for Turkey’s support for Washington’s policy against Iran’s nuclear activities, charging that Tehran had supported terrorism and taken part in activities against Turkey. Goss also asked Ankara to be ready for a possible US air operation against Iran and Syria. Goss, who came to Ankara just after FBI Director Robert Mueller’s visit, brought up Iran’s alleged attempts to develop nuclear weapons. It was said that Goss first told Ankara that Iran has nuclear weapons and this situation was creating a huge threat for both Turkey and other states in the region. Diplomatic sources say that Washington wants Turkey to coordinate with its Iran policies. The second dossier is about Iran’s stance on terrorism. The CIA argued that Iran was supporting terrorism, the PKK and al-Qaeda. The third had to do with Iran’s alleged stance against Ankara. Goss said that Tehran sees Turkey as an enemy and would try to “export its regime.”


[...]Opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy group leader Ali Topuz yesterday charged that recent visits of CIA Director Porter Goss and FBI head Robert S. Mueller aimed to “soften up” Turkey and so make it accept Washington’s demands. “If they want to end terrorism, they should catch the terrorists in Kandil,” northern Iraq, added Topuz, referring to the PKK.

I would think if the Goss wants to be believed he would drop trying to sell the Turks on the idea that Iran is helping Al Qaeda. With a Shia/Sunni civil war brewing in Iraq, I don't think anyone but the ignorant would believe this. I buy the explanation of the opposition leader. I can't believe how inept the Bush Administration is.

Iraqi Elections: What is the Outcome?

The Iranian government seems to be celebrating the Iraqi election. From Iran Focus-News.

Tehran, Iran, Dec. 23 – The editorial of Iran’s leading hard-line daily hailed the outcome of Iraq’s parliamentary elections as “the creation of the first Islamist state in the Arab world”, and warned against “American plots” to prevent the formation of the new Iraqi government by Iranian-backed Shiite groups.


[...]“The American defeat and withdrawal from Iraq will forever bury the Neoconservative current in the U.S.,…while the formation of an Islamist state in Iraq, which will be a natural ally of the Islamic Republic of Iran and will form a contiguous link between Iran and Palestine through Syria and Lebanon, will bring about a sea change in the geo-strategic balance in the region in favour of Iran and to America’s detriment. This new alliance with its huge size will directly influence all developments in the Arab and Muslim Middle East”. Kayhan’s editorial said American officials’ recent statements on election irregularities in Iraq were aimed at forcing the pro-Iranian Shiite groups to give concessions. “They [the Iranian-backed Shiites] will not accept this”, the paper wrote. “The Americans have no choice but to leave Iraq and this must happen in the next few months”, Kayhan wrote. “Today’s Iraq shows the two sides of the Middle Eastern coin: the victory of Islamism, and the defeat and flight of the West”.

Tehran seems to be gloating. But so is Bush:
Press Conference of the President

In a nation that once lived by the whims of a brutal dictator, the Iraqi people now enjoy constitutionally protected freedoms, and their leaders now derive their powers from the consent of the government. Millions of Iraqis are looking forward to a future with hope and optimism.

But what is really happening? There are headlines that are quite disturbing. But lets dig behind the headlines for the story in Iraq. Informed Comment had a guest editorial by Andrew Arato a man who clearly knows a lot about what's going on in Iraq. Let me try to paraphrase his point of view. The Sunnis may have turned out at the election, but they are going to continue the insurrection as well. They are clearly attempting to elect a political wing as the Irish Republican Army had Sein Fein.
Kurdish representation will drop, as much as 7%, just because of the increased Sunni representation. The Shi'ite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) may also drop for the same reason, but by an insignificant number.
The ultimate power in the Iraqi government is the Presidential Council. Each member of the Presidential Council, rather than only the council as a whole, will have a veto over all legislation. The Council is elected by 2/3 vote of legislative body. The UIA and a few allies will certainly be that group. If there is a sufficient block of just over 1/3 of the delegates, then that group can stop the formation of the government. If the few delegates of Alawi led by the secular Shi'ites and the Sunnis can convince the Kurds to join them, they may be able to block the formation of a government and force concessions from the UIA.
It seems likely the Kurds again will join the government with the UIA. They want control of Kirkuk. The Sunnis seem unlikely to unite behind a coalition that requires them to give up any claim on Kirkuk. Arato predicted a Sunni coalition of 30 to 40%. More recent estimates says the votes reflect 20%. And now there is a new fly in the soup.
New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 24 - An Iraqi court has ordered that at least 90 candidates in the recent national elections disqualified from serving in the Iraqi Parliament because of their ties to Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. The head of Iraq's electoral commission, Adel al-Lami, said at a news conference here Saturday afternoon that the commission would abide by the court's ruling.


While it was not clear whether more than a handful of the affected candidates would have won seats among the 275 in Parliament, the ruling bars some Sunni Arab leaders who probably would have won. And it is sure to fuel an already deep resentment among Sunni Arabs, who are likely to again have a limited role in the new government despite a large turnout at the ballot box nine days ago.


Most of the candidates affected by the ruling are Sunni Arabs, though some are secular Shiites and others opposed to the more conservative governing Shiite alliance. Several are leaders of the slate of candidates led by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, including Adnan al-Janabi and Saad al-Janabi.


Sunni Arab leaders have accused the dominant Shiite political parties of widespread ballot-box stuffing and other fraud and have called for new elections.

Juan Cole has even more sobering news.

Iraqi Supreme Court has ordered the high electoral commission to heed the warning that several leading Sunni Arab candidates were high-ranking Baathists and should be disqualified. The affected candidates are largely from the Iraqiya list of Iyad Allawi and the Iraqi Accord Front of Salih Mutlak, both of them hospitable to secular ex-Baathists. Mutlak predicted turbulence in the streets, with perfect accuracy (of course, he helped arrange for the turbulence).


Then, Al-Zaman/ AFP [Ar.] : and AP report that some 20,000 mainly Sunni protesters (along with some secular Shiites) came out in several cities to protest what they called election fraud. Demonstrations were held in Baghdad, Mosul, Tikrit and Samarra, among other cities. The crowds demanded that new elections be held, given the extent of irregularities they maintained had occurred.


At one of the Baghdad rallies, Adnan Dulaimi of the National Dialogue Council (Sunni Islamist) demanded that the results of the election be abrogated in every province where any electoral fraud could be demonstrated. He pledged to "follow all peaceful and legal means to vindicate the truth and defeat falsehood." His coalition partner, Tariq al-Hashimi, the secretary general of the Iraqi Islamic Party, said, "our position of rejecting the results of the elections is reinforced daily, and before us lies the difficult mission of altering the results and achieving justice." He said, "The intention to commit fraud was present even before the ballot boxes were opened." He added, "If we do not receive an answere, we will rethink our participation in politics, for we reject a political process that some desire, based on fraud and lies." The Sunni Arabs, he said, "refuse to be second class citizens."


Shaikh Mahdi al-Sumaidaie, the preacher at the Umm al-Qura Mosque in West Baghdad said in his sermon that "The Iraqi people, which had anticipated the rise of national government that would include all groups, has been shocked by the process of election fraud, and it is something that the Iraqi people absolutely will not abide." Sumaidaie had been among the few hard line members of the Association of Muslim Scholars who had called for Sunnis to participate in the elections.


In Mosul, hundreds of demonstrators marched from the Khidr Mosque toward the governor's mansion at the center of the city, carrying Iraqi flags and placards with phrases like "The Electoral Commission is Subordinating Iraq to its Neighbors" (i.e. Iran), and shouting "No, no!" to the High Electoral Commission, which they called the "High Fraudulent Commission."


The demonstrations were called by the Iraqi Accord Front, the Iraq People's Congress, and the National Dialogue Council one day after 35 coalitions, parties and movements (including some consisting of secular Shiites) rejected the early results being announced concerning the outcome of the elections. In those results, the Shiite fundamentalist coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance, won most of the seats in 9 southern provinces and in Baghdad. The demonstrators shouted that Iran had intervened in the elections, and said that even a high American official had complained about Tehran's interference (a reference to Gen. George Casey.)

In another article Juan says:

Chalabi’s INC received fewer than 9,000 votes in Baghdad. He probably will rise again. Allawi could be finished. Who will lead a “national unity” opposition to List 555 [UIA]? Step one is for the Allawi and Sunni groups to reach blocking power of 92 votes, which they probably cannot do without the PUK/KDP.


(The Bush administration's fear of Iran and of its reigning Iraqi allies in Baghdad may be destabilizing Iraq by giving ammunition to disgruntled Sunni Arabs. How many feet does the Bush administration have left to shoot itself in??)


There was a story floating around last week that a "tanker" full of "hundreds of thousands" of forged ballots coming from Iran was discovered and confiscated at the border, with the names but not the rest of the ballots filled in. This story, which has fed Sunni Arab discontent, makes no sense. First of all, you can't get hundreds of thousands of ballots on one truck, even a tanker. Paper is bulky. How would Iran have a list of plausible Iraqi voters? Iranians mostly print in nasta'liq script, not the naskh favored in the Arab world, and mostly use Persian, not Arabic. While Iranian printers could pull off such a thing, you have to ask, why? If you were going to print fake Arabic ballots for Iraq, why not just do it in Basra? It is not as if the United Iraqi Alliance, the presumed beneficiary of the alleged forgeries, does not control Iraqi printing presses in areas secure enough for it to commit fraud if it liked. I don't find the story plausible, but it appears that the US military has actually arrested Fazel "Abu Tayyib" Jasim, a provincial council member of Kut and a member of the Shiite Badr Organization (the paramilitary of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq), implicating him in the affair. I'd like to see the truck and the ballots on television. One tanker, or even a fleet of them, couldn't affect centrally an election with millions of voters.


In any case, these actions and statements of the US military are unlikely to overturn the election results, which probably give the religious Shiites control of parliament. But they could further destabilize Iraq, if that is possible. Informed sources told al-Zaman that the new government won't be formed until late February or early March.

Again from Informed Comment there may be some hope still for a government of national unity:

The dominance of the Shiite fundamentalist United Iraqi Alliance in the new parliament seems more and more clear as early election results are leaked. Although the UIA did not get every seat in the 9 predominantly Shiite provinces of the south, the other small lists that got seats would almost certainly ally with it.


The two main Sunni parties and the Allawi list have rejected the election results in Iraq and demanded new elections. They are also threatening to boycott parliament if election irregularities are not addressed. But since no one thinks that the election results were actually out of line with political reality or that there will be a rerun, the Sunni parties in particular are negotiating behind the scenes for a place in the new order.


Washington is apparently encouraging the idea of a government of national unity (called for earlier this week by Jalal Talabani) as a way of reining in the Shiite fundamentalist parties, who may well be able to form a government in their own right with the help of a few small parties. Washington fears that they are too close to Iran, and also that for them to present the Sunni Arabs with a tyranny of the Shiite majority will deepen and prolong the guerrilla war.

Richard Dreyfus has a very pessimistic view in his article at TomPaine.com:

The election disaster means that it is all the more important now for the United States to open direct, public talks with the Iraqi resistance, even if it means defying the Shiite religious-led regime. It is the United States whose 160,000 troops prop up the Shiites in power. Washington can no longer afford to give SCIRI and its junior partner, Al Dawa, veto power over its ability to negotiate a ceasefire with the opposition in order to pull out U.S. forces.


But it also means that every day that the U.S. forces remain in Iraq, the United States creates another day for the Shiite religious forces to strengthen their hand, to build their militia, and to make plans for cleansing Sunnis from majority Shiite areas. (It is, of course, with the help of the U.S. army that the Shiite militias are being incorporated into the new Iraqi army, unit by unit.) By getting out of Iraq as soon as possible, Jack Murtha-style, the United States can at the very least ensure that the Shiites do not grow all-powerful, and it might prevent a further radicalization of the Sunni-led resistance. When there are no good options, then prudence suggests that it's time to choose the least bad one.

I'm not ready to give up all hope, but the situation is dire. The Sunnis are talking, hoping to form a coalition and there are some signs that a government of national unity may be possible.
Here is an official release from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)

BAGHDAD, Dec. 21 -- Nearly 70 percent of eligible voters participated in parliamentary elections here last week, a turnout far exceeding that of the two previous Iraqi ballots this year, election officials said Wednesday. But they also said they were investigating at least 20 serious complaints of impropriety related to the election, the results of which have been hotly contested by a range of parties. "The question is not one of finger-pointing at a particular list or group, because from the information and complaints we have now, violations took place" in all provinces, said Abdul-Hussein Hendawi, who heads the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq. He provided only general details on what violations were being investigated but said U.N. experts were involved in the investigation.


[...]But several Sunni parties, along with a diverse coalition led by former prime minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite, have said they were victimized by fraud and other violations of electoral law ranging from ballot-box stuffing, to people being bused outside their home regions to vote, to police-linked militias intimidating voters. Several parties hoping to contest the election results gathered in Baghdad on Wednesday to plot strategy, among them Allawi's Iraqi National Accord slate; the Tawafaq front, which got the most votes among Sunni parties; and the National Dialogue Front, led by Sunni hard-liner Saleh Mutlak. "Our main demand is that the commission should delete names of candidates and even slates if necessary, because they cheated," said Ibrahim Janabi, who is aligned with Allawi.

And again from Informed Comment:

Al-Hayat says that Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish leader and current president, is calling for a government of national unity that will include Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis. Al-Sharq al-Awsat is franker about Talabani's rationale here, since he said that the Shiite-Kurdish alliance between him and prime minister Ibrahim Jaafari had not been successful. Talabani never got along with Jaafari, and was uncomfortable with being merely a ceremonial president, as is called for in the Iraqi constitution.

Then from Tehran Times:

Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Saturday called for calm and the creation of a government of national unity in the wake of the December 15 general elections, a senior official said.

Success for Bush in Iraq is hanging by a thread. If Sistani and Talabani can pull off a national unity government, they will have to work together. If they work against each other, only Sistani will have the clout to pull it off. And his method is unlikely to contain UIA. What an interesting realignment there would be if Sistani and the religious Shia parties teamed up with Talabani and Allawi and the Sunnis. Could Sistani have the courage to do this? This seems to me to be the only scenario that would head off a civil/proxy regional war.
If this unlikely scenio bears no fruit, then nothing short of a regional war is inevitable. It would seem to me that this war would last a decade and disrupt 20% of the world's oil supplies. Unless by some miracle, the EU decides to join the US and Israel, and make war on Iran, it seems likely that Iran will get it's wish of a Shi'ite Cresent from Iran to Palestine. That does not bode well for Sunni sensibilities. I think we will see a regional war, perhaps by proxy using the Sunni's of Iraq as cannon fodder. And all of a sudden Bush has to eat crow and support the Baathists in Iraq, just to contain Iran. Throw China into the mix, we may already see the allignment of WWIII.

Big Brother Is Watching Everywhere

It would appear the NSA has expanded it's operations considerably since 2000. Today's New York Times describes a whole new genre of surveillance, data-mining via the Internet using cooperation of American based telecommunications corporations.

Since the disclosure last week of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to the monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications involving people with known links to Al Qaeda. What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation.


[...]But the Bush administration regards the N.S.A.'s ability to trace and analyze large volumes of data as critical to its expanded mission to detect terrorist plots before they can be carried out, officials familiar with the program say. Administration officials maintain that the system set up by Congress in 1978 under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does not give them the speed and flexibility to respond fully to terrorist threats at home. A former technology manager at a major telecommunications company said that since the Sept. 11 attacks, the leading companies in the industry have been storing information on calling patterns and giving it to the federal government to aid in tracking possible terrorists. "All that data is mined with the cooperation of the government and shared with them, and since 9/11, there's been much more active involvement in that area," said the former manager, a telecommunications expert who did not want his name or that of his former company used because of concern about revealing trade secrets.


[...]Several officials said that after President Bush's order authorizing the N.S.A. program, senior government officials arranged with officials of some of the nation's largest telecommunications companies to gain access to switches that act as gateways at the borders between the United States' communications networks and international networks. The identities of the corporations involved could not be determined. The switches are some of the main arteries for moving voice and some Internet traffic into and out of the United States, and, with the Globalization of the telecommunications industry in recent years, many international-to-international calls are also routed through such American switches. One outside expert on communications privacy who previously worked at the N.S.A. said that to exploit its technological capabilities, the American government had in the last few years been quietly encouraging the telecommunications industry to increase the amount of international traffic that is routed through American-based switches. The growth of that transit traffic had become a major issue for the intelligence community, officials say, because it had not been fully addressed by 1970's-era laws and regulations governing the N.S.A. Now that foreign calls were being routed through switches on American soil, some judges and law enforcement officials regarded eavesdropping on those calls as a possible violation of those decades-old restrictions, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court-approved warrants for domestic surveillance. MORE

Since the NSA role has expanded exponentially in the first few years of the 21st century, they would have to add exponentially to processes capacity. Rumors have it that in 1996 NSA Tordella Super-computing Factory held over 150 such super-computers. Between 2000 and 2003 US Government and military installations added at least 73 supercomputers. Meanwhile the DoD has built a super secure government only Internet called the Global Information Grid designed to instantaneously network together all of it's computer resources.

The new computer network web, called the Global Information Grid (GIG) will provide military commanders a "God's-eye view" of the battle. The GIG will enable real-time digital communication and data dissemination through a familiar technology, similar to the World Wide Web, anytime and anyplace, under any conditions, with requisite security. Amplifying the GIG's capabilities is the initiative the DoD's communications transformation is Global Information Grid Bandwidth Expansion (GIG-BE). According to the Defense Information Systems Agency website, the GIG-BE will create a ubiquitous bandwidth-available environment to improve national security intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and command and control information-sharing.

Presumably, this all means that the NSA has the capacity to analyze a great deal more of the information available to it. I would hazard a guess it is still unable to analyze all communications worldwide, just a huge chunk of it. In other words, I wouldn't joke around about issues that might be misinterpreted anywhere other than private face to face communications.
Steve Soto at The Left Coaster wonders if providers like SBC, Verizon, or Comcast might have an obligation to mention this in their Notice of Privacy Practices. I'm sure they can argue that such disclosure is allowed under the vaguely worded exclusion: "However, we do release customer information without involving you if disclosure is required by law or to protect the safety of customers, employees or property."
The evidence suggests emptywheel at The Next Hurrah is right:

Logic Lesson Number One: It is not possible to stay completely within the legal guidelines of the program, because NSA doesn't have the technical ability to guarantee they do so.


[...]Logic Lesson Number Two: The search criteria used on this program are not stringent enough to prevent wiretapping innocent people.

Given the mega terabytes of information that have to be filtered for keywords, there is no way they could sort it in any meaningful way. Sorting usually requires going through all of the information once just to sort, then again to look for the keyword. That would cut CPU capacity at least in half and at least double the size of needed data storage capacity. It's a practical impossibility. They are filtering everything, targeting particular switches based on changing criteria, pulling all keyword containing information for additional analysis and human viewing. Protecting our privacy rights, if they were so inclined, would have to be one of the final steps in analysis where the human operator has been trained to assume there is something of value, unless proven otherwise. That's how a a innocent mom whose name and telephone number went into the Echelon database as a possible terrorist because she told a friend on the phone that her son had "bombed" in a school play. Big Brother IS watching everywhere. We just have to trust the Bush Administration has our best interests in mind. NOT!

Bush Stirring Up A War Fever Against Iran; Japan Warns of Threatening China

This time it would appear that Bush is looking to build a coalition against Iran around the issue of acquiring nuclear fuel enrichment capability. Bush has blown his credibility for me. I do worry about an Iran with nuclear weapons. They seem to be just the sort to use them.

EU and Iran agree to further round of nuclear talks 
AFP via Yahoo! Asia News - Dec 21 1:00 PM
VIENNA (AFP) - Iran and the EU agreed to meet again in January to try to set terms for resuming formal nuclear negotiations but acknowledged after a day of talks that their differences were wide.Save to My Web

EU and Iran agree to further round of nuclear talks 
TODAYonline - Dec 21 11:33 AM
Javad Vaidi(L), head of the Iranian delegation, arrives at the French embassy in Vienna, Austria. Iran and the EU agreed to meet again in January to try to set terms for resuming formal nuclear negotiations but acknowledged after a day of talks that their differences were wide.Save to My Web

Hopes slim as Iran & EU resume nuclear talks 
IranMania.com - Dec 22 2:21 AM
LONDON, December 22 (IranMania) - Iran and the European Union met to resume a nuclear dialogue broken off in August, with Tehran insisting on its right to make fuel that the West fears could be used to manufacture atom bombs.Save to My Web

Syria has signed a pact for the storage of Ians nuclear weapons and missiles Janes Defense Weekly 
DEBKAfile - Dec 21 3:45 AM
The Damascus-Tehran strategic accord is meant to protect both countries from international pressure over their banned weapons programs.Save to My Web

EU-Iran open key nuclear meeting 
IranMania.com - Dec 22 2:05 AM
LONDON, December 22 (IranMania) - Iran and the European Union opened a key meeting in Vienna, with diplomats warning hopes are slim for getting Tehran to abandon making the nuclear fuel the West says could be used to manufacture atomic bombs, AFP reported.Save to My Web

US backs European diplomacy on Iran 
AFP via Yahoo! News - Dec 21 10:39 AM
The White House said that it backed joint diplomatic efforts by Britain, France and Germany to satisfy concerns that Iran's nuclear program may hide a quest for atomic weapons.Save to My Web

Iranian Exiles: Iran Has Underground Nuclear Facilities 
Voice of America - Dec 20 6:31 PM
An Iranian exile group says Iran has built an extensive underground tunnel network to hide a secret nuclear weapons program. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) says 14 tunnels house nuclear equipment, research workshops, and command centers across Iran.Save to My Web

Iran must not have nuclear weapons: US, Germany 
Expatica - Dec 20 9:37 AM
WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush said Monday that the U.S. remains committed to diplomacy to keep Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, but stressed that "we cannot allow" the Iranians to develop uranium enrichment capacity.

Meanwhile, the US appears to be helping and supporting India build a nuclear capability while it builds a stockpile of weapon's grade plutonium clearly intended to deepen it's arsenal. The Canadians are worried:

India reports progress on nuclear issues with US 
Khaleej Times - Dec 22 11:15 PM
WASHINGTON - India reported on Friday considerable progress on implementing a civilian nuclear cooperation deal with the United States.

Canada asks India to open up nuclear reactor 
SiliconIndia - Dec 20 2:39 AM
WASHINGTON: Canada has asked India to open the nuclear reactor, which the former supplied, to allow nuclear inspectors access to the reactor. Canada says India is producing a significant amount of its weapons-grade plutonium at the reactor located north of Mumbai.

Meanwhile, Japan is sounding the alarm on China and China is for the first time is going out of it's way trying to indicate they are putting away their sabres.

N.Korea says to build light-water nuclear reactors 
Reuters - Dec 19 7:05 PM
The comment from the North's official KCNA news agency comes amid a snag in six-party talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons programs. It could further complicate an already difficult diplomatic process, diplomatic analysts said.

Japan says Chinas turning into a considerable threat 
The Manila Times - Dec 22 6:27 AM
TOKYO: Japan's foreign minister said Thursday that China was becoming a considerable threat because of its rising military spending and nuclear weapons, sparking a fresh row between the neighbors.

China Vows Peaceful Use Of Its Power
Friday, December 23, 2005; Page A14
The Chinese government, responding to doubts in the United States and neighboring Asian countries, made what it called a "solemn promise" Thursday that its growing power will never become a threat to other nations.

It would appear that the US, Japan and India are worried about a Syrian--Iranian--Chinese--North Korean alliance. That would truly create an ominous threat to world peace. Both Iran and China don't worry about casualties in wars in that they use human wave assaults that cause huge numbers of casualties. A strategic alliance with India appears the only hope to counter balence such an alliance.
The other hope is globalization. The more trade between protagonists, the less likely anyone will choose confrontation at the risk of their economic health. However, China has always thought long-term in it's strategic planning. Simple numbers predicts gradually increasing internal demand for goods to support future growth. A short term economic crisis could be contained internally by a external conflict that employs millions. China seems to carry the long-range trump card. I remain suspicious of China's intent, both short-term and long-term. They've been increasing military spending in double digits every year for the past 17 years. I'm sure the US arsenal looked particularly threatening until the Iraqi war. Now even Japan sees the US as a paper tiger.
Hat tip to Global Geopolitics.

Clinton's NSA Eavesdropped on U.S. Calls

Via Global Intel and HuntingtonNews.Net, I found a rather interesting article on the NSA during Clinton's reign.
NewsMax.com

During the 1990's under President Clinton, the National Security Agency monitored millions of private phone calls placed by U.S. citizens and citizens of other countries under a super secret program code-named Echelon.

Searching the Internet, I found a definition of Echelon by FAS and some extensive links to news reports in 1999 and 2000 about Echelon and the reports from the EU investigation in 2001.

ECHELON is a term associated with a global network of computers that automatically search through millions of intercepted messages for pre-programmed keywords or fax, telex and e-mail addresses. Every word of every message in the frequencies and channels selected at a station is automatically searched.

Noting that NewsMax was gloating about the NY Times apparently incorrectly asserting that this interception of information was unprecedented, I figured they had an ax to grind, so I googled to check on their story. Sure enough, there was an article of the CBS News 60 Minutes show dated February 27, 2001.

Everywhere in the world, every day, people's phone calls, emails and faxes are monitored by Echelon, a secret government surveillance network. No, it's not fiction straight out of George Orwell's 1984. It's reality, says former spy Mike Frost in an interview broadcast on 60 Minutes on Sunday, Feb. 27. "It's not the world of fiction. That's the way it works. I've been there," Frost tells CBS News 60 Minutes Correspondent Steve Kroft. "I was trained by you guys," says the former Canadian intelligence agent, referring to the United States' National Security Agency.


The NSA runs Echelon with Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand as a series of listening posts around the world that eavesdrop on terrorists, drug lords and hostile foreign governments. But to find out what the bad guys are up to, all electronic communications, including those of the good guys, must be captured and analyzed for key words by super computers. That is a fact that makes Frost uncomfortable, even though he believes the world needs intelligence gathering capabilities like Echelon. "My concern is no accountability and nothing, no safety net in place for the innocent people who fall through the cracks," he tells Kroft.


As an example of those innocent people, Frost cites a woman whose name and telephone number went into the Echelon database as a possible terrorist because she told a friend on the phone that her son had "bombed" in a school play. "The computer spit that conversation out. The analyst was not too sure what the conversation was referring to, so, erring on the side of caution, he listed that lady," Frost recalls. Democracies usually have laws against spying on citizens. But Frost says Echelon members could ask another member to spy for them in an end run around those laws. For example, Frost tells Kroft that his Canadian intelligence boss spied on British government officials for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. "(Thatcher) had two ministers that she said, quote, 'they weren't on side,' unquote...So my boss...went to McDonald House in London and did intercept traffic from these two ministers," claims Frost. |"The British Parliament now have total deniability. They didn't do anything. We did it for them."


American politicians may also have been eavesdropped on, says Margaret Newsham, a woman who worked at Menwith Hill in England, the NSA's largest spy station. She says she was shocked to hear the voice of U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond (R.-S.C.) on a surveillance headset about 20 years ago. "To my knowledge, all (the intercepted voices)...would be...Russian, Chinese... foreign," she tells Kroft.

Even more interesting is the allegation that Clinton was particularly interested in the economic espionage value of Echelon. From HuntingtonNews.Net:

“Clinton officials also utilized the program in ways that had nothing to do with national security - such as conducting economic espionage against foreign businesses.” In 1996, President Clinton signed the Economic Espionage Act, which, according to the Christian Science Monitor, authorized intelligence gathering on foreign businesses. "The Clinton administration has attached especial importance to economic intelligence, setting up the National Economic Council [NEC] in parallel to the National Security Council," the Monitor reported in 1999. "The NEC routinely seeks information from the NSA and the CIA," the paper continued, citing anonymous officials. "And the NSA, as the biggest and wealthiest communications interception agency in the world, is best placed to trawl electronic communications and use what comes up for US commercial advantage."

The ACLU has been complaining about Echelon since 1999. On April 6, 2000, the ACLU Counsel testified to the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee On The Constitution calling on Congress to conduct an investigation of possible violations of the Fourth Amendment, Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (18 U.S.C. 2510-20), .The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) 50 U.S.C. 1801 et seq. of 1978, The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (Pub. L. No. 99-508), and numerous precedents and court decisions. Yet a search of their site finds no usual victory press release claiming the success of their efforts. In other words, there has been no investigation by Congress in the past five years.
I searched some more on Google and found that the most recent technical information on Echelon is from 2001. From thebulletin.org:

That "Echelon" is not synonymous with the entire UKUSA eavesdropping effort does not mean that the questions raised about it are not valid. An intercept operation that scoops up a good deal of the world's communications satellite traffic, automatically processes it in search of whatever intelligence any UKUSA nation wished, and then sends it on its way, would be unsettling. At least for the immediate future the reality seems to be somewhat less frightening. The UKUSA SIGINT agencies certainly do not intercept every signal that passes through the airwaves. And, because of the volume of communications, the expense of collection systems, and the limits of their computer resources, NSA and its allies have always had to prioritize targets and selectively task collection systems. Campbell notes in Interception Capabilities that it is possible to identify certain satellite signals, whether television or communications, as of no intelligence interest, and that "these signals will not progress further within the system."


There is also a significant limit imposed on the ability to monitor voice communications, resulting from the failure of extensive U.S. efforts to produce "word spotting" software that would allow computer transcription of intercepted conversations. In 1993, former NSA director Bobby Inman admitted that "I have wasted more U.S. taxpayer dollars trying to do that [word spotting in speech] than anything else in my intelligence career." Nor has the capability been developed in the intervening years, according to Campbell's report. Thus, while faxes, telexes, e-mail, and computer traffic are subject to automatic processing and analysis, phone calls are not--although the phones of the parties involved in a call can be automatically identified and voice-prints can be used to identify who is speaking.

The article goes on to say how NSA hasn't been particularly effective with all the money spent, apparently because the software has not advanced sufficiently.

That judgment is reinforced by a number of articles, the most prominent one by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in the December 6, 1999 New Yorker, which have painted a picture of NSA as an organization facing serious challenges. At least three developments have reduced NSA's ability to collect and process communications. One is the expanding use of fiber-optic cables. Any signal sent through the air can be snatched out of the air, but signals transmitted on fiber optic cannot. Tapping them has also apparently proven a major challenge in ways that tapping conventional cables has not, according to Campbell's report. A second problem is the quantum leap in the sophistication of encryption software. A September 16, 1999 cabinet-level report to President Clinton noted that "for the strongest form of encryption, only the intended recipient can unscramble the message and read the original plain text, unless someone else has gained access to the corresponding decoding software and decryption key." The explosion in communications volume, because of the widespread use of cell phones, faxes, and the Internet, is also a problem. As communications increase, the percentage of messages containing valuable intelligence drops, and finding that information becomes more and more difficult. Hersh reports that daily satellite telephone calls in the Arab world, many of which are encrypted, number in the millions.


Even if it becomes widely accepted that Echelon is not a technological Big Brother, individuals across the political spectrum are likely to remain concerned about violations of individual privacy. The NSA and its allies clearly do intercept an enormous volume of data. And a breakthrough in word-spotting or other technologies that would allow upgrades to Echelon certainly cannot be ruled out. In addition, many have not forgotten NSA's role in monitoring the activities of dissidents during the Vietnam War, which Bob Woodward disclosed in the October 13, 1975 Washington Post. And Hager revealed that in the past Britain's Government Communication Headquarters gathered communications intelligence on Amnesty International, apparently through the Echelon network.

At least four years ago, Echelon simply had to be lucky and/or invest sufficient time in keywords to produce a usable product. One has to wonder how much advance there has been since 2001. According to Wikipedia, Echelon intercepts up to 3 billion communications every day, but again, they seem to be referencing a 2001 document.
The Europeans were particularly concerned about Echelon's potential use for economic espionage. The Final Report on the existence of a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications (ECHELON interception system), European Parliament Temporary Committee on the ECHELON Interception System, approved September 5, 2001 is available at the link. Most interesting is the minority report.
A Dissent from the European Parliament's Echelon Committee

On Tuesday evening, July 3rd , the European Parliament's Echelon Committee voted its final report. Together with the Green MEPs Alima Boumediene-Thiery (France) and Patricia McKenna (Ireland) Ilka Schroeder MEP has handed in the following minority position:

• This report makes an important point in emphasizing that Echelon does exist, but it stops short of drawing political conclusions. It is hypocritical for the European Parliament to criticise the Echelon interception practice while taking part in plans to establish a European secret service.


• No effective public control mechanism of secret services and their undemocratic practices exists globally. It is in the nature of secret services that they cannot be controlled. They must therefore be abolished. This report serves to legitimize a European Secret service which will infringe fundamental rights -- just as Echelon does.


• For the majority of the Parliament, the focus is the industry whose profit interests are supposedly threatened by industrial espionage. The vital issue however is that no one can communicate in confidence over distances any more. Political spying is a much greater threat than economic spying
.

• This report constantly plays down these dangers of Echelon, while it remains silent to the ENFOPOL interception planning in the EU. For every society it is a fundamental decision whether to live under permanent control. By adopting this report, the European Parliament shows that it is not concerned about protecting human rights and citizen's liberties.

Again from Wikipedia

Before the September 11, 2001 attacks and the legislation which followed it, US intelligence agencies were generally prohibited from spying on people inside the US and other western countries' intelligence services generally faced similar restrictions within their own countries. There are allegations, however, that ECHELON and the UKUSA alliance were used to circumvent these restrictions by, for example, having the UK facilities spy on people inside the US and the US facilites spy on people in the UK, with the agencies exchanging data (perhaps even automatically through the ECHELON system without human intervention).


The proposed US-only "Total Information Awareness" program relied on technology similar to ECHELON, and was to integrate the extensive sources it is legally permitted to survey domestically, with the "taps" already compiled by ECHELON. It was cancelled by the U.S. Congress in 2004.


It has been alleged that in 2002 the Bush Administration extended the ECHELON program to domestic surveillance. This controversy was the subject of the New York Times eavesdropping expose of December, 2005.

Clearly, Echelon is not listening into every conversation, reviewing every email, fax or other electronic communication. However, reviewing 3 billion a day is a sizable chunk. If the focus in primarily overseas, surely a large proportion of the communications can be reviewed. Adding the US, then the proportion falls precipitously. But still, a concerted effort using good keywords, over time will pull out evidence of repeated communications on the targeting topic. Otherwise, pulling out a one time comment would be simple luck. However, if targets are limited, a large proportion of messages could be reviewed by targeted individual.
One can only hope that Total Information Awareness was actually cancelled and not now funded by some Pentagon or CIA black slush fund. This program is our biggest nightmare.
Ultimately the question is how this incredible system has been used, and what information was kept and followed up. Hopefully, there will now be an investigation. Unfortunately, given the seven year history, I seriously doubt the results will be around for the next election.