How long will the American people be lied to by their government before we rise up and say NO MORE?
The Bush administration said yesterday that it plans to start using the nation’s most advanced spy technology for domestic purposes soon, rebuffing challenges by House Democrats over the idea’s legal authority.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said his department will activate his department’s new domestic satellite surveillance office in stages, starting as soon as possible with traditional scientific and homeland security activities — such as tracking hurricane damage, monitoring climate change and creating terrain maps.
Sophisticated overhead sensor data will be used for law enforcement once privacy and civil rights concerns are resolved, he said. The department has previously said the program will not intercept communications.
“There is no basis to suggest that this process is in any way insufficient to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans,” Chertoff wrote to Reps. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) and Jane Harman (D-Calif.), chairmen of the House Homeland Security Committee and its intelligence subcommittee, respectively, in letters released yesterday.
“I think we’ve fully addressed anybody’s concerns,” Chertoff added in remarks last week to bloggers. “I think the way is now clear to stand it up and go warm on it.”
Show of hands - how many people are naive, stupid or fascist enough to actually believe that this system will spy on us for our own good - to protect us?
Again, let’s review why all of this is happening:
As both global climate change, peak oil, rising food and water costs, economic disasters, etc. continue, more and more Americans are going to be thrown into desperate straits and start, perhaps, to look at the REAL causes of their misfortunes. And that scares the hell out of the Bush clan and their “have mores” that they really protect. So advanced methods of herding the sheep into controllable pens and stomping on dissent will have to be sought.
This also accounts for the more military gear, training, and attitude that your local police are acquiring. This accounts for the final executive orders including Directive 51, that all sit waiting for a coalescing event and a stroke of the pen to send this country into complete fascism.
And what that skeletal ghoul Chertoff means is that once the civil liberties concerns are swept aside with a simple sneer, these fascists will do whatever the hell they want no matter what the Democrats in Congress or the American people do or say.
Want to know what a simple sneer looks like in bureaucratic speak?
Thompson called DHS’s release Thursday of the office’s procedures and a civil liberties impact assessment “a good start.” But, he said, “We still don’t know whether the NAO will pass constitutional muster since no legal framework has been provided.”
DHS officials said the demands are unwarranted. “The legal framework that governs the National Applications Office . . . is reflected in the Constitution, the U.S. Code and all other U.S. laws,” said DHS spokeswoman Laura Keehner. She said its operations will be subject to “robust,” structured legal scrutiny by multiple agencies.
Of course, it’s all in how you interpret the Constitution, I suppose. And in an administration that makes its own reality, it means whatever they think it means.
