Big Brother 15

De World Socialist Web Site bericht: 'NSA phone spying program: a blueprint for mass repression. In the wake of the May 11 revelation by USA Today of a massive telephone spying program by the National Security Agency, directed against nearly every American citizen, the media commentary has deliberately downplayed the sinister nature of the program. This is a deliberate cover-up of what is without question the most wide-ranging invasion of privacy by the federal government in US history. The press coverage has sought to obscure the vast scale of the data-gathering, as well as the political purposes to which it can be used, in order to lend credence to the Bush administration’s claim that the operation is targeted exclusively at suspected terrorists linked to Al Qaeda. There has not been a single serious media commentary questioning why a supposedly “narrowly focused” program should collect data on an estimated 225 million Americans. Nor has there been any suggestion that the real purpose of the spy program is to assemble a database on the political affiliations and activities of a wide range of American citizens. Further details of the program have emerged, however, in scattered press reports as well as legal papers filed by civil liberties groups and lawyers acting for telephone company customers who object to their personal information being handed over to the federal government. By these accounts, the computer programs being used by the NSA to analyze the phone call databases it purchased from the big telecommunications companies are a more advanced form of the “social-network analysis” software used by commercial and political marketing firms to profile potential advertising targets. Phone trees are traced to identify nodes and determine common interests and activities among those targeted. In the case of commercial marketing, the purpose is to identify the best targets to receive a sales pitch. For the intelligence agencies, the purpose is to select targets for more intensive electronic surveillance, or arrest and (perhaps indefinite) detention. The potential value of this information for purposes of political intimidation is enormous. Every person who has ever telephoned a 900 number, for instance, now has that fact permanently recorded in a government database, making him or her vulnerable to blackmail by federal agents. Likewise those whose phone records suggest problems with gambling, narcotics abuse, or even extramarital affairs.' Lees verder:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/may2006/nsag-m15.shtml