Comments are moderated. Please stay on topic.
Frist, and foremost, is the fact we already surrender more personal info than could be considered legal just to submit an application for work.
The same analysis used for drug tests could probably carry enough DNA to screen you and prohibit hiring of people for medical reasons, sans disclosure of said facts.
Who is to say the same card would not be played as part of a "pre-existing condition" gambit to game the employer's own obligations to provide care?
Very well said. The tree of liberty is being prunned and we don't know by who or how much and will they ever stop?
I think defending the constitution, the rule of law and holding those to whom we TEMPORARILY grant great power acountable for its use are worthwhile. If not, why have elections?
but it's completely reasonable to assume that it was far beyond anything done before.
Drawing up plans to suspend the Constitution and declare martial law? Complete with camps for undesirables? Anyone seen Ollie North lately?
Seriously, sounds like the exact same shit he was doing 20 years ago. Nothing new under the sun, as Ecclesiastes would say...
well aren't there big camps underway right now? allegedly for those wretched illegals?
doesn't take a big stretch to imagine these thugs rounding up dissenters.
i just finished reading the comments to a piece on another blog and was stunned to find a fairly lengthy and involved discussion about revolution ~ in this country ~ without all of the naysaying and poo-poohing that generally accompanies the mention of the R word. interesting times. i want out.
Small questions: how legit is Radar magazine and the writer? That would be helpful in determining the accuracy of this article. As a general matter, I would assume everything written is well within the real of possibility, especially if the political party in power prefers to be authoritarian.
As for elitism, I've had a few experiences talking with people who do not want to believe torture happened at Guantanmo, or elsewhere, and so to me pointing people to the facts is another way to force people to face the truth they don't want to face. Calling it elitism is just another way to try and shut people up. As long as you have the facts on your side, it's not elitism, or rude, or unpatriotic, to educate people.
So we've given up all of this privacy and freedom out of fear of people who, since 9-11, have not so much as broken a window in the US.
I smell a hoax.
"...the blogosphere's obsession with illegal spying and torture and the like is somehow an "elitist" concern that will be detrimental to winning elections."
Apparently these concern trolls haven't figured out that winning elections in a country that illegally tortures and spies on its citizens is a meaningless accomplishment.
Yes, no one wants to be elitist. But maybe in this case "elitist" is another word for "grown-up." Some people think the most direct way to winning allegiance (or acquiescence) is to appeal to voters' immediate self-interest, like dangling goodies in front of the eyes of an unhappy toddler, and we'll forget about the less obvious, less material things that are bothering us at some deeper level. But would so many Americans think the country's off on the wrong track if it were that simple? I'd like to think we wouldn't be so easily satisfied. Please stay obsessed. It's the broader intangibles that enrage me and break my heart every day.
"I have heard some rumbling from readers lately that the blogosphere's obsession with illegal spying and torture and the like is somehow an "elitist" concern that will be detrimental to winning elections."
Agree that it might be detrimental; disagree that it's elitist. I hope civil libertarians have enough of a friend in President Obama to bring the majority of these abuses to light, and to pass real legislation, with teeth, making it a serious felony to engage in any of these extra-constitutional activities.
I do think he's the only candidate left who might be persuaded to do so. But, sadly, it's not a winning issue in the United Bedwetters of America.
The loss of Costitutionally-protected due process and civil liberties isn't elitist.
When you couple the use of torture with the legalization of mercenaries and corporate prisons -- and tie that to a concept like Main Core -- being concerned isn't elitist.
The question is: Will this become a campaign issue? Will Congress pry up the rock it's buried under, or ignore it? Will our principled media ignore this as a story, as they've ignored so many others over the past eight years... because the White House told them to, "in the interests of National Security"?
What if another "incident" occurs between now and January 20, 2009? Do you think there are some people who might do more than simply pray it happens, in order to bring about the kind of 'cleansing' that's been touted by so many on the Right?
And, if it happens -- what do we do?
"If they've built the capability, there is every chance they will use it. It's how these things work" - digby
you are absolutely 100% correct, in fact they have in the past...(those may have been quaint efforts by these new standards) But nevertheless MLK suffered that kind of invasion and scrutiny...the shameless use of federal police state practices, until his death in 68'.
I am glad this stuff is addressed at this blog, yep...it is important we are constantly monitoring for these very kinds of government efforts, as their continued efforts to eviscerate civil liberties is an on going threat, and it is the citizens that must watch dog the autocrats, not the other freaking way around. Another great article digby, thank you for your diligence, research and knowledge... Jefferson loves you.
Um, no, I don't feel safer. I have a headache.
You know that the REALLY hot databases to access are the credit card ones, right?
They know what you buy, who you buy it from then who ships it and who it is shipped too.
THAT is the jewel of intelligence info. Not some secret "what websites did they visit". Combine that with the cell phone info on a person and you know what he is doing and where he is doing it. New phones have GPS in them to 'help' 911 find out.
Yep. That is what is is for.
It's not even paranoid to mention it.
Where's the evidence that making these points is detrimental to winning? Tester won running against the Patriot Act. whatsisname beat Oberweis, and FISA was an issue in it. The polls don't show any detriment. They continue to show Republicans losing on pretty much every issue, including security/civ liberties.
This perfidious work sponsored by Jane Hartman is another treacherous example of liberty giving way to tyranny because of fear.
As long as the American people are sold and continue to believe the Bush government parables bruting the fictions that evildoer threats against the homeland are so dire that all the peoples former rights, freedoms, and protections must be set aside for national security reasons - there will be further creep these fascist lines, and more grievous erosion of the integrity and authority of the Constitution.
Just a side note...had a bad cold a few days ago, went to Walgreens to buy some pseudophedrine. Seems theres a new federal law saying the purchaser must provide valid photo identification AND provide a signature in a scanning device at the pharmacy checkout.
Now here's is where I've gotta tell ya... I paid cash. Not a ccard, not a check... cash.
OK, I was feelin' lousy so I jumped thru the hoops but not without some bad-mannered bitching.
Turns out the pills didn't work so I called up corporate HQ, got some VP in the pharmacy division (West Coast), read him the riot act about his ID requirements and his crummy pills. He gave me assurances I could return the pills with no problem. So I went back for a refund. I was refused the refund on a cash purchase unless I went thru the entire process again, including the signature. Well, I blew up, yelling at the pharmacist, generally acting like a lunatic. Only when the store manager ran up saying he'd just gotten a call from the VP at the regional office did I get my lousy 8 bucks back.
OK, this was a rambling story but the sobering point was... it was a cash purchase that required an ID and a signature for a refund, even though I had the receipt.
What does it all mean, Alfie?
Sorry, I failed to post the link mentioned in the first line: "H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007"
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/...?bill=h110-
1955
Another piece of the puzzle :
http://www.alternet.org/rights/32647/
Yeah, let's worry about whether our national debt level is too high, or if our leader's pastor is wearing a lapel pin.
Probably seven million of those eight million names in the Main Core database are liberal blog commenters. Sleep well tonight...
Real privacy laws with real teeth and real discovery and enforcement mechanisms against every last federal agency and employee on the books or off the books.
Meanwhile, use cash.
.
"It's not a stretch to think that under pressure, any government could, (*ahem*) overreach just a tad"
In my fifty some years of experience, they do so at every opportunity.
"I could be wrong, but I would guess offhand that liberal bloggers and their readers might be among them"
Especially if said blog reader were foolish enough to send Dubya an email telling him he is going to hell and quoting relevant scripture. 
Thanks, digby. This is like that old joke about going to heaven or hell. All the interesting people are in hell. Well, if Bush/Cheney had their way, all the interesting people would be in detention.
Whether or not you are on "the" list now, you can be certain you have been "reviewed" for potential inclusion. That is sick.
"federal, state, and local "intelligence" reports"...
Exactly what kind of "intelligence" do my state and local governments carry out, and who gave them that kind of ability?
Just call in DOM-ECHELON.
And now, the technology exists to analyse your phone calls and scan your email in transit, flagging it the way your email program flags spam.
And there's an awful lot of pressure being placed on the EU, which has a wide-ranging data protection directive. Don't dish on your own citizens, the US says? We won't let them travel without getting a visa, and putting their prints and photograph into our fucking database.
Another 9-11 is too scary to contemplate. First the government would crack down on the "free" media using some flimsy justification. Then they'd start rounding up the enemy liberal elitists.
And I wouldn't at all be surprised to learn that Bush administration is secretly providing the McCain campaign with illegally obtained information on his opponents. I'd be surprised if they didn't.
And Spocko? There's a good bit in Suskind's The One Percent Doctrine about the use of the credit card settlement database.
Maybe we should use the argument against the Bush Admin that they always use on us.
"If you don't have anything to hide, what are you afraid of?"
We know they project their sins on us.
They are hiding their sins.
I also wonder WHO is the worst example on this massive enemies list.
I'm thinking Oprah. "She's dangerous to the nation! She promotes reading books!!"
A few brief Google searches point back to Digby and/or Radar Magazine.
Here's an older source from 2007, not long after Comey's testimony. I haven't signed up to read more (and don't know anything about Wayne Madsen -- some other readers may have opinions on credibility):
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com...cles/
20070708_1
Some other sobering thoughts -- there is a Continuity of Government Commission that is hosted at AEI:
http://www.continuityofgovernmen....org/
index.html
Yikes!
Here's a Congressional Research Service report on Continuity:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/mi...crs/
rs21089.pdf
It says that as of 2005, the current directive was issued by Clinton in 1998.
Here's a more recent Presidential Decision Directive, ostensibly the latest in this series:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/r...0070509-
12.html
Item 22 rescinds the 1998 version. And of course, most of this PDD is classified, per Items 23 and 24.
Which of course is wholly consistent with the objective stated in Item (5)(b):
"maintaining the trust and confidence of the American people"
The truth is out there.
My conservative brother has been telling my sister and I that we are in the government's "liberal enemies' database" since the Reagan administration. I thought he was joking.
Ollie freakin' North has always made my skin crawl.
As my moods have been oscillating from optimism to pessimism over the past few years, this particular nightmare keeps troubling me. It's not that I think it's going to happen — it's that we can't rule anything out, given our recent history. (For me, that includes some, but far from all, of the conspiracy theories about 9/11 and all else. As Criswell says, Can you prove it didn't happen?)
My most paranoid scenario is just what we're talking about here. What if there's a major "terrorist attack" shortly before the election? Why, then it could seem oh so reasonable to "postpone" the election, and to declare martial law.
Of course I hope this is nonsense. But what, in the past 7+ years, has made any sense at all?
A possibility? This was the entire freaking point. We'll know it's going down when the internet gets shut off. Those fiber trunkline cut-ins can not only monitor and store our information, more money and processor power can turn them into tools of censorship.
Time to start thinking about the resistance.
I have heard some rumbling from readers lately that the blogosphere's obsession with illegal spying and torture and the like is somehow an "elitist" concern that will be detrimental to winning elections.
A lot of people don't interact much with what they define as government. They tend to think of DMV and paying taxes, while just assuming that food is safe all by itself. Liberals need to push harder on the apparently silent ways that government supports corporations against the people. This administration thinks eco-terrorism is a major threat, including "animal rights, pro-life, environmental, anti-nuclear, and other movements."
While I think that most Americans still can't conceive of government coming after them as they go about daily life, most Americans now think that corporations have too much power and most support environmental protection. We need to do a better job of pointing out that activists for clean water and air are at risk from government repression, and that will affect the citizens' daily lives. It's the Martin Luther King point updated. Whatever you thought about civil rights, you didn't get thrown in jail unless you actively worked for them, and only the active work got results. We'll get/keep clean air and water only by actively working for them, and polluting corporations are the Republicans' friends.
Office of Pre-Crime...
It is , indeed, appalling.
But next diary, digby, should be a list and explanations of which Democratic leadership figures ENABLED all this nonsense?
I'll go first. JAY ROCKEFELLER. TOM DASCHLE.
Your turn.
somebody has to care about civil liberties and the constitution
civil liberties and the Constitution are certainly important, but what about something even more basic: morality.
Can there be any doubt that torture is immoral.
Can there be civil liberties and a Constitution without notions of humanity and morality?
.
Back in the Clinton days the Justice Dept put out bids for mobile execution unit's hows that for scary. I don't know what ever came of the effort, I did read about it on cryptome. Thought it was fucked couldn't be real, but now I wonder how many they've got. And how detailed the lists they have are. I wonder if the records are even in government computers or on RNC computers I guess it was the same thing for large periods of time.
Oh yeah user Loser...I remember something about those more recently....
Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinal
December 13 2007
"Though Duong is best known for designing high-explosives used to destroy hardened targets, she also supervised the Joint Expeditionary Forensics Facilities project, known as a “lab in a box” for analyzing biometric data, such as iris scans and fingerprints, that have been collected on more than one million Iraqis.
The labs – collapsible, 20-by-20-foot units each with a generator and a satellite link to a biometric data base in West Virginia – will let U.S. forces cross-check data in the field against information collected previously that can be used to identify insurgents. These labs are expected to be deployed across Iraq in early 2008.
Duong said the next step will be to shrink the lab to the size of a “backpack” so soldiers who encounter a suspect “could find out within minutes” if he’s on a terrorist watch list and should be killed."
http://baltimorechronicle.com/
20...1307Parry.shtml
[I wonder if commenting here gets me in the COG database?]
In ancient times [late 60's] I applied to the Public Health Service and was turned down for "security reasons." So, to my dismay, I ended up in the Air Force. I was miffed and pursued questioning their rejection. It turned out that I was on a "list." What was most absurd was the reason. During WWII, my father [same name] had been an F.B.I. secret observer in the TNT plant where he was a chemist. I pointed out that he was a good guy. They said, "Yeah, we know. They [good guys and bad guys] were all on the same list." Go figure. My point is that these "lists" have been around for a very long time, and they haven't proved very helpful...
An elitist is someone who is not a Republican.
There were those who thought protesting and organizing against the Vietnam war was an elitist distractions from the true working class and ethnic group struggles of the time.
And that was stupid then. Such arguments are stupid now.
Are they now brandishing every objection to reactionary authoritarianism, as “elitist” since the charge of being “liberal” seems to have lost some of its bite? This is always the tactic used to shut down legitimate discussion. You are unpatriotic or un-American if you question any policy, when in fact there is nothing more patriotic than having rational discourse about how the government operates and its effect on the citizenry, especially when that policy raises huge questions about infringement of civil rights and legality.
The NSA wire tapping program started the instant these criminals got their paws on the levers of power in January 2001. Is there any doubt that this policy was planned before 9-11 to be sure? 9-11 was merely a convenient excuse (some will undoubtedly say planned and executed) to implement it.
In addition to the information mentioned un Radar, the entire content of your MySpace, Facebook, online dating site, etc., is in the hands of these people. They have the means to track every comment made here to the correct IP address (even if you are spoofing), meaning that if you are using a home or office computer, they can easily find you.
Oh by the way, this works for all sites, Freepers and all the lunatic right-wingers too. So when/if a non-Bush is elected, in theory he/she will have this information as well. This is something the lizard brains typically miss completely. The same people who scream about how terrible government is at everything and cannot be trusted, seem to have no problem at all with this clear violation of the 4th amendment. It is a wonder their tiny heads don’t explode from the cognitive dissonance.
It's them or us
The period immediately after the new administration takes over will probably be this republic's last chance. Either we put them in jail, legally, for their actual crimes, or we will sooner or later end up in the gulag, Main Cored, for non-crimes we didn't commit.
There is probably nothing more conservative and simultaneously liberal in the true sense of those words than protecting the Constitution. This issue has nothing whatever to do with “right” v. “left”, this is purely Bushie v. The Rest of the Planet, or perhaps, Right v. Wrong, Sane v. Insane, etc.
That long chain of abuses is getting longer still...
"If they've built the capability, there is every chance they will use it. It's how these things work."
I concur with mjfgates that this is absolutely right, digby. The war machine - of both ancient and modern design - doesn't tend to sit idle in a corner, minding its own business, tending quietly to its knitting.
This chilling report by Ketcham seems very sound and well-sourced to me [though he needs to clean up his post-article Update - it's Michael, not John, Mukasey, and he seems to have the dates of the Yoo memos confusingly intermingled]. Ketcham does an excellent - and extremely welcome - job of painting the big picture while including very telling details from the most important parts of the story. He made a great catch by noticing Bush's line about "the continuity of our government" in the 2005 Oval Office warrantless surveillance admission speech.
'Carefree abandon' and lack of concern for the possible negative consequences of the sharing of our personal data today with any collector of computerized data (meaning almost every sort of business or organization, anymore) - a theme that's peddled and pushed high and low in the utopian world portrayed by the advertisements of every high-tech device or service seller - seems to be an option reserved to the rich and/or famous in this country now. The rest of us abandon care for the negative consequences of personal electronic dossiers maintained on us by, or available to, the police powers of our government at our peril.
[As an aside, I can, and do without fail, identify spam solely by reading the alias of the sender and the subject line of the email, without any need to open it to read its "content." As a result I can reliably delete spam from the ISP server without ever downloading it to my computer ('foreign to nowhere' communications?). Such "transactional" email information, like almost all stored digital data once categorized, ordered and cross-referenced, is extremely, intrusively, seductively revealing - and it is simply laughable to try to pretend that today's warrantless software-ordered database dossiers of government "intelligence" information about Americans don't violate our Fourth Amendment right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures by government agents (a technologically-outdated Supreme Court decision or two notwithstanding).]
The blogosphere needs to refresh it's memory on the happenings during the reagan administration. Specifically, the BCCI scandal, the theft of "PROMIS" software from Inslaw, the use of HUD as payoff for party supporters, the indcitment and conviction of so many Reagan admin officials.
This shit happening today has roots that go back to before Nixon.
And "good" Dems like JFK and William Jefferson Clinton either willingly compromised themselves or actively participated in keeping this truth buried.
This nation's numerous covert agencies have not been serving this nation for decades. The final play is coming, I swear...I expect another "national emergency" prior to the November election, and I'll be watching Bush/Cheney's reaction.
hey, mary!
please please PLEASE go fuck yourself. blaming democrats for republican crimes is what republicans and assholes do. you're an asshole. go back to the twentieth century and die there.
love, earth.
Mary is blaming Democrats for Democratic sins of omission and commission, and she's right to do so.
Daniel Inouye, per the interference he ran during Iran-Contra as cited in RADAR's article, and his long and tight bond of friendship and committee co-stewardship with the corrupt Ted Stevens, as well as his recent votes for PAA telecom immunity, appears to be a prime member of the MIC "embedded" crew in Congress, where party membership is absolutely meaningless. His war heroics and physical courage notwithstanding (or perhaps more to the point, a helpful foil and shield for his current behavior).
Please continue to hold to account, Mary, without fear or favor, our "representatives" in Congress who have long since turned their backs on the people. They burrow for protection into the conscience-free self-referential class in D.C. and hide behind the two-party-only system that has almost blocked out the sun in this country so that we cannot see the destruction both parties have wreaked on the nation for what it is.
The two party system is a vicious circle now abetted by a public interest-hostile media that has chosen sides, and can safely predict when its next turn at the controls will inevitably arrive. That keeps the corporate-funded shadow government "think tanks" humming during the "off-season" where the plots for the next reign of ruthless power are contrived for future implementation.
The future is neither Democratic nor Republican. The future is either America's Constitutional Republic or tyranny, American Empire-style.
There are plenty of people who worry about the government 'coming to take our guns', yet vote for these bozos. Maybe we should point out that we all need to worry about the government coming to take us.
"Somebody has to care about civil liberties and the constitution or the whole house of cards falls in."
I do respect you for caring; I'll give you that. Major props (proper respect). Even though your sense of proportion is, I think, out of whack.
I'm not worried, reassured as I constantly am by current and former administration officials that they only mean well and are taking every precaution that no abuses occur under their watch.
Take, for example, tomorrow's WaPo op-ed by Julie Myers, the recently resigned former head of ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, on how the U.S. does not tolerate improper behavior [in its] Caring for Immigration Detainees. Who am I to argue with the daughter of Bush's first chairman of the joint chiefs?
I simply don't know where tragedy and outrage end and farce and self-parody begin anymore.
Washington, Jefferson, Adams; all elitist in thier time.
They were thought of as elitist, considered themselves elitist yet know seemed to mind.
I like reading what pow wow is saying here. Maybe there are a few people that can see beyond the end of their nose. I like the "The future is either America's Constitutional Republic or tyranny, American Empire-style".
Thanks for speaking truth to power Digby. The more people that understand that our government is doing these things the better chance for all of us.
The dissemination of this sort of information will be one of the first things to go. If the crack-down occurs before or as part of this election, taking the internet away from the bloggers and alt-info types will be relatively easy because those tools have not reached critical mass yet within the bigger society.
I hate to say this but if they don't use this shit soon their window of opportunity to do so may get smaller for a while.
So, what do we do when it happens? If you find yourself inside or outside of detention, what will you do? I'm here to support the original dream of America, that of a secular republic, not the theocratic empire that we not exist under.
I relish the possibility of voting with more than my keyboard about this subject.
Engage the machine!
I will concur with Mary and add a name. Nancy Pelosi. She was in a unique position to simply keep her Buscist hands off the building drive to hold hearings on whether Articles of Impeachment might be indicated. Instead, she deliberately on purpose took impeachment "off the table", precisely to shelter and protect Buscist initiates such as this. Which
makes me think that "this is bigger than Buscism".
Dan, I suspect you are wrong about JFK. He got SOMEbody upset. Upset enough to have him assassinated in broad daylight. Whereas Clinton has been rewarded post-presidency with millions of dollars for whatever services he rendered to whoever it is that has paid him all this money. So lets not compare JFK with the DLC likes of Clinton.
Another "terrorist attack" would be
as good a trigger for MainCoring as anything else would. Don't I vaguely remember that a week ago or so, President Bush was speaking somewhere and he said something about how electing a Democratic President in 2008 would lead to a "terrorist attack"? Do I remember that correctly? Because I remember thinking at the time that the best way
to interpret that statement would be to take it as a threat. "Nice little country you got there. Shame if something was to happen to it." The country in question being...America.
America has never had a 9/11 investigation. We had a whitewash, and a partisan coverup with manipulative reporting and curious timing, and select decisions to refuse to investigate or report on facts that were...untidy for the Bush government. Google Indira Singh and Ptech, (an evolution of promis enterprizes) and weep.
The Bush government suffers from the self inflicted injury of an astronomical credibility gap. In pedetestrian terms - anything - anyone in the Bush government brutes, proselytizes, or propagandizes is a pathological lie.
Torture is torture. If we accept and tolerate torture as state policy, - then we must also accept that our warfighters, and intelligence operators will be tortured, - (and here is the critical difference and the reason why the rule of law must be honored) - we will have no grounds to condemn the torture of our citizens. We of course can and will responde, but we will have altered ourselves into the kind of base, primitive, and malignant beasts the we seek to destroy. How are we, as Americans who tolerate torture as state policy any more noble or honorable, or supremist than Al Quaida, or Hezbollah, or Hamas, or Islama Jamayaa, or Islamic Jihad, or any jihadist massmurder gang?
The massmurderers are not elevated, but we descend into the realms of beasts, barbarians, and massmurderers, torturers. Is this what we want America to promote or tolerate, or do we stand on higher ground, and honor and obey the rule of law, and the Constitution?
This is the epic choice facing America, and the entire world is watching. Subtract 9/11, and few of these other horrorshows would be possible? Iraq, spying on Americans, mangling, dismembering, and reengineering the Constitution, dismissing and ignoring the rule of law would never have been possible without the "PearlHarborlikeevent" of 9/11.
In a world where there are no laws, - there are no laws for anyone.
"Deliver us from evil!"
To put that in almost bumper sticker
simple terms,
We've had our 9/11 Warren Commission.
Now we need a 9/11 Truth Commission.
"The more data you have on a particular target, the better [the software] can predict what the target will do, where the target will go, who it will turn to for help," he says.
Who he will turn to for help?
Who she will turn to for help?
No.
Who it will turn to for help.
Defining citizens as internal enemies, and then clinically depersonalizing them, are two of the defining tenets of a genuinely totalitarian mindset. That is language where the skull is straining to burst through the skin.
--
Well, it should be easy to find those missing White House emails now, shouldn't it??
The more we learn about domestic surveillance the more we understand about why they are so freaked out abouut the so-called "Protect America Act."
Bunch of fucking roaches running the GOP, just filthy fucking roaches.
We need to pressure the Democratic party as hard as possible to allow daylight to shine in every nook and cranny.
Where does reality end and paranoia begin?
Certainly, it's true that far too much private information is in too few databases. But using it to detain 8 million people? Why is it laughable when Republicans talk about detaining and deporting 11 million immigrants, but plausible when it's 8 million liberals? It's quite a leap to equate the existence of a massive enemies list to the detention of enough people to empty a large midwestern state.
Say the Main Core list exists. In Digby's article, Main Core data compilation included computer searches of numerous governmental databases. Each time Main Core accessed another database, an electronic fingerprint of that search was left on the accessed database, no matter how sophisticated Main Core software is.
With a Democratic administration come November, and the widespread replacement of personnel that will accompany it, how long will it be until much of this illegal activity surfaces? Dick Cheney and everyone involved can shred all the documents they want, delete as many mainframes as they can get their hands on--the federal bureaucracy with it's electronic networks is so vast it is impossible to wipe away all the proof of illegalities.
The real question is: do we have the political will to conduct lengthy public prosecutions?
One thing is for certain, if the next attack is not from Islamic terror groups, and is in fact home-grown, the Bush adminnistration will treat it very lightly. Unless, of course, it's deemed to be a "liberal" terror group.
As Dave Niewart has so meticulously chronicled, the Bush Justice Dept has continuously swept violations by domestic right-wing terror organizations under the rug. Remember the guy in Texas who was caught with literally tons of explosives, thousands of rounds of ammo, hundreds of assault weapons, and our fearless DOJ decided he was an overzealous gun collector. OK.
Why else would Bush be tap dancing the day he "endorsed" McCain? I'm half convinced there won't be an election at all - and then everyone likely to resist Martial Law and organize would already be on "Main Core", documented and tracked so they could be neutralized in one fell swoop.
You can call me paranoid if you want, but what would stop them (Bush, Cheney etc.) from doing it? Congress? The Judicial branch? Don't make me laugh.
I am disturbed to see a recrudescence of JFK and 9/11 conspiracy theories in this thread. I suppose it comes with the territory. But the truth is that JFK was shot by Oswald simply because Oswald wanted to make a name for himself. And 9/11 was carried out by 19 determined people who thought, however erroneously, that they were doing something for their religion.
A more useful frame of reference for the present discussion consists of the actual crimes committed by the totalitarian regimes of the past, updated to account for the greater possibilities offered by the misuse of modern information technology. That is enough to worry about by itself, without bringing in the play of shadows and illusions.
A determining factor is the level of criminality of the chief executive. Unfortunately, I don't really expect any of the current batch of candidates to become a champion of civil liberty who will put all of the criminals on trial and push through laws to impede any recurrence.
But I do expect any random Democratic chief executive to be smart enough to reassign personnel and hardware away from this type of project. Without constant updating and maintenance a database like this rapidly becomes obsolete and useless. Any subsequent GOP regime would have to rebuild it from scratch.
.
Thank you, Pow Wow. Of course there were Democrats that concurred and enabled. We should ALL be aware of, informed about, and concerned with those individuals.
And that other poster with his obscenity-laced one-liner drivebys?
Just ignore him, like Digby and I do.
Not even worth reading. 
This all makes sense.
I subscribed to Radar Magazine. But I sensed a right-wing slant to it, so I stopped subscribing. It likes to attack celebrities on the left: Laurie Davis, for instance. Ultimately, it's snarky, personality-driven tone doesn't lend itself to leftist perspective.
@willrob: Well, obviously Clinton didn't initialize any high-profile investigations of the other surveillance programs in place when he was elected (PROMIS, etc.). So why would the next administration be any different? Maybe he was blocked by the Republican-controlled Congress at the time, I don't know. But as President I think he would have had the visibility and power to make an issue of it, and I don't remember any revelations about these programs in the early- to mid-nineties.
Why is it laughable when Republicans talk about detaining and deporting 11 million immigrants, but plausible when it's 8 million liberals? It's quite a leap ... to the detention of enough people to empty a large midwestern state.
willrob
Actually, it isn't. It's a matter of logistics.
I have no idea what the COG protocols say, but every step in a plan like this is legitimized, and in the beginning accepted without question, because it's commanded by a lawful authority.
COG plans are a legitimate and necessary set of protocols for any government -- but if they're used as a cover for a seizure of power, then all it takes is the will, on the part of a small group of persons, to use them through a State of Emergency if the 'opportunity' presents itself -- or is manufactured.
Any act committed under the regulations of a State of Emergency, in the eyes of the group running the government, are justifiable as self-defense against enemies foreign, and domestic.
Arrest and detention of a core group of persons designated threats to the government would begin within hours of the COG protocols being triggered. If a group controlling the government restricts communications, money, travel and movement -- and has created a vast system for surveillance and data collecton on its citizens -- they can arrest and imprison whomever they want.
If it's determined to be a national priority, then the number of persons detained by a government is limited only by the size and number of facilities constructed for the purpose, and the structure that clothes, feeds and guards the detainees.
That's all it takes.
What the extent of mass civil disobedience to repression under a State of Emergency would be is anyone's guess. The United States has never experienced a Spanish or Chilean or German repression of its citizens. We've never been occupied by a foreign or domestic enemy, or fought a conflict on our own soil since 1865, and the majority of us wouldn't know how to react if such things happened.
When certain lines in the sand are crossed, it's always done in secret: Development of terrible weapons; industrialized geoncide; or plans for political repression that include destroying the village in order to save it. No one recognizes that these lines have been crossed until they're well past then -- and then no one can go back.
Allow me to add that in 2006, Halliburton received a massive DHS contract to build "detention camps" in the U.S. Marketwatch characterized the contract as follows:
The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to expand existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs, KBR said. The contract may also provide migrant detention support to other government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency… [emphasis mine]
All the pieces of the puzzle are there, and all that's needed for implementation is an "initiating event".
This is no longer the stuff of tinfoil hattery.
Damn. Forgot to close my tag after the bolding above. So sorry.
Presidential Directive 51, anyone? Again, all of the pieces are in place.
One moment.
An unarmed population can be rounded up and exterminated by mere police units. An armed population, not so much.
This notice brought to you by the Second Amendment. Thank you for your attention.
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Actually, the blueprint for this already exists, and it dates back to actions that Cheney and Rumsfeld may have participated in.
The blueprint is The Dirty War and Operation Condor in the 1970s, followed by the Central American deathsquads of the 1980s. In the 1970s, when the military took over the Chilean and Argentine governments, they had pre-sorted lists of "leftists" that they would gather up, imprison, and then selectively torture and "disappear." The Nixon and Ford administrations (CHeney and Rumsfeld were in the White House then)supported this effort. The governments shared information on naming and locating leftists to be captured.
In Argentina, between 30,000 and 50,000 people were killed. In Chile, at least 3,000 and possibly 5,000 were killed.
In the 1980s, with the cooperation and knowledge of the Reagan administration (and yes, Dick Cheney and several other current administration officials), the militaries of Gautemala, Honduras and El Salvador killed hundreds of thousands of their citizens, identified for some reason as "leftists" or "leftist sympathizers."
Yes, it can happen to us. Think about another 9/11 event occurring, blamed on "leftists."
For that reason, 8,000,000 in a database scares me, but not that much. That number isn't actionable. But 500,000 or less......
Wikipedia has good articles on The Dirty War and Iran-Contra.
digby:I have heard some rumbling from readers lately that the blogosphere's obsession with illegal spying and torture and the like is somehow an "elitist" concern that will be detrimental to winning elections.
It seems that there are all kinds of concerns that are being relegated to "elitist" status. As people struggle more to keep their jobs and their homes and live without healthcare, all sorts of concerns become less relatively important than food, work and shelter. Keeping the populace in its place and compliant is a nice byproduct for the Bush administration of the further distancing of the moneyed from those struggling to subsist.
Damn, y'all have the best drugs ever. Yes, I'm sure the elections will be cancelled and all the readers of Hullabaloo will be the first ones rounded up for the gulag. But if you all have a bunch of pop guns and .22 caliber rifles, you'll be able to hold them off! Hooooookay.
Don't bogart the good stuff, peeps. Pass it around.
An unarmed population can be rounded up and exterminated by mere police units. An armed population, not so much.
This notice brought to you by the Second Amendment. Thank you for your attention.
Yes, the NRA has been real vigilant at standing up against the Elephascists' security-state scaremongering, the raping of privacy rights, habeas corpus, warrantless wiretaaping and the militarization of law enforcement. Not.
They don't give a shit about any rights except keeping their guns, so long as it all happens to 'somebody else'.
So what makes you think the Second Amendment has anything to do with the NRA? Did they somehow convince you it's their right, not yours?
Listen to anon troll, though. No .22's. You want a real rifle. If you don't get one now you will later wish you had listened to anon troll and me.
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An unarmed population can be rounded up and exterminated by mere police units. An armed population, not so much.
This notice brought to you by the Second Amendment. Thank you for your attention.
Sweet monkeyfuck christ, what an idiot. This is the stupidest nation on earth. As long as nothing interferes with the cable teevee, and as long as the fast food restaurants are still open, Americans will tolerate any assault on their Constitutional liberties, especially since eight out of ten of them couldn't even list three of those rights. I don't know why morons like you are so obsessed with imagining some Red Dawn-like apocalyptic gun battle between a bunch of fat-ass hillbillies and the gubmint, but grow up. Or, barring that, shove your guns up your ass (but be careful you don't blow your brains out in the process).
Evidently anon troll has paid no attention at all to recent history. For example, there was a different outcome for the Bosnians in Yugoslavia 1992-1995 and the Armenians in Turkey 1904. Can you think of a few reasons why the Bosnians are still alive and independent? Sure, there are several reasons (including American diplomacy). But the Bosnian rifles are certainly one of the critical reasons.
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Hmmm.
Digby - Combine what you just wrote about with Infraguard (which you wrote about two months ago) and with the Bush issued National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive NSPD 51/HSPD 20 from last May (2007), and the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 which by revising the restrictions contained in The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331 -335) and the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385) gave Bush new powers for deploying US troops on US soil, including the power to over rule governors and deploy National Guard troops in their states, and add H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 then combine all of that with the Military Commissions Act which legalizes the detention, rendition and torture of anyone the administration declares a terrorist suspect, and you have a dictatorship in the making.
Nor would I be one to rule out a "terrorist" attack happening before the November election. I don't buy the 9/11 conspiracy crap but I sure wouldn't put it past this government to understand the value of a good terrorist attack.
I apologize for the unavoidable delay. Main Core of course must have an operational component in order to be useful. in 1974, a friend of mine, Ron Ridenhour, published an investigation into a series of Army/National Guard/ local/state police war games that took place in western states. The setup was domestic turmoil requiring martial law, leading to the roundup of "the usual suspects," meaning left wing sympathizers. Ron had become a national hero for his courageous pursuit of the truth behind the My Lai massacre and was interested in the impact of the Viet Nam war on America. He relentlessly tracked down and acquired (at some personal risk) the records of the exercises conducted by federal, state, and local authorities. Ron's original reporting, titled Bringing the War Home, appeared November 28, 1974 in the New Times newspaper in the Phoenix area (for text go to: namebase.org/ppost14.html). The regional action plan for five western states was called Cable Splicer, and was part of a national plan called Garden Plot, which was uncovered by Sam Ervin's Watergate investigators, but its significance was unrecognized at the time. Ron specifically details how massive numbers of citizens would be corralled and detained during a national emergency surrounding left wing anti-war protests, prompting a police state. Plans called for detaining as many as 8 million citizens in public and military facilities. (Google: Cable Splicer and Ron Ridenhour). Note to gun guys: plans included disarming local citizens as well. I notice in the comments a concern about Oliver North and his machinations, but my personal recommendation would be to look much more closely at the career of Admiral John Poindexter and his involvement in Total Information Awareness. It was strongly opposed by many conservatives at the time, but Main Core is bigger and better, and secret. Main Core is a dramatic and profound violation of the Constitution and of American patriotic values, and a much greater threat to our culture of freedom from Big Brother government than any terrorist plot. Of course, an operational component would still be a necessity- an up-to-date war game, anyone? Well, it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for?
cliff hughes
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