The WIRED Threat Level Blog is reporting on alleged abuses of domestic spying by the National Security Agency (NSA).
Threat Level's reporting is a must -read for any American who is concerned with violations of personal liberty. According to Russell Tice, in an interview with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann:
"The National Security Agency had access to all Americans' communications," Tice said. "Faxes, phone calls and their computer communications. ... They monitored all communications."
Here are a few of the main points of interest, as reported by Threat Level:[Tice] said he was told to monitor certain groups in order to eliminate them as suspects for more intense targeting. Those groups, he said, were U.S. journalists and news agencies. But rather than excluding the news organizations from monitoring, he discovered that the NSA was collecting the organizations' communications 24 hours a day year round.
Olbermann asked if this means there's a file somewhere containing every e-mail and phone conversation these reporters ever had with sources, editors and family members.
"If it was involved in this specific avenue of collection, it would be everything, yes." Tice answered.
If true, the NSA spying adds additional support to concerns that intelligence agencies have been infiltrating all forms of communication, including the Internet.
I'll have a lot more to say about this in future posts. Of particular interest are the use of UFO tales for intelligence collection.
