Big Brother Is Watching You
By Michelle Mairesse

 

     An indispensable reference for any critic of the imperial presidency is the monthly Hightower Lowdown, guaranteed to make your gorge rise and your blood boil. The May 2006 issue includes such outrages against our democracy as a "contingency contract" of $385 million dollars so Halliburton can build a network of domestic detention centers across our country.

Hightower Lowdown: "The feds and Halliburton cryptically say that the detention centers could be needed for 'some kind of mass migration' or for 'the rapid development of new programs.' When asked what 'new programs' might mean, a Halliburton spokeswoman said she could provide no additional information."

     In Part 2 of "The Bush push for an imperial presidency," the Lowdown reveals this chilling development: "The Legislation has yet to pass, but intelligence watchdogs say that Bush has already implemented it by fiat--Executive Order 13388 appears to authorize the Pentagon to access domestic intelligence files.

      Also, the military has already created a robust collection system of its own. A new Northern Command, established in Colorado in 2001 to monitor Americans, now employs more intelligence analysts than does the Homeland Security Department. Also, the Marines launched an operation under a 2004 executive order for the 'collection, retention and dissemination of information concerning U.S. prisons,' noting that the corps will be 'increasingly required to perform domestic missions.' And during the past five years, each of the service branches has created its own domestic snooping enterprises."

     Remember John Poindexter's plan to collect data on all Americans, including tips by neighbors? Congress deep-sixed the Total Information Awareness Program, but it's back. The new version of TIA will be code-named "Basketball."

Hightower Lowdown: "The new sponsor of this hoops game is a highly classified outfit called Advanced Research and Development Activity (ARDA) that is housed inside NSA (yes, the very agency that's been running George W's illegal domestic spying program."

               

     In May 2003, Paul Wolfowitz authorized the ultra-secret Counterintelligence Field Activity, a new domestic spy agency code-named TALON (Threat And Local Observation Notice).

                               

Hightower Lowdown: "It directed military officers throughout the country to collect raw information about suspicious activities by local people and to feed reports on them into CIFA's humming computers." "Even the Pentagon concedes that thousands of TALON reports have been filed on totally innocent, non-threatening civilians and are retained in CIF's computer banks."


     We seem to be in a bit of a bind here, fellow Americans. Our government spies on us from all directions, but if we question the legality of domestic surveillance, we can be classified as subversives.

 

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