BUSH REGIME TO LAUNCH MASSIVE DOMESTIC SPYING PROGRAM

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TIM SHORROCK, CORPWATCH - A new intelligence institution to be
inaugurated soon by the Bush administration will allow government spying
agencies to conduct broad surveillance and reconnaissance inside the
United States for the first time. Under a proposal being reviewed by
Congress, a National Applications Office will be established to
coordinate how the Department of Homeland Security and domestic law
enforcement and rescue agencies use imagery and communications
intelligence picked up by U.S. spy satellites. If the plan goes forward,
the NAO will create the legal mechanism for an unprecedented degree of
domestic intelligence gathering that would make the U.S. one of the
world's most closely monitored nations. Until now, domestic use of
electronic intelligence from spy satellites was limited to scientific
agencies with no responsibility for national security or law
enforcement.

The intelligence-sharing system to be managed by the NAO will rely
heavily on private contractors including Boeing, BAE Systems, L-3
Communications and Science Applications International Corporation. . .

The NAO is "an idea whose time has arrived," Charles Allen, a top U.S.
intelligence official, told the Wall Street Journal in August 2007 after
it broke the news of the creation of the NAO. Allen, the DHS's chief
intelligence officer, will head the new program. The announcement came
just days after President George W. Bush signed a new law approved by
Congress to expand the ability of the NSA to eavesdrop, without
warrants, on telephone calls, e-mail and faxes passing through
telecommunications hubs in the U.S. when the government suspects agents
of a foreign power may be involved. . .

Donald Kerr, a former NRO director who is now the number two at ODNI,
recently explained to reporters that the intelligence community was no
longer discussing whether or not to spy on U.S. citizens: "Our job now
is to engage in a productive debate, which focuses on privacy as a
component of appropriate levels of security and public safety," Kerr
said. "I think all of us have to really take stock of what we already
are willing to give up, in terms of anonymity, but [also] what
safeguards we want in place to be sure that giving that doesn't empty
our bank account or do something equally bad elsewhere."

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14821

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