In 2002, the Total Information Awareness program was activated

26 January 2006 -- Back in 2002, with the country still reeling
from the 9/11 attacks, the AWOL Bush administration unveiled a new
intelligence program that granted traditional law enforcement
agencies as well as the FBI and the CIA the authority to conduct
what was then called "suspicionless surveillance" of American
citizens.

This "suspicionless surveillance" program was developed by the
Pentagon's controversial Total Information Awareness department, led
by Admiral John Poindexter

Republican and Democratic lawmakers concerned about domestic spying,
led Congress to shut down the surveillance program in 2003. Several
current and former NSA officials said, that shortly after this shut
down, AWOL Bush signed an executive order authorizing the National
Security Agency to secretly eavesdrop on American citizens' email
and international phone calls, thereby continuing, in effect, a
domestic spying program that Congress had objected to.

Back in the summer of 2002, a public outcry over the revelation that
JetBlue Airways turned over the names and addresses of 1.5 million
passengers to the Pentagon so the agency could create a database
about Americans' travel patterns, and allowed intelligence officials
to monitor credit card transactions, forced Congress to withhold
tens of millions of dollars in funding for the project.

Despite assurances that the federal government would not misuse the
program, the JetBlue revelation proved that the administration was
willing to sacrifice individual privacy rights in the name of
national security. JetBlue officials said the airline was pressured
by the Pentagon to hand over its private customer data to a Pentagon
contractor named Torch Concepts. The contractor then bought
demographic information on nearly half of the passengers from
Acxicom, a marketing company. Torch then put together a study and
posted it on the Internet.

Poindexter's plan, which barely got off the ground before Congress
stepped in and dismantled the project, proposed to use state-of-the-
art computer systems at the Army's Intelligence and Security
Command, headquartered at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, to secretly
monitor emails, credit-card transactions, phone records and bank
statements of hundreds of thousands of American citizens WITHOUT
PROBABLE CAUSE.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012606I.shtml

Comment:

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads as follows:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses,
papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,
shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon
probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly
describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be
seized."

The police have probable cause to believe they can find evidence
that you committed a crime, and a judge issues a search warrant, or
the particular circumstances justify the search without a warrant
first being issued.

http://www.nolo.com/article.cfm/catId/3900BEB2-2599-4E9F-
B5F09F0DF3E33C7B/objectId/DED24689-ADA8-4785-
887A0B4A19A694DE/104/143/ART/

Background:

The Wackenhut Corporation maintained and updated its files even
after the McCarthyite hysteria had ebbed, adding the names of
antiwar protesters and civil-rights demonstrators to its list
of "derogatory types." By 1965, Wackenhut was boasting to potential
investors that the company maintained files on 2.5 million suspected
dissidents-one in 46 American adults then living. in 1966, after
acquiring the private files of Karl Barslaag; a former staff member
of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Wackenhut could
confidently maintain that with more than 4 million names, it had the
largest privately held file on suspected dissidents in America. In
1975, after Congress investigated companies that had private files,
Wackenhut gave its files to the now-defunct Anti-Communist Church
League of America of Wheaton, Illinois. That organization had worked
closely with the red squads of big-city police departments,
particularly in New York and L.A., spying on suspected sympathizers;
George Wackenhut was personal friends with the League's leaders, and
was a major contributor to the group.
(Source: Age of Surveillance by Frank Donner and Inside the
Shadow CIA by John Connolly, SPY Magazine - Sept 1992 - Volume 6)

The FBI Library Awareness Program was a program that ran for about
25 years, in which FBI agents tried to enlist the assistance of
librarians in monitoring the reading habits of "suspicious"
individuals. FBI agents clandestinely visited libraries to track the
reading habits of people from communist countries, people with
foreign-sounding names, and people with foreign accents.

As part of its Library Awareness Program, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation conducted numerous counterintelligence activities in
libraries, including requesting confidential information on library
users based solely on their nationality.

The Cold War–era counterintelligence program arose out of
suspicions that Soviet agents were searching the stacks for valuable
technical data, and targeted scientific and technical libraries,
including some public and university libraries. As part of the
program, agents asked library staff members to report the use of
unclassified scientific reading materials by people from "hostile
foreign nations." Often, FBI agents who didn't have subpoenas or
search warrants approached lower-level workers for information,
which they used intimidation tactics to obtain. One FBI document
reveals an extended investigation of librarians who criticized this
Bureau's program. National Commission on Libraries and Information
Science (NCLIS) became heavily politicized and acquiesced to the
spying.
(Source: Herbert N. Foerstel, Surveillance in the Stacks: The FBI's
Library Awareness Program, (Greenwood Press 1991)

Comment: Private security personnel currently outnumber police
officers in the United States by three to one. At the present time,
the Fourth Amendment does not apply to searches carried out by non-
governmental employees like private security guards.

For example, assume that a shopping mall security guard acting on a
pure hunch searches a teenager's backpack. Inside the backpack the
guard finds a baggie containing an illegal drug. The guard can
detain the teenager, call the police, and turn the drug over to a
police officer. The drug is admissible in evidence, because the
search was conducted by a private security guard. As private
security guards increasingly exercise traditional police functions,
courts may one day apply Fourth Amendment guidelines to their
conduct.

http://www.nolo.com/article.cfm/catId/3900BEB2-2599-4E9F-
B5F09F0DF3E33C7B/objectId/DED24689-ADA8-4785-
887A0B4A19A694DE/104/143/ART/

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit for research and educational purposes. MY
NEWSLETTER has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this
article nor is MY NEWSLETTER endorsed or sponsored by the
originator.


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