Originally published February 22 2006
Mass government surveillance possibilities create concerns
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Mass surveillance techniques by the U.S. government, such as proposed face recognition technology in airports, are becoming a real technological possibility, leaving many asking when or whether such practices should be used.
The United States government either currently has, or soon will have, new technology that makes mass surveillance possible.
This answer is easy in a world where we know that technologies of mass surveillance, or TMS, are effective against terrorism, where we have unlimited resources for national security, and where there's no cost when the technology malfunctions, is intentionally abused or innocently misused.
We don't live in that fictional world, so as citizens and policy makers, we have more-difficult choices to make.
For example, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, requires phone companies to build mass surveillance capabilities into their networks.
Privacy advocate Phil Zimmerman has pointed out that through CALEA the FBI requested technological surveillance capabilities far beyond the capacity of the judicial system to approve warrants or the FBI to monitor.
This suggests that law enforcement plans to automate or computerize the monitoring process -- probably by deploying voice-recognition technology to look for "hits" that could be followed up on with human-monitored wiretaps.
Commentators from Ars Technica and other publications assembled comments from officials familiar with the program that, in total, suggested that the National Security Agency was using new technological capabilities.
There is a difference between detecting so we can prevent, and monitoring.
The president is correct that FISA only allows targeted surveillance of identified or particularly described individuals.
"In the context of the post-9/11 threat, which includes sleeper cells and sleeper operatives in the United States, no other form of surveillance is likely to be feasible and effective.
But this kind of surveillance may not fit into the forms for court orders because their function is to identify targets, not to conduct surveillance of targets already identified.
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