Monitoring America

[+EdwardGlen]

This a fairly long article (8 pages) so i didn't paste it all here but first couple of paragraphs. its a very important read that everyone should take the time to do so.

 

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/monitoring-america/1/

 

Nine years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, the United States is assembling a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators.

 

The system, by far the largest and most technologically sophisticated in the nation's history, collects, stores and analyzes information about thousands of U.S. citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing.

 

The government's goal is to have every state and local law enforcement agency in the country feed information to Washington to buttress the work of the FBI, which is in charge of terrorism investigations in the United States.

 

Other democracies - Britain and Israel, to name two - are well acquainted with such domestic security measures. But for the United States, the sum of these new activities represents a new level of governmental scrutiny.

 

This localized intelligence apparatus is part of a larger Top Secret America created since the attacks. In July, The Washington Post described an alternative geography of the United States, one that has grown so large, unwieldy and secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs or how many programs exist within it.

[Bisharoo]

[lawyercaregiver]

:unsure: I could say tin to the left, foil to the right but he is absolutely correct. THEY ARE WATCHING US. (hi!)

 

However, bear in mind they can only use the information in national security and terrorism type investigations- not criminal investigations (as far as you know).