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What are they doing with all that data?
According to stories I've been hearing lately, the CIA has been capturing virtually ALL Internet traffic for quite a while. They've been using special, secret rooms in various telecom facilities across the country.
And the odds are very good that the CIA and/or the NSA have been tapping all US phone traffic - foreign and domestic.
These are just cases of them "listening in" - this is recording ALL traffic and analyzing the contents in detail. Over the last several years.
The question that crossed my mind is, what are they doing with all that information?
So far the only answer I can possibly imagine is that they're using it to gain and consolidate political power - in other words, as a weapon against the American people, and against the Constitution itself. This shouldn't be a startling notion. It's what virtually every government has done when given the unchecked power to spy on their own people. And what with the in-your-face torture, signing statements, renditions, etc., Bush & Co. have made it very plain that they are just about the least self-restrained government on the face of the planet.
The thing is...how would they do it? What would their methodology be? These people don't have a track record of subtlety, after all. I'm trying to figure out where they'd game the system, how they'd use all that personal information, in order to increase their power.
The one thing that crosses my mind is that it wouldn't totally surprise me if they were simply blackmailing opposition politicals. How strange it is that so many Democrats turned so gutless! They've given in on every issue that Bush & Co. cared about. I recognize that not all Democrats have turned, but a startling number of them have. Why? What happened over the past several years to change them from a sometime-effective party into a national joke?
Perhaps Bush & Co have been using their "total information awareness" to gather blackmail data on any Democrat with any sort of skeletons in the closet. Given that Democrats have been persecuted at a ratio of 5-1 (or was it 7-1?) over Republicans by the Justice Department, it seems quite possible that that's yet another thrust of the Bush intelligence operation.
But how is it that not one person has come forward? That's what puzzles me. There's something going on here, something dark and ugly behind the scenes. But what is it? Will we ever find out?
And the odds are very good that the CIA and/or the NSA have been tapping all US phone traffic - foreign and domestic.
These are just cases of them "listening in" - this is recording ALL traffic and analyzing the contents in detail. Over the last several years.
The question that crossed my mind is, what are they doing with all that information?
So far the only answer I can possibly imagine is that they're using it to gain and consolidate political power - in other words, as a weapon against the American people, and against the Constitution itself. This shouldn't be a startling notion. It's what virtually every government has done when given the unchecked power to spy on their own people. And what with the in-your-face torture, signing statements, renditions, etc., Bush & Co. have made it very plain that they are just about the least self-restrained government on the face of the planet.
The thing is...how would they do it? What would their methodology be? These people don't have a track record of subtlety, after all. I'm trying to figure out where they'd game the system, how they'd use all that personal information, in order to increase their power.
The one thing that crosses my mind is that it wouldn't totally surprise me if they were simply blackmailing opposition politicals. How strange it is that so many Democrats turned so gutless! They've given in on every issue that Bush & Co. cared about. I recognize that not all Democrats have turned, but a startling number of them have. Why? What happened over the past several years to change them from a sometime-effective party into a national joke?
Perhaps Bush & Co have been using their "total information awareness" to gather blackmail data on any Democrat with any sort of skeletons in the closet. Given that Democrats have been persecuted at a ratio of 5-1 (or was it 7-1?) over Republicans by the Justice Department, it seems quite possible that that's yet another thrust of the Bush intelligence operation.
But how is it that not one person has come forward? That's what puzzles me. There's something going on here, something dark and ugly behind the scenes. But what is it? Will we ever find out?