By Tom Burghardt
Despite last week's "termination" of America's bête noire, Osama bin Laden, the reputed "emir" and old "new Hitler" of the Afghan-Arab database of disposable Western intelligence assets known as al-Qaeda, Secrecy News reports an uptick in domestic spying.
Never mind that the administration is engaged in an unprecedented war on whistleblowers, or is systematically targeting antiwar and solidarity activists with trumped-up charges connected to the "material support of terrorism," as last Fall's multi-state raids on anarchists and socialists in Chicago and Minneapolis attest.
In order to do their best to "keep us safe," Team Obama is busily building upon the criminal legacy bequeathed to the administration by the Bush regime and even asserts the right to assassinate American citizens "without a whiff of due process," as Salon's Glenn Greenwald points out.
According to a new Justice Department report submitted to Congress we learn that "during calendar year 2010, the Government made 1,579 applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (hereinafter 'FISC') for authority to conduct electronic surveillance and/or physical searches" on what U.S. security agencies allege are "for foreign intelligence purposes."
The April 29 missive, released under the Freedom of Information Act, documents the persistence of our internal security apparat's targeting of domestic political opponents, under color of rooting out "terrorists."
Secrecy News analyst Steven Aftergood comments that "this compares to a reported 1,376 applications in 2009. (In 2008, however, the reported figure--2,082--was quite a bit higher.)"
"In 2010," Aftergood writes, "the government made 96 applications for access to business records (and 'tangible things') for foreign intelligence purposes, up from 21 applications in 2009."
Also last year, America's premier domestic intelligence agency, the FBI, "made 24,287 'national security letter' requests for information pertaining to 14,212 different U.S. persons, a substantial increase from the 2009 level of 14,788 NSL requests concerning 6,114 U.S. persons. (In 2008, the number of NSL requests was 24,744, pertaining to 7,225 persons.)"
As I have pointed out many times, national security letters are onerous lettres de cachet, secretive administrative subpoenas with built-in gag orders used by the Bureau to seize records from third-parties such as banks, libraries and telecommunications providers without any judicial process whatsoever, not to mention the expenditure of scarce tax dollars to spy on the American people.
"Money for Nothing..."
With U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's February announcement that the Department of Justice will seek $28.2 billion from Congress in Fiscal Year 2012, a 1.7% increase, the FBI is slated to reap an $8.1 billion windfall.
We're told that the "administration supports critical national security programs within the department, including the FBI and the National Security Division (NSD)."
"The requested national security resources include $122.5 million in program increases for the FBI," including "$48.9 million for the FBI to expand national security related surveillance and enhance its Data Integration and Visualization System, as well as "$18.6 million for the FBI's Computer Intrusion Initiative to increase coverage in detecting cyber intrusions."
Rather ironic, considering that ThreatPost reported last month that a U.S. Department of Justice audit found that the FBI's ability to "investigate cyber intrusions" was less than adequate. The report disclosed that "fully 36% [of field agents] were found to be ill-equipped."
To make matters worse, "FBI field offices do not have sufficient analytical and forensic capabilities to support large scale investigations, the audit revealed." All the more reason then to shower even more money on the Bureau!
And with the FBI demanding new authority to peer into our lives, on- and offline, the FY 2012 budget would "address the growing technological gap between law enforcement's electronic surveillance capabilities and the number and variety of communications devices available to the public, $17.0 million in program increases are being requested to bolster the department's electronic surveillance capabilities."
One sure sign that things haven't changed under Obama is the FBI's quest for additional funds for what it is now calling it's Data Integration and Visualization System (DIVS). According to April congressional testimony by FBI Director Robert Mueller, DIVS will "prioritize and integrate disparate datasets across the Bureau."
Read more:
http://www.blacklistednews.com/Secret_State%27s_Domestic_Spying_on_the_Rise/13808/0/0/0/Y/M.html
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