The Surveillance State: Knowing Every Bit About You

This story is similar to one a week or so ago that showed the National Security Agency's (NSA) plans for a huge surveillance facility in Bluffdale, Utah.

Read more http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/computers/item/11235-the-surveillance-state-knowing-every-bit-about-you

Bruce

"The software, created by a company called Narus that is now part of Boeing, is controlled remotely from NSA headquarters at Fort Meade in Maryland and searches US sources for target addresses, locations, countries, and phone numbers, as well as watch-listed names, keywords, and phrases in email. Any communication that arouses suspicion, especially those to or from the million or so people on agency watch lists, are automatically copied or recorded and then transmitted to the NSA.

The scope of surveillance expands from there, Binney says. Once a name is entered into the Narus database, all phone calls and other communications to and from that person are automatically routed to the NSA’s recorders. “Anybody you want, route to a recorder,” Binney says. “If your number’s in there? Routed and gets recorded.” He adds, “The Narus device allows you to take it all.” And when the Bluffdale facility is completed, whatever is collected will be routed there for storage and analysis.
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For it is nothing less than a terminal war on Americans’ privacy that is being waged, in deep secrecy and by a comparatively small and fanatically dedicated group of government security fetishists.
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These machines are now being introduced in train stations and courthouses as well, as naked becomes the new normal. A recent Supreme Court decision upholding the “right” of police to strip-search anyone arrested for any reason (the plaintiff, Albert Florence, was strip-searched twice after being arrested for an unpaid traffic fine) gives legal countenance to the dangerous notion that state-sanctioned strip-searches of anyone, anywhere, anytime are perfectly acceptable in the post 9/11 world.
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The political use of forced nudity by anti-democratic regimes is long established. Forcing people to undress is the first step in breaking down their sense of individuality and dignity and reinforcing their powerlessness.
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Jewish prisoners herded into concentration camps were stripped of clothing and photographed naked, as iconic images of that Holocaust reiterated."