Dr. DigiPol

Some of you may recognize the title as a line from the 1974 Rolling Stones song Fingerprint File. And just as their Superbowl performance proved the Stones can still rock, the Bush Administration’s performance proves that Jagger’s observation is still true.

By now, everyone knows about the NSA’s domestic wiretapping program, or as the Administration spins it, the Terrorist Surveillance Program. But that program is only the tip of the iceberg. The Department of Defense and the Department of Justice have been digging deep into the Internet to spy on us, as well.

And what have they found?

According to Newsweek, on June 23, 2004 the Pentagon’s TALON program found an insidious plot to hand out free peanut butter and jelly sandwiches outside of Halliburton’s Houston headquarters. They found this tidbit on Houston.IndyMedia.org.

On October 25, 2004 TALON found another “credible” threat on a Miami antiwar web page. The Broward Anti-War Coalition organized about 20 people to protest outside a armed services recruitment office with signs saying, “BUSH LIED.”

And now the Pentagon is buying identity masking software so they can infiltrate online communities as if they are coming from foreign countries. What is that all about?

As SCTV’s Count Floyd says, “Ooooooooooooooooooh, very scary.”

(For more information on TALON, click here.)

And then there is the DoJ’s effort to collect search request data from AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft. They handed over the information without a fight. Google fought. And Justice has moved to compel them. According to Newsweek, this effort has nothing to do with national security. It is about policing porn.

The President has stated clearly that he is concerned about protecting our civil liberties while he is spying on us. I am thankful, in principle, but concerned by what the President means by “civil liberties.” If these programs are any indication, I don’t think he is using the same definition as the rest of us. And since his Administration has fought tooth and nail to keep the details of these programs secret, Jagger is still right. “These days, its allll secrecy and noooo privacy.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 9th, 2006 at 3:34 pm and is filed under Digital Politics, Rants, Raves, Reflections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.