Metro Spirit national security blog
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Enemies foreign and domestic?
2,821 "force protection threats" under military surveillance carry U.S. passports.
Considering this is a country of 300 million, that may not sound like a lot of people who have been subject to domestic surveillance by an arm of the government that's still bound, or at least ought to be, by the principles of Posse Comitatus.
Look at it another way, and the problem is obvious.
Judging by these numbers, roughly one of every 70 reports in the Pentagon's Talon counterintelligence database concerned an American citizen who happened to be a peace activist.
That's clearly a disproportionate amount of concern about a group of people -- the peaceniks -- who are so ineffective they haven't staged a significant demonstration since 2003.
But let's say the military spied on ONE American citizen without just cause. Wouldn't that still be a problem?
Considering this is a country of 300 million, that may not sound like a lot of people who have been subject to domestic surveillance by an arm of the government that's still bound, or at least ought to be, by the principles of Posse Comitatus.
Look at it another way, and the problem is obvious.
Judging by these numbers, roughly one of every 70 reports in the Pentagon's Talon counterintelligence database concerned an American citizen who happened to be a peace activist.
That's clearly a disproportionate amount of concern about a group of people -- the peaceniks -- who are so ineffective they haven't staged a significant demonstration since 2003.
But let's say the military spied on ONE American citizen without just cause. Wouldn't that still be a problem?
# posted by Corey Pein @ 12:10 PM 
