we all know you and i are being spied upon

i hope THEY (the they being those in government. YES OUR GOVERNMENT) know THEY are being spied upon too. do they think they're beyond the scopes of king george and his court? well i hope they think again. it's all ok when we, the little ones are having our rights and liberties tossed. i wonder when they'll figure out THEIR rights and liberties are being trounced on as well
king george is NOT exempting anyone. not me. not you or you OR YOU

FBI Data Transfers Via Telecoms Questioned

By Ellen NakashimaWashington Post Staff Writer
When FBI investigators probing New York prostitution rings, Boston organized crime or potential terrorist plots anywhere want access to a suspect's telephone contacts, technicians at a telecommunications carrier served with a government order can, with the click of a mouse, instantly transfer key data along a computer circuit to an FBI technology office in Quantico.
The circuits -- little-known electronic connections between telecom firms and FBI monitoring personnel around the country -- are used to tell the government who is calling whom, along with the time and duration of a conversation and even the locations of those involved.
Recently, three Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, including Chairman John D. Dingell (Mich.), sent a letter to colleagues citing privacy concerns over one of the Quantico circuits and demanding more information about it. Anxieties about whether such electronic links are too intrusive form a backdrop to the continuing congressional debate over modifications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs federal surveillance.
Since a 1994 law required telecoms to build electronic interception capabilities into their systems, the FBI has created a network of links between the nation's largest telephone and Internet firms and about 40 FBI offices and Quantico, according to interviews and documents describing the agency's Digital Collection System. The documents were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group in San Francisco that specializes in digital-rights issues. .........

i don't like this

i don't like it AT ALL. if i brought my laptop to the airport and they demanded i log in so they could see the websites i visited, i'd be LIVID. it's NONE OF THEIR F**KING BUSINESS. of course i know they're tracking me right now (i'm not naive) but i sure as shite am NOT going to bend over for them. they'll have to work for it. same goes for my cell phone. who i call, when i call and how often is NO ONE'S BUSINESS (yet i also know they're tracking that as well. especially since i have at&t to begin with). then again, i have less to worry about than someone whose skin is not my color. someone who may have a different set of religious beliefs than i do. (this IS america, right?)
Clarity Sought on Electronics Searches
Travelers' Devices Seized at Border

By Ellen Nakashima Washington Post Staff Writer
Nabila Mango, a therapist and a U.S. citizen who has lived in the country since 1965, had just flown in from Jordan last December when, she said, she was detained at customs and her cellphone was taken from her purse. Her daughter, waiting outside San Francisco International Airport, tried repeatedly to call her during the hour and a half she was questioned. But after her phone was returned, Mango saw that records of her daughter's calls had been erased.
A few months earlier in the same airport, a tech engineer returning from a business trip to London objected when a federal agent asked him to type his password into his laptop computer. "This laptop doesn't belong to me," he remembers protesting. "It belongs to my company." Eventually, he agreed to log on and stood by as the officer copied the Web sites he had visited, said the engineer, a U.S. citizen who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of calling attention to himself...........

what happened to probable cause?

it went the way of habeas corpus and democracy and our entire constitution it appears.
(i have NO problems with tapping phones IF there is a warrant AND PROBABLE CAUSE AND it's all within the LAW)

Cellphone Tracking Powers on Request
Secret Warrants Granted Without Probable Cause

By Ellen Nakashima Washington Post Staff Writer
Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers.
In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime. Privacy advocates fear such a practice may expose average Americans to a new level of government scrutiny of their daily lives.

hmmmmmmmmmmmm

i think no one is surprised to learn soldier's personal blogs are NOT giving away state secrets (unlike novak and rove and on and on and on). it's the STATE itself

Army Reports Brass, Not Bloggers, Breach Security

By Noah Shachtman
For years, the military has been warning that soldiers' blogs could pose a security threat by leaking sensitive wartime information. But a series of online audits, conducted by the Army, suggests that official Defense Department websites post material far more potentially harmful than anything found on a individual's blog.
The audits, performed by the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell between January 2006 and January 2007, found at least 1,813 violations of operational security policy on 878 official military websites. In contrast, the 10-man, Manassas, Virginia, unit discovered 28 breaches, at most, on 594 individual blogs during the same period.
The results were obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, after the digital rights group filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act.
"It's clear that official Army websites are the real security problem, not blogs," said EFF staff attorney Marcia Hofmann. "Bloggers, on the whole, have been very careful and conscientious. It's a pretty major disparity."
The findings stand in stark contrast to Army statements about the risks that blogs pose. ............