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[glynor]

CIFA: The Pentagon's very own domestic surveillance program

It's bad enough that No Such Agency is wiretapping US citizens without a warrant, and that the FBI is keeping tabs on domestic political groups in the name of terrorism. Now Newsweek reports that the Pentagon is also in on the domestic surveillance game, monitoring and compiling information on all kinds of domestic anti-war and anti-Halliburton protests. The surveillance part of the program was set up in 2003 and is called Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON). TALON collects raw intelligence on incidents of interest and feeds it to a top-secret analysis shop at the Pentagon, called Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA). CIFA's task is to identify and track anti-military terrorist activity within the United States.

...

(Truly, if you're secretly plotting to commit acts of terrorism against the American military, among the first things you'll do are stage a public protest outside a military recruitment office and/or put up an anti-government web page. I believe that's on the first slide of the Al Qaeda "So You Want to Be a Terrorist" PowerPoint presentation. It's in the section titled, "On the importance of blending in with local radicals, dissidents, and other persons likely to be targeted by the feds.")

[glynor]

Oh, and it keeps getting better too...

Meet the Registered Traveler program

[Mysticeti]

Why Dem's attempt to shine a light on this will probably back fire:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-civil25jan25,0,5547867.story?coll=la-news-politics-national

By the way, this was a *very* interesting series:
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=the+power+of+nightmares&btnG=Search+Video

[glynor]

Why Dem's attempt to shine a light on this will probably back fire:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-civil25jan25,0,5547867.story?coll=la-news-politics-national

I don't consider myself a Democrat.  Most of the time I split the ticket, and tend to vote Republican/Conservative for local politics and Liberal/Democrat for national ones.  I'm basically your run of the mill radical socially-liberal, environmentally-green, died-in-the-wool fiscally conservative, teacher-hating, gun-toting, back-woods, constitution and freedom loving libertarian.   

On the point of this article I strongly disagree.  They should be afraid of the counter-attack?  That's utterly absurd.  Because it worked so well so far to play nice and fair on the national security question?

These people are, IMHO, hurting America. The Dems (or anyone else please!) need to stand up and tell them that what they are doing is (a) un-American because it robs us of the very freedoms the terrorists are trying to destroy, (b) counter productive because they are the "easy fixes" and are therefore easy for the terrorists to evade, and (c) counter productive because it wastes money when real things still need to be done (4.5 years later and they could still do the same thing in any port city with a cargo carrier).  They need to tell them that it is not okay, and that we will not sit idly by.  They need to take a stand, if not for this then what else?

(Wow.... The DRM thing got me all riled up tonight.  Sorry everyone.)   

[jgreen]

FWIW, Tinfoil Hats are ineffective unless shaped like a pyramid.

[glynor]

FWIW, Tinfoil Hats are ineffective unless shaped like a pyramid.

Well duh!   

[hit_ny]

Paranoid times in the US these days.

..like all that happened before, it will pass.

remember Macarthy ?

Bush won't be in office forever.

If the world could stand being on hair trigger alert during the Cold War and still get by, this terrorism thing is as small as a moquito bite.

[Mysticeti]

> Bush won't be in office forever.

That can be said of all Presidents (so far).  However, the Neocons may have a strong influence for some time to come if:

• they can continue to play on the public's fears and religious convictions
• no one comes up with a viable strategy to defeat them

[Mysticeti]

Somewhat related:
"Democrats and Republicans Both Adept at Ignoring Facts, Study Finds"