"This is a crisis that may be used to take action against Americans not the Chinese or North Koreans."

Obama and security team to spy on Internet users

By Jim Kouri
Monday, September 27, 2010

President Barack Obama and his national security team are seeking an expansion of the U.S. government’s role in eavesdropping on the Internet including emails, social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as BlackBerries.

According to reports, the Obama White House plans to submit a bill after the new congress takes over both houses next January that would require all online services that provide communications between users to be enabled to comply with federal wiretap orders.

The proposed monitoring measures will affect encrypted e-mail, such as the popular BlackBerry, networking sites like Facebook or Twitter, as well communication sites such as Skype.

Cash is already allocated for Obama’s new spy program. In the Pentagon’s fiscal 2011 budget proposal cybersecurity received a $105 million increase from the previous year. The Defense Department’s sub-command dedicated to cyber warfare—a facility in Fort Meade, Maryland, known as U.S. Cyber Command—is slated for a fiscal 2011 budget of $139 million under the Air Force budget proposal, in addition to funding from the U.S Strategic Command, which oversees its operations.

Federal law enforcement and counterterrorism experts claim the new Obama-sanctioned regulations are necessary in light of increased communications on the Internet between members of terrorist groups and organized crime gangs.

“It’s amazing how during the Bush administration, the limited actions taken to monitor terrorists’ communications met with fury from civil liberties groups and members of the news media. Now that a liberal-left president sits in the Oval Office, these same people are silent regarding increased surveillance of U.S. citizens by law enforcement and intelligence agencies,â€