Quote Originally Posted by ALIPAC
Quote Originally Posted by nittygritty
dman1200
Do you have proof there are records where they were spying on everyday Americans? Just for the record, I would like to know what W. thinks about this, What do you think W.? Do you think the government is listening to what the Americans are saying about the illegals?
Nitty,

I'm sorry I did not see your question before. Sometimes it is best to PM me a link to your questions if they are for me since I cannot read the boards as much as I would like.

Yes, I believe that the government scans most calls made in America through a program called Echelon. I believe the computers scan the calls for keywords and encrypted information. If keywords are detected or encrypted information, then the call is stored until a human agent can look at it.

In the 1970s, there was a big scandal when the public found out about Operation Shamrock. It was discovered that the NSA was using computers to scan all telegraphs sent in the nation. Upon exposure, the program was shut down and new laws were put in place to protect the American public from the government spying on our citizens.

The way echelon works is this... It has been illegal for the CIA and the NSA to monitor our own citizens. That duty has been with the FBI and they have had to secure warrants in the past for electronic eavesdropping.

The Echelon system allows the NSA to bypass these laws because while it has been illegal for the NSA to monitor all calls and e-mails in the US, it is not deemed illegal for Great Britain to eavesdrop on all e-mails and calls. It is also not illegal for Great Britain to share intelligence about American citizens with American governmental agencies.

So England monitors us and we monitor them and then we exchange the information when something trips a wire.

Now there is a very good reason that privacy rights were built into the US Constitution. It is because the old way prior to the Democratic movements in Western Europe involved secret police and tyrannical powers monitoring their own populations and using that knowledge / power advantage to subdue and enslave their populations.

Privacy and freedom go hand in hand. A prisoner has no privacy.

With the emergence of new technologies and biometric devices, Americans are quickly becoming prisoners in their own homes where their communications can be monitored.

Each of us and all of us collectively may end up powerless in the face of our own government which can obviously be controlled by special and foreign interests.

We can fix our security problems with terrorists and our illegal immigration problem without volunteering to live in electronic fish bowls for the rest of our lives and subjugate our children to living in a world where they are watched and tracked from birth to death.

George Orwell's 1984 is here and now.

The main problem I have is that these new technologies establish an electronic omnipresence in our lives.

There is only room for one omnipresence in my life and it will not be an agency, a computer, George Bush, or Chertoff. God should be the only omnipresent force in my life.

W
The other program is called Carnivore. You can't even encrypt your data anymore unless you give the NSA a back door.

As for your final comment, there have been no truer words spoken on this site.