There are disturbing revelations this morning in Hullabaloo's blog on Elliot Spitzer and the New York Times article cited.
Disturbing revelations, not about Elliot Spitzer but about the scope of domestic surveillance and law in America.
Digby asks, "When did the FBI agents seek the AG's permission?". I ask "What were the agents seeking permission for?".
I ask this question in light of yesterday's revelations concerning the scope NSA's domestic surveillance programs not in defense of Spitzer.
The programs are larger than we were previously led to believe. It even appears that the extent of the programs is as large as the critics, who were previously dismissed during the last round of revelations, said it was.
The problem with the scope of the domestic surveillance programs described is that it allows a work backwards solution to building cases for prosecution, i.e. given a tip on an individual the government can search surveillance data for supporting information.
Since the NSA's programs lack the proper controls and oversight we have to assume that this is possible, we have no guarantees otherwise.
Reading through the Spitzer material it seems to work better backwards. What is suspicious about a wealthy or high ranking government official enlisting the services of a consulting firm? You have essentially described the daily activities of a large part of Washington DC. You need additional information to make this activity suspicious and that is not presented. Is the IRS investigating everyone who used a consulting firm?
Reading the Times article, I am left wondering, are we seeing an individual caught during the investigation of a crime, or a crime uncovered during the investigation of an individual?
Even if you believe the former, the lack of oversight and controls on domestic surveillance makes the latter possible and this will taint any investigation.
There are a lot of interesting tidbits in this article.
One thing we learn that the IRS routinely monitors all financial activity within the US despite the fact that it is not a national security or law enforcement agency and that the monitoring is detailed enough to identify individuals. It appears that the IRS is also conducting domestic surveillance, in addition to the NSA. It also appears that this surveillance is without due process.
It appears that when you tie all of the US domestic monitoring capability together the US is operating a formidable domestic surveillance system.
Are we seeing what we are told is not happening, the routine surveillance of American citizens?