Hi there. Do you get the feeling that someone is watching you? When you walk into the bookstore, when you walk threw the hardware section of the Home Depot, when you are setting in the library, reading Popular Mechanics, well there's a chance that you are, but your information could be as well.
Information like, credit card receipts, books you check out of the library, even the products you buy at the store, are being watched by the, CFIA, which is the head of counterintelligence at the Pentagon.
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The project that has been started to keep an eye on the people that oppose the government, is call Project Talon. It has that all to familiar smell of what the government did during the Vietnam war, to watch the antiwar protesters, antiwar activist groups, and Civil Rights leaders.
The activity of the Defense Department during the sixties and early seventies, was the main reason the congress put restrictions on just what could be done to gather, and retain information on United States citizens.
"I am particularly apprehensive about the expansion of our military's role in domestic intelligence gathering," said Washington lawyer Richard Ben-Veniste, a member of the Sept. 11 commission at that panel's final news conference last week, noting that Congress has yet to pay attention to the Talon program. The Pentagon's collection of data, he said, was a "cause for concern," partly because little is known about it publicly.
"Programs such as
CIFA's, Eagle Eyes and Talon -- names unfamiliar to most Americans -- must receive robust scrutiny by Congress and the media," Ben-Veniste said.
Washington Post.
The documents contain raw information that is gathered through, neighbors and concerned citizens.The reports may or may not be related to an actual threat, and its very nature may be fragmented and incomplete.
Yesterday in
my blog, I told of, section
802 which leaves a broad definition of terrorism under the Patriot Act, which could come in to play here when it comes to turning in your neighbors.
What a way to become the well-liked person on your block.
CIFA, according to a Pentagon background paper provided to The Washington Post in response to inquiries, has established standards for Talon reports and handling that "meet intelligence oversight requirements." The statement said "U.S. person information" -- reports concerning people in the United States -- "is collected and retained only as authorized" by presidential executive order.
When questioned by the "Washington Post", about the documents in the Talon Project the spokes persons for the FBI director John Negroponte, and CIFA, would not comment on the Eagle Eye, and Talon projects.
Even former counterintelligence officers are worried about what the CIFA, and the pentagon are doing with the information they are gathering.
A former senior CIA official with wide counterintelligence experience, who is familiar with CIFA's growth, said the agency's mandate is "ambiguous, but the Defense Department is using its assets in its broadest terms." He added that efforts such as Talon "could be a well-intentioned effort and it could develop important information." But, he said that in his view, "the Pentagon has chosen to err on the side of over-collection" of information.
His concern, he said, was who does the intelligence "go to, and what do they do with it."
Oh by the way if you were wondering what Talon stands for, it is "threat and local observation notice," and was created by then Deputy-Secretary of Defense,and signer of PNAC, Paul Wolfowitz.
ABA