US Neighborhoods Spied Upon, NYT Exposes Larger Extent of Warrantless Taps

Deep in your gut you hoped it hadn't got this bad, but knew different didn't you ? I sure felt that way, but as the voting away of more of our Civil Rights draws close the New York Times spills a few more beans, big beans.

In a separate N.S.A. project, executives at a Denver phone carrier, Qwest, refused in early 2001 to give the agency access to their most localized communications switches, which primarily carry domestic calls, according to people aware of the request, which has not been previously reported. They say the arrangement could have permitted neighborhood-by-neighborhood surveillance of phone traffic without a court order, which alarmed them.

Neighborhood-By-Neighborhood Surveillance and no fuckin warrant. Wider Spying Fuels Aid Plan for Telecom Industry

As Bushco is running around trying to lobby anyone it can think of, or whose arm they can twist to get the immunity, to hear them tell it, it's no big deal. They put down some of the evidence and witnesses. One of the Lawyers on the case sees it much different, and says so.

The accusations rely in large part on the assertions of a former engineer on the project. The engineer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said in an interview that he participated in numerous discussions with N.S.A. officials about the proposal. The officials, he said, discussed ways to duplicate the Bedminster system in Maryland so the agency "could listen in" with unfettered access to communications that it believed had intelligence value and store them for later review. There was no discussion of limiting the monitoring to international communications, he said.

"At some point," he said, "I started feeling something isn’t right."

Two other AT&T employees who worked on the proposal discounted his claims, saying in interviews that the project had simply sought to improve the N.S.A.’s internal communications systems and was never designed to allow the agency access to outside communications. Michael Coe, a company spokesman, said: "AT&T is fully committed to protecting our customers’ privacy. We do not comment on matters of national security."

But lawyers for the plaintiffs say that if the suit were allowed to proceed, internal AT&T documents would verify the engineer’s account.

"What he saw," said Bruce Afran, a New Jersey lawyer representing the plaintiffs along with Carl Mayer, "was decisive evidence that within two weeks of taking office, the Bush administration was planning a comprehensive effort of spying on Americans’ phone usage."

Pre 9-11 you will notice. There was no invasion, no war, no terrorists, just the violation of every Citizens Civil Rights. The more I read this article the madder I got. In 2 short pages the Times manages to make a strong arguement why the Immunity must be voted down.

You know the drill, except this time it's is not a drill. If you have never made that call to a politician, now is the time to get off the dime. There will never be a better time, a important time in our histroy is upon us and only action by everyone can make it right. I beg you to make the calls to Harry Reid, and the Pres. Candidates. We MUST stop this vote from going forward.