Funny isn't it? Just a few stories about the NSA and how they are involved in domestic surveillance. . . of people who are resisting Bush. . . and all the sudden something like the true extent of the situation we face comes clear to a whole bunch of people who had been telling themselves that we just had to wait for the political pendulum to swing back our way. . .
Hear that sound? It's the sound of many dimes dropping.
Sorry about that. Btw,
Echelon allows for domestic surveillance of foreign espionage or terrorist threats, always has. OF course, we don't carry out the listening, ourselves, we get one of our friends to do it for us. But that requires that we get the necessary foreign intel services involved and political action at the highest level. What has the NSA professionals mad is that Bush wants domestic spying to become their regular mission, standard operating procedure, against domestic, not foreign targets. This is so obviously targeting the American people, the domestic population that it has the intel professionals up in arms, yet again. . . Also the spirit of the law allowed for Echelon since the nature of the foreign threat was significant during the Cdld War, and even since 9/11, but that is not what we are dealing with here.
From an information operations perspective, they would want to be able to monitor and perhaps crush any domestic resistance that shows signs of becoming effective, that's the way budding military dicatorships operate. . .