The Pentagon wants your bank records:
The Pentagon has been using a little-known power to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage inside the United States, part of an aggressive expansion by the military into domestic intelligence gathering.
Hey, don’t worry. If you haven’t done anything wrong you have nothing to worry about. Right?
I guess it depends on what you meant by doing wrong.
The Department of Defense admitted in a letter obtained by NBC News on Thursday that it had wrongly added peaceful demonstrators to a database of possible domestic terrorist threats. The letter followed an NBC report focusing on the Defense Department’s Threat and Local Observation Notice, or TALON, report.
Once again, add power and subtract accountability. Abuses are inevitable like water flows downhill.
Richard 23
Just an oversight I suppose. Which is why such programs require oversight.
dslak
Isn’t “peaceful demonstrators” just another way of saying “al-Qaida supporters”?
Ugh
I liked the part where, even after they clear someone they’ve requested records on, they’re going to keep the records anyway and put them in some giant database.
This is a massive class action suit against financial institutions waiting to happen (in addition to the other suits that, I think, are ongoing right now).
jake
In ’02 an acquaintance joked that because he’d purchased a copy of the Koran and taken flying lessons, a SWAT team might kick his door down.
‘Taint so damn funny now.
And would someone please smack the CIA with a rolled up paper? The last time they used the possiblity of foreign baddies to justify domestic spying they wound up looking pretty damn stupid.
However, my key beef with massive data mining is all they might catch are stupid bad guys. The smart bad guys know (or suspect) someone might peek at their credit card records so they pay cash and keep their money in the matress. Your tax dollars at…um…something.
Also, if someone would shoot the idiot who comes up with names like TALON, that would be swell.
srv
This is just what the government did during Clinton, as Darrell has told us before.
Darrell
This never would have happened under Clinton. Wrong names getting added to a watch list managed by a huge govt. bureaucracy. Unheard of!
srv
See, I told you so.
Gary Farber
“The Department of Defense admitted in a letter obtained by NBC News on Thursday that it had wrongly added peaceful demonstrators to a database of possible domestic terrorist threats.”
They admitted that almost a year ago, actually. (I first started posting about CIFA back in 2003; also Talon in 2005).)
Punchy
I’ve been a part of this. Wisked aside at McCaren (sp?) Airport in Vegas after a very liberal use of a credit card. Damn near banned from flying. A Midwestern cracker with a gambling problem nearly added to a “no-fly” list simply b/c his CC was more useful than his (my) debit card.
Yeah, our gov’t is using its resources to keep us safe. Keep me off all airplanes, before I bet someone even odds on our arrival time.
Jay C
Whisked aside at McCarren Airport in Vegas after a very liberal use of a credit card. Damn near banned from flying.
There you go! Damn spendthrift liberals! If the TSA weren’t keeping an eye out for types like who knows what shape we’d be in!!!???
RandyH
Without reading any of the comments above, I am compelled to tell everyone… After 9/11, there was extreme paranoia going on and then the Patriot Act got passed. At the time, I was working as an IT guru for a MAJOR stock brokerage (to remain nameless) and we built a data-mining system that would make Stalin proud. We built a system that could almost predict who the next great “terrorist” would be… AND we made all of our work available to whatever “other” intelligence agencies that might be interested. Since then the system has been built upon greatly and the “other” intelligence agencies (NSA/CIA) still have their hands in all of your personal financial data – ALL OF IT. Every last morsel of personal financial data is and has been evaluated by these folks since early 2002… along with your email, web reading, phone calls and, on occasion, your paper snail mail as well.
There is a separate “underground” government that is evaluating everything that we do. At the time, when I worked inside the private sector apparatus that supported it, I thought that it was protecting all of us from imminent disaster. I have since learned that it was all just a hoax to let them violate our basic rights as Americans for political gain. I don’t work in that business anymore. I couldn’t possibly do that to our people anymore. But they’re still watching everything that you do. Seriously, start paying cash for everything.
Paul Wartenberg
I spoke to my mom once about how bad it was the Pentagon was spying on these pacifist groups like the Quakers. My mom responded that there’s a possibility of the pacifist groups being infiltrated by terrorists.
That boggled my mind. WHY WOULD BOMB-THROWERS INFILTRATE PACIFISTS? Being a pacifist implies there will be no bomb-throwing, for one thing. If anyone showed up at a Quaker meeting saying, “Hey, let’s blow sh-t up” they’d be kicked out (politely, of course). You really ought to worry about terrorists and bomb-throwers inflitrating other groups. You know, like the College Republicans. Why not, huh? Best place for a terrorist to hide is with the group in ‘power’. So hey Pentagon start investigating the College Republicans, will you? Please and Thank you.
GDAEman
dslak –
(pretending along with you…) See. They start out as “peaceful demonstrators,” like the people in Fallujah, Iraq in 2003 who wanted access to their elementary school being occupied by US troops. Then the reactionary govevernment, or troops, do nasty things like spying or shoting and killing 13 “peaceful demonstrators” want their school back.
Mix, repeat, let stew for several years and viola! The “peaceful demnonstrators” are now Al-Qaida supporters.
Really quite brilliant if your aim is to rule-by-crisis-management.
Sachem515
There’s a political solution to our military problem.
Dick Cheney must go.
We’ve all had enough. The evidence is about to be put on the table. 17 Republican Senators will be found in agreement.
Spare us all Dick and resign. I got yer unitary executive right here pal.
Marc
Whisked aside at McCarren Airport in Vegas after a very liberal use of a credit card.
But according to the Decider, spending money is our only responsibilty as good citizens in the War on Terra. We’re supposed to go out there and spend, spend, spend. Sacrifice? Not so much.
Go to sleep, America. The Decider has it all in hand.
Sachem515
There’s a political solution to our military problem.
Dick Cheney must go.
The investigations are about to begin. Libby’s gonna get Fitz’d. The congressional subpoenas will be issued. The weariness over constitutional erosion is palpable.
So in advance of the predictable claims of executive privilege, I believe the call for his resignation must begin to rise. Political will for the necessary must begin to be accumulated.
It may seems a bit premature to some, but I expect it will resonate broadly as events unfold. There is no unitary executive. Not in this country. Sorry about yer luck Dick.
“The object is a larger one, and the original overarching goal of this administration: expanding executive power, for its own sake”.
slate.com/id/2157493/
Since I expect no reader here to disagree with the above quote, then let’s ask ourselves why we feel obliged to put up with this any longer.
Congress is suffering fom a type of learned helplessness. Public outcry from most quarters must create intestinal fortitude.
democrats.com/Congressional-Dems-Suffering-From-Battered-Spouse-Syndrome
As I have said before, time is exceedingly of the essence. Do we really want Dick driving the bus at the next geopolitical crossroad?
The framers put the impeachment clauses in the constitution for scenarios like this. Exercising our rights is an imperative. No signing statement on this one.
Once this is all over, we will look back and wish Dick had spared us the inevitable vitriol. Men in multi-thousand dollar suits will try and tell America that this is complicated. It’s not. He’s a bad man. He’s an enemy of the republic. He should’ve been cuffed years ago.
Join the call for his resignation today.
ConservativelyLiberal
That is the problem with conservatives, they can’t spend liberally without their head exploding…
Regarding the political solution, I agree. Impeachment is a very viable political solution. On another point, with a dick and a bush in the White House, who would have ever guessed that we would be the ones who got screwed?
Go figure.
jake
Thought this needed repeating.
Krista
They just want their secret recipe for that yummy oatmeal.