From: Risto Lankinen on
the dramatic
increase in forfeitures between 1985 and 1993?

What caused it to increase by more than a MAGNITUDE?

* "Above the Law", by David Burnham, ISBN 0-684-80699-1, 1996
*
* In June 1989, the Deputy Attorney General ordered the nation's U.S.
* attorneys to "take all possible actions" on forfeitures, even if it meant
* dropping other matters. "You will be expected to divert personnel from
* other activities."
*
* One year later, the Attorney General himself warned the U.S. attorneys
* that the Justice Department had fallen far behind its budget projection
* in the collection of assets. "We must significantly increase production
* to reach our budget target... Failure to achieve the $470 million
* projection would expose the Department's forfeiture program to criticism
* and undermine confidence in our budget projections. Every effort must be
* made to increase forfeiture income during the remaining three months of
* fiscal year 1990."
*
* In addition, forfeiture activities affect how many federal prosecutors
* will be allocated to each U.S. Attorne


From: Dik T. Winter on
But the National Security Agency's ability to monitor microwave
transmissions, to scoop out of the air VAST numbers of communications,
including telephone conversations, store them in computers, play them
back later, has a truly frightening potential for abuse.

George Orwell issued a warning.

He told us that freedom is too much taken for granted, that it needs to
be carefully watched and protected. His last word on the subject was a
plea to his readers: "Don't let it happen. It depends on you."
]
*
* The National Security Agency's Project L.U.C.I.D., with all its
* technological wizardry, is a future, planetary dictator's dream---and a
* Christian and national patriot's nightmare. Someday, the Holy Bible
* prophesies, that planetary dictator will emerge on the scene, lusting
* for blood...
*
* There can be no doubt about it.
*
* The REAL Chief Executive Officer of the NSA is not a human being.
*
* The CEO MUST be Lucifer himself.

Amen.


----


It is technology driving the capabilities, it is our government using
them ruthlessly: without letting us vote on it.

Never before could someone walk up to you and number you by scanning
your fingerprints. A number that is yours and yours alone.




From: Phil Carmody on
Thatcher, and
it was alleged that massive bribes were made to middlemen, including her
son, Mark, who was said to have received a 10 million Pound commission.

The former employee of the British Joint Intelligence Committee, Robin
Robison, broke his indoctrination oaths and told the Observer that, as
part of his job, which involved sorting intelligence reports from the
British intelligence agencies, he personally forwarded GCHQ transcripts
of intercepted communications about Lonrho to Mrs. Thatcher's office.


P9
Intelligence is not just neutral information; it can be powerful and
dangerous. Intelligence gathering and military force are two sides of
the same coin. Both are used by countries and groups within countries to
advance their interests, often at the expense of others. To influence or
defeat an opponent, knowledge can be more useful than military force.

The type of intelligence described in this book, signals intelligence
(SIGINT), is the largest, most secret and most expensive source of secret
intelligence in the


From: Pubkeybreaker on
suspected anything out of the ordinary.

But the inside was anything but ordinary. There were scores of rooms crammed
with administrative functions, equipment, wires, jury-rigged gizmos, a
currency bank, and computers.

Every electronic intercept capability NSA denied having was right there.

In a small black box, not much bigger than a briefcase, was "Oratory."

This portable key-word selection computer could be taken almost anywhere
and set to pick out pre-selected words and automatically monitor and
record fax, voice, or teletype messages that contained them.

Developed by NSA, "Oratory" was "tempest-proof" (i.e. shielded to
prevent emmisions that could lead to detection), small, virtually
indestructible, and easy to repair: all you had to do was open the
lid and replace the self-diagnosed defective component.
[snip]

In pursuit of plausible deniability, CSE, GCHQ, and NSA have used each
others' personnel and resources to evade laws against domestic spying.

[ an example given in which the NSA wanted to spy on someone within
the US, even though they had no authorization for such an operation ]

...So, two Canadians were sent to conduct a counter-espionage operation
on US soil at US taxpayer expense so that NSA could maintain deniability.

In every way that counts, NSA broke US law and spied on its own citizens.

[ A UK operation by CSE described next. Margaret Thatcher (then Prime
Minister) thinks two of the m


From: bitsplit on
hand biometrics
* of employees who use their childcare facilities] in Palm Springs,
* California, in 1994, England not only endorsed the proposed mandatory
* national I.D. smart card, but went one scary step further:
*
* The smart card is a wonderful idea, but even better would be the
* capacity to not have a card, and I call it "a chip in your ear,"
* that would actually access your medical records, so that no matter
* where you were, even if you came into an emergency room unconscious,
* we would have some capacity to access that medical record.
*
* We need to go beyond the narrow conceptualization of the smart card
* and really use some of the technology that's out there.
*
* California Governor Pete Wilson has actively stumped for a National I.D.
* Card system, using the straw man of California's pervasive immigration
* problem. California Senators Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer support
* it too. The latest proposal is to mandate I.D. cards for all school
* children under the Goals 2000 national education program. Another plan
* by the U.S. Labor Department would have required it for all users of a
* National Job Training and Employment database.
*
* George Orwell, in 1984, his classic novel of Big Brother and a coming
* totalitarian state, observed that very few people are awake and alert
* to the machinations and manipulations of the controllers. Thus, the
* people, as a whole, fall victim to a colossal conspiracy out of ignorance
* and because of apathy and denial of reality:
*
* The people could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of
* reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was
* demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public
* events to notice what was happeni