I’m going to provide a one paragraph summary, just to make sure that the implications of this are clear to everyone:
The U.S. Government has, almost certainly, established a database and tracking system for something like eight million Americans who have been designated as threats to national security. The system is called MAIN CORE and it is being run under the auspices of highly classified Continuity of Government (COG) operations. MAIN CORE uses a variety of intelligence sources as inputs, including your email, web activity, telephone and private financial information. In the event of a major national security crisis, it is alleged that Americans listed in the MAIN CORE database, “Could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.”
And from Emptywheel: Russel Tice confirms everything we've surmised about Bush's illegal wiretap programTeddy linked to the stunning Russell Tice appearance on Keith O tonight. I wanted to add a few points.
First, Tice's description of the program confirms everything we have surmised about the program. The program:
- Established the means to collect all American communications
- Analyzed meta-data to select a smaller subset of communications to tap further
- Conducted human analysis of those messages
That is, the Bush administration used meta-data (things like length of phone call that have nothing to do with terrorism) to pick which communications to actually open and read, and then they opened and read them.
And of course, everyone's communications--everyone's--were included in the totality of communications that might be tapped.
Including--especially--journalists. We knew that both Christiane Amanpour and Lawrence Wright's communications were tapped. Well, apparently so were every other journalists'.
Read more @ Emptywheel
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