Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Thought Police, Part 2

AT&T is one of the big telecom companies that has been cooperating with the FBI (and perhaps other agencies) to in response to requests to spy on average citizens. Keep in mind that most subjects are likely to be innocent citizens with indirect connections to actual criminal/terrorist suspects.

A recent article on the WIRED site describes how AT&T has developed and patented technology to help in these efforts:

"According to a letter from Verizon to a congressional committee earlier this month, the FBI has been asking Verizon for 'community of interest' records on some of its customers out to two generations -- i.e., not just the people that communicated with an FBI target, but also those who talked to people who talked to an FBI target. Verizon, though, doesn't create those records and couldn't comply. Now it appears that AT&T invented the concept and the technology."

Bush Lies

It's official: Bush lied, lied, and lied some more during the lead-up to the Iraq war -- at least 935 times according to this study:

See report by The Center for Public Integrity


In Bush's 2008 State of the Union address a few days ago, the President spoke about Iran using rhetoric frighteningly similar to that in speeches before attacking Iraq.

We need to stop Bush and the neo-cons, who still show up routinely on the national TV and radio news and talk shows, from leading into another disastrous war without provocation.