Beyond the NSA: Other Agencies Spy on You, Too
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/20670-beyond-the-nsa-other-agencies-spy-on-you-too
Beyond the NSA: Other Agencies Spy on You, Too
Monday, 16 December 2013 14:40
By Shahid Buttar, Truthout | Op-Ed
The latest discoveries about NSA spying revealed that the agency has collected 27 terrabytes of information about cellphone locations to track its targets not only in cyberspace, but also real space. The Panopticon is real. It siphons billions of dollars each year from a federal budget in crisis. And it is watching you and your children.
Lost in the debate about NSA spying, however, have been the dozens of other federal agencies also complicit in Fourth Amendment abuses.
Leading the Charge: The FBI
The FBI is among the federal agencies leading the assault on the Constitution. The FBI runs its own intelligence databases, has long abused the very same sections of the PATRIOT Act for which the NSA has recently come under fire and has the further distinction of having infiltrated First Amendment-protected activist groups and religious institutions all over the country.
Nor are these new issues. Unfortunately, the FBI's abuses are well established: For at least a quarter century, the bureau deployed a series of domestic "counterintelligence programs" that were discovered by activists in the 1970s and then investigated by Congressional oversight committees. Summarized as a "sophisticated vigilante operation" in 1976 by the Senate, CoIntelPro presaged the recurrence of similar abuses under the Bush administration and continuing into the Obama administration.