Program raises spying concern

[UCSBLiberalCat53]

Program raises spying concern

STATE NATIONAL GUARD UNIT SET UP TO DETER TERRORISM MONITORED ANTI-WAR RALLY

By Dion Nissenbaum

Mercury News Sacramento Bureau

SACRAMENTO - Three decades after aggressive military spying on Americans created a national furor, California's National Guard has quietly set up a special intelligence unit that has been given ``broad authority'' to monitor, analyze and distribute information on potential terrorist threats, the Mercury News has learned.

Known as the Information Synchronization, Knowledge Management and Intelligence Fusion program, the project is part of an expanding nationwide effort to better integrate military intelligence into global anti-terrorism initiatives.

Although Guard officials said the new unit would not collect information on American citizens, top National Guard officials have already been involved in tracking at least one recent Mother's Day anti-war rally organized by families of slain American soldiers, according to e-mails obtained by the Mercury News.

Past abuses recalled

Creation of California's intelligence unit is already raising concerns for civil libertarians who point to a string of abuses in the 1960s and 1970s, when the military collected information on more than 100,000 Americans, infiltrated church youth groups, posed as reporters to interview activists, monitored peaceful protests and even attended an elementary school Halloween party in search of a ``dissident.''

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[McKenzie]

1. all web traffic is monitored in the UK

we have a Draconian Act called the "Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act" which means that every net visit, e-mail and Usenet post is monitored without a warrant. And if you know anything about security on the web you might have heard of Echelon and Carnivore. The only way of defeating them is to use PGP for e-mail (or something else with a strong encryptation algorithm) PGP is so powerful it is banned for export to certain countries. And proxy chains are possible with a fast connection...the more remote the IP's the better.

Other than those of us who know how these monitoring proggies work, your web life is like an open book.

I wonder why Windows has a swapfile that can grow to several Gb in size...except my swapfile is disabled because I run 2 Gb of RAM...snigger.

edit: speling