Espionagem doméstica na Administração Bush

Se os EUA neste momento não são uma sociedade/Estado policial, muito pouco faltará.

Cada vez o governo entra mais pela casa a dentro das pessoas sem lhes pedir licença, sem mandatos sem nada.
Habeas Corpus, já era, mandatos, para lá caminham.
Podemos sempre agradecer ao Patriot Act.

PÚBLICO.PT

Esta legislação abrangente reforçava os poderes policiais do Estado em muitas áreas. O "Patriot Act" dava às forças de segurança autoridade para, entre outras possibilidades, detenções de suspeitos de terrorismo sem culpa formada, escutas sem autorização de tribunais, pesquisas em bases de dados desde registos bancários aos ficheiros de livros requisitados em bibliotecas.

Quem deu a cara pelo "Patriot Act" foi sobretudo John Ashcroft, o "attorney general" (semelhante a ministro da Justiça), muito criticado por inúmeras organizações cívicas por querer impor restrições à privacidade e à liberdade de expressão.

EPIC USA PATRIOT Act Page

The clumsily-titled Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (USA PATRIOT Act, or USAPA) introduced a plethora of legislative changes which significantly increased the surveillance and investigative powers of law enforcement agencies in the United States. The Act did not, however, provide for the system of checks and balances that traditionally safeguards civil liberties in the face of such legislation.

Legislative proposals in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were introduced less than a week after the attacks. President Bush signed the final bill, the USA PATRIOT Act, into law on October 26, 2001. Though the Act made significant amendments to over 15 important statutes, it was introduced with great haste and passed with little debate, and without a House, Senate, or conference report. As a result, it lacks background legislative history that often retrospectively provides necessary statutory interpretation.

The Act was a compromise version of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001 (ATA), a far-reaching legislative package intended to strengthen the nation's defense against terrorism. The ATA contained several provisions vastly expanding the authority of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to monitor private communications and access personal information. The final legislation included a few beneficial additions from the Administration's initial proposal: most notably, a so-called sunset provision (which provides that several sections of the act automatically expire after a certain period of time, unless they are explicitly renewed by Congress) on some of the electronic surveillance provisions, and an amendment providing judicial oversight of law enforcement's use of the FBI's Carnivore system.

However, the USA PATRIOT Act retains provisions appreciably expanding government investigative authority, especially with respect to the Internet. Those provisions address issues that are complex and implicate fundamental constitutional protections of individual liberty, including the appropriate procedures for interception of information transmitted over the Internet and other rapidly evolving technologies.

The death of habeas corpus - Countdown with Keith Olbermann- msnbc.com

The president has now succeeded where no one has before. He’s managed to
kill the writ of habeas corpus. Tonight, a special investigation, how
that, in turn, kills nothing less than your Bill of Rights. Because the
Mark Foley story began to break on the night of September 28, exploding
the following day, many people may not have noticed the bill passed by
the Senate that night.
Congress passed the Military Commission’s Act to give Mr. Bush the power to deal effectively with America’s enemies—those who seek to harm the country. He has been very clear on who he thinks that is.

Os casos são cada vez mais conhecidos, tal como o da AT&T, e agora este Spying on Americans without warrants, charges based on secret evidence, a small town divided by fear. Welcome to the world of Bush's "specially designated global terrorists."


Salon.com News | Blacklisted by the Bush government

Ever since a New York Times report uncovered warrantless domestic spying by the Bush administration, the issue of NSA surveillance and the 1978 law governing it has been intensely scrutinized and debated. Until now, however, little attention has been paid to dubious activities directly connected with the domestic spying. The Bush administration has used expanded national security powers to undermine the legal rights of people in the United States who are identified as al-Qaida supporters, but who are not charged with terrorist-related crimes. The U.S. Treasury Department and other agencies investigating domestic organizations and U.S. persons rely on the NSA to spy and collect evidence for them -- a fundamental shift from the past, when the NSA's vast eavesdropping powers were used only for foreign intelligence gathering. And in the name of protecting national security, the Bush administration has regularly withheld what it claims is key evidence against those accused -- insisting, essentially, that the public accept without question its private conclusions about the suspects' guilt.

AT&T Whistle-Blower's Evidence

AT&T Whistle-Blower's Evidence
05.17.06 | 2:00 AM

Former AT&T technician Mark Klein is the key witness in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's class-action lawsuit against the company, which alleges that AT&T illegally cooperated in an illegal National Security Agency domestic-surveillance program.

In this recently surfaced statement, Klein details his discovery of an alleged surveillance operation in an AT&T office in San Francisco, and offers his interpretation of company documents that he believes support his case.

Poderão pensar as pessoas que isto só afecta os cidadãos dos EUA, de certa forma sim, mas indo um pouco mais além, os cinco países anglófonos, USA/UK/AUS/CAN/NZ, são as principais bases do sistema Echelon, um dicionário que actua em todas as frentes de telecomunicações para espiar quer os cidadãos destes países quer os do resto do mundo, como aliás provou a UE, através de um comité presidido por um português.

ECHELON - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

ECHELON is a name used in global media and in popular culture to describe a signals intelligence collection and analysis network operated on behalf of the five signatory states to the UKUSA agreement; Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, known as AUSCANZUKUS.[1]

The system has been reported in a number of public sources.[2] Its capabilities and political implications were investigated by a committee of the European Parliament during 2000 and 2001 with a report published in 2001.[3]