Welcome to 1984, the DHS 2008 edition

The Department of Homeland Security is spying on you!

It didn't take long after 9/11 for that to happen. Many communities began setting up local departments of homeland security in the weeks immediately following that cataclysmic event. U.S. News & World Report tells how DeKalb County, Georgia "put in for--and got--a series of generous federal counterrorism grants. The county received nearly $12 million from Washington, using it to set up, among other things, a police intelligence unit."

What happened next is all too typical. Two agents of this intelligence unit were "assigned to follow around the county executive ... to determine whether he was being tailed--not by al Qaeda but by a district attorney investigator looking into alleged misspending. A year later, one of its plainclothes agents was seen photographing a handful of vegan activists handing out antimeat leaflets in front of a HoneyBaked Ham store. Police arrested two of the vegans and demanded that they turn over notes, on which they'd written the license-plate number of an undercover car."

This is the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. Various police officials, "in the name of homeland security, have surveilled or harassed animal-rights and antiwar protesters, union activists, and even library patrons surfing the Web."

"A U.S. News inquiry found that federal officials have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into once discredited state and local police intelligence operations. Millions more have gone into building up regional law enforcement databases to unprecedented levels."


Part of the problem is that guidelines for police spying are non-existent. "Documents and videotapes obtained from lawsuits against the NYPD," for example, "reveal that its undercover officers have joined antiwar and even bicycle-rider rallies. In at least one case, an apparent undercover officer incited a crowd by faking his own arrest."

It gets crazier. "In February 2006 near Washington, D.C., two Montgomery, Md., homeland security agents walked into a suburban Bethesda library and forcefully warned patrons that viewing Internet pornography was illegal. (It is not.) ... Similarly, in 2004, two plainclothes Contra Costa County sheriff's deputies monitored a protest by striking Safeway workers in nearby San Francisco, identifying themselves to union leaders as homeland security agents."


Now to the crux of the problem. In 2003, DHS "began requiring states to draft strategic plans that included figures on how many 'potential threat elements' existed in their backyards. The definition of suspected terrorists was fairly loose--PTEs were groups or individuals who might use force or violence 'to intimidate or coerce' for a goal 'possibly political or social in nature.'"

The result of all this was the identification of thousands of "potential" terrorists. And it isn't any wonder, that with such a moronic definition, states came up with wildly varying numbers. South Carolina found 68 PTEs. North Carolina said it had 506. Vermont and New Hamshire reported none. Texas identified 2,052 which one FBI official labeled "absurd." "Included among the threats cited by the states ... are biker gangs, militia groups, and 'save the whales' environmentalists."


What has changed over the years is the determination of the DHS to pit American citizens against one another by spying on their neighbors.

Last November, the AP reported on a program called Fire Service Intelligence Enterprise (FSIE) being tested in New York "to help identify 'material or behavior that may indicate terrorist activities."

It began with a conference in September of 2007, hosted by the FDNY and Homeland Security. Chief officers from fire departments around the country--Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and 12 other cities "met with NYC fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppette and officials from the Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Surveillance."

The FDNY is now supposed to not merely fight fires by "help identify material or behavior that may indicate terrorist activities."

The Bush administration, in 2002, suggested that bus drivers, mail carriers and telephone repair personnel "spy on the American public as part of Homeland Security's 'Citizen Corps' initiative. This program, known as TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System) was shot down in Congress, but the FSIE (Fire Service Intelligence Service), being a city program, "has bypassed federal regulation altogether."

One problem with this citizen spy business is that it involves untrained people who may well trigger various false alarms sending firefighters on wild goose chases. Another problem is that problem of definition - what is a "terrorist" activity? Is reading an ACLU bulletin terrorist? Is protesting Bush's illegal war in Iraq a terrorist activitiy? Is reading the Quran a terrorist activity?


May 2008. The DHS, not content with firefighter spies suggested that "boating enthusiasts ... be on the lookout for suspicious activities on the nation's coastlines and waterways."

If you're a boater and you see "small boats that could deliver nuclear or radiological devices" call DHS!

Again, most boating enthusiasts are not trained observers. And then you have the problem of the guy who's mad because someone's wake rocked his boat while in the middle of an assignation. Tell the Coast Guard he's carrying funny-looking material.


The Denver Post reported on June 28 of this year that "Hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and even utility workers have been trained and recently dispatched as 'Terrorism Liaison Officers" in Colorado and a handful of other states to hunt for 'suspicious activity' -- and are reporting their findings into secret government databases."

What the hell is "suspicious activity"? It could be "taking photos of no apparent aesthetic value, making measurements or notes, espousing extremist beliefs or conversing in code, according to a draft Department of Justice/Major Cities Chiefs Association document."

You better be careful. If you like to take upside down photos of neon signs as the sun goes down, you're in deep caca. If you're outside measuring a house under construction which you have just bought, you're probably already in a "secret" government database. If you decide that Bush is a goddamn extremist and tell the guy sitting next to you at the bar, you'll probably get a visit from DHS operatives wearing black hats and trenchcoats in the middle of the night. Hell, you may end up spending the next 20 years in a military brig and no one will know where where you went. If you are talking on your ham radio system and your basement window is open, and your neighbor reports you to the DHS you can bet your booty you're gonna wind up in a "secret" government database.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is currently going on now, not only in Colorado, but in other states as well, including Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Washington, D.C. According to one report, dozens more states are planning to get involved.

"Colorado alone has 181 Terrorism Liaison Officers, and some of them are from the private sector, such as Xcel Energy."

Matt Rothschild at The Progressive "found a description for a Terrorism Liaison Officer Position in the East Bay.

"Reporting to the Alameda and Contra Costa Counties and the city of Oakland, these officers 'would in effect function as ad hoc members' of the East Bay Terrorism Early Warning Group, which consists of local police officers and firefighters.

"The 'suggested duties' of these Terrorism Liaison Officers include: 'source person for internal or external inquiry,' and 'collecting, reporting retrieving and sharing of materials related to terrorism. Such materials might include ... books, journals, periodicals, and videotapes.'

"Terrorism Liaison Officers would be situated not only in agencies dealing with the harbor, the airports, and the railroads, but also 'University/Campus.'"

If that doesn't scare the crap out of you, nothing will! Except for what follows.


The DHS decided last August "to provide state and local authorities access to information gathered by the U.S. military's fleet of spy satellites..."

Supposedly, the National Applications Office (NAO) "would coordinate how domestic law enforcement and 'disaster relief' agencies such as FEMA utilize imagery intelligence ... generated by U.S. spy satellites."

Tom Burghardt at Dissident Voice reminds us, however, that "...as with other Bushist 'security' schemes there's little in the way of 'oversight' and zero concern for the rights of the American people."

Many members of Congress became irate when informed of the program, partly because DHS hadn't bothered to "vet this program with the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board..."

That, however, as Burghardt says, is "standard operating procedure for the corporatist gang setting 'homeland' security policy in Washington: 'You don't ask, we don't tell, comprende?"


That hasn't stopped the Bushites. On April 12, the Washington Post said Bush plans to go ahead "rebuffing challenges by House Democrats over the idea's legal authority."

Jane Harman (D-CA), not particularly opposed to spying on American citizens, said "It will terrify you if you really understand the capabilities of [military] satellites."

Burghardt notes that the military satellites are different than civilian satellites in that they "are far more flexible, have greater resolution and therefore, more power to monitor human activity. By utilizing different parts of the light-and infrared spectrum, spy satellites, in addition to taking ultra high-resolution photographs to within a meter of their 'target,' can also track heat signatures generated by people inside a building."

[You may want to forgo skinny-dipping in your backyard swimming pool from here on.]

Worse, is that no one really knows all the capabilities of these satellites. "...only those inside NAO will actually know who is being monitored from space."

"Simply put," says Burghardt, "if Chertoff's plan passes congressional muster NAO will greatly enhance the formidable technological police state architecture already in place through current 'warrantless wiretapping' and data mining programs."

While the DHS plan to use spy satellites has not yet been put into place, it is still "hot" and the DHS is pressing for the OK.


To give you a better idea of what the Bush administration thinks about our civil liberties, note that the government's civil liberties board, first mandated by Congress in 2004 "and reauthorized with newly independent powers nearly a year ago ... exists today in name only. It has no office, no staff and no members."

Bush has recently rejected House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's choice for the board. This may kill any chances of the board actually functioning so long as Bush holds office.

In other words, at this point there is no effective oversight. Nobody is watching the spies!


Perhaps we should check on the latest Bush version of the Constitution to make sure it still contains the Fourth Amendment which used to read as follows:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."


While a spy satellite fails to meet the requirements of this amendment on all counts, that does not matter to Bush and company. The Department of Homeland Security (god, I even hate that Nazi-sounding name!) is moving us closer to a police state every day.

When agents of this monstrosity can call on you in the middle of the night and without a warrant, search your house and effects and haul your ass off to prison forever, perhaps we're already there!


The irony of all this is that George W. Bush fought tooth and nail against the establishment of a Department of Homeland Security prior to 9/11!