Brad Blog | February 28 2006

Thanks
to a heads-up from Larisa at The Raw Story, we were able to captured
this broadcast of CNBC's Tim Russert show. Russert interviewed James
Risen and Robert O'Harrow, Jr. The video contains about 24 minutes of
clips from CNBC's Saturday broadcast.

James
Risen broke the NSA warrantless domestic spying story for the New York
Times. He also has a new book out, State of War: The Secret History of
the CIA And The Bush Administration. Risen is known to have sources
within various intelligence agencies and has recieved information from
several NSA whistleblowers. One of those whistleblowers, Russell Tice,
recently testified before congress that NSA domestic surveillance
programs may be much more widespread than the "limited" program that
the Bush Adminstration has admitted. Tice has said that some programs
could be monitoring "millions of Americans".

Robert
O'Harrow, Jr. is an award-winning reporter for the Washingon Post with
an expertise data mining and privacy issues. His recent book, No Place
to Hide: Behind the Scenes of Our Emerging Surveillance Society,
describes "a surveillance society that's less centralized and more a
joint public/private venture".

Together,
Risen and O'Harrow paint a picture of an enormous partnership between
U.S. intelligence agencies and private data collection firms. Spying
agencies like the NSA can leverage its' massive computing power to mine
data collected by these private firms. The result is a mind-boggling
domestic surveillance capability with access to nearly any information
imaginable. Phone calls, email, video as well as finicial, criminal and
other personal records can all be searched at the same time. The NSA's
powerful computers can mine the data to find otherwise imperceptible
links for profiling groups and individuals.

Russert
calls it a "sobering" discussion. The interview only scratches the
surface of how extensive the scope of Big Brother's monitoring of
Americans may be. The surveillance programs are a dramatic departure
from what the public has come to believe. It's easy to see why the Bush
Administration has avoided legislation and oversight.

It's
quite possible that the American people would not stand for Bush's
spying policies if they had a sense of the true nature of the
government's surveillance.

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