Open Your Wallet And Show Us What You’ve Got

by digby

A lot of folks don’t seem exercized that the government might be listening in on their phone calls without a warrant or reading their e-mails and letters with no oversight from anyone. But I have noticed for years that people would much rather tell you every detail of their sex lives than reveal their financial status.

So, I wonder how happy they are going to be to know that the Pentagon and the CIA have taken it upon itself to investigate the finances of American citizens with no warrants or oversight and keep the information on file forever:

The Pentagon has been using a little-known power to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage inside the United States, part of an aggressive expansion by the military into domestic intelligence gathering.

The C.I.A. has also been issuing what are known as national security letters to gain access to financial records from American companies, though it has done so only rarely, intelligence officials say.

Banks, credit card companies and other financial institutions receiving the letters usually have turned over documents voluntarily, allowing investigators to examine the financial assets and transactions of American military personnel and civilians, officials say.

The F.B.I., the lead agency on domestic counterterrorism and espionage, has issued thousands of national security letters since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, provoking criticism and court challenges from civil liberties advocates who see them as unjustified intrusions into Americans’ private lives.

But it was not previously known, even to some senior counterterrorism officials, that the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have been using their own “noncompulsory” versions of the letters. Congress has rejected several attempts by the two agencies since 2001 for authority to issue mandatory letters, in part because of concerns about the dangers of expanding their role in domestic spying.

The military, the clandestine spy service and the FBI have all been gathering financial information on American citizens. Nobody knows what they have, who’s been targeted or if the information is correct or useful.

Usually, the financial documents collected through the letters do not establish any links to espionage or terrorism and have seldom led to criminal charges, military officials say. Instead, the letters often help eliminate suspects.

“We may find out this person has unexplained wealth for reasons that have nothing to do with being a spy, in which case we’re out of it,” said Thomas A. Gandy, a senior Army counterintelligence official.

Except the records are going into a database:

But even when the initial suspicions are unproven, the documents have intelligence value, military officials say. In the next year, they plan to incorporate the records into a database at the Counterintelligence Field Activity office at the Pentagon to track possible threats against the military, Pentagon officials said. Like others interviewed, they would speak only on the condition of anonymity.

Military intelligence officers have sent letters in up to 500 investigations over the last five years, two officials estimated. The number of letters is likely to be well into the thousands, the officials said, because a single case often generates letters to multiple financial institutions.

[..]

Some national security experts and civil liberties advocates are troubled by the C.I.A. and military taking on domestic intelligence activities, particularly in light of recent disclosures that the Counterintelligence Field Activity office had maintained files on Iraq war protesters in the United States in violation of the military’s own guidelines. Some experts say the Pentagon has adopted an overly expansive view of its domestic role under the guise of “force protection,” or efforts to guard military installations.

[…]

“There’s a strong tradition of not using our military for domestic law enforcement,” said Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, a former general counsel at both the National Security Agency and the C.I.A. who is the dean at the McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific. “They’re moving into territory where historically they have not been authorized or presumed to be operating.”

Similarly, John Radsan, an assistant general counsel at the C.I.A. from 2002 to 2004 and now a law professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, said, “The C.I.A. is not supposed to have any law enforcement powers, or internal security functions, so if they’ve been issuing their own national security letters, they better be able to explain how they don’t cross the line.”

I thought the Intelligence Czar was supposed to coordinate all this; the whole idea was that DNI and DHS was that they were going to streamline things and end the useless duplication and cross wires in the investigative agencies. Instead, it appears that we have the FBI, CIA, Pentagon, local and state police agencies all running amock and using the provisions of the patriot act in the most expansive way possible to spy on US citizens without warrants and then each keep the information they have on file forever.

I have written before that the most dangerous thing we have done to ourselves domestically since 9/11 is to hugely expand our policing powers and throw unlimited funds at the agencies who will find a reason and a way to flex their new, expensive muscle. It is a law of nature. If you build it they will use it.

We have thrown so much money away on the Department of Homeland Security that they can’t even account for billions in missing funds. Small towns in the Alaskan Bush are putting camera’s on every street corner with their free money from Uncle Ted Stevens. (To catch the terrists, dontcha know.)

We are building a well funded national police state apparatus at the same time that we are giving unlimited money and power to our military and foreign intelligence agencies to operate in the United States. This is incredibly dangerous and I can’t help but wonder why there is so little effort on the part of anyone in public life to educate the public on the inherant dangers of such powerful, unaccountable institutions. This is why we had a revolution to begin with. It’s why we fought two world wars in the last century. (Where is the Al Gore of civil liberties?)

And the most laughable thing is that all of this is apparently perfectly acceptable to the principled right wingers and “libertarians” who spent decades railing against the jack booted government thugs — at least until a Republican administration was wielding the power. It seems that unless the target in question is buying weapons or explosives (in which case they come roaring in to protect the only amendment in the Bill of Rights they care about) these people are just fine with all this. After all, only the “right” people are being spied upon — Muslims, war protestors, liberals, Democrats and other enemies of the state.

But guess what? That could change. The list of enemies will grow longer. It always does. And you never know who might land on it. This is not a partisan issue and it’s tragic that there are so few on the right who can’t extricate themselves from their pep club and cheerleader team sport world to consider that this is one issue we civil libertarians and at least some conservatives should be able to agree upon. I can say with absolute confidence that if a Democratic administration were institutionalizing spying on Americans and building a new all-powerful unaccountable police state apparatus, I’d be screaming just a loudly.

This exposes the right’s total intellectual bankruptcy as nothing else has, in my opinion. They are nothing more than rich authoritarian thugs whose only real mission is to maintain their prerogatives. One of these days somebody is going to find a reason to think they are unamerican too — and they are probably going to use that very same police state power against them. Then they’ll screaming too — but it will be too late.

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