Is The NSA Spying On American Citizens?

Just a few days ago, the proverbial feces hit the fan. Wired Magazine, in a stellar piece of investigative reporting, revealed a ton of information regarding the NSA's new Utah spy center, and the agency's secretive agreements with shadowy firms to spy on US Citizens. That's right. We should all be concerned.

The story hit hard, and spread. TV News reports from small local stations all the way to national news programs highlighted the story. The US Army General responsible for the NSA felt compelled to go public with a denial. Of course, it didn't hurt that concerned congressional representative started asking direct questions. Read the Wired article. And read the General's denials here. Take note that he says quite specifically: We don't do that here. "Here" is the operative word. I submit that means the agency does not spy on US Citizens from US territory. Thus, the "here." In fact, there is evidence that we have sub-contracted that task out to trusted foreign allies like Israel and Singapore.

There are many who are quite skeptical about the General's denials. After all, it's not like the NSA has a long record of honesty when addressing Congress or the American public. It's a spy thing. So we have to rely on the judgments of others in that regard. Read what ComputerWorld had to say about the denials in this article.

Now, read about how we've outsourced the invasion of our privacy to foreign firms in this BUSINESS INSIDER article.

The Author is connected to this story, in a peripheral sort of way. During the 80's I had a chance to meet and chat with Admiral John Poindexter, the US Governments uber-geek programmer, and the conceptual architect of the TIAA (Total Information Awarness & Analysis) program that was deemed so unconstitutional by Congress that they de-funded it and sent it away. Problem is, it never really disappeared. It just went underground. I first wrote about my conversation with the Admiral years ago in THIS POST.

So you can see that in addition to Israeli firms, Singapore is also involved. Investigations reveal that THIS MAN is part of the Singaporean effort. He's an old associate of Poindexter's by the way. You remember Poindexter's TIAA, well in Singapore it's called RAHS: Risk Assessment Horizon Scanning. Snowden is an integral part of a firm called Cognitive Edge that is the architect of RAHS. From the firm's website, this vague but tantalizing description of the program.

The RAHS system is a strategic risk assessment and analysis tool, which aims to provide early alerts on potential threats to national security by building a network that links various independent government agencies throughout the Singapore government. Through the RAHS project, the government aims to identify early indicators of change, detect signals and analyze potential threat patterns which otherwise would have gone unnoticed.

Finally, here's a video piece from Amy Goodman's Democracy Today covering the story.