'What Congress and the public don't know is hurting them'

Several enormous spying programs started before and after the 9/11 attacks, once partially disclosed, were so controversial that Congress intervened to put a halt to them. But they didn't stop operations. Like rogue companies that go out of business only to come back under different names, or under no name at all.

The FBI's "Carnivore" system, approved during the Clinton administration, is designed to tap e-mail and cell-phone links -- what numbers and e-mail addresses are calling each other, what's in the subject-line of e-mails, time stamps, lengths of communications. Negative press reports compelled the FBI to change the name but not the program, to something blandly called the "Digital Collection System," until the agency dropped the system in 2005 in favor of another secret spying system. The same thing happened to the ominously called "Total Information Awareness" program started by a Pentagon agency in 2002. That program was designed to sift through as much data as possible on any given individual from as many sources as possible. Congress stopped funding the program in 2003 -- but not really. The program was adopted by the National Security Agency. It's now paid for from a "black budget," the secret funding of intelligence activities that gets minimal congressional scrutiny.

~ from Underworld of Carnivores ~