Department of Justice (DOJ)

[Wired.com] Point, Click ... Eavesdrop: How the FBI Wiretap Net Operates

An owl, an animal known for its exceptional vision dominates the logo of the Telecommunications Intercept and Collection Technology Unit, or TICTU, which developed the DCS-3000. This enhanced image is based on black-and-white FBI documents.

The FBI has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any communications device, according to nearly a thousand pages of restricted documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act.


The surveillance system, called DCSNet, for Digital Collection System Network, connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet-telephony providers and cellular companies. It is far more intricately woven into the nation's telecom infrastructure than observers suspected.

[BORDC] Representatives Hold Town Hall Meetings

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From our friends at the BORDC,

It's not too late to give Congress a piece of your mind within your legislators' home district before the August recess ends on September 4! BORDC has found a list of many of the town hall meetings scheduled across the country, and we'd like to share it with you, asking that you use it to speak out about the recently passed Orwellian "Protect America Act"!


Please go to your local meeting with as many allies as you can gather and tell your representatives that warrantless wiretapping violates our fundamental rights to privacy, and threatens each of us. We're being treated as terrorist suspects by our own government when it demands the right to eavesdrop on our conversations and emails with no particularized suspicion.

John Ashcroft's Patriot Games (Vanity Fair)

The revolution inside John Ashcroft's Justice Department—an array of new crime-prevention powers embodied in the Patriot Act—has been fueled by the attorney general's ambition, intelligence, and unusually extreme beliefs about everything from the similarities between himself and Jesus to the post-9/11 role of law enforcement, to the purported demonic properties of calico cats. But as nervous sources share stories of his Missouri governorship, and former staffers and Senate allies speak out, JUDY BACHRACH discovers that Ashcroft has also sparked a growing backlash, one with surprisingly bipartisan power

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

- Benjamin Franklin, 1759

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