Pentagon Seeks A Loophole In The Privacy Act

CygnusXII writes "As reported over @ wired.com. It seems that Homeland Security isn't the only govermental body wanting to keep a database on the good old U.S. population. 'The bill would allow Pentagon intelligence agents to work undercover and question American citizens and legal residents without having to reveal that they are government agents. That exemption currently applies only to law enforcement officials working on criminal cases and to the CIA, which is prohibited from operating in the United States.' Kinda adds a whole new meaning to 'We want you!', or should it be 'We want all your secrets'?"

Comments

Re:This is the part I like best.

[ahdeoz]

I'll bet there weren't any real muslim women there, and I'll guarantee that there was seditious activity there.

An honest man...

[u-238]

Has nothing to hide.

You would think the destruction of two sky scrapers and the death of over 3000 would knock some sense of reality into all ye ACLU zealots.

Need they drop a nuke or dirty bomb before such methods of interrogation is accepted? They're likely to be whats next, anyway.

Hard to pathom any American, even the most fanatic left idealist, could prioritize an intangible 'right' over the lives of thousands, if not millions.

Re:A soldier isn't a police officer...

[Master of Transhuman]

"Simply put, if you find a spy, you can shoot them."

They did - in Falluja - after which they burned the bodies. Somehow that pissed the US off despite the fact that it was perfectly correct behavior so we killed another 800-1000 civilians.

"What is the point of having a military if not to defend our own soil?" If you spent more time on our soil, I might agree with you. Iraq is not your soil, and the US military has no business being there as there was absolutely NO threat to the US from Iraq (unless you count Saddam's insults).

Not to mention Afghanistan from whom there was also absolutely NO threat (Al Qaeda is not Afghanistan, despite whatever harboring they may have received there.)

The US military is a disaster waiting to happen. The troops are poorly trained, the officers incompetent, the budgets FAR out of line with effectiveness, and its members are patsies and suckers for whoever is in power and for whatever nonsensical, illegal, and irrational "foreign policy" is being used to cover up naked grabs for money and power.

I spent three years in the US Army during Vietnam because I was too stupid to desert to Canada, but not so stupid that I would allow myself to be drafted and forced to become infantry fodder.

A soldier is a moron. A soldier is not a warrior.

And every US soldier in Iraq deserves exactly what he is getting there.

And when the final conflict between the Iraqi Hawza and the US comes to pass (when Sistani finally realizes the US has no intention of leaving ever), the Iraqi people will DESTROY the US military handing it the worst defeat in US history (unless Sistani grants them a truce to allow them to evacuate).

And we want these morons doing investigative work in the US - outside of the courts' control and outside of the methods and procedures developed by law enforcement to deal with the community?

Hardly.

This is just another naked Rumsfeld power grab. Colonel Hackworth was totally correct when he desribed Rumsfeld as an "arrogant asshole".

Re:after a declaration of war? What in hell is 9/1

[Master of Transhuman]

A minor act of terrorism far smaller than the terrorism conducted by the US in the Phillipines
and elsewhere - including Iraq and Afghanistan.

"War" is a conflict between state (and perhaps ethnic) actors.

"Terrorism" is not "war" (except in the sense that all conflict between groups is "war") and cannot be combated by (conventional) "war". It can only be combatted by a combination of counterintelligence and policy change. Remove the reasons for the support of terrorists by populations and you can then remove the terrorists who are then by definition limited in number. Any other approach is counterproductive.

NOTHING the US has done since 9/11 has had any significant effect on the ability of terrorists to function against the US or the rest of the world. See the Google news page on any given day for this obvious fact. Ergo, use of the military and the rhetoric of "war" to combat terrorism has been an abject failure.