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Mystery of FBI Documents Posted To US Press In 1971 Solved
AHuxley writes "A team of eight antiwar activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania and removed at least 1000 documents. Once removed and sorted, the bulk of the files showed FBI spying on U.S. political groups. COINTELPRO had been found. 43 years later five of the participants have come forward."
That's not the only reason they monitor everyone.
If you're building up a dossier on absolutely everybody, then you can usethe information in that dossier whenever you want to.
For example, let's say WanderCat decided to run for political office, and part of his/her platform was "Stop the NSA from spying on everyone." Now, up until now, WanderCat hasn't been interesting enough to monitor, but now, in order to protect "America" (i.e. the national security state), the NSA will want to go through everything that WanderCat has ever said or done that they know about and make sure that anything potentially embarrassing is released via a friendly journalist willing to quote the source anonymously.
That means that the only people that can actually stop the NSA from doing what they're doing are those so squeaky-clean that they won't want to.
I am officially gone from