Under the guise of "cybersecurity," the new all-purpose bogeyman to increase the secret state's already-formidable reach, the Obama administration and their congressional allies are crafting legislation that will open new backdoors for even more intrusive government surveillance: portals into our lives that will never be shut.
As Antifascist Calling has frequently warned, with the endless "War on Terror" as a backdrop the federal government, most notably the 16 agencies that comprise the so-called "Intelligence Community" (IC), have been constructing vast centralized databases that scoop-up and store all things digital--from financial and medical records to the totality of our electronic communications online--and do so without benefit of a warrant or probable cause.
The shredding of constitutional protections afforded by the Fourth Amendment, granted to the Executive Branch by congressional passage of the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) after the 9/11 attacks, followed shortly thereafter by the oxymoronic USA Patriot Act set the stage for today's depredations.
Under provisions of multiple bills under consideration by the House and Senate, federal officials will be given broad authority over private networks that will almost certainly hand security officials wide latitude over what is euphemistically called "information-sharing" amongst corporate and government securocrats.
As The Washington Post reported in February, the National Security Agency "has pushed repeatedly over the past year to expand its role in protecting private-sector computer networks from cyberattacks" but has allegedly "been rebuffed by the White House, largely because of privacy concerns."
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