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The US Defense Department is expanding domestic intelligence collection in ways that could allow it to circumvent barriers to military spying on US citizens, the Washington Post reported Sunday. Formerly focused on protecting its US bases and military operations, Pentagon intelligence collection inside the United States has already expanded to cover broader terrorist threats to the country, the Post said. However, proposed moves to further expand the military's domestic intelligence activities in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, have sparked worries among politicians and civil liberties advocates that such activities could go out of control, the newspaper said. "We are deputizing the military to spy on law-abiding Americans in America. This is a huge leap without even a (congressional) hearing," Senator Ron Wyden told the daily. According to the Post, the White House is now considering expanding a secret Pentagon security agency into one which could investigate a range of domestic crimes, for which the government has used the FBI in the past. The little-known Counterintelligence Field Activity has a secret budget but is believed to already have 1,000 people on its staff, the paper said. A recent high-level presidential commission "urged that CIFA be given authority to carry out domestic criminal investigations and clandestine operations against potential threats inside the United States," the Post said. CIFA's expansion would build on post-9/11 efforts to break down data-sharing barriers between the domestic intelligence operations of the FBI and its international counterpart, the CIA. Lack of information-sharing by the FBI, CIA, and the Pentagon was a factor in the success of the suicide attacks by Al-Qaeda operatives on New York and Washington in 2001. All rights reserved. © 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse. Related Links SpaceWar Search SpaceWar Subscribe To SpaceWar Express 
K-State Professor's Research Could Possibly Identify 'Face' Of Terrorism
Manhattan KN (SPX) Nov 15, 2005Grumpy, sleepy, happy and bashful may sound like the names of some of the vertically-challenged mine workers from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," but to a Kansas State University professor, they could also be the facial expressions of potential terrorists guarding their plans. |
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