Jason Schaeffer (v 1.3773)

John Paczkowski’s article today “We’re Calling it ‘Omnivore’ in memory of ‘Carnivore’ “ on allthingsD was interesting in its coverage of the FBI’s attempts to hook into the internet backbone for security and monitoring.  The NSA is supposedly doing this according to numerous publications and books on the subject of domestic spying, war on terror, etc.

Bringing awareness to the monitoring of the internet is nothing new…but always valuable for our promotion and understanding of democracy, freedom and promulgation of a transparent society.

I recently read two interesting books that cover shades of this theme as they relate to the ‘war on terror’.  Ron Suskind’s “The One Percent Doctrine” discusses the public debate over this administration’s views of war and peace and sharing of information.  James Risen takes alot of these issues to a higher plane with “State of War”.  He discusses the NSA activity and domestic spying and hypothesizes on the extent of the program. Both fascinating readings to understand and put into context alot of this internal/domestic ’spying” by government institutions.

Interesting to see how much privacy people are willing to forgo for safety, security and domestic review by defense?