Key paragraph:

The Transporation Security Administration rolled out a program this week to put what they call "Visible Intermodal Protection and Response" (VIPR) teams into municipal transportation systems around the country to conduct "anti-terror surveillance" among the general population -- without their knowing it.
...
...many of the municipalities where the VIPRs deployed are reporting that they received little or no notice that the VIPRs would be slithering through their public transit systems.

Full commentary at: VIPRs Among Us?

This stuff is just extraordinary rendition scarey.

From yesterday's WaPo:

The NSA activities were justified by a classified Justice Department legal opinion authored by John C. Yoo, a former deputy in the Office of Legal Counsel who argued that congressional approval of the war on al Qaeda gave broad authority to the president, according to the Times.

"FBI" looks to be a typo here, by Susan, but I'm still wondering about this passage in the same article:

Public disclosure of the NSA program also comes at a time of mounting concerns about civil liberties over the domestic intelligence operations of the U.S. military, which have also expanded dramatically after the Sept. 11 attacks.

For more than four years, the NSA tasked other military intelligence agencies to assist its broad-based surveillance effort directed at people inside the country suspected of having terrorist connections, even before Bush signed the 2002 order that authorized the NSA program, according to an informed U.S. official.

my emphasis

The wording here is vague, but raises a number of questions. What agencies were "tasked" by the NSA to do domestic surveillance? Were these agencies operating within the bounds of FISA and obtaining warrants, or acting outside the law as well? "For more than four years:" ok, so since (or before?) 1998. Was this a reaction to the Africa embassy bombings that year (I mistakenly suggested the 2000 Cole incident yesterday on BM's diary)? If these agencies were acting without warrants, what authority was operative? It's hard to imagine the Clinton administration going along w/ any of this.

". . . the more educated you are, the more indoctrinated you are. After all, propaganda is largely directed towards the privileged." -Noam Chomsky