The FBI Reloads

Nothing is new in the United States if it’s spying on its citizenry. When the regime of George W. Bush introduced the Patriot Act under the pretext of the War on Terror, the intelligence agencies expanded beyond any semblance of protection of the civil rights of U.S. citizens. But it was thought that Bush’s departure from the White House would bring an end to the excesses.

However, in mid-February, the House of Representatives — with its Republican majority — voted 275 to 144 in favor of extending for nine more months three provisions of the Patriot Act that were due to expire on Feb. 28. These would give federal investigators the ability to: obtain communication records of terrorism suspects; follow foreigners suspected of acting as “lone wolves” plotting attacks; and access certain business records.

The Senate version is expected to pass, although not in a form some Republicans would prefer. Chuck Grassley (a Republican from Iowa) wanted to extend these provisions indefinitely … and to never revise their formulation.

In any case, the persecution of citizens is a constant in the U.S., despite its hyped liberty and democracy. Just a couple of days before this vote, Obama’s Department of Justice made clear that the FBI, in reality the political police of the empire, could obtain phone records of international calls placed in the U.S. without the mediation of any legal process.

This was revealed by the media group, McClatchy, which apparently obtained a copy of a secret FBI memo that raised the possibility that the agency’s abuses in this regard were ongoing, despite having supposedly been terminated in 2006.

So the Obama administration has continued Bush’s controversial tactics and strategies that allowed the FBI to monitor thousands of international phone calls over many years, according to the McClatchy article.

And here’s something interesting: evidence of collusion with private companies. The FBI maintains an informal system in which it solicits and receives telephone records from three major telecommunications firms, with which it has created what one agent called a “telephone database on steroids,” and which includes names, addresses, information about pay stubs, and services used by customers in certain circumstances or “emergencies.” This is obtained with the companies acting voluntarily and without any legal process.

In addition, this procedure can also be used for email, so whether you’re laughing or crying about privacy concerns, the FBI is laughing at its own citizens and the whole world.

In the end, the FBI continues its long history of espionage and abuse of U.S. citizens, which has become especially famous since its establishment last century when it was directed for decades by the shadowy and feared John Edgar Hoover.

As I said, the FBI is reloading, and nothing is new in the U.S. police state. There are also data security firms developing plans against WikiLeaks, for example, including cyber attacks, misinformation and other aggressive tactics. But this is just another aspect of the methods of the police state and its private partners.