Be careful what you say…and what you hear…and what you write…and what you read.

You just never know who might be watching and listening. Chances are, someone located at “Crypto City” in Fort Meade, Maryland might just be paying attention. Fort Meade is the location of NSA (National Security Agency) headquarters, a huge, hidden complex of over fifty buildings midway between D.C. and Baltimore. An estimated 38,000 people work for this super-secret signal intelligence agency, made infamous (most recently) by President Bush’s domestic spying (oops, I meant Terrorist Surveillance) program. The NSA was at one time so secretive, that insiders used to joke that NSA stood for “No Such Agency”.

President Truman established the NSA in 1952, under total secrecy. The idea was to have all signal intelligence centralized into one agency. Only a few members of Congress knew of it’s existence, and no one outside this new agency really knew what they were doing. Not much has changed in 54 years. While the government no longer denies that such an agency exists, nobody outside the walls of “Crypto City” really knows what this agency is up to. This month’s issue of “The Atlantic” magazine has an excellent article on the NSA. I highly recommend reading it. (If anyone wants the article e-mailed to them, let me know.)

What it boils down to is that we are reaching a point where the NSA can intercept EVERY SINGLE ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION into, out of, and within the U.S., and much of the rest of the world. In recent years, and with the advent of modern communication technology, the NSA’s ability to gather signal intelligence has exploded. And the NSA has not developed this incredible capability on its own. They’ve had help. Many of the telecommunications companies have been complicit in the effort to make sure that Big Brother hears, sees, and knows everything. Local calls, long distance calls, international calls, cellular calls, e-mails, faxes, you name it. If it goes through a wire, or via satellite, or via fiber optic line, chances are, the NSA can intercept it.

Many people will not be surprised by this, myself included. Many will say, “it’s no big deal, I’ve got nothing to hide.” And while that may be true, it’s no reason not to be concerned. People have been placed on watch lists because they’ve done legitimate business with entities that the government “suspects” are illegitimate. People have been red flagged because they’ve made the mistake of using the wrong combination of words in an innocent e-mail. As a matter of fact, I’m willing to bet that this blog will get a hit from Fort Meade or Langley because I had the audacity to use the words “Fort Meade”, “Terrorist”, “exploded”, and “NSA” in the same post.

Now don’t get me wrong. I do believe that the U.S. intelligence community should have the capability to protect U.S. interests through the use of signal intelligence. And like many others who have had generous doses of Ian Fleming, Robert Ludlum and the like over the years, there’s a certain part of me that thinks this stuff is just “too cool.” But the fact remains that the system of oversight that was set up in the mid-seventies, in the wake of Watergate, is simply broken. It is broken by an Executive Branch that doesn’t feel that the laws apply to them. It is broken by the effective abdication of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, whose job it is to rein in the abuses and over-reaching by this, and other intelligence agencies. And as long as that system is broken, a “free society” as we know it, is in serious jeopardy.

The “Church Committee”, set up in the mid-seventies by Idaho Dem. Sen. Frank Church, investigated some of the abuses by the NSA, as well as the Nixon White House. Church’s panel was responsible for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, and the establishment of the FISA court, which rules on any warrant requests by the NSA and other intelligence agencies. The work of this committee has really been the only serious scrutiny of the past, and potential future abuses, of this secretive agency.

In 1975, Sen. Church made a very prophetic statement regarding the future advancement of the NSA’s technology. He said the NSA’s capabilities “could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such [is] the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it is done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capacity of this technology.” Church further commented: “I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge… I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that [the National Security Agency] and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”

It’s almost as if Sen. Church read Pres. Bush’s script, over thirty years ago. Too bad nobody in Congress really heeded his warning. So do be careful about what you say, and hear, and write, and read. As for what you think… I’m sure they’re working on that one too.