Ellington

Some stories get ignored by the mainstream media because they're too controversial, or too much of a challenge to the rich and powerful, or just too hot to handle.

But some stories get dismissed because they're just not credible – and unfortunately, one of the pieces Project Censored cites this year appears to fall into that category.

Almost everything on the Project Censored list is well sourced and, at the very least, plausible. But one of the stories listed under "Surveillance Society Quietly Moves In" is a piece titled "Where Big Brother Snoops on Americans 24/7." Written by Teresa Hampton and Doug Thompson, the piece was published on http://www.capitolhillblue.com, a Virginia Web site that's been around since 1994.

The piece makes some pretty spectacular allegations. Hampton and Thompson claim not only that the Pentagon is defying Congress and covertly operating the notorious Total Information Awareness program (TIA) (which Congress explicitly killed), but also that the feds now monitor "virtually every financial transaction of every American," in real time (that is, as it's happening). They also maintain that the Pentagon uses the information to launch investigations of "persons of interest" and as a basis for adding names to the Transportation Security Administration's "no fly" lists.

It's pretty far-fetched to think that the Pentagon could run an operation so vast as to review almost every financial transaction in the country as it happens. But beyond that, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed two suits against the feds trying to pinpoint just how it collates TSA's "no fly" lists and still hasn't been able to figure it out.

The principal sources Hampton and Thompson base their story on seem to be an anonymous "security consultant who worked on the ... project" and an "Allen Banks" – someone identified simply as a "security expert," without any detail as to who he is or how he would be privy to such information.

Thompson, who is the site's publisher, defended the accuracy of the story, saying that he'd spoken with "over 30 sources" – police, banks, credit card agencies – and that he reached his conclusions based on those sources as well as on the fact that there were "too many coincidences." (None of that is explained in the story.)

"To some extent," he added, "it was a conclusion by me, looking at the links." Banks and other private industries had been instructed to e-mail data to the feds under TIA, and they continued sending data to the same places after TIA was killed, because they never received orders to stop, Thompson said. His caveat: "If I had to go into court and prove this, there's no way I could prove it."

We're still dubious.

Previous Comments

ID

78972

Comment

Story #8 (on Iraqi farmers and bioengineered food) also seems suspicious to me. I'm in favor of government-approved genetically engineered fruits and vegetables--I would have no reservations about eating them myself--and they have saved literally hundreds of millions of lives over the past 30 years. It's also not at all clear to me how the initiative is supposed to prevent Iraqi farmers from choosing to grow local crops if they prefer to do so. I would be the first to say that the conservative media has done a lousy job of criticizing the actions of this administration, but this is not the first time Project Censorship has been less than self-critical in the way it reports this stuff. Cheers, TH

Author

Tom Head

Date

2005-10-05T17:46:19-06:00

ID

78973

Comment

TIA was killed, but I think Foxnews (of all people) reported that the project was continued, being parted out to different agencies. Here is a link to Epic's "Terrorist (total) Information Awareness". Seems they're keeping track of it. How much of this is actually active or not is open to debate, but I think being paranoid isn't out of the question given the governments history.

Author

Ironghost

Date

2005-10-12T08:03:34-06:00