Do you care that the NSA is on the front lines of the drug war?
by digby
Yesterday I posted a little tid-bit about the NSA proposing some years back to "re-think the 4th Amendment" in a once secret (now de-classified) document. I was reading it over again this morning and happened upon this little tid-bit:
So, for all those who worry about ham-stringing the government in its noble quest to protect us from the boogeyman, where exactly does this fit into the matrix of concerns? Are we all ok with the NSA doing secret surveillance of Americans' activities with a mandate to "stem the flow of narcotics into our country"?
Remember, this document was written long before any alleged terrorist plots featuring Mexican drug lords existed. This was about drug interdiction, period. That's not to say that in recent years the DEA and the National Security apparatus haven't pretty much merged under the umbrella of "narco-terrorism". But the NSA has been involved in the drug war for a very long time.
Is everyone comfortable with that, knowing what we know about how much information they're collecting?
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