Surveillance CamerasTen Years Later:
Surveillance in the "Homeland"

A joint project between Truthout.org and ACLU

Ten years after the devastating attacks on New York and Washington, the fundamental promises of American democracy are hanging by a thin thread. Promoted by a culture of war and fear, the US government has steadily chipped away at those legal protections that enabled 'we the people' to rule ourselves. "Ten Years Later: Surveillance in the Homeland" charts the course of this shift, exposing the rapid advent of a technologically advanced surveillance state in the shadows of the Twin Towers.  Read the blog.



Surveillance

From fusion centers to license plate sharing technology, the expansion of surveillance methods has been a hallmark of the past ten years. Investigative journalists and privacy advocates consider just how far the surveillance state has expanded and what it's actually done for our security

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Immigration

Border security and 'homeland' security are integrally linked, both in the language used to justify their continuing growth and in the companies that profit off this growth. In this section, we look at private prison companies and their role in legislation, the introduction of biometric ID cards and how Islamophobia is used to fuel the war effort.

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FOIA

Freedom of Information Act requests are the bread and butter of investigative reporting, and here we compile what years of tireless requests by the ACLU have shed light on - including warrantless wiretapping, database sharing and the targeting of dissidents

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Targeting Dissent

Investigations

How little - yet how much - has changed in the last 40 years. The COINTELPRO papers sound distinctly 21st century as they detail the monitoring of perceived threats to "national security" by the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency (NSA), Secret Service, and the military, as well as the intelligence bureaucracy's war on First Amendment protest activity.  

The Church Committee investigation concluded in 1976 that the "unexpressed major premise of the programs was that a law enforcement agency has the duty to do whatever is necessary to combat perceived threats to the existing social and political order." In addition to massive surveillance, assassinations and dirty tricks "by any means necessary" included the creation of NSA "watch lists" of Americans ranging "from members of radical political groups, to celebrities, to ordinary citizens involved in protests against their government," with names submitted by the FBI, Secret Service, military, CIA, and Defense Intelligence Agency. The secret lists, which included people whose activities "may result in civil disturbances or otherwise subvert the national security of the US," were used by the NSA to extract information of "intelligence value" from its stream of intercepted communications.

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