Free Republic

Original Article: Accused Terrorist on Trial in Jordan Attended Classes at Sac State; Initiation to Terrorism May Have Started in Sacramento, According to Published Reports. Layla Bohm State Hornet (Student Newspaper) November 27, 2001 Former Sacramento State student Raed Hijazi at his trial in Jordan Nov. 26. Hijazi pleaded innocent to nine charges stemming from a plot to execute terrorist attacks on America and Israel during Millenium celebrations in December 1999. Courtesy Photo/A He was a typical California student. Born in San Jose Dec. 3, 1968, Raed Hijazi eventually attended Sacramento City College, took a Sacramento State extension course...

<p>Congress has pulled the plug on a data-mining computer program criticized by privacy advocates as a supersnoop system to spy on American citizens and is closing the Pentagon office that created it.</p> <p>"The outcome is we are not going to have Americans picked up by their ankles and turned upside down then shaken to see if anything funny falls out," said Sen. Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat and leading opponent of the office's activities.</p>

Information Awareness Office Makes Us a Nation of Suspects by Charles V. Peña November 22, 2002Charles V. Peña is senior defense policy analyst at the Cato Institute. Embedded in the nearly 500 pages of the current House version of the Homeland Security Act is language that could give the federal government sweeping powers to secretly monitor e-mails, bank accounts, credit card transactions, telephone calling cards, medical records, and travel documents – all without a search warrant – and keep that data in a centralized database. The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is already pursuing the creation of such...

While looking over my server logs today, I came across a blogger post about DARPA's Information Awareness Office. For those who don't know, this new DARPA agency was established in January to provide the U.S. with "total information awareness" in the wake of 9/11. Utilizing the full capabilities of Echelon technology and a sister organization called the Information Exploitation Office, the US foreign and domestic spying capabilities are akin to an "All-Seeing-Eye". In February the Guardian ran a story which said, "Think, Big Brother is Watching You. IAO will supply federal officials with 'instant' analysis on what is being written...