via Drudge: Hello 1984
December 15, 2005
Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in U.S. After 9/11, Officials Say
By JAMES RISENand ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 ­- Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.
Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.
1984 from Wikipedia: The novel introduced the concepts of the ever-present, all-seeing Big Brother, the notorious Room 101, the ubiquitous Thought Police, and the bureaucrats' and politicians' language Newspeak. Some commentators have drawn parallels between today's society and the world of 1984, suggesting that we are starting to live in what has become known as Orwellian society.
- posted by Jasper @ 5:16 AM