private companies and domestic spying

In my disturbing vision of the future, private security firms would snoop on U.S. citizens and get paid millions and millions in tax money for doing it. The U.S. military would enforce civilian laws. Private security companies and the military would join together in collaboration, the security companies doing the dirty work, hiding behind hard to trace corporate accountability, and the military would do the brute force stuff, coordinate the data collected, and keep everything secret crying National Security all the way.

But the future is here according to this story from Knight Ridder. The story was picked up by papers all over the country today and yesterday.

I somehow missed out on the story's background, which includes a Republican congressman in California getting 8 years in prison for involvement in a bribery scandal, a shadowy private contractor, MZM Inc, the briber, which was also hired by the Whitehouse and the Pentagon for "intellegence services," and yet another secret branch of the U.S. military, "CIFA," AKA the Pentagon's Joint Counter-Intelligence Field Activity. And this is wrapped up with high tech surveilance and spying on peaceful anit-war protesters. The whole shebang was intended to help prevent attacks from foreign adversaries- but was of course used to spy on U.S. citizens. Oh yes and the owner of the private security contractor, a Mitchell Wade, may get upto 20 years in prison for bribing the CA congressman, Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Oh yes, and our pal Bush in Washington has been doing business with this scum all along paying our tax money for unkown "intellegence services."