Mr. Klein was responsible for maintaining Internet switching equipment near the secret room, and said he was stunned to discover that special “splitter” equipment had been installed in his area to route copies of all Internet traffic diverted through his lines into the secret room. “What I saw is that everything’s flowing across the Internet to this government-controlled room,” he said. Later, Mr. Klein obtained three AT&T documents that he said revealed the computer and equipment design for the room — documents that the company maintains he kept improperly after leaving AT&T in 2004. Those designs, according to Mr. Klein and other telecommunications specialists who have reviewed them, would give the security agency. the ability to sift and reroute international and domestic communications and data from the AT&T lines to another site. “The physical apparatus gives them everything,” Mr. Klein said, adding, “A lot of this was domestic.”

"The fate of prisoners secreted away under the Bush administration is in some ways worse than even Hollywood has portrayed. [...] Within days it emerged that el-Masri was indeed the wrong man. It was a "100 percent case of mistaken identity," said another former agency official. Yet, despite this discovery, el-Masri spent 18 weeks in solitary confinement in a CIA "black site," or secret prison used by the United States in its war on terror. [...] In the course of investigating the rendition program for the past four years, I have interviewed victims, CIA pilots, case officers who have actually carried out renditions, senior CIA officers who directed such operations and officials at the White House who were involved in authorizing such measures. All of these sources told me in private or on the record that repeated claims by the White House that we "don't send people to countries where they will be tortured" are plain lies. [...] Inside its own "black site" prisons, the CIA uses interrogation methods that -- while falling short of the medieval techniques used in the Arab world -- still, in the eyes of many within the agency, amount to straightforward torture. [...] Physical torture, like the beatings he later endured, could be overcome, he said, but psychological torture "lives with you all your life." [...] Most of the terrorist suspects involved remain in custody and cannot talk. [...] Recently, by refusing to hear the lawsuit of Khaled el-Masri, the U.S. Supreme Court has added to this veil of secrecy. [...] As long as a terror suspect remains a "ghost prisoner" whose location and fate can only be guessed at, then a prison guard or interrogator need feel little fear of the consequences of what he or she might do. Secrecy is a friend of the torturer."

Ja, auch in den USA nehmen die Gefährder von Verfassung und Menschenrechten für sich in Anspruch, dass es ja keine "Denkverbote" geben dürfe. So auch Mukasey, Kandidat für den Posten des Attorney General in den USA. Als "unabhängiges" Denken wird dort bezeichnet, dass er Folter total prima (= lebensnotwendig) findet. Demnach waren Hitler und Stalin vermutlich echte Freigeister und hervorragende, kritische und unabhängig denkende Intellektuelle.

"The question of whether waterboarding constitutes torture is a no-brainer. Our nation and many others have recognized for decades that it does. One doesn't have to have been "read into" the details of a classified program, as President Bush has suggested, to reach a judgment about this interrogation technique. [...] If we were to legitimize cruelty -- as those who espouse waterboarding would wish us to do -- we would do violence to the concept of inalienable and inviolable personal rights. The protection afforded by law to core human dignity would be shattered, with incalculable damage to our nation's deepest values, founding principles and constitutional order."

"Michael Hochgeschwender, der in München amerikanische Kulturgeschichte lehrt, macht ein Fragezeichen hinter dieses bedrohlich wirkende Bild US-amerikanischer "Fundamentalismen". In seinem Essay räumt er überzeugend mit den allzu pauschalen europäischen Urteilen über den Antimodernismus amerikanischer Religiosität auf. [...] Hochgeschwender gelingt es, anhand mikrogeschichtlicher Darstellungen, den Beitrag der seit dem 18. Jahrhundert wellenartig auftretenden Erweckungsbewegungen zur Modernisierung und zur Herausbildung der amerikanischen Gesellschaft zu beleuchten und damit zugleich der (auch politischen) Vielfalt der Evangelikalismen gerecht zu werden. [...] Ohne das Great Awakening des Jahres 1740, bei dem die Masse der Siedler von einem überkonfessionellen und antiinstitutionellen religiösen Enthusiasmus erfüllt war, der die lebendige Teilhabe eines jeden "Wiedergeborenen" einklagte, hätten die Konzepte der Revolutionäre nicht umgesetzt werden können. Aus diesem Miteinander erwuchs sowohl die Abschaffung des Staatskirchentums als auch die Sanktionierung religiöser Pluralität und nicht zuletzt die Geburt der amerikanischen Zivilreligion. Der Autor greift nicht zu hoch, wenn er "im zweiten Awakening des 19. Jahrhunderts die schlechthin folgenreichste religiöse Bewegung in der US-amerikanischen Geschichte" sieht. Von der zweiten Welle egalitärer Religiosität wurde die Wahlrechtsreform ebenso mitgetragen wie die Frauenemanzipation und - nicht zuletzt - die Anti-Sklavereibewegung. Zugleich erwiesen sich bereits damals die marktgerichteten, heilsuniversalistischen Religionsgemeinschaften als äußerst kreativ bei der irdischen Herstellung einer Nation upon a Hill. Immer wieder betont Hochgeschwender, wie modern und antirestaurativ die frühen Erweckungsbewegungen in ihren Antworten auf die Transformationskrisen der Moderne waren und wie spät sich erst die heute alles überschattende Allianz von New Right und Neofundamentalismus herausgebildet hat."

"The nation's centralized watch list has grown to include 755,000 names suspected of having terrorist ties, resulting in nearly 20,000 positive matches of persons against the list in 2006, according to a new report from Congress's investigative reporting arm. Since the list is now used in nearly all routine police stops and for domestic airline travel, Americans made up the bulk of those matches."

"From the company that brought you the C programming language comes Hancock, a C variant developed by AT&T researchers to mine gigabytes of the company's telephone and internet records for surveillance purposes. [...] With Hancock, "analysts could store sufficiently precise information to enable new applications previously thought to be infeasible," the program authors wrote. AT&T uses Hancock code to sift 9 GB of telephone traffic data a night, according to the paper. [...] Another sample program included in the manual shows how a Hancock program could create historical maps of a person's travels by recording nightly what cell phone towers a person's phone had used or pinged throughout a day."

"Mitte der 80'er Jahre führten Forscher in Harvard und Yale eine Untersuchung der Heiratsgewohnheiten in den USA in Abhängigkeit von der Alterstruktur durch und kamen zu dem Schluss, dass eine 40-jährige unverheiratete Frau nur eine Chance von 1,3 % hat, noch irgendwann zu heiraten. Diese Geschichte wurde dann groß in der Presse aufgegriffen und führte weltweit zu einer Debatte über die "Heiratskrise" der Baby-Boom-Frauen. Dieses Thema passte exakt zur antifeministisch-konservativen Haltung jener Zeit [...]. Später wurde auch die Zahl von "1,3 %" angezweifelt. Die Daten der Volkszählung von 1980 wurden noch einmal untersucht und man kam zu dem Ergebnis, dass die Wahrscheinlichkeit für einen 40-jährigen weiblichen Single, noch zu heiraten, zwischen 17 und 23% lag. Die Harvard/Yale-Untersuchung war fehlerhaft gewesen. Wer hätte das von Elite-Unis erwartet? Und was für eine monströse und den Zeitgeist massiv beeinflußende Desinformations-Kampagne wurde daraus von den Medien gemacht."

"A key Democratic congressman accused ExxonMobil last week of pushing junk science intended to fool the public into believing Alaskan polar bears are not in danger. The U.S. Geological Survey recently concluded that climate change and other factors would reduce the global polar bear population by two thirds by 2050, and wipe out the Alaskan polar bear population entirely. Newer research has indicated that could happen even more quickly. But a new scientific paper, funded in part by ExxonMobil, called some of that research into question [...]. Environmentalists have for years pushed the federal government to categorize the animal as "threatened," which would afford it increased environmental protections. That could complicate petroleum companies' efforts to develop oil and gas operations in Alaska [...]."

"Lawmakers are advancing efforts to curtail energy giant Chevron's activities in Myanmar, which are said to provide significant financial support for the ruling military junta. [...] Much of the ruling junta's financial support comes from the royalties and other revenue paid by Chevron and the other members of the gas operation. The group paid more than $2 billion to the Myanmar government last year, according to the group Human Rights Watch. [...] On Tuesday, the House Foreign Relations Committee unanimously approved a bill by its chairman, Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., that would bar the firm from paying taxes to the government of Myanmar, or write off expenses relating to the project from its U.S. tax bill. The legislation now moves to two other committees for approval, before it is voted on by the full House."