Christopher H. Pyle teaches constitutional law and civil liberties at Mount Holyoke and is the author of an op-ed article in the Hartford Courant. He has first hand experience and information about his topic.

Read what he has to say about Poindexter and the Pentagon's proposed Total Information Awareness (TIA) program --the title of his op-ed is Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid, of Spying by the U.S. Army. (via Buzzflash).

First, as background:

"This isn’t the first time that the military has slipped the bounds of law to spy on civilians. In the late 1960s, it secretly collected personal information on more than a million law-abiding Americans in a misguided effort to quell anti-war demonstrations, predict riots and discredit protesters. I know because in 1970, as a former captain in Army intelligence, I disclosed the existence of that program."

Here's what Pyle says about Poindexter's plan:

"Under Poindexter’s plan, the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, headquartered at Fort Belvoir, Va., will use high-powered computers to secretly search the e-mail messages, credit-card purchases, phone records and bank statements of hundreds of thousands of people on the chance that they might be associated with, or sympathetic to, terrorists."

"Much of INSCOM’S information will be sent to the Army’s new Northern Command, which is supposed to provide perimeter security, crowd control and technical assistance to civilian agencies in the aftermath of terrorist attacks. Nothing in the Northern Command’s mission requires it to keep dossiers on anti-war demonstrators or Muslim Americans, but the Northern Command expects to receive so many reports on individual terrorists and their sympathizers that it is planning to employ 150 people just to read them."

"The scale of this operation suggests that the Army is not just preparing to clear streets, defuse bombs and provide emergency services. It’s too early to tell how far the Army will actually go with its plans, but it is not too early to start asking questions."