By Michael Snyder ~ June 10th, 2013
Are you on the list? Are you one of the millions of Americans that
have been designated a threat to national security by the U.S.
government? Will you be subject to detention when martial law is
imposed during a major national emergency?
As you will see below, there is actually a list that contains the
names of at least 8 million Americans known as Main Core that the
U.S. intelligence community has been compiling since the 1980s. A
recent article on
Washingtons Blog quoted a couple of old magazine articles that
mentioned this program, and I was intrigued because I didnt know
what it was. So I decided to look into Main Core, and what I found
out was absolutely stunning especially in light of what Edward
Snowden has just revealed to the world.
It turns out that the
U.S. government is not just gathering information on all of us. The
truth is that the U.S. government has used this information to
create a list of threats to national security that the government
would potentially watch, question or even detain during a national
crisis. If you have ever been publicly critical of the government,
there is a very good chance that you are on that list.
The following is how Wikipedia
describes Main Core
“Main Core is the code name of a database maintained since the
1980s by the federal government of the United States. Main Core
contains personal and financial data of millions of U.S.
citizens believed to be threats to national security.
“The data,
which comes from the NSA, FBI, CIA, and other sources, is
collected and stored without warrants or court orders. The
databases name derives from the fact that it contains ‘copies
of the main core or essence of each item of intelligence
information on Americans produced by the FBI and the other
agencies of the U.S. intelligence community.
It was
Christopher Ketchum of Radar Magazine that first reported on the
existence of Main Core. At the time, the shocking information that
he revealed did not get that much attention. That is quite a shame,
because it should have sent shockwaves across the nation
“According to a senior government official who served with
high-level security clearances in five administrations, ‘There
exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and
most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a
time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify
and locate perceived enemies of the state almost
instantaneously.’
He and other sources tell Radar that the
database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core.
One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now
listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a
national emergency, these people could be subject to everything
from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning
and possibly even detention.
“Of course, federal law is somewhat vague as to what might
constitute a ‘national emergency.’ Executive orders issued over
the last three decades define it as a ‘natural disaster,
military attack, [or] technological or other emergency,’ while
Department of Defense documents include eventualities like
‘riots, acts of violence, insurrections, unlawful obstructions
or assemblages, [and] disorder prejudicial to public law and
order.’ According to one news report, even ‘national opposition
to U.S. military invasion abroad’ could be a trigger.”
So if that list contained 8 million names all the way back in
2008, how big might it be today?
That is a very frightening thing to think about.
Later on in 2008,
Tim Shorrock of Salon.com also reported on Main Core
“Dating back to the 1980s and known to government insiders as
‘Main Core,’ the database reportedly collects and stores
without warrants or court orders the names and detailed data
of Americans considered to be threats to national security.
“According to several former U.S. government officials with
extensive knowledge of intelligence operations, Main Core in its
current incarnation apparently contains a vast amount of
personal data on Americans, including NSA intercepts of bank and
credit card transactions and the results of surveillance efforts
by the FBI, the CIA and other agencies.
“One former intelligence
official described Main Core as ‘an emergency internal security
database system’ designed for use by the military in the event
of a national catastrophe, a suspension of the Constitution or
the imposition of martial law.”
So why didnt this information get more attention at the time?
Well, if Obama had lost the 2008 election it might have. But
Obama won in 2008 and the liberal media assumed that he would end
many of the abuses that were happening under Bush. Of course that
has not happened at all. In fact, Obama has steadily moved the
police state agenda ahead aggressively.
Edward Snowden has just made that abundantly clear to the entire
world.
After 2008, it is unclear exactly what happened to Main Core.
Did it expand, change names, merge with other programs or get
superseded by a new program? It appears extremely unlikely that it
simply faded away. In light of what we have just learned about NSA
snooping, someone should ask our politicians some very hard
questions about Main Core. According to
Christopher Ketchum, the exact kind of NSA snooping that Edward
Snowden has just described was being used to feed data into the Main
Core database
“A host of publicly disclosed programs, sources say, now
supply data to Main Core. Most notable are the NSA domestic
surveillance programs, initiated in the wake of 9/11, typically
referred to in press reports as ‘warrantless wiretapping.’
“In
March, a front-page article in the Wall Street Journal shed
further light onto the extraordinarily invasive scope of the NSA
efforts: According to the Journal, the government can now
electronically monitor ‘huge volumes of records of domestic
e-mails and Internet searches, as well as bank transfers, credit
card transactions, travel, and telephone records.’ Authorities
employ ‘sophisticated software programs’ to sift through the
data, searching for ‘suspicious patterns.’
“In effect, the
program is a mass catalog of the private lives of Americans. And
its notable that the article hints at the possibility of
programs like Main Core. ‘The [NSA] effort also ties into data
from an ad-hoc collection of so-called black programs whose
existence is undisclosed,’ the Journal reported, quoting unnamed
officials. ‘Many of the programs in various agencies began years
before the 9/11 attacks but have since been given greater
reach.’
The following information seems to be fair game for
collection without a warrant:
- the e-mail addresses you send to
and receive from, and the subject lines of those messages; - the
phone numbers you dial, the numbers that dial in to your line,
and the durations of the calls; - the Internet sites you visit and
the keywords in your Web searches; the destinations of the
airline tickets you buy; - the amounts and locations of your ATM
withdrawals; and the goods and services you purchase on credit
cards.
All of this information is archived on government
supercomputers and, according to sources, also fed into the Main
Core database.
And there have been hints that such a list still exists today.
For example, the testimony of an anonymous government insider
that was recently posted on shtfplan.com
alluded to such a list
’We know all this already,’ I stated. He looked at me, giving
me a look like Ive never seen, and actually pushed his finger
into my chest. ‘You dont know jack,’ he said, ‘this is bigger
than you can imagine, bigger than anyone can imagine. This
administration is collecting names of sources, whistle
blowers and their families, names of media sources and everybody
they talk to and have talked to, and they already have a huge
list. If youre not working for MSNBC or CNN, youre probably on
that list. If you are a website owner with a brisk readership
and a conservative bent, youre on that list. Its a political
dissident list, not an enemy threat list,’ he stated.”
What in the world is happening to America?
What in the world are we turning into?
As I mentioned in a previous article, the NSA gathers
2.1 million gigabytes of data on all of us every single hour.
The NSA is currently constructing a
2 billion dollar data center out in Utah to store all of this
data.
If you are disturbed by all of this, now is the time to stand up
and say something. If this crisis blows over and people forget
about all of this stuff again, the Big Brother surveillance grid
that is being constructed all around us will just continue to grow
and continue to become even more oppressive.
America is dying right in front of your eyes and time is running
out. Please stand up and be counted while you still can.