I have mixed emotions on the following Washington Post article, Top Secret America. On the one hand, I'm more than happy to increase our surveillance of muslim activities inside and outside of America. After all, they're the ones perpetrating hideous acts of terrorism against our country. On the other hand, this appears to be overkill by a factor of twenty, and assets and activities on this magnitude invevitably end up being used against regular American citizens to quell political dissent.

Are you paying attention Tea Partiers? I sure do hope so...

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/

A hidden world, growing beyond control

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

The investigation's other findings include:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances....