Feds Warrantlessly Tracking Americans’ Credit Cards in Real Time

The most painful part of this article to me is this one quote:<p>"The Justice Department did not return a call for comment."<p>Our own government is, once again, not holding itself accountable to the people or the fourth estate. Is it any wonder then that organizations like WikiLeaks exist that perform the function that the fourth estate is failing in?<p>(EDIT: Yes, I realize that WikiLeaks mission is somewhat different from the fourth estate but even so.)

Having worked for a bank, I'm shocked that they managed to build a product that offers no business value but requires actual technical expertise to implement.<p>Now that I think about it... it's probably an Excel spreadsheet...

"For credit cards, agents can get real-time information on a person’s purchases by writing their own subpoena, followed up by a order from a judge that the surveillance not be disclosed."<p>The information was in a Power Point presentation Chris Soghoian FOIA'ed. Good reporting once again by Ryan Singel.

What really upsets me about ALL these things is that it seems highly unlikely any of these privacy violations would have caught any known terrorists, foreign or domestic.<p>It's just lazy law enforcement covering itself so it has an after-the-fact method to hunt people down easily, just like all the security cameras in the UK are not to actively prevent crime, but just to have a trail afterwards.

It would seem that this makes it significantly easier to stay under the radar -- simply set up your credit cards to suggest a very normal life and then use cash for any illicit activities.<p>And, if a group of people (such as a terrorist cell) wanted to, it would be easy to deliberately create a paper trail to mislead authorities.

Hmm, makes me want to use cash for everything, but then I'd have to pay an assload in ATM fees.

It seems like we are waking up to a bad dream that the US government is increasing the Skynet in the Terminator movies..<p>They track you, bug you, infiltrate , and than order drones to bomb the heck out of you..<p>The sad thing is its not the Government's fault. We as voters let this happen in not opposing the interests of the Military-Industrial-Financial complex with real votes on the issues..