I want to start out this article by pointing out an error in my earlier writing about the links between the new Protect America Act and lawsuits brought to expose the National Security Agency’s resurrection of the Total Information Awareness program. I had reported that the Protect America Act gave exclusive power to execute and scrutinize electronic surveillance operations to just two people within the federal government: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and National Director of Intelligence John Negroponte. What I got wrong is that John Negroponte left the position of National Director of Intelligence earlier this year, and was replaced by a man named John Michael McConnell. So, it’s actually Alberto Gonzales and John Michael McConnell who have the sole power now to operate and scrutinize electronic surveillance. No one else, not the judicial branch and not Congress, has the power under the Protect America Act to stop them.

From what I’m reading about John Michael McConnell, I’m actually more worried about the Total Information Awareness link to the Protect America Act than if John Negroponte were still Director of National Intelligence. You see, back in the first part of this decade, John Michael McConnell worked as a Vice President at a company called Booz Allen Hamilton. In that position, he got 63 million dollars in government contracts for Booz Allen Hamilton for work on the Total Information Awareness projects.

Specifically, the Total Information Awareness work that John Michael McConnell got for Booz Allen Hamilton was for data mining. Data mining is the process through which small bits of information are gathered and then put together in order to build more meaningful profiles of people. Considered separately, the bits of information are not powerful. Put together, however, all the tiny pieces of information assembled through a data mining program like the one McConnell led for Total Information Awareness can track people’s activities in great detail.

Now, as Director of National Intelligence, John Michael McConnell is one of only two people in the entire federal government who are entrusted with approval and oversight of electronic surveillance dragnets that sweep up huge amounts of information about what law-abiding Americans are doing on the Internet, with their cell phones, and with their land line telephones.

The Protect America Act gives the one of the prime architects of the early Total Information Awareness program to spy on Americans the power to put the program into action, and to make it untouchable by Congress, the courts, or anybody else.

The only other person who has any oversight of the spy program legalized by the Protect America Act is Alberto Gonzales, who has been caught using his position for partisan political gain, committing perjury, and withholding information from Congress.

The two people in the Bush Administration who are least worthy of trust have just been handed tremendous power to spy against our private online activities. What’s more, many Democrats in the House and Senate actually voted in favor of this unprecedented expansion of power.

Some people, like Democratic Party insider Stuart Rothenberg, say that it doesn’t really matter, and that Democratic voters will just get over it and learn to love Big Brother.

Please, don’t let Stuart Rothenberg speak for you. Do the research. Pay attention to the details about the Protect America Act. Then, hold your members of Congress accountable. Dog them. Let them know that you won’t stop speaking out until the Protect America Act is repealed, and the Total Information Awareness program is permanently shut down.