Promises Fewer Dropped Calls in Exchange For 24-hour Surveillance
In a sign that the Bush administration intends to ratchet up its program of domestic surveillance, the Central Intelligence Agency today announced that it was offering what it called a "Friends & Family" eavesdropping plan.
Under the new plan, American citizens would reap significant discounts for long-distance calls in exchange for permitting the CIA to listen in on all of their conversations.
The calls will be routed through a CIA spy satellite and then beamed back to the spy agency's headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where agency operatives will be listening in on a 24-hour basis.
With many Americans unhappy with their current long distance service, the CIA hopes that consumers will decide that having a CIA agent listening in on all of their conversations is a small price to pay for fewer dropped calls, which the CIA's eavesdropping plan promises.
According to the agency's announcement, the CIA is sweetening the deal by offering even deeper discounts if the customer will allow the agency to "out" the names of its friends and family by leaking them to a newspaper reporter or columnist.
Carol Foyler, 28, of Memphis, Tennessee, who signed up for the eavesdropping plan on Monday, said that so far she had mixed feelings about the new service: "I was talking to my boyfriend last night, and all of a sudden I heard Dick Cheney on the line - that kind of puts a damper on things."
