Category: 9/11 Era

• The Patriot Act and ECHELON

  A surveillance-continuity theory claiming that the USA PATRIOT Act did not create a new surveillance state from scratch, but publicly legalized or widened access to capabilities already operating through preexisting interception systems such as ECHELON. In this telling, 2001 was not the beginning of bulk monitoring, but the unveiling of an older Anglo-American signals architecture that had already been harvesting international communications, including email, since the mid-1990s or earlier.

• The Anthrax Attacks (2001) Inside Job

  A post-9/11 theory claiming that the anthrax mailings in September and October 2001 were not foreign terrorism but a domestic operation involving a U.S.-linked Ames strain, designed in part to intensify fear, shape congressional behavior, and help drive passage of the Patriot Act and other emergency security measures.