Govt 'creating vast domestic snooping machine'

As I'm sure many of you have noticed also, many law enforcement agencys have begun using protocols and equipment historically reserved for the military against civilians. Some might claim that society has become violent and dangerous and therefore that validates the use of military grade hardware for law enforcement, however one simple fact cannot be overlooked nor dismissed and that is; law enforcement is NOT the military. So how does law enforcement validate the use of such against regular civilians? Simple, cite 911 and thats all any agency has to do anymore to use whatever against civilians. The cry of 911 has become for law enforcement, a cry for more funding and equipment to fight the "bad guys" when the reality remains, civilians get the hard end of the stick when they commit minor offenses due to the cop on the street all of a sudden has this high tech gear and no terrorists to use it on.
The civilians lose in this mindset.

The government is using for this purpose the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators, the daily added.

The system collects, stores and analyzes information about thousands of US citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing, the report noted.

The government's goal is to have every state and local law enforcement agency in the country feed information to Washington to buttress the work of the FBI, noted the paper, which has conducted its own investigation of the matter.

According to the report, the network includes 4,058 federal, state and local organizations, each with its own counter-terrorism responsibilities and jurisdictions.

Source