The Pentagon intends to increase domestic surveillance and information sharing with civilian intelligence and law enforcement agencies, according to a ten-year military strategy document.

The Strategy for Homeland Defense and Support (PDF) argues for an “active, layered defense” and increased information sharing.

An active, layered defense requires information to flow freely regardless of operational boundaries. Relevant information may originate in one or several of the operational domains–land, maritime, air, cyberspace, or space. It may originate from an array of domestic and foreign sources. To achieve maximum awareness of threats, information will be posted to DoD’s Global Information Grid, integrating operational domains and facilitating information sharing across traditional military-civilian boundaries.

Not everyone’s buying it. Critics are calling this an unprecedented move to establish military surveillance on American soil.

Do we want, as a free people, with the notion of privacy enshrined in the Constitution and based on the very clear limits and defined role of government, to be in a society where not just the police, but the military are on the street corners gathering intelligence on citizens, sharing that data, manipulating that data? — Former Rep. Bob Barr (R-TX)

The report says that “Such an expansion in information sharing requires appropriate safeguards to ensure that DoD intelligence components rigorously apply laws that protect Americans’ civil liberties and privacy.” I guess at this point we need some laws that protect our civil liberties and privacy, since nobody in Washington respects the Fourth Amendment anymore — or the Ninth and Tenth, for that matter. And what about that Posse Comitatus Act?