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defrogITEM: The ACLU releases a report that chronicles incidents in the US in which the police have either placed under surveillance or outright detained groups and individuals simply for exercising their First Amendment rights.
If you map the incidents out by state, it looks like this.
LEGEND: Red states = speech-related surveillance incidents.
To be sure, this represents incidents collected over the last decade – a few of them actually date to the Bill Clinton years. But it’s still a pretty long list for a country that lists free speech and freedom of assembly as a constitutional right rather than a potentially suspicious activity if you go around saying the Wrong Things.
We’ve been here before, of course. The difference this time is that it’s not just the FBI that thinks in such terms:
That’s life in the Kingdom of Fear, where citizens are warned frequently to be on the lookout for dangerous people that may appear harmless – pregnant women, Hooters waitresses, white people, etc.
Why just the other day, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) warned of a new insidious plot by al Qaeda to turn the 14th Amendment against America by recruiting pregnant women and sending them into the US to breed a secret army of future Manchurian Candidate terrorists to be activated at The Right Moment:
That should keep the surveillance teams busy for the next few decades.
READER ADVISORY: I spent most of Iraq War II making Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld jokes, so those of you who have recently signed on here, yr probably in my FBI file now. I probably should have mentioned that in my Friending Frenzy blurbs. Sorry about that.
Everywhere you look,
This is dF
If you map the incidents out by state, it looks like this.
LEGEND: Red states = speech-related surveillance incidents.
To be sure, this represents incidents collected over the last decade – a few of them actually date to the Bill Clinton years. But it’s still a pretty long list for a country that lists free speech and freedom of assembly as a constitutional right rather than a potentially suspicious activity if you go around saying the Wrong Things.
We’ve been here before, of course. The difference this time is that it’s not just the FBI that thinks in such terms:
The FBI, federal intelligence agencies, the military, state and local police, private companies, and even firemen and emergency medical technicians are gathering incredible amounts of personal information about ordinary Americans that can be used to construct vast dossiers that can be widely shared with a simple mouse-click through new institutions like Joint Terrorism Task Forces, fusion centers, and public-private partnerships. The fear of terrorism has led to a new era of overzealous police intelligence activity directed, as in the past, against political activists, racial and religious minorities, and immigrants.
That’s life in the Kingdom of Fear, where citizens are warned frequently to be on the lookout for dangerous people that may appear harmless – pregnant women, Hooters waitresses, white people, etc.
Why just the other day, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) warned of a new insidious plot by al Qaeda to turn the 14th Amendment against America by recruiting pregnant women and sending them into the US to breed a secret army of future Manchurian Candidate terrorists to be activated at The Right Moment:
And then one day, twenty...thirty years down the road, they can be sent in to help destroy our way of life. 'Cause they figured out how stupid we are being in this country to allow our enemies to game our system, hurt our economy, get setup in a position to destroy our way of life.
That should keep the surveillance teams busy for the next few decades.
READER ADVISORY: I spent most of Iraq War II making Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld jokes, so those of you who have recently signed on here, yr probably in my FBI file now. I probably should have mentioned that in my Friending Frenzy blurbs. Sorry about that.
Everywhere you look,
This is dF
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no subject
on 2010-07-01 05:50 pm (UTC)