Slashdot Mirror
Widespread Spying Preceded '04 GOP Convention
Frosty Piss alerts us to a story in the New York Times reporting on details that are emerging of a far-flung spying operation lasting up to a year leading up to the 2004 Republican National Convention. The New York Police Department mounted a spy campaign reaching well beyond the state of New York. For at least a year before the convention, teams of undercover New York police officers traveled to cities across the US, Canada, and Europe to conduct covert observations of people who planned to protest at the convention. Across the country undercover officers attended meetings of political groups, posing as sympathizers or fellow activists. In at least some cases, intelligence on what appeared to be lawful activity was shared with other police departments. Outlines of the pre-convention operations are emerging from records in federal lawsuits brought over mass arrests during the convention.
Of course, the typical American response is going to be this:
For a couple days, half of people will get upset over the abuse of power and invasion of privacy and misuse of government while the other half excuse and justify it with comments like "if ya don't have nuthin' tuh hide" and "we're at war - you have to give up some freedoms to be safe during war!".
Some minor news organizations will make a huge deal out of it.
Most will largely ignore it and not make a story out of it.
Within 72 hours, Americans will have forgotten entirely about it and be back to fretting over the poor blond haired, blue-eyed, pretty, affluent girl that disappeared a couple years ago in Bermuda thanks to the non-stop cable news coverage (still, two years later - as of the broadcasts LASTNIGHT!).
Remember, this is America. We don't start revolutions. We don't fight for anything unless it's the last Tickle Me Elmo on store shelves at Christmas. The most effort we're willing to put into our civics and society and the most we're willing to risk of ourselves for them is a text vote or two on our cell phones.
So, what I took from this article is that the NYPD has domestic and international espionage capabilities comparable to (or, worse, better than) our nation's designed intelligence bodies. They also seem to do a better job of sharing information between agencies than the CIA, NSA, the various military intelligence organizations, and the FBI.
This is yet another illustration of my point... the people that need to be in Iraq and Afghanistan are the NYPD and the LAPD. Their SWAT, negotiations, and (apparently!) intelligence teams are what's needed - these efforts ceased being appropriate "military actions" some time ago. What's needed now is an effective police force - which not the U.S. Army or Marines.
And, by the way, yes, I do agree with what will no doubt the general sentiment on there - that is an outrageous, appalling, and despicable invasion of the personal privacy rights of ordinary citizens around the globe... but, aside from whining about how corrupt our elected officials and expressing my outrage, I figured there was some small glimmer of upside in this piece.
"Adventure? Excitement? A Jedi craves not these things."
So let's review what we know so far...
* FBI abusing its snooping authority under the patriot act
* Major telecommunications companies provide secret rooms to the government to pick through Internet communications
* Al Gonzalez authorizes (illegal) collection of phone call databases
* "Total Information Awareness" (TIA) program continues to create mass associative database of all american entities (people, businesses)
* Inkjet printers embed hidden serial numbers
* Newly issued American passports leak personal information including pictures
* Government has access to all Americans' financial transactions
* US government contracts w/private companies to harvest information (which it itself can't do)
* Law enforcement infiltrates peaceful organizations (occasionally incites and/or foments violence)
* Attorney General removes Federal Prosecutor for lack of loyalty to Administration... (raising questions about those who WEREN'T fired)
* ???
* Someone profits.
Of course! Reality has a well-known liberal bias.
My brother was one of the 1,800 people held for one or two days at the old vehicle maintenance facility on the west side of Manhattan. Many of these people (including my brother) were rounded up like cattle just because they were walking down a block where a protest was taking place. People were out getting groceries and arrested, with no way to place phone calls, no place to sit, and unhealthy conditions (the police who worked in the facility during the same time period have filed numerous health claims).
So all this data was gathered and used for what...to cordon off a city block with snow fence and arrest EVERYONE in that block?
Ultimately the police likely had no real way to use any of the data, and to keep their Republican guests happy they resorted instead to just rounding up as many people as they could. By the time everyone was released the convention was over. The lawsuits will drag on for years (my brother is suing the city) and cost the city a ton of money.
The police like to boast that there were no disturbances or major incidents during the convention and they take the credit. More likely the reason is that the protestors and the citizens of New York were well behaved, protested peacefully, and even welcomed many of the convention attendees. My daughters (13 and 10 at the time) and I marched in the protest on Sunday during the convention and it was a wonderful day of peaceful expression of our political feelings.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
Within 72 hours, Americans will have forgotten entirely about it /.
and we'll find something else to read and rant about on
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
The problem here isn't necessarily what they were monitoring, but why they were monitioring it. As the article repeatedly states, one must have grounds for an inquiry (i.e. possible illegal activity, backed up by either compelling circumstantial evidence or hard empirical evidence) before conducting a covert inquiry. As an example: it would be perfectly legal, in most cases, to begin covert surveillance of a target if the object of the investigation could in some way be demonstrated to be a possible factor involved in illegal activty, such as someone here in TN buying extremely large amounts of, say, nyquil (can be used in making crytsal methamphetamine), so long as the amounts were truly beyond any conceivable norm (compelling circumstantial evidence). While this would by no means be enough for an arrest or conviction, a judge could be convinced to allow wiretapping, diversion of assets towards surveillance, etc. However, one bottle of nyquil would not be enough (one would hope) to get this kind of permission.
In the case reported in the article, the NYPD was effectively conducting surveillance of the one bottle of nyquil people. Simply being involved in a political protest group is by no means indicitive of illegal activity; however, the police apparently deployed assets to groups with apparently peacful intentions, with no cause to suspect illegal activity (one bottle of nyquil.) Now, if the police could show that Group A. had been responsible, say, for severe property damage at the WTO riots in Seatlle, that is compelling circumstantial evidence (did it before, might do it again) that could be used in obtaining permission for covert intelligence gathering (55 gallons of nyquil, so to speak). This does not seem to be the case here, however.
The reason that this distinction is so important is that power does tend to corrupt, not necessarily morally, as the old adage is often taken to be stating, but more often ethically. You're a cop: protect and serve, preserve the peace, and all that. By the very nature of your job, if you're dedicated to it, anyways, you are going to always be pushing as close to the edge as possible. But where exactly is that edge? Where society (in the form of government, an ethical government one would hope) places it. Only when these distinctions are upheld, only when this line is constantly reinforced and restated, does the concept of checks and balances truly work. In this case, the police have overstepped their authority, it seems. Conducting an investigation with no probable cause is no different than pulling random people off of the street and interrogating them for a crime that one has no reason to suspect they comitted. Case in point: guys, how would you feel if everytime a woman was raped in your town, every male was wiretapped, followed, and snooped on? You might say that such a thing would be different, but it's not. After all, you have a penis (these people were involved in protest groups), and almost all women are raped by men (these groups are similar in form to groups that have created disruptions in the past), so all men should be surveilled equally (RTFA).
The argument can go on and on: it is logically sound. However, the thing that is most compelling to me in this instance is it reminds me of the FBI during the Cold War, expecially during the Mcarthy era, and the Vietnam war. Do we not find it disturbing that people like MLK Jr., John Lennon, and the vast majority of the faculties of NE colleges were under surveillance, that dossiers were compiled on their potential "socialist," or "Communist," leanings, due to no more evidence than that they "fit the profile,"? Same thing here. Such policies were the product of Hoover and his protegees at the FBI, which nowadays are
Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.
I'm no history major, but I'm pretty sure those were not Americans at the time of the revolution. They were colonists. To my knowledge, the closest thing to a revolution that actual Americans have participated in was the civil war and I don't think that really counts. Again, I don't know shit about history, so someone feel free to correct me.
Regardless, they were a different breed of people. Those were people who would stand up for their ideals and freedoms. They didn't have to risk losing sit-coms on television, lattes at starbucks and their 9mpg sedans for standing up for themselves. Look at the liberties we've already lost. Do we even have half of our Bill of Rights left? I don't think so. And where is the outrage? There isn't any. As long as we can still buy Pepsi from vending machines, drive whatever car we choose and wave little american flags made in China and have our Superbowl, we believe we have freedom and are better than the rest of the planet.
Don't feed the trolls. Don't feed the trolls. Don't feed the... ah, crap.
The current controversy is because firing US Attorneys en masse in the middle of a President's term is unprecedented. Lots of presidents appoint new attorneys when they take office. If you think Clinton is getting a free pass, here's a brain twister for you: Bush did the same thing when he took office, and nobody said a thing about it. If it's really "it's okay if Clinton does it, but not Bush!" then why didn't anyone complain then? Maybe because what's happening now isn't the same thing?
And truthfully, This is the exact reason Bush needs the patriot act and the secrecy surrounding holding enemy combatants. This is exactly why he needs the suspension of Habeas Corpus for some non citizens. And this is exactly why he need the process to be conducted in a secure manor.
But those of us who are not cowards would prefer to have some risk (even though even what there is is largely overblown) than to have a totalitarian society.
In fact, that's how this country came to be.
So your cowardice (don't whine ad hominem, a coward is exactly what *you* just declared yourself to be) and that of those like you is the gravest threat our nation faces or has ever faced.
Since you're too weak and cowardly to live in a free society, why don't you move to Saudi Arabia or some other country where they already live under your favored system rather than working to fuck this place as well?
Oh yeah, that would take the courage of your convictions and you've already admitted to being a coward.
The issue is that the police should leave people who haven't committed any crime, who're not suspected of having committed any crime, and who are not suspected of planning to commit any crime in the future ALONE.
Suppose a police officer would get posted outside your house. He doesn't enter your private property or anything, but he stands there, and when you leave the house, he follows you; if you enter another piece of private property (one that he can't enter - your office, for example, or a friend's house, as opposed to a supermarket or a pub), he waits outside again until you come back out. He's always with you, listening to everything you say in public, compiling a file on you that gets shared with the FBI later on. Heck, for added fun, suppose he's also recording every public conversation of yours and videotaping your actions in public.
Are you OK with that?
Clearly, the same reasoning you use could be applied here: you're in public, so everything you do and say is - well - public. And if you ask the police officer why he's doing this, he will tell you that it's in the interest of "security", of course - national security, most likely. And he's sorry, but he cannot give any details, but since he's not intruding on your *private* life, there's no issue there, right?
Now suppose the same thing's happening, but he's not identifying as a police officer or letting you know he's recording your conversations etc. or compiling a file on you; in fact, you don't even notice that he's there. He's always following you, but you don't even know until you find out years later by pure coincidence. Are you still OK with that?
The problem here is that the police simply has no business interfering with the lives of people who aren't suspected of doing anything wrong. And that's DOUBLY TRUE when we're talking about protesting and political dissent, since that's arguably one of the fundamental pillars upon which democracy rests; harassing (and I intentionally say "harassing"!) innocent people simply because they intend to attend a political demonstration creates a chilling effect and is at completely odds with democracy.
THAT is what the issue is.
butter the donkey