Posted on 08/05/2013 10:08:34 PM PDT by null and void
Surveillance Society: The government says spying on U.S. citizens is acceptable since it's merely a means of fighting foreign terrorists. But what if the government used espionage in investigations of common criminals?
The program is so sneaky that officials are trying to cover it up. "Law enforcement agents," says Reuters, "have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin — not only from defense lawyers, but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges."
Criminal investigations should be launched, and suspects deprived of liberty, only "when there's a reasonable amount of suspicion, supported by circumstances sufficiently strong to justify a prudent and cautious person's belief that certain facts are probably true," to quote one definition of "probable cause."
Americans are angry that the government would tap phone calls, monitor Web use, vacuum text messages and use other methods of warrantless eavesdropping on our private domestic communications.
And we're livid for good reason: Doing so makes all of us suspect and subject to state harassment and abuse.
In fact, the harassment and abuse have already started. Reuters reports that current and former federal agents say tips the DEA acts on "aren't always helpful," and that one agent puts their accuracy at 60%.
If that agent is right, 40% of "suspects" are hassled by the government for no reason. They've been snatched out of their routines by authorities, consumed by a system and forced to defend themselves when there was no good reason to believe they've done anything wrong.
We can logically assume they suffered through Kafka-esque trials in which an unaccountable government running a secret program made their lives miserable.
This can't happen in the America we were promised by the Founding Fathers. But it is happening in a country where government has spun out of control.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
How many morons didn't see this coming?
Enough to re-elect him.
Say, was it not Bush who put into play the Patriotic Act?
Come to think of it, was it not Bush who imported more Muslims into the U.S. AFTER 911, than the previous two decades?
I knew if the knucklehead got a second term America was going to be in heap big trouble but Barry has managed to exceed my expectations. There’s that “unexpected” word again?
Time to revive my old tag line...
A sadly accurate tag-line it is.
“DEA Surveillance: Turning Citizens Into Criminals”
Well, that’s one way of justifying your salaries and your budget...
Yep....gullible well intentioned GW put into place most
of the current tools of tyranny that the current tyrant
and his henchmen are putting in to play.
I truly believe that Bush Jr. meant well but that in
no way diminishes the scope and depth of the crimes
he was party to. For the Patriot Act alone he should
swing.
our “betters” just keep making more and more laws, and make more and more things crimes, because law abiding people aren’t breaking the current laws. you can’t jail innocent people who aren’t breaking laws, so you make so many laws and so many crimes it’s impossible for anyone to know all the laws and that’s all the excuse govt needs to turn innocent people into criminals they then can prosecute.
BTTT
It was but youll hear little of it here...hes our despot and that makes it OK.
Yep....I have little tolerance for political hypocrites.
Those little SMTWTFS boxes that let you set up your pills for the week allow you to very easily commit a felony, yet noone seems to know or care, even though the selective enforcement of laws turns us into a nation of men, not laws.
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