On Thursday, November 29, 2001, at 09:26 AM, Adam Shostack wrote:
"One former senior F.B.I. official described the investigation this way: "When you send a whole lot of agents out after a whole lot of people, they're going to find some who committed various crimes. It's just inevitable."
(The article focuses on the fact that only about 1% of the 1200 detainees are suspected of terrorist involvement. It's a crime that they still haven't gotten due process, and we haven't seen their names...)
I save most of my rage for other fora (forums), but America's rapid move to a kind of police state has been faster than even most of us expected: * warrants no longer needed to invade houses, tap phones, tap computer lines...only the say-so of a minor bureaucrat. * "freezing of assets" (which I call a "taking," subject to due process) on the word of a government official, with no trial, no review * unlimited detention without charges being filed, courtesy of abuse of the "material witness" process * suspension of due process for "terrorists" (funny, how do they know someone is a terrorist until a trial has been held?) * military tribunals for "terrorists" (ditto the above point) * many cases of folks being stopped for "inappropriate praying" (Houston), "inappropriate reading material" ("Hayduke Lives!" novel), taking photos of dams (California tourists), etc. Most of these police state measures were rushed into law, or declared to be an Executive Order, without any consideration of the constitutionality or the long-term implications. These laws can and will be used after the 911/Afghanistan thing is over to suppress dissident groups, to arrest and hold people like Bell without charges being filed, and to wiretap and bug many more people. Congress spent a year debating the "definition of what "is" is" and yet rushed through these Orwellian measures without serious debate. See the comments of Congressman Ron Paul in the .sig quote below. Every Congressman who voted "Yea" on USA-PATRIOT deserves to be strung up from a lamp post. --Tim May "They played all kinds of games, kept the House in session all night, and it was a very complicated bill. Maybe a handful of staffers actually read it, but the bill definitely was not available to members before the vote." --Rep. Ron Paul, TX, on how few Congresscritters saw the USA-PATRIOT Bill before voting overwhelmingly to impose a police state