Most of a nation on probation?

John Young jya at pipeline.com
Thu Jul 5 17:08:26 PDT 2001


Sandy proposes:

>Now let's put some Cypherpunk brain power towards those 
>tattletale ankle transponders...

What are other technological devices used to track parolees?
Are there any limits on what can be used? Is the parolee
less subject to pan-surveillance than the prisoner?
Or is the parolee subject to greater surveillance than
the prisoner due to being outside physical enclosure?

The use of parolees as snitches is another issue,
as with citizens who greatly fear prison, even more
so the threat of prison, even more than that being
seen as inadvertently swept up in an operation that
lumps all in a heap.

Pre-emptive ass-saving snitching by anyone subject to 
fear of authoritarian punishment: before and after a 
subpoena arrives, before and after a grand jury 
appearance, before and after appearing as a witness, 
before and after being named as an unindicted co-conspirator, 
before anda fter being named indiscriminately diffusely as 
a participant in an activity the government chooses to 
suspect of planning something that might become a 
chargeable offense which warrants pre-emptive
spying and gathering pre-evidence by pre-legal means
against those who need to watched closely, with
purposeful clues left and rumors dropped to maximum 
self-policing effect.

Did I leave anyone out the realm of suspicion which
may well induce running to officials to relieve anxiety
with a tale to tell? Even fabricating such tales if that
pleasures the protectors ever able to spot a snitch
aching to clear the record.

A tall tale such as this one -- but how to tell who's
quietly transponding beneath cover of technological 
simulators.





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