The United Police State of America

By Libby

The Bush administration takes us one step closer to a full out police state. Their latest ploy, streamlining intelligence information sharing, effectively makes your local cop a deputy spy for the feds.

The Justice Department has proposed a new domestic spying measure that would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years.

Read it and weep for our formerly free country. The measure seeks to roll back the protections against government excess that arose out the Watergate era, ignoring the fact that the reasons those protections were enacted in the first place was because of abuse of the existing powers. It would be nice to think that Obama would fix all this when he's elected president, but as emptywheel notes -- don't hold your breath.

And let me repeat something I have said before: once law enforcement, political and prosecutorial entities are vested with power and dominion such as described herein; it is never substantially relinquished; it becomes the new norm.

And as I often say, the transformation to a police state is made in such tiny increments as to be almost unnoticed. I ran across this old link today, from when Al Gonzales was on the hot seat over the Ashcroft hospital visit seeking to authorize a domestic surveillance program that was so illegal Ashcroft wouldn't sign off on it. Back then, notes just released by FBI Director Robert Mueller, notes he made because he thought the situation was so unusual he felt the need to document it, contradicted the AG's sworn testimony.

The notes were heavily redacted and Conyers swore he would get an unredacted version. As far as I know he never did and we still don't know what this particular "Terrorist Surveillance Program" really was. All we know for sure that the ethical players at Justice were ready to quit over it. And anybody remember the 'Clergy Response Team' that helped avoid a public outcry over the quasi-martial law declared in NOLA in the wake of Katrina?

They enure us slowly to these encroachments, just like that proverbial frog in the boiling pot of water. And just like the frog, by the time we realize we're in danger of completely losing our liberties, it's going to be too late.

Comments

[shdwsclan]

Just like that movie, minority report....

[ddjango]

C U I L !

[Libby]

I wish it was a movie, so we could turn it off.

LOL dd.