Where Left Is Right / The Old Site

...doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

In today's Capitol Hill Blue "Rant" column, Doug Thompson recounts his discovery of a 100-page FBI file on him:

The printout, shown to me recently by a friend who works for Justice, identifies me by a long, multi-digit number, lists my date of birth, place of birth, social security number and contains more than 100 pages documenting what the Bureau and the Bush Administration consider to be my threats to the security of the United States of America.

It lists where I sent to school, the name and address of the first wife that I had been told was dead but who is alive and well and living in Montana, background information on my current wife and details on my service to my country that I haven’t even revealed to my wife or my family.

Although the file finds no criminal activity by me or members of my immediate family, it remains open because I am a “person of interest” who has “written and promoted opinions that are contrary to the government of the United States of America.”

[...]

According to my file, the banks where I have both business and checking accounts have been forced to turn over all records of my transactions, as have every company where I have a charge account or credit card. They’ve perused my book borrowing habits from libraries in Arlington and Floyd Counties as well as studied what television shows I watch on the Tivos in my house. They know I belong to the National Rifle Association, the National Press Photographers Association and other professional groups. They know I attend meetings of Alcoholic Anonymous on a regular basis and the file notes that my “pattern of spending” shows no purchase of “alcohol-related products” since the file was opened in 2001.

In The Weasel's America, of course, this is not supposed to concern us; if anything, we're to celebrate such blatant obscenities of police-state tactics. After all, fighting a Global War On Everyone Different From Us surely requires the monitoring not only of known terrorists, but also of unknown terrorists, terrorists (both known and unknown) in the making, those would encourage terrorists through their criticism of terror-fighting tactics, those who have helped or who might in the future help little old terrorist ladies cross the street, those whose children attend pre-schools also attended by children descended from natives of countries known to harbor terrorists or, heck, the countries bordering on those countries.

The specific bureaucratic mechanism for authorizing this compilation of data on any given "person of interest," says Thompson, is the "national security letter" (emphasis mine in the passage below):

A “national security letter” it turns out, can be issued by any FBI supervisor, without court order or judicial review, to compel libraries, banks, employers and other sources to turn over any and all information they have on American citizens.

The FBI issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year. When one is delivered to a bank, library, employer or other entity, the same federal law that authorizes such letters also prohibits your bank, employer or anyone else from telling you that they received such a letter and were forced to turn over all information on you.

The FBI has long had the power to gather this kind of information for criminal, intelligence, and (yes) even terrorist-fighting purposes. Previously, though, they had to get a court order. And previously, they were required -- if the investigation proved no wrongdoing -- to destroy all the records gathered on the individual in question. But as Thompson points out:

President George W. Bush in 2003 reversed that long-standing policy and ordered the bureau and other federal agencies to not only keep that information but place it in government databases that can be accessed by local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.

In October, Bush also signed Executive Order 13388 which expands access to those databases to “appropriate private sector entities” although the order does not explain what those entities might be. In addition, the Bush Administration has successfully blocked legislation and legal actions that have tried to stop the expansion of spying and gathering of information on Americans.

Yet another instance, here, of ways in which The Weasel cannot be said to be "just doing what they've always done." No. The Weasel & Company are something unique in the history of the country. The threat to the US from terrorists is real, no doubt. But the threat to large numbers of US citizens from their own elected and appointed officials is far more insidious, far more destructive, far more dangerous than all the shaking of fists, the throwing of rocks, and -- yes -- the launching of horrific attacks on citizens, here and abroad, by Osama & Company. It's all those things because it pretends to be for our own good. (To paraphrase the Vietnam-era slogan, "Attacking civil liberties in order to preserve freedom is like fucking to save your virginity.")

These evil bastards cannot be stopped soon enough.