If only, if only, this Glenn Greenwald column were an April Fools. But Your modern-day Republican Party is all too real.
It seems that leading GOP Presidential candidates mostly don't have any problem with the idea that the President has the power to imprison American citizens without any opportunity for review of any kind.
Constitutional rights? Those are for sissies.
Paging Bruce Schneier. This piece of security theater has to take the cake.
According to a proposal being floated by the FBI, manufacturers of sneakers with a suggested retail price over $75 a pair would be required to produce individualized patterns in the sole that would allow police to uniquely identify the wearer.
The “SafeSneaker” proposal is being justified as an anti-crime measure in that criminals apparently often wear sneakers, and that school children are often mugged for their (expensive) sneakers. The idea is that parents would be encouraged to register the unique patterns in an online database, thus protecting their children from robbery — and incidentally identifying them if footprint evidence were found at the scene of a crime.
The stupidity of this idea defies belief. What parents are going to finger their children in this fashion? How often can the FBI actually get good enough footprint evidence to make out an intricate pattern? What happens when the shoes get worn, or if kids mutilate the soles to obscure the pattern?
I mean, just when you think you've heard everything….
New York city police were spying on them:
Billionaires For Bush Respond to N.Y.P.D. Spying Report
– Billionaires to release own domestic surveillance files as gesture of good faith.
– “We guessed he was an undercover officer when he kept asking for stock tips.” Meg A Bucks, National Co-Chair.
New York, NY, March 27th, 2007 Stunned by a recent New York Times report revealing that Billionaires For Bush were the targets of widespread surveillance by the New York Police Department in 2004, we issue the following statement:
“We join the chorus of voices calling upon the city to make its files public. As a gesture of good faith, today the Billionaires For Bush make our own domestic surveillance files public.
Public scrutiny of these files will reveal that we have infiltrated city hall and all key city departments, including zoning, development, taxation, and the Brooklyn Public Library. Our most important informant operated at the highest echelons of municipal governance. His code name (presciently) was “Snow Shovel,” and files will reveal his identity as Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Snow Shovel (his Honor) operated as a double agent for Billionaires For Bush beginning in January 2004. During the R.N.C. he played a crucial role in banning protestors from Central Park so that members of Billionaires For Bush could play croquet. He continues to serve our interests well to this day. While we don't expect him to resign from his post, he no longer needs to feed us information. Another tax break for the upper brackets would be nice, though.”
About Billionaires For Bush
Armed with tuxedos, evening gowns, hard facts and a humorous spin, Billionaires for Bush is a do-it-yourself grassroots media campaign using humor and street theater to exposes politicians who support corporate interests at the expense of everyday Americans.
They're not only watching us … they don't want us taking pictures in public. See The Cosmic Tap: An Accidental Interview with Lieutenant Phil Dreyer for what's only the latest in a huge series of incidents up and down the country in which police attempt threaten perfectly legal photographers.
Earlier (2004) item: A Snapshot of Our Freedoms
City Police Spied Broadly Before G.O.P. Convention.
Not only did cops waste a phenomenal amount of resources infiltrating public meetings of obviously harmless groups such as Billionaires for Bush, but having made files about lawful activities by harmless groups they shared their files with cops nationwide.
For at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention, teams of undercover New York City police officers traveled to cities across the country, Canada and Europe to conduct covert observations of people who planned to protest at the convention, according to police records and interviews.
From Albuquerque to Montreal, San Francisco to Miami, undercover New York police officers attended meetings of political groups, posing as sympathizers or fellow activists, the records show.
…
In at least some cases, intelligence on what appeared to be lawful activity was shared with police departments in other cities. A police report on an organization of artists called Bands Against Bush noted that the group was planning concerts on Oct. 11, 2003, in New York, Washington, Seattle, San Francisco and Boston. Between musical sets, the report said, there would be political speeches and videos.
Political speeches and videos! The horror!
What NYC Cops did may well have been legal. But it was not only a distraction from real police work, but something that bespeaks a level of one-sided political paranoia that is a danger to democracy.
Can you imagine the police infiltrating the Federalist Society? Or a meeting of the Freepers? And even if you can, could two wrongs make a right?
Jim Henley, writing about the Pernicious Effects of National Security Gag Orders that I blogged about earlier, under which the FBI (probably failing to follow the statutory requirements) serves a man with an order that gags him from even mentioning the order to his family or his Congressman,
The government has taken the most intimate aspects of this man’s life from his own control. There is no part of his waking day untwisted by the injunctions of the Patriot Act, and probably little enough of his sleep. The man has been accused or convicted of no crime. This is tyranny. Not “the threat of” tyranny, not “practically” tyranny – the thing itself. It hasn’t directly touched me yet and it may not have touched you, but if it has already ensnared your neighbor you won’t even know.
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