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The Palmer raids in the early 1900s arrested more than 10,000 people. Of that, 3,500 of them were held indefinitely. Almost all of them were innocent people. I
by gareim 13y ago
The Palmer raids in the early 1900s arrested more than 10,000 people. Of that, 3,500 of them were held indefinitely. Almost all of them were innocent people.
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, 1,200 Muslims were arrested. Some were beaten (this is according to the Justice Department's own Inspector General of the time). Hundreds were held for months. Absolutely none of them were found to be with al-Qaeda.
These are just two examples of MANY. You know what's scary? The spying that the NSA, FBI, and CIA do gets people put on lists. There are lists of people to arrest in the event of an attack. Hoover of the FBI had something like 70,000 people on a list during the era of Communism fear. The vast majority of those people were innocent of any crime.
Over the past century, these lists have been kept openly and kept secretly when different administrations denounced them. But they have been kept (at the FBI at least. Hoover hid them illegally). Letting the NSA spy on us and treating us as if we were assumed criminals before innocent is a terrible way to waste away your fundamental rights.
And the scary thing is we wouldn't even have known that we were being spied on for sure unless Snowden said something.
These are crimes against the American people. You can't tell me that the FISA court not rejecting any warrants is a good thing. Out of tens of thousands of requests, not one gets rejected? That is a failure of the checks and balance system our founding fathers set up. THAT is definitely a crime against the American people.
- angersock 13y agoAnd because of how fucked-up the system is, when they come to pick you up, any number of minor things during that encounter ("Fuck you pig, where's the warrant?", running, etc.) can escalate into resisting arrest, disturbing the peace, or assaulting an officer, and then magically you're in the system "for real" and screwed.
- res0nat0r 13y agoProbably shouldn't be telling cops to fuck off then?
- Karunamon 13y ago1st amendment says otherwise.
- res0nat0r 13y agoYou are free to talk shit to anyone you want in a bar; you are also free to get your ass kicked. Antagonizing a cop just to be a dick will probably result in those minor charges he would have ignored if you were nice, getting written up with a smile on his face. That's 100% your fault in that case.
- Karunamon 13y agoThe guy in the bar isn't bound by law and ethics to be professional and respect the constitution. The cop is.
- rhizome 13y agoWow, I didn't know about the Palmer Raids. Thanks! "In June 1919, Attorney General Palmer told the House Appropriations Committee that all evidence promised that radicals would 'on a certain day...rise up and destroy the government at one fell swoop.' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Raids http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Raids