Policing Terrorism
(Last one from me today, I swear)
The FBI, even before the 9/11 attacks, changed its definition of terrorism to include the violent potential of protestors in the United States, mainly those who oppose government policy or the government itself.
To refer to pop culture, this reminds me of the movie “Minority Report.” In it, the police of the future view crimes before they happen and arrest the would-be criminals before the acts have been committed. By the end of the movie they realize the fallacy and folly of their ways: You can’t justly predict what a person might do any more than you can police him/her without probable cause and proof.
According to an article written for the Cordoza Law Review, “For nearly 20 years we have known that psychiatrists cannot predict whether a person who has committed a violent act will be violent in the future.” So if experts can’t predict this behavior even in a person with a criminal record and violent history, why is the government trying to find it in peaceful, freedom-loving protesters?
The Patriot Act has redefined domestic terrorism as to include acts that “intimidate or coerce a civilian population.”
“Intimidate” and “coerce” . . .
Don’t those words sound like tactics used in torture? Like the actions taken at Abu Ghirab prison and Guantanmo Bay, actions that the president has assured us he would allow to continue by vetoing an anti-torture law?
If the government truly wants to fight terrorism, they ought to leave alone those peaceful protestors, exercising their first-amendment right to peaceably assemble, whose violence cannot be predicted and instead investigate those institutions which are actively engaging in tangible, proven acts of terrorism.
The FBI, even before the 9/11 attacks, changed its definition of terrorism to include the violent potential of protestors in the United States, mainly those who oppose government policy or the government itself.
To refer to pop culture, this reminds me of the movie “Minority Report.” In it, the police of the future view crimes before they happen and arrest the would-be criminals before the acts have been committed. By the end of the movie they realize the fallacy and folly of their ways: You can’t justly predict what a person might do any more than you can police him/her without probable cause and proof.
According to an article written for the Cordoza Law Review, “For nearly 20 years we have known that psychiatrists cannot predict whether a person who has committed a violent act will be violent in the future.” So if experts can’t predict this behavior even in a person with a criminal record and violent history, why is the government trying to find it in peaceful, freedom-loving protesters?
The Patriot Act has redefined domestic terrorism as to include acts that “intimidate or coerce a civilian population.”
“Intimidate” and “coerce” . . .
Don’t those words sound like tactics used in torture? Like the actions taken at Abu Ghirab prison and Guantanmo Bay, actions that the president has assured us he would allow to continue by vetoing an anti-torture law?
If the government truly wants to fight terrorism, they ought to leave alone those peaceful protestors, exercising their first-amendment right to peaceably assemble, whose violence cannot be predicted and instead investigate those institutions which are actively engaging in tangible, proven acts of terrorism.
posted by Anonymous at 4/03/2006 12:17:00 PM
3 Comments:
It is alarming that so few people are up in arms over the surveillance and generalized definitions that the government is using to sweep all those with opposing views into their "terrorist" waste basket. While I won't say that I've ever felt a personal violation of my rights, it is unsettling that the people I rely upon to represent me seem to care so little.
I should make it clear that I don't believe in universal free speech. Obviously if you threaten me, that is a violation of a limitation set on free speech that most can agree with. I can't yell fire in a crowded public place falsely. But to criticize is wholeheartedly American. Remember the base word for criticize is to "critique." That means to weigh, or assess positives as well as negatives. Free speech is alive and well, but if we are not careful it could fall into more limitations, and definitions.
I agree with what Dorko has said. But the other thing that we must realize is that it can be for any word that the government deems fit to try you over. I could say that something was the bomb, this is just a generalization, and I could get wisked away for siding with the enemy. It's just one wrong conversation away for all of us. The scary thing is, it doesn't matter if you are joking or not. Let me give this example of how this is working against all of us. A girl in one of my classes ordered a book from Half.com. When the book arrived the package was open. She called Half, and upon further investigation found that the government had opened it because the book was from Texas, under the claim that Texas is a hot bed for anti-government literature. How is that terrorist related? We have the ability to read any literature that coincides or speaks against the government, that is the essence of free speech.
That textbook story is disturbing. I don't know under what authority they operate under. Probably no authority at all. The ability to criticize is part of what makes america what it is. That boils my britches.
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