SCHWARZENEGGER IS WATCHING
Agents from the Governor's Office of Homeland Security have been gathering information at antiwar demonstrations, the LA Times reported today. The Times only got their hands on two of the daily reports from the office and both described legal protests along with terrorism assessments.
Besides the general spookiness of government snooping at political rallies, I found two particularly disturbing facts in the Times article.
Democratic Congressman George Miller was one of the protesters observed. He spoke at an antiwar rally in Walnut Creek. When the executive branch is sending clandestine agents out into the field to report back on activities of the rival party, that's not playing fair. Not only are they gathering potential campaign information at taxpayer expense, which is Nixon-esque, but they're doing it under the guise of fighting terrorism, and that's much worse that anything Nixon did.
The second disturbing thing I saw was that the agents at the three rallies reported were not employees of the Office of Homeland Security (OHS). "Officials [at OHS] said the details about the rallies were reported by SRA International, a company hired to provide counter-terrorism analysis."
That jogged my memory a bit. Isn't that the name of the company that maintains the gang list for Rocky Delgadillo? Why yes. As I wrote in my endorsement of Rocky's rival:
"There is a list of gang members managed by a publicly traded company, called the Cal/Gang Database. Once on the list, citizens are denied the right of assembly, free speech, and expression. You get on the list by having the wrong tattoo or being seen with known gang members. You get off the list... well, nobody's ever got off the list (KPCC report by John Rabe, 6/1/06). Even the most generous estimates say gang injunctions only reduce crime by 6-9% and opponents say they just move the crime to the next neighborhood over."
Boo hoo, say my libertarian friends, why pick on them because they're a publicly traded company? But even a libertarian will tell you that it's the government's job to protect us, not to outsource crime prevention.
SRA International is beholden to its shareholders and not to the citizens of California. What responsibility do they have to protect our privacy? What else might they use the information for? SRA has contracts with healthcare interests, the military, and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
No wonder they're out at war protests.
A spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer denounced the program in strong terms. The AG's office apparently learned about it after the fact; I guess he's in the wrong party. Cheers to Peter Nicholas for breaking this story. Here's hoping he'll follow it where it leads.
The LA Times story:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-security1jul01,0,6449051.story?coll=la-home-headlines
SRA International's list of project profiles:
http://www.sra.com/services/index.asp?id=60
My words on Rocky and Jerry:
http://hollywood-liberal.blogspot.com/2006/06/garamendi-bowen-brown-in-down-ticket.html
I found the photo from Total Recall through Google Images at Susan Stepney's website here:
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/sf/films/trecall/index.htm
posted by Davefordemocracy @ 9:22 PM
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4 Comments:
This harkens back to the days of the Nixon Administration, the “dirty tricks”, the “Enemies List”, the survelliance. It also reminds me of the FBI under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover. The Church Commission was supposed to reform this. But with the leadership in the Whitehouse today following 9/11, we are once again witnessing the destruction of civil liberties and I am afraid the knucklehead in Sacramento is just following in line (shall I say with a Goosestep?) with Bush and his cohorts.
The UPDATE to this story is that the Governor has agreed to make all of the reports public, but:
"Before the reports can be reviewed in coming days, officials will remove all 'law-enforcement-sensitive information' — anything covering 'ongoing investigations' and related 'safety threats,' said Chris Bertelli, spokesman for the homeland security office."
It remains to be seen how much black Sharpie will be added to the reports. It also remains to be seen whether SRA International will be held accountable.
Peter Nicholas' followup from the Sunday LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-security2jul02,1,5940914.story
davefordemocracy,
Most libertarians (myself included) will agree with you whole-heartedly that tax money spent on government surveillance of citizens is wrong, regardless of whether the operation happens to be outsourced.
anonymous,
Comparing political opponents to Nazis is cliched, lazy, reactionary and stupid (btw, Jon Stewart on the Daily Show had an entire segment devoted to the bi-partisan overuse of this tactic). Show a little restraint.
I have to admit, I didn't catch the Nazi reference there until you pointed it out, Daniel. I think the point anonymous was making about Señor Schwarzenegger was his willingness to follow along without question like a good soldier.
I don't like people who call everyone Nazis either. It's too easy and it's insensitive, especially to those still alive with numbers on their arms.
I do think people can very carefully compare aspects of the Nazi regime to situations today as long as they point out the limitations of their analogy.
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