CelticBear’s Musings

As an update to my recent post, On the issue of privacy and protecting civil liberties, I added a story about Local councils in the UK use CCTVs to spy on dog owners’ cute butts; here’s another couple of examples of how reasonable and proper the idea of giving our privacy and liberty over to those error-free and trustworthy persons representing government (note that was irony) :

First, a darkly humorous story:

• Con-artist convinces town he’s a super Fed who doesn’t need search warrants

This is the story of a Missouri town bamboozled into believing an ex-security guard was a federal agent who, thanks to the War on Terrah, was above the law and needed to warrants to search, detain, and arrest suspected drug users and dealers in the town.

Now, this kind of con theoretically can happen most anywhere and regardless of whether it’s post-9/11 or not. But it was likely made all the easier to pull off fooling a mayor, a chief of police, and a police force, and a town thanks to the culture of federal power worship that has been instilled, fostered, and cultivated by the government. We are all being encouraged and convinced, directly and very subtly, to not question authority especially when it’s behind the (supposed) badge of Homeland Security.

A little more serious and far-reaching:

• Official anti-terrorism civilian snoop program to be expanded

This is that program which I blogged about in Kitchen Fire? Better be a good, upstanding Patriot!, where Homeland Security is forcing government employees, civil workers, like firefighters and EMT’s as well as postmen and utility workers, to keep an eye out for suspicious activity, illegal or legal, outside or inside a home, and report it to a federal database. (Imagine the change in trust in firefighters may be going on when you know that these formally impartial and neutral protectors of public safety are required to start reporting on any “suspicious activity or possessions” they encounter?)

From the previous blog:
–begin quoted section–

But a volunteer firefighter commenting on BoingBoing made this additional, thoughtful observation:

If criminals have to worry that by calling the fire department they are also calling the DHS, they may be less likely to call in the first place, putting lives and property at further risk. If they do call, they may treat firefighters as hostile parties, placing firefighters’ lives at risk beyond the normal hazards of the job.

We’re already well into the world of 1984, this takes us a step closer to Fahrenheit 451. Sweet. Always thought it’d be nice if the world were more like the books I read….

UPDATE: Some of the comments on BoingBoing are good:

I have to agree with Andrew. I’m an EMT in Washington St. We are taught that we are advocates of the patient, so even when I roll up on-scene of a car accident and smell alcohol on the breath of a driver, I’m not allowed to tell the police; only the hospital staff see my report. I know I look around the apartments and houses, but it’s certainly not for DHS or the police.
-tfuller

–end quoted section–

A recent commenter has found and detailed some interesting ways in which this program resembles the East German Stasi’s recruitment of civilian snoops and citizen spies.