Our Hypocritical Surveillance State

By on August 8, 2011 in News 22

TruthDavid Sirota writes at Salon.com:

With the Obama administration considering federal civil-rights investigations into police brutality, some local police departments have reacted not by cleaning up their act, but instead by intensifying their ongoing efforts to stop citizens from even documenting police misconduct in the first place.

Earlier this summer, Rochester authorities arrested Emily Good for videotaping police while on her own property — and then later used parking tickets to try to punish and intimidate those protesting Good’s arrest. In Las Vegas, it was even worse — the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Friday reported that a police not only arrested Mitchell Crooks but then beat him to a pulp — all for the “crime” of innocently videotaping them from his own driveway. Importantly, Crooks may have been specifically marked for police revenge after he had made headlines in 2002 by documenting Inglewood, California police beating a 16-year-old boy.

The hypocrisy of police trying to stop citizens from videotaping their public actions should be obvious in this, the Patriot Act Age. From warrantless wiretapping to data mining to the proliferation of red-light cameras, the Surveillance State is clearly on the march. And yet, when citizens occasionally exercise their constitutional rights and turn the camera on the Surveillance State itself, they increasingly face the threat of police retribution.

More: Salon.com

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  • Elifiknow

    Why won’t people go V for Vendetta on these cops? Like they do in South American countries.

  • t_bazill55

    take a leaf out of the London Riots’ book>>>> mass protest and riots

  • DeepCough

    Come on, Americans, you have guns, too! Hell, it’s the only thing your government even allows you to have!

  • ojs glove

    yeah  once i was in brazil visiting family and they kidnapped the local police chiefs wife and in ransom asked for their stations arsenal and got away with it. the pig loved his wife but didnt care for anyone else that was going to see the barrel of those assault weapons he traded for her. but no one was really mad because the police is even more corrupt then the gangsters. the pigs go up into the favelas and massacres youths and innocent women all the time, confiscates any contraband then sell it at premium price.

  • ojs glove

    no pepper spray or tasers those hurt :P

  • http://buzzcoastin.posterous.com BuzzCoastin

    I liked it better when Andy Taylor and Barny Fife were running the police force. The new Homeland Gestapo forces are not as much fun.

  • Hadrian999

    it is dishonest to lay this totally on the police, mainstream American culture is all about doing anything you want as long as you don’t get caught, the only crime is getting caught everything else is acceptable, laws and rules will never really make a difference until a sense of honor and integrity is restored to the national character.

  • Yith

    I personally would like to have everything I do each day recorded, digitally watermarked, encrypted, and time-stamped right down to the last second, like in the film “The Final Cut”… no need to pull out a camera — what I see and hear would be what is recorded.  This would be about the best protection I can think of against lawsuits and official harassment.  It would also be a path to immortality, a chance to tell future generations, “This is who I am… who I was.”

    What of privacy?  Well, this is where laws come in:  the point is that in such a future it would be up to YOU, and ONLY you, to decide what to share and with whom. 

  • Anonymous

    Curiously, America’s gun ownership statistics and the fact that most Americans are essentially gutless share a causal relationship. 

  • XFT

    How about the title be “This articles hypocritical bias towards the Obama Administration.” Hey David, do your damn research. Obama has reinstated, and expanded the Patriot Act TWICE now. Yes the Bush Administration was a fucking catastrophe, but Obama is even worse. Get your shit together and write an article about how this whole country is being led into a police state, and not just by the republicans. You libtards have had just as a big part contributing to this disaster.

  • Nunzio X

    In the Mayberry of 2011, Barney would use his one alloted bullet to execute the only black guy in town for the crime of “looking at a white woman.”

    “But Anj—-I had to nip it, NIP IT IN THE BUD!”

    Howard Sprague would organize the cover-up.

  • Anonymous

    I’ve always considered firearms more humane. Hurts for a second, then you never feel pain again.

  • ojs glove

    why go to all the trouble to film something we no its true. I am in favor of keeping the cops in check. But we all know they do it word of mouth is enough. The retarded pigs can keep their camera. They are the true minorities 

  • HK145

    I live in Memphis and at the nearest grocery store to where I live there is a crane-like machine with a 5x5x6 ft box with blacked out, bulletproof windows that looks like something the police would sit in to look over an extremely large crowd.  It’s a blue/white Blue C.R.U.S.H box, which is a division of Memphis Police who are notoriously known to beat dat ass.  This is also the division that installed those constitionally-questionable license plate scanners on the top of squad cars that can scan your license plate to look for people with warrants, etc.  I’m no professional, but one of the first things I learned in Intro to Criminal Justice was about probable cause, especially in relation to traffic stops, not to mention having family members in law enforcement and know for a fact that license plate scanning is like shooting fish in a barrel and wasting resources when cops could be responding to actual calls, but it makes money for this very poor city we live in.  Lots of money.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they are preparing for some sort of riot based on the box I saw because this is not considered a bad neighborhood.    

  • Anonymous

    Uh…No thank you Big Brother.

  • Anonymous

    Uh…No thank you Big Brother.

  • Tuna Ghost

    Hmmm….what was the name of that dude in, what, North Carolina who was arrested for “ogling” a white teenage girl back in the 60′s?  I think it was the 60′s.  May have been the 50′s.  But yeah, that actually happened.  Not the execution, but he was in jail for quite some time for the crime of looking at a white woman.

  • http://www.zazzle.com/fantoccini* Gort

    Personal cloaking devices and micro burst emp anti surv mechanisms.

    When you are filmed – there appears only a white noise field where your image would be.

    In law enforcement vehicles – dashcams show total white noise fields.

    Pull up to my vehicle – your dashcam is white noised.

    May even decide to fry your electrics depending on my mood and your courtesy.

  • http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

    Unless you get hit in the kneecaps

  • Edubus

    Yeah, what was his name? Oh right, you don’t actually give one. But it really happened, right?

  • Edubus

    Yeah, what was his name? Oh right, you don’t actually give one. But it really happened, right?

  • Tuna Ghost

    The official charge was “staring with intention of rape” or something like that, made worse because the woman was technically a minor.  But yes, there were “ogling” laws on the books in southern states, and they were used.  Do you really find that surprising or doubtful?  John Howard Griffin described them in his novel back in ’59.  Poor Emmett Till was murdered for it, but I’m trying to find the name of the guy who was jailed for “ogling” for like 3 years or something…fuck, can’t remember the article in which I read about it.  Normally I can play Google like a piano, but I can’t find his name.