Saturday, April 22, 2006

Sneak-and-Peek

What’s wrong with the “sneak and peek” operations that President Bush is claiming is his right to do?
The person or people doing the sneak and peek will be some permanently unidentifiable person, perhaps a CIA employee, perhaps a lower level FBI person. . . more and more, perhaps a private company employee.
They will be searching for “evidence”.
Their search will not be a legal search for only certain specified items, authorized by a judge after seeing a “justification” for such a search.
The Sneak and Peek will be a clandestine probe for any possible evidence that could be used for any purpose.
You will have no right to know what “evidence” was found, or to challenge it or confront it or to even see if it really was yours.
Such “evidence” could lead not to your legal arrest, but to your abduction.
More and more, public officials as well as private company employees, are working under terms of program measures and performance standards. Such employees, whose job is to produce “evidence”, will find that the more “evidence” they produce, the more secure their employment, the better their chances for retention and promotion.
These people will have no need to restrict their search to a certain category of “evidence”, either because there is no search warrant. They can sneak in and peek at whatever they wish, copying, photographing, even taking whatever seems likely to be “evidence” of one possible crime or another. “Evidence” could actually be found in your place, or brought into your place by the Sneak and Peekers - they could “certify” later that they were looking for some relatively minor item and “find” this damning stuff instead - stuff they actually brought into your place - or - simply “swore” that they found it there. You would never know what that “evidence” was, and neither would your lawer be able to find out.
Why would anyone want to find “evidence” against you or me? If we are not doing anything wrong, why should be even be concerned about it? Mistaken identity, stolen identity, bureaucratic bungling, a careless mistake either on our part or on theirs, their fear of admiting they made a mistake, a settling of old scores, racial, sexual or religious predjuices, someone needing to make a name for themselves. How’s that for a start?

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