Many of the “juicier” parts of Eric Lichtblau’s and William Arkin’s exposé (SEE: "More Federal Agencies Are Using Undercover Operations"), scheduled for publication as a lede in Sunday’s edition of the NY Times, are buried deep within their story; but, the entire article is jam-packed with eye-opening statistics and tales of thousands of undercover government agents, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to military operatives, infiltrating just about every aspect of our society and monitoring citizens participating in virtually every flavor of social activism across our country’s political spectrum, and principals and employees in virtually every field of business: from pro-choice protestors in front of the Supreme Court to doctors’ offices across America, and just about everything in-between. Frankly, if you refused to accept the claims of many, including yours truly, that we’re already living in a militarized-police-surveillance state that’d make George Orwell roll over in his grave, this just might be the article that changes your mind.
In this article we learn that the focus of much—but not all--of this intelligence work is upon the drug trade, gangs and organized crime. Additionally, we’re informed the “oversight can be minimal,” when it comes to these intelligence agents spread amongst scores of government entities. The story informs readers that corruption runs rampant throughout these domestic government intelligence-gathering efforts, with scores of millions of taxpayer dollars unaccounted for in many agencies.
Meanwhile, the largest organized crimes in our society—such as white collar crimes and Wall Street’s laundering of, literally, at least a couple of trillion dollars in drug cartel and organized crime dollars, over the past decade--are dealt with exclusively via fines, which amount to a few week’s or month’s worth of income for the biggest offenders, and the inevitable distribution by our government of their obligatory get-out-of-jail-free cards. Adding insult to injury, even the enforcement of the payment of those fines is nothing less than a cruel--and extremely underreported--joke imposed upon the 99%.
But, I digress.
It’s not until the latter half of Sunday’s NY Times' lede where some of the more alarming aspects of this massive government surveillance effort really come to light.
So, I’ll close with an excerpt from the last few paragraphs of the story in the hope that it’ll spur readers to checkout the entire piece…
More Federal Agencies Are Using Undercover Operations
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and WILLIAM M. ARKIN
NEW YORK TIMES
NOV. 15, 2014 12:53PM (Online) NOV. 16, 2014 (Page A1)
WASHINGTON — The federal government has significantly expanded undercover operations in recent years, with officers from at least 40 agencies posing as business people, welfare recipients, political protesters and even doctors or ministers to ferret out wrongdoing, records and interviews show…
…
…The Times analysis showed that the military and its investigative agencies have almost as many undercover agents working inside the United States as does the F.B.I. While most of them are involved in internal policing of service members and defense contractors, a growing number are focused, in part, on the general public as part of joint federal task forces that combine military, intelligence and law enforcement specialists.
At the Supreme Court, all of the court’s more than 150 police officers are trained in undercover tactics, according to a federal law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity because it involved internal security measures. At large protests over issues like abortion, small teams of undercover officers mill about — usually behind the crowd — to look for potential disturbances.
The agents, often youthful looking, will typically “dress down” and wear backpacks to blend inconspicuously into the crowd, the official said…
…
…A Supreme Court spokesman, citing a policy of not discussing security practices, declined to talk about the use of undercover officers. Mr. German, the former F.B.I. undercover agent, said he was troubled to learn that the Supreme Court routinely used undercover officers to pose as demonstrators and monitor large protests.
“There is a danger to democracy,” he said, “in having police infiltrate protests when there isn’t a reasonable basis to suspect criminality.”
(Bold and underlined type is diarist’s emphasis.)
I’ve written about recently-reported, potential government violations of the Posse Comitatus Act in the past, including HERE and HERE. In the overall scheme of things, it is this preponderance of military and militarized surveillance of our society—especially as it relates to social/political dissent—and the crossing of that ("fighting against terrorism" propaganda) line by our government that this diarist finds most disconcerting.
Tomorrow's NY Times' lead article is just one of many recent stories, providing clearcut evidence presented by the MSM to the public, that demonstrates that this is occurring all around us.
As I noted in a post here, yesterday:
…as we all now know, in our inverted totalitarian society, when it comes to spending taxpayer money, there's no such thing as too much surveillance and wiretapping.
What say you?
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