Patrick Elliott <kag### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> That being said, to use a better anology.. the US has become about as 
> much of a police state, given the revelations of the NSA, and a lot of 
> other crap going on, as.. say.. An Oreo is a kind of "soft cookie". Its 
> both, at once, depressingly inaccurate, and a tad too close to 
> plausible, given the right.. environmental conditions.

Before Jim got his tantrum, he kind of missed my point.

It's not the individual actions, or their frequency, that give a vibe
of a police-state-like system, it's the fact that they mostly can do
it with impunity. Most of the abuses go unpunished, either because
the authorities are unwilling to investigate or, in the worst case,
because nothing illegal was actually done.

For example, as far as I understand (and please correct me if I'm wrong),
but at least in some states it's actually completely legal for police
officers to lie to suspects, and this is regularly abused eg. by traffic
cops to try to make drivers incriminate themselves (often of traffic
violations or other crimes they haven't actually committed.)

Time and again you can read stories about a cop abusing or injuring
someone, or otherwise going well beyond the limits of what the situation
had required, and get no penalty for it. Often it's not even investigated
at all. In the most publicized cases it might get investigated, but even
then no punishment is enacted, or the punishment is really light.

It's not the acts themselves per se, it's the reaction of the government
to them.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message