This is life as some of us already know it. “Arbitrary exercise of power by police” is normal in “minority” or “native” communities, and unexceptional for low-income, young people, immigrants, or persons with disabilities.

It is shameful, but many of us accept it—for “the others.” Today, many people are calling for more of it. The government is happy to comply. The expansion of police power is a broadly bipartisan undertaking.

• Congress almost unanimously passed the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act in 1970 as an anti-Mafia measure. Now you may be sued or jailed, and your property seized and sold, for the acts of others. RICO has been used against labor unions, businesses, and both anti-imperialist and anti-abortion activists.

• In 1978, the Carter administration set up the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. This is the court that now issues secret surveillance warrants under the PATRIOT Act. In 2003, it granted all but two of 1,727 requests for such warrants.

• The bipartisan “War On Drugs” and mandatory minimum sentencing — although the latter has recently been called into question by the courts—has quadrupled the U.S. prison population. Today one-third of all African-American males can expect to be caught up in the “criminal justice system” during their lifetimes.

• President Clinton’s 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act established a federal power to designate “terrorist” organizations, to set aside immigration, hæbeus corpus and free speech rights, and to authorize FBI infiltration of domestic political groups.

• The Bush administration’s U.S.A.PATRIOT Act of 2002 rests squarely upon the foundations of these earlier Acts.

What they could get away with

Our own MBTA is the first U.S. transit agency to randomly inspect passenger bags and packages. Some riders complain and wear buttons saying, “I do not consent to a search.” Others say the extra security makes them feel safer. In fact, no searches have been reported on the MBTA since the Democratic convention.

Khalida Smalls of the T Riders Union says that this may be because “they can't afford it.” She thinks it is possible that “the burden will again fall on the riders via a fare hike.”

Neil Berman of the National Lawyers Guild sees this as “a pilot project to see what they could get away with.” If the feds fund it, it will go national. If not, it may “eventually peter out - it’s too expensive.”

Another security program started last summer at Logan Airport. Keith Reed reported in the Boston Globe, “despite complaints from civil libertarians… those who signed up yesterday morning said they were thrilled” with the new policy of keeping photo files of their eyeballs— it speeded up their security checks.

When shootings and street violence spiked in August, some Boston residents expressed nostalgia for the heavy security during the Democratic National Convention (DNC).

The authorities responded with “Operation Neighborhood Shield,” reuniting the DNC team of Boston and State police, FBI, and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). They swept up dozens of “players” and promised to seek federal prosecutions where possible.

The New Black Panthers and NAACP protested, while others in the affected neighborhoods welcomed the operation

A Boston Globe poll concluded that more than two-thirds of the public supported the massive police presence at the DNC itself.

Directed energy

A Miami judge presiding over cases of “free trade protesters” declared in court that he had personally witnessed ''no less than 20 felonies committed by police officers'' during November 2003 demonstrations. For whatever reasons, the police in Boston did not follow the “Miami model” of systematic aggressiveness.

But, according to New Scientist, authorities are gearing up for more Miamis. “Weapons that can incapacitate crowds of people by sweeping a lightning-like beam of electricity across them are being readied for sale to military and police forces in the US and Europe… The new breed of non-lethal weapons can be used on many people at once and operate over far greater distances” than those in use today.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry approved of these new devices. He proposed to “focus defense investment” on “precision weapons, including directed energy weapons that can produce lethal and non-lethal effects.… for use in urban combat and stability operations….”

Stability, like beauty, is in the eyeball of the beholder.

Last month a spokeswoman for Governor Mitt Romney said, "Protesters can't distribute materials inside a gubernatorial event…." Carol Rose of The Civil Liberties Union objected. "The right to hand out leaflets in public places is protected by the First Amendment."

Before or after the use of “directed energy weapons”?

Increasing coordination of federal, state and local agencies is supposed to address the failure of U.S. intelligence to catch the teams who carried out the 9/11 attacks.

An FBI October 2003 confidential memo told local law agencies to be “alert to these possible indicators of protest activity and report any potentially illegal acts to the nearest FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force... [such as] use of the internet to recruit, raise funds, and coordinate their activities prior to demonstrations… using cell phones or radios to coordinate activities or to update colleagues about ongoing events,” use of tape recorders and video cameras for “documenting potential cases of police brutality…,” wearing scarves and sunglasses “to minimize the effects of tear gas and pepper spray as well as obscure one’s identity…..”

Governor Romney called for “a new intelligence network to sift though crime reports and other statistics that might help uncover terrorist plots.….enlist ordinary citizens, identify threats and then feed critical information up the chain of command….”

In August, John Kerry began talking about neighborhood-based terrorist watch groups. "If we do that to protect ourselves against vandals or a burglary, why would we not do it to protect ourselves against a terrorist?" Running-mate John Edwards added, "We need a neighborhood watch kind of system so that we have a way to notify people, they know what they're supposed to do."

Also in August, Wired News reported that “[d]ata aggregators, companies that aggregate information from numerous private and public database— and private companies that collect information about their customers— are increasingly giving or selling data to the government to augment its surveillance capabilities and help it track the activities of people. Because laws that restrict government data collection don't apply to private industry, the government is able to bypass restrictions on domestic surveillance.

On August 4th, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that security gaps discovered by nuclear plant inspectors would no longer be public information.

Well, folks, is this a slippery slope here, or are we already waist deep in the doodoo?

The FBI has already used the PATRIOT Act in a Las Vegas bribery case, and the U.S. attorney in Seattle is using it against a pot smuggling ring. Neither case has much to do with with “terrorists.”

Last May, the feds arrested seven members of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty USA charging them and their organization with “animal enterprise terrorism.”

Under the Medicare Modernization Act, effective September 1, 2004, hospitals are supposed to require incoming patients to divulge their immigration status, and to keep photocopies of passports, visas, and border crossing cards in their files.

As reported in the September issue of this paper, to qualify for funds under the No Child Left Behind Act, high schools are required to help set the stage for the possible return of universal military conscription.

The banality of boodle

Speakers at a meeting of the American Institute of Biological Sciences in March urged the Department of Homeland Security to get involved with the fight against “invasive species.” We’re talking river weeds and white geese here, folks. Notre Dame professor David Lodge saw “a huge missed opportunity to use the same resources. The departments of agriculture and the interior, which have the bulk of the responsibility for invasive species monitoring and eradication, are woefully underfunded and understaffed…”

Agriculture agrees with that assessment, as any good Department would. They are asking for funds and staff to meet the threat of “agri-terrorism.”

Boston’s own Willie Sutton, when asked why he robbed banks, said “That’s where the money is.” If he were still with us, Sutton would be writing grant proposals to the Department of Homeland Security.

Deputy City Manager Richard Rossi says that the City of Cambridge put in for $335,000 in police and fire overtime connected with the DNC. We wonder if this includes the cost of arresting the Lafayette 8 in April, or of the dozens of cops sent to City Hall when citizens concerned about that incident addressed the city council in May.

Chelsea, Everett, and Revere are using State anti-terrorism funds to buy special video cameras to help detect potential terrorist activities within their communities. They expect also to use the cameras for other police needs. Malden, Melrose, Somerville, and Winthrop all got smaller dollops of cash.

The Chelsea Housing Authority is already using some of these cameras to watch for “lease fraud”—in other words, to see who’s sleeping over with whom in the projects.

The City of Baltimore is building a 24-hour surveillance network under a $2 million federal grant.

Maryland’s director of homeland security brushed aside jittery questions about cameras that will be constantly monitored by retired police officers or college students: "We're at war."

Boston already has “thousands” of hidden cameras in its streets, both government and private (“Cold eyes on you - Everywhere!” Tom Mashberg, Boston Herald, 9/12/04).

The cold eye of the beholder

Among the omens of the police state is a vanishing legal distinction between political activity and crime. Non-citizens, particularly of Arab or South Asian origin, began feeling this well before 9/11.

A recent Civil Liberties Union report, Mass Impact: The Domestic War Against Terrorism: Are We On The Right Track?, detailed the devastating effects of security policies, mostly on immigrants, in Massachusetts.

Congress, asked to bring these same policies to bear on the general public, actually rejected the Bush administration’s “Total Information Awareness” plan.

At least, Congress appeared to reject the Bush plan.

A separate computer database known as—get this—the MATRIX (Multi-state Anti-TeRorism Information eXchange), touted as a local crime-control efficiency measure, had been effectively brought under the control of the Department of Homeland Security for the price of an $8 million federal grant.

The state-level Matrix program can be expanded across the nation, apparently in defiance of Congress. But Congress continues to fund the highly specialized software being developed for that plan, provided it is not used against Americans on U.S. soil.

End of joke, laugh here.

Satellite-based Global Positioning (GP) technology has already been introduced into transportation industries. Recently passed state legislation mandated the use of GP to keep track of sex offenders. That may sound reasonable to most of us. But then, RICO sounded like a good way to go after the Mafia.

Lifetime imprisonment with out charge or trial, the revival of torture, public harassment of students and professors—it’s almost too much to believe that this is already happening in this country.

Last summer, some Republican senators proposed to centralize control of all federal spy organizations directly under the president. Democratic candidate John Kerry’s top security advisor commented, "President Bush still appears to be dragging his feet.… Senator Roberts's proposal is welcome and is very similar to the reforms offered by John Kerry but needs to become bipartisan to be fully successful….”

Bipartisan. Yes, sir. One of the two Senators and only eight of the 75 Congresspeople who opposed the Intelligence Reform Act in December were Democrats. The Act’s new Director of National Intelligence will be in charge of all intelligence, covert action, and natural disaster relief, both domestic and international. The law’s 240 pages are full of specific references to Islam, the Middle East, and Pakistan.

The Act also mandates a standardization of drivers’ licenses. The American Civil Liberties Union warns that this will mean de facto national I.D. cards.

chips ahoy

The follow-up REAL-ID bill passed the House February 10. According to Rep. Ron Paul (R, Texas), “gives authority to the Secretary of Homeland Security to expand required information on driver's licenses, potentially including such biometric information as retina scans, finger prints, DNA information, and even Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) radio tracking technology.”

Many conservatives and libertarians in Congress such as Reresentative Paul and Senator Robert Byrd (D, WV) are opposing these policies. But for now, the government and its agents in media are ignoring them and focusing on their opponents on the political left, mainly those in the nation’s universities.

Thus Northeastern University Professor M. Shahid Alam and a leading American Indian academic in Colorado, Ward Churchill, are being vilified daily by right-wing publicists in an effort to deprive them of their livelihoods.

This report drew on materials published by: Baltimore Sun, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Counterpunch, the John Kerry campaign, Knight-Ridder news service, Miami Herald, New Scientist [U.K.], St.Petersburg [FL] Times, Scientist.com, Seattle Times, Washington Post, Wired