Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/09/26/american-stalinism.html
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What a wonderful job we’re doing creating enemies and radicalizing our own…
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And outsourcing our torture to theocratic dictatorships.
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How many friends do I have to narc on to get a free upgrade to business class?
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America: land of the free, home of the brave.
Or maybe not.
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None. They don’t actually have to be guilty of anything. Just brown.
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You can narc on me if I can narc on you for my seat.
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Business class upgrades cost 20,000 Frequent Flipper Miles.
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Playing nonsense advocate here, but thats quite a back story for this gentleman to have absolutely no reason to be on the no-fly list. if he was on for simply “being brown” / from Sudan, who were they expecting him to narc on or get info from? just seems like a heap of work if the poor guy had absolutely no info and was not connected in any way to some kind of trouble. gotta keep pushing those TPS reports i guess…
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Remember that in the US, national security is often conflated with national interest; this fellow probably knew somebody who knew something of value to the US.
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Then why did the FBI back down to try to avoid the lawsuit? That’s pretty rare for cops, and I don’t think they’d do it if they thought they had any case at all.
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I am reminded of some of the “stingray” cases where the declined to prosecute if information about the use of the cellphone tower simulators was about to come out in open court. I’d guess that there was something more than “being brown” here but not something that they would want to release in open court. Smells like “sources and methods” and/or illegal surveilance to me.
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It’s not unusual for intelligence agencies to seek informers from particular groups, just in the hopes that they’ll meet someone who will pass along some information of interest to them, not because they even have any suspicions about anyone in that person’s immediate circle.
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Historically there has only been a tenuous connection between police requests for informants and wrongdoing. Police are capable of all of the biases seen in our broader society, including racism and petty vengefullness. All it takes is them wanting to get an informant in a mosque (well documented behavior) and being unhappy about being refused ( very well documented behavior). Absent some showing that the person belonged on the list, the presumption should be that they don’t.
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