{"id":1487,"date":"2007-10-23T05:46:55","date_gmt":"2007-10-23T10:46:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1487"},"modified":"2007-10-23T05:46:55","modified_gmt":"2007-10-23T10:46:55","slug":"but-verify","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1487","title":{"rendered":"…But Verify"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most Americans approved of giving government a lot of extra power after the onset of the crisis.\u00a0 We gave the power on the assumption that the government would operate with integrity.\u00a0 Being composed of humans with imperfections (and, being careerists and politicians, perhaps more imperfections than most), some of them took more than they were supposed to.<\/p>\n

The crisis – well, that’s the trick, of course:\u00a0 the Red Scare, the Kennedy Assassinations (both), Watergate, the Stockton Massacre, the Crack Epidemic…<\/p>\n

…oh, yeah – and 9\/11.\u00a0 The responses, in the wrong hands, led to untrammelled power in the hands of J Edgar Hoover, immense CIA abuses and the Gun Control Act of 1968, a special prosecutor law with inordinate power, the 1994 Crime Bill and 1996 Counterterrorism Act…<\/p>\n

…and the Patriot Act, which gives the government powers it may well need to fight the war on terror, and gives unethical law enforcement and intelligence peopleimmense opportunities for abuse, as Patterico relates:<\/a><\/p>\n

First, it is true that, as the anonymous source told the New York Sun, there is information that \u201ccould jeopardize the safety of certain individuals\u201d \u2014 namely, the ages of Higazy\u2019s family members, and the fact that his brother has arthritis. But I don\u2019t really think that this information is that significant \u2014 or that its omission would provide a significant roadblock to security officials determined to harm Higazy\u2019s family members.<\/p>\n

The other thing you notice is, I believe, far more significant \u2014 which is why I put it in bold type. Namely, you have an FBI agent who admits that he threatened to ensure that a suspect\u2019s family would be tortured by a foreign government.<\/p>\n

Somehow, I think that\u2019s the reason the information was submitted under seal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The ethics of power depend on the integrity of government’s agents.\u00a0 Which, like any other people, takes constant scrutiny.<\/p>\n

Oh, read the whole thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most Americans approved of giving government a lot of extra power after the onset of the crisis.\u00a0 We gave the power on the assumption that the government would operate with integrity.\u00a0 Being composed of humans with imperfections (and, being careerists and politicians, perhaps more imperfections than most), some of them took more than they were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}