I knew it would happen sooner or later. Despite the reassurances of my more right-wing friends that such things could NEVER occur because of all the myriad checks and balances put into place. None of them seem capable of understanding how a United States Senator could , nor could they grasp the very simple fact that innocent people are placed on terrorist watch lists.
No, they have a very hard time getting beyond the rhetoric "Well, if you have nothing to hide, there's nothing wrong with collecting secret data on U.S. Citizens. WRONG. There is something VERY wrong with the way the U.S. government, in the guise of the FBI, CIA, NSA, NRO, Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security and others, collects and maintains secret lists. Yes, I think that data is needed. Yes, it's a GOOD THING to track known or suspected terrorists. But sadly, it's grown beyond that, by combining data from many state and local databases to a panacea to "git them terrists!"
And now, we are starting to hear about cases where these secret watch lists and databases are being abused by the very people sworn to protect us from the evil terrists. In this case, an NY cop used improper access to NCIC to find info on a guy. Turns out the guy ended up on a terrorist watch list. Then, said NY cop takes this info and hands it over to a girl, who just happened to be in the middle of a child custody dispute with the guy. The girl, in turn, hands info to her lawyer, who attempts to use it to force the court to rule in the girl's favor.
I don't know whether this guy really is a terrorist, or linked to terrorists, or not. I'd wager that a good 40% or more of all the people on these secret lists simply do not belong there, and are on them simply because they share a name, or even a similar sounding name to someone who DOES belong on the list. Or maybe they gave money to the wrong PAC. Or were arrested at a protest, or who knows what. The point is, the NY Cop should not have had the access he did, and he certainly should not have abused the system to get this kind of information.
If I was the guy in question, I'd launch a nasty multi-million dollar lawsuit against the NYPD. This is EXACTLY the kind of abuse of information that they swear could never happen. But it does happen. It happens fairly frequently.
Das Aggregator!