Starvin Larry

“The Justice Department is claiming, in a little-noticed court filing, that a federal agent had the right to impersonate a young woman online by creating a Facebook page in her name without her knowledge. Government lawyers also are defending the agent’s right to scour the woman’s seized cellphone and to post photographs — including racy pictures of her and even one of her young son and niece — to the phony social media account, which the agent was using to communicate with suspected criminals.”

“Consider what the federal government is arguing here. It’s arguing that if you’re arrested for a drug crime, including a crime unserious enough to merit a sentence of probation, the government retains the power to (a) steal your identity, (b) use that identity for drug policing, thus making your name and face known to potentially dangerous criminals, (c) interact with those criminals while posing as you, which could subject you to reprisals from those criminals, (d) expose photos of your family, including children, to those criminals, and (e) do all of this without your consent, and with no regard for your safety or public reputation.

The mindset that would allow government officials to not only engage in this sort of behavior, but to then fight in court to preserve their power to continue it is the same mindset that, for example, allows drug cops to compel juveniles and young women to become drug informants, with little regard for their safety — and to then make no apologies when those informants are murdered. Or that would lead campus cops to let a teen slowly kill himself with heroin, because they could hold his addiction over his head to force his cooperation as an informant. Or that would allow a guy arrested on a possession charge to be abandoned for days in a jail cell, nearly killing him.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/10/07/once-youve-dehumanized-drug-offenders-its-easy-to-steal-their-identities/

Does anyone still have any doubt that we are living in a police state?