A Nation of Snoops
October 8, 2009
Our Neighbors’ Keeper?
A Nation of Snoops
By DAVE LINDORFF
Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton and other big city cops are calling for a new system of “citizen watch” programs, allegedly to help them spot hidden terrorists. I view this new call for a nation of private spies with a deep suspicion born of experience with the LAPD and its historic penchant for spying on law-abiding residents of that city.
Back in the late 1970s, together with a band of other doughty journalists, including Tommy Thompson, Ron Ridenour, Ben Pleasants, I co-founded and ran a spunky little news weekly called the LA Vanguard. In the course of just one year, we broke stories about secret “security offices” run by local phone companies (Pacific Telephone and GTE) which provided unlisted numbers and credit information to police and other government agencies without requiring a warrant, about the killing of unarmed citizens by police, about the LAPD’s “shoot to kill” gun use policy, about judges in landlord-tenant cases who were slumlords themselves, and many other stories that were being ignored by the LA Times and the rest of the local establishment media.
For our efforts, we found out years later, we were targeted by the LAPD’s “red squad,” known at the time as the Public Disorder Intelligence Division (PDID), for an intensive program of spying that including planting a young cop, Connie Milazzo, as a member of our editorial collective. We only learned of Milazzo’s real identity years later when she admitted disclosed it herself to a judge in a public hearing (she wanted to avoid being sent to the county lockup along with a group of activists she had “joined” undercover who had all been arrested during a protest and who were refusing to provide their identities to the court).
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[quote]
Any attempt to organize a citizen’s watch program to look for suspicious activity is bound to devolve into a police program of spying on those who are outside of the “norm”: minorities, leftists, activists, loners, people with alternative life-styles, artists, etc. [/quote]
I think the only reason that information about these programs are coming out now is because people are talking about it more. Also I don’t think you can keep this stuff hidden forever. I think they are already doing this, the propaganda here is to make it more palatable as they present it to the general public.
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“I think the only reason that information about these programs are coming out now is because people are talking about it more. Also I don’t think you can keep this stuff hidden forever. I think they are already doing this, the propaganda here is to make it more palatable as they present it to the general public.” I abolutely agree with your assessment, it is an attempt to soften the blow by desesitizing the masses therby prevent real changes from occuring.
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gangstalking Reply:
February 1st, 2010 at 8:06 pm
I think the Internet has helped. Remember this happened for years and when it did, the target would think it was just them. They or their families would be run from town to town, job to job, thus we have targets saying this goes back 20 or 30 years. Also we have targets saying this happened to a relative, or someone from an older generation. I think we are helping to expose it, but in East Germany and in China we know this happens, or happened, and the citizens are aware and still go along with this. One person I worked with said that in many countries that you walk down a street and that their is someone looking out and watching, he didn’t think this was such a big deal. I can’t understand how someone could feel this way, they creep me out, when they just act like this is normal, but then what can they do?
If I thought it was about protecting the city, that would be one thing, but I see the slavery of it, and I just expect people to be unhappy about it, or rebel somehow, but I guess for some of them if they go along with it it’s not that bad for them.
For us, they literally try to harm us, sometimes mortally if they can, and just can’t smile and act like this is normal, or that I think that the world should be this way. Again the movie Matrix comes to mind, and the scene where Morpheous tells Neo that he is a slave.
I think this will come out, but my concern is that when it does, they will make it seem like it’s not a big deal, like it’s something good, and that will be worst. When the truth about sexual abuse or jail rapes were hidden it was one thing, but with it so out in the open and still happening it’s worst. Cause you think that if people don’t know that is why it’s not changing, but with this, I see that people do know, they are all too aware, and even if and when we expose this fully, I think many will just go along with this. Look at how many of them are snitches? I think they will just see it as normal and not as the abomination that it is. I am all for defending your home and city, state, ect, but I don’t think you have to be an organized informant to do it. This brings out the worst in society. Plus almost every totalitarian society set up a snitch force first before they could come to power and kept them so they could stay in power. Slavery for the people by the people.
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