From: Declan McCullagh <declan@eff.org>
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 1996 21:57:33 +0800
To: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
Subject: Re: TWA 800 - Serious thread.
In-Reply-To: <32349A90.51BD@gte.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.960910041133.12836I-100000@eff.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Last night I started reading "Main Justice," by Pulitzer-winner Jim McGee
and Brian Duffy, about the DoJ's recent history of organized crime/drug
war fighting and wiretapping. 

The book describes how Federal agencies have been granted more leeway in
terms of entrapment thanks mostly to a conservative Supreme Court. Scary
stuff. 

-Declan


On Mon, 9 Sep 1996, Dale Thorn wrote:
> 
> Per the tendency of federal agencies to let it be publicly known that 
> they lie openly to trap suspects (and apparently this technique has been 
> OK'd for local enforcement as well):
> 
> This is going to backfire on them (and us), and probably has already.
> If govt. protects its "sources and methods", however nefarious, to the 
> extent that the public is never asked to assent to these methods (even 
> though a few of us know about them anyway), then the public doesn't have 
> to become overtly cynical about what's going on.
> 
> On the other hand, whether you think the people have this much right to 
> know or not, when the public consciousness embraces the concept that the 
> police openly and regularly lie (and that it's a "good thing" they do), 
> the result will be greater public cynicism, distrust, paranoia, hatred, 
> and anarchy (the bad kind).
> 


// declan@eff.org // I do not represent the EFF // declan@well.com //