Charles Pierce asks the appropriate question: When Will 9/11 Stop Being an Alibi for Injustice?

When Will 9/11 Stop Being an Alibi for Injustice?
By Charles P. Pierce
at 3:55PM

I expect we'll be hearing howls of outrage, and anguished cries for Liberty (!) from all the Republican contenders when word gets around that the NYPD apparently woke up one morning and decided it was the American Stasi. I expect we'll hear humble apologies from the people who laughed at the nervous-liberal slippery slope arguments about how unleashing the power of the U.S. intelligence apparatus on American Muslims invariably would result in that power's being loosed generally on people who disagreed with the government itself, and for any reason. I expect the president and his men will condemn this inexcuable abridgement of the Bill of Rights vigorously and vow to make whole its victims to the full extent of the law.

And then I expect to walk down to the banks of the Charles River and find a fortune in Aztec gold in a Stop-and-Shop bag....

The AP points out that the NYPD used these same tactics in 2004, when the department monitored church, environmental, and anti-war groups in the U.S., claiming these policies were necessary to prep for the GOP convention. But these methods continued far after the convention took place: in 2008, the NYPD's super-secret intel department sent an undercover officer to attend the People's Summit in New Orleans. The project report gathered information on two U.S. activists, journalist Jordan Flaherty and labor organizer Marisa Franco, the AP notes...The department has not commented directly on this issue, but has said previously that its tactics are necessary in the wake of September 11.

At its most basic, this is a local police force exercising an intelligence-gathering operation beyond all oversight and way out of its jurisdiction. How in the name of god does 9/11 justify spying on a convention in New Orleans seven years later? And, on a more general note, I'd like to live long enough to see the day when 9/11 no longer lives on simply as a free-range alibi for every authoritarian fantasy held by everybody who's hiding under the bed.


Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/nypd-spy-on-liberal-groups-7552703#ixzz1q8cq959P