CBP division spying on journalists, congressmen and NGOs.

[alhoon]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/cbp-launc...100035634.html

The gist: U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is conducting a review of a secretive division that uses some of the country’s most sensitive databases to investigate the travel and financial records and personal connections of journalists, members of Congress and other Americans not suspected of any crime.



Unless I am wrong, that news article talks about a secretive governmental organization that shadows journalists and members of congress to find and track their connections.
" Such work, which was used to track terrorists, was also directed at Americans, including congressional members and staffers and journalists."

Alarming as a division using dubiously legal methods to track persons they deem as dangerous because of their expressed beliefs and not any threat they present to the American public, what shocked me was this:

“There is no specific guidance on how to vet someone,” Rambo later told investigators. “In terms of policy and procedure, to be 100 percent frank there, there’s no policy and procedure on vetting.”

So, that organization with access to some of the most sensitive databases works under no set of rules, policies or procedures, like a shadow police.
KGB and Stazi probably started that way too.

It is only now, under the new administration, that CBP institutes some training and policies to protect the 1st and 4th amendment rights of Americans citizens.


I am alarmed by this blatant slide towards authoritarianism. I believe this secretive division should become much more transparent and the activities of these proto-KGB (or should I say Gestapo since they were installed by far-rights?) should be curtailed and investigated for any illegal activities while gathering information on innocent people.

[Heathen Hammer]

A lot of identity theft and other things like that tend to come from government leaks,
Having said that best way to deal with government overreach problem is by reversing the situation. Government's ability to "classify" /withhold information from public should be severely limited. At the same time, we have to ask ourselves, if government officials above certain level enjoy too much privacy. Matters such as their investment portfolios, as well as pretty much every other aspect of their lives should be out in public eye. If you want to have control over lives of many other people, then you shouldn't have privacy.

[Cyclops]

....

I am alarmed by this blatant slide towards authoritarianism. I believe this secretive division should become much more transparent and the activities of these proto-KGB (or should I say Gestapo since they were installed by far-rights?) should be curtailed and investigated for any illegal activities while gathering information on innocent people.

Its not that new of course, I mean the PATRIOT Act is still largely (almost completely?) in place, and the NSA and CIA have a history of domestic spying in breach of their charters.

I guess any successful state cuts corners with its security measures, and those instruments of state get used for private and systemic benefit (eg ruining rival politicians or reformers).

Makes the line about "the land of the free" a bit of a joke though, it may just be that US citizens get spied on by their own people more than anyone on earth.