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.