Much Ado About Nothin’, Man

I know it’s old news, but I’ve been wanting to say something about the ACLU’s tempest-in-a-teapot “story” about the activities of the Maryland State Police, which they would very much like you to believe were a series of illegal, outrageous, and preposterously unjustifiable invasions of individuals privacy. Reading their webpage and press release, it’s hard not to come to that conclusion, yourself. Unfortunately, the ACLU then blew it, by providing some of the “supporting documents” that were released. Smoking guns? Not exactly.

Rather than showing the gregarious invasions of privacy that the ACLU likes to pretend they show, the reports from the Maryland State Police show - gasp! - a law-enforcement agency doing their job, in a perfectly legal and above-board way. There’s no evidence that phones were tapped, or that people were “tailed” or placed under surveillance. No computers were broken into; no personal records were subpoenaed from banks, libraries, or other businesses. No, rather, police attended public meetings of a couple select groups of interest, over a pretty limited time frame.

Much of the information they gathered at these meetings was, let’s face it, of little value. Some of it, though, was of legitimate intelligence value. Normally I’m a fan of the ACLU’s efforts, but this time I think they’ve gotten a little carried away with their Big Brother hysteria. Law enforcement doing their job is not cause for concern. Gathering intelligence by attending public meetings is not cause for concern, is not - as the ACLU describes it - “Un-American”; quite the contrary, in fact. Nor were the “tactics” used anything like those of the COINTELPRO years, however much the ACLU might like you to believe otherwise.

If you ignore the ACLU’s hysteria, and read the reports, you’ll see that a couple of groups’ meetings were attended, for around a year - during which time it became clear that most of them were civil and law-abiding. As far as I can tell, attendance at these groups meetings eventually ended, after it was determined that they weren’t of concern. If you read some of the reports in the database about Max Obuszewski, it should be fairly easy to figure out why he was - quite legitimately - of interest. Here’s a hint: Max may describe himself as a life-long pacifist, but some of his rhetoric can be interpreted otherwise. Some of the things he’s alleged to have said at some of the meetings, in fact, sound a bit like ALF or ELF rhetoric. If Max wants to argue that his statements were mis-reported or mischaracterized, that’s one thing - one thing, I might add, that he doesn’t seem to be arguing, actually.

I recently read William Gibson’s novel Pattern Recognition, and in it, one of the characters states - and I know, it’s hardly an original concept - that paranoia and persecution complexes are symptoms of rampantly self-centered egotism. Nine times out of ten, it seems, when a liberal activist cries about persecution and harassment at the hands of the government, such claims are basically unfounded. If it makes ‘em feel important, then fine, let them whinge about how The Man is out to get them - saying so is, of course, a Constitutionally-protected right, and there’s no law against having a ginormous ego. It’s just somewhat painful to watch a group like the ACLU - who do indeed do much good - waste their time, money, and effort pursuing big nothings like the Maryland State Police thing, when those resources could be put to such better uses…

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