Saturday, January 09, 2010

Worrying developments: Another reduction in our liberties

A foreign police organization is now free to do what it likes in the United States without oversight from any US law enforcement body. If that doesn't sound scary enough then read the full article: Immunity for INTERPOL in the US.

Whilst the article is written in an overly alarming way which may put some people off, please try to get past that and understand the actual substance of what has happened and the possible consequences.

The key data I saw in the article are:

INTERPOL now can conduct its operations on U.S. soil with zero accountability to anyone in this country.
INTERPOL records are beyond US citizens' Freedom of Information Act requests and from American legal or investigative discovery
Why is it suddenly necessary to have, within the Justice Department, a repository for stashing government files which, therefore, will be beyond the ability of Congress, American law-enforcement, the media, and the American people to scrutinize?
Has this action effectively bypassed the Freedom of Information Act? Only time will tell, but many small changes like this add up to big chunks taken out of our rights.

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