Via Cursor, a fascinating “Special Report” called The Campus Files at the San Francisco Chronicle’s online site SF Gate. The series revolves around various FBI memos from the 1960’s that reveal the coordinated efforts of the FBI, CIA, and then-California governor Ronald Reagan to undermine those Hoover and his cronies deemed subversive. Especially disturbing is being able to compare the FBI memos with most of their contents censored for what the FBI claimed were reasons of protecting information about law enforcement operations, and the same memos un-censored (obtained after a 17-year long and eventually successful Freedom of Information Act suit). Needless to say the previously censored information didn’t contain anything sensitive about law enforcement, but a lot of information about the illegal surveillance of various people connected with the University of California at Berkeley.
To quote from a 1969 memo from J. Edgar Hoover’s third in command to his second in command:
The lessons for today’s era of “homeland security” are painfully obvious. Look no further than Ashcroft’s recent lifting of restrictions on the FBI to monitor religoius meetings and Internet traffic.
Update: Found this over at the Nando Times:
Four in five Americans would give up some freedoms to gain security […] a new Gallup poll found.
About one-third of those polled favor making it easier for authorities to access private e-mail and telephone conversations.