It *Does* Happen Here
So many times in the course of conversations about privacy and politics, people are otherwise share my same general socio-political moorings express great doubt that the US government would ever spy on people for any reason other than crime prevention. While I’m never at a loss for counter examples, I’ll have to say that the best documented examples are often a generation or two old, and probably carry a little less currency, as a result. Well, governments - state and federal - have been obliging me lately. First we had Maryland police closely tracking the activities of dangerous people like anti-death penalty activists, and now we’ve got a straight admission from the FBI that it spied on reporters from the Washington Post and New York Times.
It not only can happen here, it *does* happen here.
