[47192] in Cypherpunks
Above the Law
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Young)
Sun Jan 14 20:03:48 1996
From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 1996 19:45:58 -0500
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
David Burnham, a distinguished journalist, has published:
Above the Law: Secret Deals, Political Fixes, and Other
Misadventures of the U.S. Department of Justice;
Scribner; 1996. 444 pp. $27.50. ISBN 0-684-80699-1
The chapter, "Keeping Track of the American People: The
Unblinking Eye and Giant Ear," nails wizard surveillance,
surreptitous entry and other security-beats-privacy
technotoxins:
A solid argument can be made that in shaping and
directing the FBI's investigative technologies from the
late 1970s to the mid-1990s, Al Bayse, assistant FBI
director, Technical Services Division, may well be the
nation's single most influential law enforcement
official since J. Edgar Hoover.
Burnham cogently details DOJ and NSA plots, the bull-market
in federal prosecutors, the pathology of "national
security" abuse, encryption nightmares, subservient
politics, careerism absent ethics. He admonishes "sleeping
watchdogs" complicit with the nation's leading agency for
burgeoning instrusiveness.
