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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas M. who wrote (190495)	6/14/2004 3:53:02 AM
From: Amy J	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1586096

As long as they don't abuse the information they have, why not? The only thing that bugs me about your story, is that they wasted a bundle of taxpayer's money by having 241 investigators engaged to the task, rather than simply having one more efficient investigator. I think the biggest risk would be incorrectly accusing someone of something, just on the basis of their beliefs. As a hypothetical example, a right-wing Neocon FBI agent might classify Tejek as a threat to this country for having (what that agent might think) extremist opinions against Bush. A Neocon might get confused in how to interpret data of a liberal. Meanwhile, a liberal FBI agent, might classify Tejek as a benefit to this country for having (what that agent might think) intelligent opinions on how Bush is potentially putting our country at risk. The risk isn't if a person is surveillanced. The risk is if an extremist Neocon with zero international friends with no friends outside of his or her color or race, is so uninformed about globalization, that the person incorrectly interprets intelligence data due to their narrow mind. How data is interpreted, is the risk. But how it's presented to the public is also a risk too. Look no further than the 60-aged-something Oregon police officer that reported on the Intel employee in such a way that generated a huge amount of disbelief in the community, namely because the report stated the guy grew a beard and wore religious clothing. A more liberal minded police officer, probably would have written a few more words to preface that type of information in such a way to make the report more believable from the perspective of a liberal-minded person who believes in full equality of race and religion. Apparently turned out the police officer was correct and for that I'm thankful they got him out of there. But I think the report should have prefaced such type of information with, "While wearing religious attire and having a beard in of itself certainly does not imply anything wrong, but as is most commonly known ANY type of drastic change in attire can imply a change in state of mind. His attire suddenly changed to a religious style." Instead, the officer just wrote his attire changed to a beard and religious style, which was widely interpreted in the community as a racist comment due to the lack of preface. A hardcore liberal-minded person should have proofread his report to help with public acceptability. 241 was really a huge waste of taxpayer money. And on such a peaceful person too. Makes you wonder if someone was against MLK's beliefs for promoting equal rights. I think one area our govt should get more involved from an undercover standpoint, is with the environmental extremist loose-knit groups in Oregon, where a foreign country could easily instill one person to instigate anger within such groups that could act out radical attacks on our country. The thought occurs to me, because one time there was a foreigner that tried to create a loose group of environmentalists where he tried to generate a lot of anger thru enviro hate topics (not too successfully with the normal enviro types but possibly he was successful with radical folks that may have come out of the bushes). It's amazing the amount of anger that can easily be created or influenced by a person with leadership skills. This guy didn't do anything wrong nor did anyone in his "loose" group, but it certainly gives insight into a potential weakspot our country has, namely how easy it is to come to this country and influence hatred. I think CNN's article about the concern for an enviro terrorist attack, is a valid concern. Regards, Amy J