On Friday, May 31, 2002, at 02:12 AM, Bill Stewart wrote: > If Ashcroft wants his underlings to monitor the internet, > TCP/IP will let him do lots of things, and Bugs will let him do more, > but if he needs cooperation from ISPs or other online service or > content providers, his choices are either subpoenas or extortion. > And if he wants them to investigate churches, I'd recommend that he > first try being as fundamentalist about the Constitution as he is > about his personal religious views, and see if that leaves him any room > for bothering them.
An amusing social hack might be for some of the more clean-cut folks (not me) to show up in various churches and political groups and _appear_ to be agents investigating and observing the churches. Perhaps the careless display of a tape recorder, perhaps a small earpiece, and certainly the black shoes and conservative garb of an agent. Or the "phony attempting to blend in" look of a agent. But too much subtlety might not be good...better to just freak them out directly. This could freak out the Moonies, the Quakers, the ACLU, and so on. A few hundred "fake Men in Black" could really unleash some paranoia. Don't _tell_ people one is an agent, for multiple reasons (might be illegal to claim to be a Fed, for one thing). But make them nervous. Make them wonder what the hell has become of limited government and freedom of association and religion when narcs from Big Brother are sitting in on their ceremonies taking notes and making recordings. Of course, don't do this at any kind of militant group, which may take forcible steps to eject suspected narcs...or worse. --Tim May "How we burned in the prison camps later thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive?" --Alexander Solzhenitzyn, Gulag Archipelago
