LEGAL Houston Man Takes Picture Of Thunderstorm, Gets FBI Visit As A Result (OMG A TERRORIST!)

[Dozdoats]

Probably will be reported to the local Fusion Center anyway...
=======================================

http://www.pixiq.com/article/houston-man-receives-visit-from-fbi-after-photographing-weather
October 5, 2012 @ 9:24PM
Houston Man Receives Visit from FBI after Photographing Weather
By Carlos Miller -... Topics News

A man who snapped photos of a brewing storm last month received a visit Friday from an FBI Agent, inquiring why he would want to take such photos.

Michael Galindo explained that he was simply volunteering for the National Weather Service.

And FBI Agent David Pileggi seemed to be satisfied with that response.

But Galindo was left wondering whether he now has a permanent FBI file.

“He told me, ‘you’re not a threat and you are doing a public service but just be careful next time,’” Galindo said in a telephone interview with Photography is Not a Crime.

The problem arose because Galindo happened to be taking photos near the Lyondell Refinery outside of Houston on September 13, even though he was never standing on the refinery’s property.

Someone from the refinery spotted him and called police, whom apparently arrived after he had left.

Police then contacted the local FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, which bills itself as “nation’s front line on terrorism.”

“I was pretty freaked out when he came but I had no idea what it was about,” said the 26-year-old man. “The worst thing I’ve done is get speeding tickets, but I haven’t gotten one in three years.

“He said I was spotted near the refinery but I couldn’t even remember doing that. I thought it had to be somebody else.

“It wasn’t until he mentioned my camera that I made the connection.”

Galindo told the agent that he volunteers for a NWS program called Skywarn that trains citizens to monitor the weather in the name of “protecting lives and property.”

He said when he pulled off to the side of the road and began taking photos of a brewing storm and potential tornados, he didn’t even notice the refinery, but made sure there weren’t any “no parking” signs around.

“I told him I had been looking for a clear line of site and I had found it,” he said.

Although Pileggi seemed a little surprised by that response, he pulled out a three-page document and began asking questions off it, inquiring whether Galindo had ever been in the military or had ever traveled overseas and about what schools he had attended in the past.

“I wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything,” Galindo said.

The 20-minute visit took place less than a week after a scathing report was released on the inefficiency and ineptitude on urban fusion centers, such as the Miami-Dade Police Department’s Homeland Security Bureau, which was monitoring my Facebook page because of my blog, as well as the Houston fusion center, which produced a video depicting photographers as terrorists.

Joint Terrorism Task Forces are a little different than fusion centers but they both operate under the Department of Homeland Security and are under the assumption photographers are terrorists.

 

[Hacker]

This government has way too much money . . . and too little to do.

Up here, we see DHS SUVs - brand new Chevy Tahoes. Cars that most of us cannot afford.

I could cut a Trillion out of the Federal government budget in a New York minute.

 

[Publius]

I would want to know more like who informed them of this activity and why? FOIA?

 

[Cascadians]

Considering that now almost everybody has a cellphone with a camera, they are going to be awfully busy.

 

[Palmetto]

We have a real terrorism problem in both the Executive Branch and the "Justice" Department.

I suggest to the FBI to start there and work their way down.

Palmetto

 

[TCPatriot]

We have a real terrorism problem in both the Executive Branch and the "Justice" Department.

I suggest to the FBI to start there and work their way down.

Palmetto

I agree with the above 100%. Start at the top. DC is where the most terrorists are.

 

[Dozdoats]

See Something Say Something, probably. Every entry in the article below is linked at the original site, follow the link below to read them all.
=====================

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012...ke-in-nazi-germany-or-stasi-east-germany.html

“See Something Say Something” Campaign Could Allow People to Label ANY AMERICAN a Suspected “Terrorist” … Just Like in Nazi Germany or Stasi East Germany
Posted on February 12, 2012 by WashingtonsBlog

List of Actions or Beliefs Which May Get You Labeled a Terrorist Grows Daily

Every American could – literally – be labeled a suspected terrorist under current governmental criteria.

Specifically, the following actions may get a U.S. citizen labeled as a suspected terrorist today:

Speaking out against government policies
Protesting anything
Questioning war (even though war reduces our national security; and see this)
Criticizing the government’s targeting of innocent civilians with drones (although killing innocent civilians with drones is one of the main things which increases terrorism. And see this)
Asking questions about pollution (even at a public Congressional hearing?)
Paying cash at an Internet cafe
Asking questions about Wall Street shenanigans
Holding gold
Creating alternative currencies
Stocking up on more than 7 days of food (even though all Mormons are taught to stockpile food, and most Hawaiians store up on extra food)
Investigating factory farming
Infringing a copyright
Taking pictures or videos
Holding the following beliefs may also be considered grounds for suspected terrorism:

Valuing online privacy
Supporting Ron Paul or being a libertarian
Liking the Founding Fathers
Being a Christian (?)
Being anti-tax, anti-regulation or for the gold standard
Being “reverent of individual liberty”
Being “anti-nuclear”
“Believe in conspiracy theories”
“A belief that one’s personal and/or national “way of life” is under attack”
“Impose strict religious tenets or laws on society (fundamentalists)”
“Insert religion into the political sphere”
“Those who seek to politicize religion”
“Supported political movements for autonomy”
Being “anti-abortion”
Being “anti-Catholic”
Being “anti-global”
“Suspicious of centralized federal authority”
“Fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation)”
“A belief in the need to be prepared for an attack either by participating in … survivalism”
See Something, Act Like a Snitch in Nazi Germany, Stasi East Germany or Iraq

I initially thought that Paul Joseph Watson was overreacting when he claimed that a Homeland Security video paints the following activities as signs of potential terrorism:

Opposing surveillance
Talking to police officers
Wearing a hoodie
Driving a van
Writing on a piece of paper
But Watson makes a brilliant point about Homeland Security’s “See Something Say Something” campaign, and how accusations of terrorism actually spread:

As Robert Gellately of Florida State University has highlighted, Germans under Hitler denounced their neighbors and friends not because they genuinely believed them to be a security threat, but because they expected to selfishly benefit from doing so, both financially, socially and psychologically via a pavlovian need to be rewarded by their masters for their obedience.

At the height of its influence around one in seven of the East German population was an informant for the Stasi. As in Nazi Germany, the creation of an informant system was wholly centered around identifying political dissidents and those with grievances against the state, and had little or nothing to do with genuine security concerns. [Indeed, the American government has been using anti-terror laws to crush dissent and to help the too big to fail businesses compete against smaller businesses (and see this. And the Department of Homeland Security has been distracted by activities which have very little to do with terrorism.)]

This is the kind of society the Department of Homeland Security is, whether deliberately or inadvertently, recreating in 21st century America.

Gellately’s website notes:

“I started to read these files about all the victims in just one region of Germany that the Gestapo had processed,” Gellately says. “It would have taken a large force of secret police to collect information on so many people. I needed to know just how many secret police there really were. So I asked an elderly gentleman who would’ve lived through those times, and he replied, ‘They were everywhere!’”

That was the prevailing myth.

“But I had evidence right there in my hands that supported a different story,” Gellately explains. “There were relatively few secret police, and most were just processing the information coming in. I had found a shocking fact. It wasn’t the secret police who were doing this wide-scale surveillance and hiding on every street corner. It was the ordinary German people who were informing on their neighbors.”

***

As he was uncovering who was acting as the Gestapo’s unsolicited agents, he also began to discern what motivated neighbor to inform on neighbor. The surviving myth told the story of informers who were motivated either by a commitment to the Third Reich or by a fear of authority.

But the motives Gellately found were banal—greed, jealousy, and petty differences.

He found cases of partners in business turning in associates to gain full ownership; jealous boyfriends informing on rival suitors; neighbors betraying entire families who chronically left shared bathrooms unclean or who occupied desirable apartments.

And then there were those who informed because for the first time in their lives someone in authority would listen to them and value what they said.

***

Backing Hitler also challenges conventional views on the nature of modern dictatorships. Perhaps as a way for us to believe that “it couldn’t happen here,” we have viewed the Holocaust as an atrocity that was the work of a handful of evil men. Gellately, however, presents persuasive evidence that Hitler and the Third Reich were able to build a consensus for their policies.

“They began with small violations of the rights of Jews and other minorities, and then ratcheted up their racism and persecution only when they saw implied consent from the German people.” Gellately says. “Many Germans disapproved of Hitler’s fascism and brutality, at first. But after the long economic depression following the First World War, the German people allowed the thriving economy and return to law and order under Hitler to mute their concerns. People had jobs and the streets were safe. Hitler was managing a fine balance of consent and coercion.”

The same dynamic played out in Iraq. People turned their neighbors in to the American military pretending they were Al Qaeda, based on petty jealousies or just wanting to get a reward. Specifically, neutral observers say that most of the Iraqis tortured in Iraq were innocent farmers, villagers, or those against whom neighbors held a grudge. Iraqis received a cash reward from the U.S. military for turning people in as “suspected terrorists”. See this movie.

The number two man at the State Department under Colin Powell (Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson), the commander of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and official U.S. military records all confirm that virtually all of the people turned in and subsequently tortured were innocent.

 

[Troke]

Well, let's see, I have seen more than one speculation that if the Jihad really wanted to do something, blowing some key refineries might be it. And then we have a guy taking photos of a refinery it was thought, and somebody in the refinery turns him in (says so in the OP, must have gotten a license plate) and the FBI looks into it. And people just don't normally go around photoing refineries so......

What we got to do is inform people they are not to report 'suspicious' behavior. People have a constitutional right to look suspicious. So should we see a truckload of fertilizer being parked next to a Fed building, our first thought will be that it is just a couple of farmers stopping to check their SS balance.

Of course if we are wrong, we might not have a second thought.

 

[Marthanoir]

You know whats scary, there hasn't been a single investigation into somebody taking pictures of lightening storms here, not a single one, are you really telling me that its not happening, no way, i want to know why on earth the Gardai are wasting their time with the paramilitary organizations and drugs gangs when they should be out stopping this heinous crime, next thing you know they'll be taking pictures of rain storms, hail storms, snow storms, argggh its never ending

 

[Richard]

this is a hoax or an x file, is david the brother of mitch

 

[Sysman]

Reminds me of the guy that entered an AMTRAK photo contest,

and was then busted by AMTRAK police for taking pictures of trains!

 

[Gitche Gumee Kid]

[QUOTE

As Robert Gellately of Florida State University has highlighted, Germans under Hitler denounced their neighbors and friends not because they genuinely believed them to be a security threat, but because they expected to selfishly benefit from doing so, both financially, socially and psychologically via a pavlovian need to be rewarded by their masters for their obedience.

At the height of its influence around one in seven of the East German population was an informant for the Stasi. As in Nazi Germany, the creation of an informant system was wholly centered around identifying political dissidents and those with grievances against the state, and had little or nothing to do with genuine security concerns. [Indeed, the American government has been using anti-terror laws to crush dissent and to help the too big to fail businesses compete against smaller businesses (and see this. And the Department of Homeland Security has been distracted by activities which have very little to do with terrorism.)]

This is the kind of society the Department of Homeland Security is, whether deliberately or inadvertently, recreating in 21st century America.

Gellately’s website notes:

“I started to read these files about all the victims in just one region of Germany that the Gestapo had processed,” Gellately says. “It would have taken a large force of secret police to collect information on so many people. I needed to know just how many secret police there really were. So I asked an elderly gentleman who would’ve lived through those times, and he replied, ‘They were everywhere!’”

That was the prevailing myth.

“But I had evidence right there in my hands that supported a different story,” Gellately explains. “There were relatively few secret police, and most were just processing the information coming in. I had found a shocking fact. It wasn’t the secret police who were doing this wide-scale surveillance and hiding on every street corner. It was the ordinary German people who were informing on their neighbors.”

***

As he was uncovering who was acting as the Gestapo’s unsolicited agents, he also began to discern what motivated neighbor to inform on neighbor. The surviving myth told the story of informers who were motivated either by a commitment to the Third Reich or by a fear of authority.

But the motives Gellately found were banal—greed, jealousy, and petty differences.

He found cases of partners in business turning in associates to gain full ownership; jealous boyfriends informing on rival suitors; neighbors betraying entire families who chronically left shared bathrooms unclean or who occupied desirable apartments.

And then there were those who informed because for the first time in their lives someone in authority would listen to them and value what they said.

***

Backing Hitler also challenges conventional views on the nature of modern dictatorships. Perhaps as a way for us to believe that “it couldn’t happen here,” we have viewed the Holocaust as an atrocity that was the work of a handful of evil men. Gellately, however, presents persuasive evidence that Hitler and the Third Reich were able to build a consensus for their policies.

“They began with small violations of the rights of Jews and other minorities, and then ratcheted up their racism and persecution only when they saw implied consent from the German people.” Gellately says. “Many Germans disapproved of Hitler’s fascism and brutality, at first. But after the long economic depression following the First World War, the German people allowed the thriving economy and return to law and order under Hitler to mute their concerns. People had jobs and the streets were safe. Hitler was managing a fine balance of consent and coercion.”
[/QUOTE]

<================0================================0====>

Good post Doz.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/...t-germany.html

Esp the part off your neighbor turning you in.

GGK

 

[Cheval]

Not surprising. I was out on a Friday night 3 months ago and pulled into a school parking lot that was all lit up and EMPTY and I was sitting there with my car lit up and the brake lights on (never put it in park). Sounds like a real threat huh? since obviously anyone going to commit a crime would be there with all the lights on right next to the main road. Well, someone called the police on my ass and two cop cars came rolling in and let me have it. I hadn't even been sitting there 5 minutes.

 

[Countrymouse]

And while this government looks down rat holes and up flea colons for terrorists, they are totally oblivious to the wooly-mammoth sized humvee full of Muslim Jihadists that just drove by, screaming "Allahu Akbar!" out the open windows as they wave their Uzzi's and rocket launchers in the air......



they couldn't find a true terrorist if one lit a bomb under their B***s......


(do you get the idea I'm just a teensy-weensy little bit DISGUSTED with these idiots???!!!?)

 

[big kumara]

But how many posts have we seen here by members who were freaked out by seeing someone with a camera near something that could be a terrorist target? .

 

[MaureenO]

Probably will be reported to the local Fusion Center anyway...
=======================================

http://www.pixiq.com/article/houston-man-receives-visit-from-fbi-after-photographing-weather
October 5, 2012 @ 9:24PM
Houston Man Receives Visit from FBI after Photographing Weather
By Carlos Miller -... Topics News

A man who snapped photos of a brewing storm last month received a visit Friday from an FBI Agent, inquiring why he would want to take such photos.

Michael Galindo explained that he was simply volunteering for the National Weather Service.

And FBI Agent David Pileggi seemed to be satisfied with that response.

But Galindo was left wondering whether he now has a permanent FBI file.

“He told me, ‘you’re not a threat and you are doing a public service but just be careful next time,’” Galindo said in a telephone interview with Photography is Not a Crime.

The problem arose because Galindo happened to be taking photos near the Lyondell Refinery outside of Houston on September 13, even though he was never standing on the refinery’s property.

Someone from the refinery spotted him and called police, whom apparently arrived after he had left.

Police then contacted the local FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, which bills itself as “nation’s front line on terrorism.”

“I was pretty freaked out when he came but I had no idea what it was about,” said the 26-year-old man. “The worst thing I’ve done is get speeding tickets, but I haven’t gotten one in three years.

“He said I was spotted near the refinery but I couldn’t even remember doing that. I thought it had to be somebody else.

“It wasn’t until he mentioned my camera that I made the connection.”

Galindo told the agent that he volunteers for a NWS program called Skywarn that trains citizens to monitor the weather in the name of “protecting lives and property.”

He said when he pulled off to the side of the road and began taking photos of a brewing storm and potential tornados, he didn’t even notice the refinery, but made sure there weren’t any “no parking” signs around.

“I told him I had been looking for a clear line of site and I had found it,” he said.

Although Pileggi seemed a little surprised by that response, he pulled out a three-page document and began asking questions off it, inquiring whether Galindo had ever been in the military or had ever traveled overseas and about what schools he had attended in the past.

“I wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything,” Galindo said.

The 20-minute visit took place less than a week after a scathing report was released on the inefficiency and ineptitude on urban fusion centers, such as the Miami-Dade Police Department’s Homeland Security Bureau, which was monitoring my Facebook page because of my blog, as well as the Houston fusion center, which produced a video depicting photographers as terrorists.

Joint Terrorism Task Forces are a little different than fusion centers but they both operate under the Department of Homeland Security and are under the assumption photographers are terrorists.

Imagine it's 10 Sept 2001 and a call in was dispatched that was blown off by first responders. 9/11 attacks occur and folks are bitching about how the PD didn't investigate it (I've read a lot of them here on TB2K).

No matter what you do as an LEO, it's wrong...

Maureen

 

[Ragnarok]

Imagine it's 10 Sept 2001 and a call in was dispatched that was blown off by first responders. 9/11 attacks occur and folks are bitching about how the PD didn't investigate it (I've read a lot of them here on TB2K).

No matter what you do as an LEO, it's wrong...

Maureen

Well... Then that would be status quo, wouldn't it?

FBI agent 'warned of hijack risk'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4827460.stm

Agent: FBI warned 70 times of 9-11 plot
http://www.wnd.com/2006/03/35348/

 

[MaureenO]

Well... Then that would be status quo, wouldn't it?

FBI agent 'warned of hijack risk'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4827460.stm

Agent: FBI warned 70 times of 9-11 plot
http://www.wnd.com/2006/03/35348/

Yes. I don't want to see it again.

Maureen

 

[Night Owl]

We the taxpayers bailed out GM and then we bought 79% of the GM sales this year for new cars....just look at any New Chevy, most have a G license plate for government. Even the world embassy's got new GM vehicles....it's good to have taxpayers money to spend.

 

[Dozdoats]

A happy medium would be nice.

The FBI et al blows off dozens of indicators/warnings/reports from MULTIPLE agents that something odd was going on with Islamic folks wanting to learn to fly airplanes (but not concerned with learning how to land them). We get 9-11 and all of a sudden they're hiring retired STASI to advise a newly created Department Of Homeland Security, and trying to turn the USA into a simulacrum of East Germany.

Something is definitely going on here, and it ain't about security as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Troke]

Well... Then that would be status quo, wouldn't it?

FBI agent 'warned of hijack risk'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4827460.stm

Agent: FBI warned 70 times of 9-11 plot
http://www.wnd.com/2006/03/35348/

It is apparent that you people don't have a clue as to the tremendous power that Political Correctness has. PC got us 9/11. anybody that bothers to look can see that. And Dubya missed his greatest chance of killing it right in its bed, so dead that if anybody tried to resuscitate it, they would cursed off the streets. But he didn't, so we still have it.

 

[Dozdoats]

Yep.

Condoleezza sez no one could have predicted terrorists flying airplanes into buildings. Yet the intelligence community was discussing the possibility in 1996.

Something got us 9-11 all right, but pee cee wasn't it. And the PATRIOT Act was drafted overnight, too.

 

[Satanta]

I'm surprised I don't get questioned more often.

he kid needs to lighten up-part of the business, always has been and always will be.

Even before 9/11 got questioned off and on by cops and land owners why I was photographing whatever.

None have *ever* bothered coming out during the middle of a lightning storm to ask however.

Pussies.

 

[packyderms_wife]

There was a law that was either passed or they attempted to pass it several years back making it illegal to photograph refineries, railroads, commercial farm lots (ex. chicken houses and tomato fields) to the point that it's dang near illegal to photograph your own house these days.

K-

 

[Troke]

Yep.

Condoleezza sez no one could have predicted terrorists flying airplanes into buildings. Yet the intelligence community was discussing the possibility in 1996.

Something got us 9-11 all right, but pee cee wasn't it. And the PATRIOT Act was drafted overnight, too.

PC didn't do it? Really? That FBI agent in Arizona sends in a report that some ME type is acting peculiar in his flight training and it gets tanked because he was profiling ME types? (Profiling ranks just behind privacy and unidentified voting in the PC hierarchy.)

And the 9.11 conspirator from Minn. Local agents were denied entrance to a laptop held by an illegal alien ME type because it would have violated his privacy. (To the Left Wing Sh*thead, the only thing that outranks privacy is the right to vote without identifying yourself.)

And finally the poor sap who sold the tickets to Mohummad Atta and one of his henchmen...spotted them right off as potential hijackers but then felt so ashamed to think that of them that he went out of his way to make sure they caught their plane (They were running late)

When the crash occurred, he knew immediately who might have done it, the FBI was notified and the security tapes told who they were, thus leading to the conspiracy argument that the only way the FBI could have known so quickly was that they were part of it.

I call all this PC. But I suppose you could argue a conspiracy coordinated by sinister forces in high places involving hundreds of people, none of whom talked.

I like PC better, it is simple.

 

[Dozdoats]

I like PC better, it is simple.

Yep. Simple-minded. Just like real life. Nothing complicated EVER happens.

 

[marymonde]

There was a law that was either passed or they attempted to pass it several years back making it illegal to photograph refineries, railroads, commercial farm lots (ex. chicken houses and tomato fields) to the point that it's dang near illegal to photograph your own house these days.

K-

This is correct. My son works on pipeline and has had work at refineries. He told me that you can do jail time for taking photo's of a refinery.

 

[marymonde]

http://www.progress.org/2011/fold733.htm

No Photos Allowed


by Fred E. Foldvary, Senior Editor, 5 September 2011

In Long Beach, California, the police arrested photographer Sander Wolff for taking a picture of an oil refinery. He does photography for a local newspaper. The police accused him of committing a suspicious activity, since a bomber would take a photo of an oil refinery if he intended to blow it up.
It is also illegal to photograph a police officer making an arrest. Those who have sought to document the police making a citation or arrest have had their cameras taken away and arrested and put in jail (see the July 2011 The Freeman article "Watch the Watchmen" by John Stossel). If you photograph somebody being arrested, you are allegedly "interfering" with the arrest.

The Chief of Police of Long Beach confirmed that it is standard police policy to arrest people who take pictures of things that are not usually tourist material. The Los Angeles Police Department also has a policy for Suspicious Activities Reports for actions such as photography that may indicate an intent to commit terror. Activities that the police regard as suspicious and subject to arrest include photography, viewing buildings with binoculars, and taking notes while looking at anything not usually gazed at by a tourist.

The police chief stated that the policy of the Long Beach police regarding suspicious activity is standard procedure among police departments throughout the USA.

The criminalization of making photos or videos of people and objects in public has been a policy one associates with police states, with countries such as North Korea and the old Soviet Union. It is common in totalitarian countries to prohibit photography of government buildings or police officers. Tyrants fear photography because it can help rebellion.

In the "free world" one of the freedoms is that one may take photos of anything that is out there in public. By prohibiting photography other than for tourist sights, the USA has left the free world. For photography, the United States now has the police state policy of prohibiting anything that is not prescribed as legal.

The anti-photography policy is compounded by civil asset forfeiture. All levels of government in the USA are legally able to confiscate any property that is suspected of being involved in a crime, without a trial or conviction. Asset forfeiture is rapidly increasing in the USA. The US Department of "Justice" has had an official Asset Forfeiture Plan 2008-2012. The Department has engaged in partnerships with state and local governments to confiscate people's assets.

Things typically confiscated under asset forfeiture include houses, cars, and cash that is suspected to be associated with illegal drugs and prostitution. The police in Oakland, California, for example, have stopped men driving alone in particular neighborhoods, ordered them out of their cars, and then seized the car to sell in police auctions. The police hire decoys to approach male drivers in intersections and invite them to have a good time.

Asset forfeiture is mostly used for illegal drugs. For example, if a landlord has a tenant who is suspected of smoking marijuana, the government may seize the building, even when the landlord has no knowledge of the tenant's suspected activity. The police in Ventura County, California, murdered a man whose house they had entered, after they had taken photos of properties from the air to see if any could possibly be growing marijuana. No marijuana was found in the property.

Thus civil asset forfeiture could be used to confiscate cameras and cell phones that are used to take photos and videos of non-tourist objects. Perhaps you think that a local refinery is polluting the environment, and you photograph that for a local newspaper feature. BAM! A police officer sees you, and confiscates your camera under asset forfeiture. He does not even have to cite you or arrest you. The camera is involved in a suspicious activity, and that is sufficient.

The nation-wide policy of arresting people who take photographs of police offices or buildings, and the increase in asset forfeiture, combine to create a police-state atmosphere. When America goes to war, the government says that the troops are fighting to defend our freedom. But as the state confiscates property and arrests people who are not harming others, we can no longer call the USA a free society. The freedoms and rights of the Constitution have been annulled.

All levels of government are engaged in a War on Freedom. The voters democratically elect the officials who seek to limit liberty, and they sit in juries which convict those charged with victimless crimes. Americans seem to accept the destruction of liberty as a price for the War on Terror. If that's the way it is, then we should stop singing about the "land of the free" and stop putting the word "liberty" on American coins. America suffers from the schizophrenia of claiming to value liberty while practicing tyranny. I suppose there is no medical cure for such hypocrisy, because the disease is iatrogenic.

 

[Dozdoats]

http://battlefieldusa.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/go-ask-alice/bushobama/

 

[blueridge]

I would want to know more like who informed them of this activity and why? FOIA?

That's what came to mind - "I'll gladly answer your questions if you answer mine"...

Year by year - this becomes a VERY different country than the one most of us grew up in.

 

[MtnGal]

No matter what you do as an LEO, it's wrong...

Not at all. There is something different today about LEOs.

Around here for the most part the local LEOs are great people. When they stop you they still talk to you like a human. They haven't lost the ability to access a situation, they still have human emotions.

Now the State Troopers are a different story, they come on as gang busters no matter what the situation. I was stopped for speeding a few days after I buried my parents. Yes, I was at fault and very vulnerable. I burst into tears, something that is out of character for me. You would have thought I was a murderer the way he treated me, he was crude and inhuman, a real prick. I personally know several and they all carry themselves like they are just looking for a fight.

It is apparent that you people don't have a clue as to the tremendous power that Political Correctness has.

That, in my estimation has done way more damage than anything. PC has made me want to reach out and touch people. Again not my character. When I go to Charlotte I see a different Black man, a different Muslim. They have a chip on their shoulder, the size of a railroad tie, because they know they can harass you and get away with it.

I would not want to be in Law Enforcement and I'm sure glad my DS didn't choose that career. It's a different world out there. My fear is it is going to get a lot worse.

As far as these lists the gov has for possible terrorists, if you are a good person, choose the high road, that automatically makes you a terrorist in their eyes. Evil hates anything good.

 

[end game]

Well, let's see, I have seen more than one speculation that if the Jihad really wanted to do something, blowing some key refineries might be it. And then we have a guy taking photos of a refinery it was thought, and somebody in the refinery turns him in (says so in the OP, must have gotten a license plate) and the FBI looks into it. And people just don't normally go around photoing refineries so......

What we got to do is inform people they are not to report 'suspicious' behavior. People have a constitutional right to look suspicious. So should we see a truckload of fertilizer being parked next to a Fed building, our first thought will be that it is just a couple of farmers stopping to check their SS balance.

Of course if we are wrong, we might not have a second thought.

Pick and choose your investigations. Photography, sure. Consulate attacks and the murder of a Border Patrol agent, not.

 

[Dobbin]

There was a law that was either passed or they attempted to pass it several years back making it illegal to photograph refineries, railroads, commercial farm lots (ex. chicken houses and tomato fields) to the point that it's dang near illegal to photograph your own house these days.

K-

Try to photograph a nuclear power plant!

Dobbin

 

[Ragnarok]

It is apparent that you people don't have a clue as to the tremendous power that Political Correctness has. PC got us 9/11. anybody that bothers to look can see that. And Dubya missed his greatest chance of killing it right in its bed, so dead that if anybody tried to resuscitate it, they would cursed off the streets. But he didn't, so we still have it.

I understand it more than most.

You just missed the sarcasm of my post.

 

[pete5555]

i wonder what color this man is

 

[blueridge]

Just kinda sad that small freedoms (taking a picture) are being lost one at a time.

We're losing it folks...THINK.