They have a dream

How many times have we seen a phrase like this or words to this effect since Bush came into office?

Database Stirs Privacy Fears

I suspect far too many for freedom-loving Americans to be comfortable with. And far too many for it not to speak of a much larger effort, all of which furthers the integration of an overwrought police state.

The Justice Department is building a massive database that allows state and local police officers around the country to search millions of case files from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and other federal law enforcement agencies, according to Justice officials.

The system, known as "OneDOJ," already holds approximately 1 million case records and is projected to triple in size over the next three years, Justice officials said. The files include investigative reports, criminal-history information, details of offenses, and the names, addresses and other information of criminal suspects or targets.

Note that this not just limited to convicted criminals but anyone who has been a suspect or target of an investigation (I wonder if Karl Rove wound up in this database).

Ignoring and repealing certain constitutional rights including habeas corpus, the US government has locked up American citizens and denied them due process, is and has been illegally spying on American communications, sweeping up immigrants in SWAT-like raids, sending hundreds of millions of dollars to Halliburton for a network of detention centers, building walls on the borders, expanding FBI DNA databases, while generally, American society is increasingly spied upon by a vast array of surveillance cameras, transactional databases, and computer search records. As this country privatizes the prison system -- incarceration for profit -- the inmate population continues to soar and we now imprison more of our own citizens and have a higher incarceration rate than any other country on earth.

We are told that ordinary citizens don't have to worry, that innocent people have nothing to fear from the police state infrastructure. We are told all of this will make us safer. Consider who is telling you this.