The above image was made with stable diffusion using the prompt 'a man wearing handcuffs in a hotel bathroom.'
Imagine being woken up from a sound sleep in your hotel room by pounding on the door. Not knowing what's going on, you open the door to find FBI agents intent on interrogating you for no apparent reason. This is exactly what happened to a thirty-something Delta pilot in Boston recently. From an NPR piece on the incident:
"Members of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command had set out to conduct "essential military training" with assistance from the FBI-Boston Division. ... "The training was meant to enhance soldiers' skills to operate in realistic and unfamiliar environments," he added. "The training team, unfortunately, entered the wrong room and detained an individual unaffiliated with the exercise." ... The man had been asleep in his room at the Revere Hotel when agents began banging on his door and demanding to be let in, according to WBZ-TV. It says the agents handcuffed the man, put him in the shower and interrogated him for more than 45 minutes before they realized their mistake, uncuffed him and apologized."
Law enforcement agencies routinely make mistakes, often with deadly results. This latest incident didn't involve any injuries or deaths, so that's good. But cuffing a guy and interrogating him in the shower for 45 minutes is problematic in the best of circumstances. And the fact that the Army was directly involved is downright chilling.
Posse Comitatus
The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 explicitly prohibits the Army from being used domestically to enforce government policies. But according to the ACLU, "Congress has weakened Posse Comitatus over the years by permitting military involvement in drug enforcement, border control and all sorts of other "domestic support" operations. As a result, the military is increasingly turning its powerful intelligence collection capabilities against Americans."
A 2009 document published by Wikileaks made it clear that the Army considered domestic spying activities in partnership with law enforcement agencies to be perfectly legal. Part of the document's justification for military involvement in domestic matters was that it could "identify and prevent disruptive actions by violent protesters." That sounds suspiciously like something a totalitarian police state would want.
The term 'violent protesters' is of course loaded. The Pentagon has been caught spying on the Quakers and other peace groups, so it's unclear whether the term 'violent' has any meaning at all when used by the military. Do they consider vandalism to be violence? What about blocking traffic?
One question that the Boston incident raises is the question of competence. As a society, we basically seem to have accepted that police can ruin people's lives at random because they routinely make terrible mistakes and rarely if ever face commensurate consequences. But the FBI and USASOC seem like organizations with higher standards. I'd hope they have higher standards, but maybe they don't. I'm not sure how else to explain this kind of blunder.
In general, it makes me nervous that the Army and FBI were caught interrogating an innocent hotel guest in his shower. If this was part of their training, whatever they were training for probably isn't great from a civil liberties standpoint. My sense is that we're really only one major crisis away from the military taking more direct control of domestic law enforcement. This is something that anyone who values freedom should oppose.
Read my novels:
- Small Gods of Time Travel is available as a web book on IPFS and as a 41 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt.
- The Paradise Anomaly is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Psychic Avalanche is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- One Man Embassy is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Flying Saucer Shenanigans is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Rainbow Lullaby is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- The Ostermann Method is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Blue Dragon Mississippi is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
See my NFTs:
- Small Gods of Time Travel is a 41 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt that goes with my book by the same name.
- History and the Machine is a 20 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on my series of oil paintings of interesting people from history.
- Artifacts of Mind Control is a 15 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on declassified CIA documents from the MKULTRA program.