Is wiretapping by Bakersfield and federal agencies out of control? - By N.L. Belardes

As broad of an issue that surveillance has become in America you might think wiretapping by local government and federal agencies is out of control. Last I heard, wiretapping had gone warrantless on the Federal level. It was in appeals in late 2006 anyway. Locally, regarding the Vincent Brothers case I’ve heard talk of wiretapping having gone on at the Harper residence long before the murders took place. If such wiretapping occurred, then why? Some say it was harassment. But we know how rumors regarding murders can spread.

I’ve written to a blogger who swore his house phones were tapped on occasion. Why?

Who is to say? Surveillance issues have taken America into heated debate. The cry of Homeland Security has rung through our ears, the last shouts through the clatter of fallen towers—other than screaming machinery of war.

With surveillance comes issues of privacy and individual rights. What rights do we really have if Federal and State governments believe they have just cause to peer into our lives at every turn?

You’re driving down a street near the rare occurrence of an American bombing and your best friend riding with you has Arabic features. Your friend isn’t even Arabic. He’s Mexican. Doesn’t matter. The police only see exigent circumstances. Your car and persons are searched without any kind of warrant. Your friend is carted off to prison.

It doesn’t stop there. What about phone tapping? In the name of Homeland Security is it possible all our phones can be tapped anytime the government wants? And how easy would it be for government officials to abuse such power and, falsify stacks of documentation required to tap into private American conversations? Oh wait, it’s warrantless, unless the appeals killed it. Someone please tell me…

Corruption and scandal?

Could it happen in Kern County?

Especially in Bakersfield, the land of forced interrogations and mostly overturned child molestation trials. Don’t you watch 48 Hours? Have you seen Nightline? Do you read the Rolling Stone? Or this site? Are you not aware of the Lords of Bakersfield stories? (read more) Why Bakersfield consistently whines about our DA and then hands him 90% of votes each election is strange, as not even national news, an article in the Rolling Stone, the Bakersfield Californian Lords stories, and a book on Mean Justice can sway popular opinion within Kern County. 90%! And that’s give or take a few percentage points.



I guess it’s that strong conservative heart of the rural Central Valley. Lock away not just the guilty but the potentially guilty and throw away the key. Safer streets, right? Wrong. Last I heard the gangs run Bakersfield. It was just recently I was reprimanded by police for allowing my kids to walk to a high school football game. Yes, that’s blame on me for a pack of 20 gang kids jumping my kids and their two friends because they look white. The police didn’t do shit but talk down to me. The gangs run Bakersfield streets. The police make excuses for them.

Maybe I’m just skewed because I just read John Grisham’s latest book The Innocent Man, and listened to TV interviews where grown men talked about being young boys in the 1980s, coerced by law officials into false testimony.

So I’m not at all surprised if corruption and scandal wriggle their dark hands into the area of surveillance in Bakersfield.

And it doesn’t end with wiretapping, car and home searches.

Email backdoors in corporate networks are set up just for government tampering. That means if you work for a corporation, your emails can also belong to the US government. They’re already corporate property.

And what about your emails on Yahoo, Google, or Hotmail?

According to a September 12, 2001 article in Wired Magazine titled “Anti-Attack Feds Push Carnivore” Declan McCullagh writes,

Just hours after three airplanes smashed into the buildings in what some U.S. legislators have dubbed a second Pearl Harbor, FBI agents began to visit Web-based, e-mail firms and network providers, according to engineers at those companies who spoke on condition of anonymity.

An administrator at one major network service provider said that FBI agents showed up at his workplace on Tuesday "with a couple of Carnivores, requesting permission to place them in our core, along with offers to actually pay for circuits and costs."

The person declined to say for publication what the provider's response was, "but a lot of people" at other firms were quietly going along with the FBI's request. "I know that they are getting a lot of 'OKs' because they made it a point to mention that they would only be covering our core for a few days, while their 'main boxes were being set up at the Tier 1 carriers' -- scary," the engineer said.

What is most disturbing is that most email users don’t even have a clue that their privacy can be compromised at any second of the day. And where the government requires a judge-issued warrant to search your home computer, the very same government can surf your webmail account with just a subpoena issued without judicial review.

And before you go thinking your Gmail account is safe. Take a look at this 2004 UK article on how Gmail ads work. Yes, the content of your email is scanned by a corporation, so relevant ads can shoot onto your dear nothings to dear somebody. And that means government tracking bots can be added. Sure, you have nothing to hide. But is that the real problem here? Maybe you’re sharing corporate secrets over Gmail.

Maybe you should just test for yourself whether the US government can snoop on you (Go here).

What about letter opening?

In a January 8th 2007 article in the LA Times, “First wiretapping, now letter-opening? Can the feds read your mail without a warrant? You wouldn't think so, but that's not how the president sees it,” the editorial states, “THE BUSH administration seems determined to raise the specter of surveillance over every means of communication within the United States.”

Could such limited individual rights be true? We hate to even suggest such ideas here in Kern County, a land of rugged individualism. The article goes on to say:

Still, it's hard not to be suspicious of the president's position on mail privacy, given the administration's record on the issue of domestic surveillance. In the name of the "war on terror," it has taken an unusually expansive view of government power and a correspondingly restrictive view of individual privacy rights. It also has sought to redefine what constitutes a "reasonable" search, and has often done so unilaterally and in secret.

Does that mean your recent letter stating your opinion to your uncle Fred about the state of war in America, if opened by the Feds, could be held as evidence against you? And don’t think the FBI doesn’t have files on many of us, or many of our community leaders and educators. I used to get into conversations with CSUB professors who declared the Federal government had thick files on many college educators.

One college educator said it was because he attended a few anti-war rallies in the late 1960s.

Fast forward to Bakersfield, California today and you have another story of surveillance, this by local government over CSU Bakersfield professor Steve Bacon (Click link and scroll down for image of Steve) and his wife Nancy Bacon (She’s a therapist). They recently organized a Peace Pole event that I’d heard about but didn’t attend. They were infuriated after receiving two form letters dated Jan. 12 from Deputy District Attorney C. Stephen McNutt stating their telephones may have been tapped for one month during the fall of 2006.

May have been?

I don’t get that wording.

The Peace Pole ceremony included an array of local religions in attendance. Even the mayor was slated to have been there. If Nancy Bacon phoned mosques, well that makes sense. The American government has reason to fear mosques. The Yemeni currently on trial and caught in Bakersfield was likely under surveillance, and quite possibly affiliated with some local mosque. Does that make mosques bad? No.

Or is that explanation too simple?

May have been.

If I got that letter, I would take may have been as a yes. Otherwise, why would I receive the letter?

I wonder if representatives from the DA’s office ever called the Bacons to explain. What would they have said? Maybe something like, “Nothing to worry about. This is routine.”

Turn back the clock to the early 1980s. A little girl is stands sad-faced in a room filled with strangers with badges. They’re telling her that her daddy raped her. They’re telling her to say that on a witness stand. “Nothing to worry about. This is routine,” they say to her.

Talk about the power to screw up someone’s life.

Nothing to worry about folks, this is routine.

Your life is a window.

Nothing to worry about.

And so is everyone’s life around you.

This is routine.

Only you can’t see in or out.

Nothing to worry about…

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Wednesday, January 24, 2007. You can leave your response.