Re: CLIP: Legal Aspects

[George A. Gleason <gg@well.sf.ca.us>]

Illegal taps: and keep in mind "investigative" taps used to gather deep
background information... by the time that information gets to a useable
form, its origin is so far obscured as to be impossible to prove... and most
importantly, keep in mind the simple matter of political and economic
intelligence.  The British GCHQ routinely tapped trade unions; NSA went
after the civil rights movement, history is full of cases like this.  If you
don't know COINTELPRO, look it up and get scared.  The main thing here is
not whether they can use evidence against you in court, but whether they can
gather extracurricular info and use it to fuck up careers, runs for elected
office, campaigns on public issues, labor negotiations, and all kinds of
other things which we expect to be able to do freely in a nominal democracy.
Clinton has expressed a commitment to civil rights causes, so I don't worryu
about his administration pullling another WAtergate or COINTELPRO, but if we
ever got another bunch of zealous authoritarians in there...!

-gg