Above the Law

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

   David Burnham, a distinguished journalist, has published:

      Above the Law: Secret Deals, Political Fixes, and Other
      Misadventures of the U.S. Department of Justice;
      Scribner; 1996. 444 pp. $27.50. ISBN 0-684-80699-1

   The chapter, "Keeping Track of the American People: The
   Unblinking Eye and Giant Ear," nails wizard surveillance,
   surreptitous entry and other security-beats-privacy 
   technotoxins:

      A solid argument can be made that in shaping and
      directing the FBI's investigative technologies from the
      late 1970s to the mid-1990s, Al Bayse, assistant FBI
      director, Technical Services Division, may well be the
      nation's single most influential law enforcement
      official since J. Edgar Hoover.

   Burnham cogently details DOJ and NSA plots, the bull-market
   in federal prosecutors, the pathology of "national
   security" abuse, encryption nightmares, subservient
   politics, careerism absent ethics. He admonishes "sleeping
   watchdogs" complicit with the nation's leading agency for 
   burgeoning instrusiveness.