Re: Escrowing Viewing and Reading Habits with the Government

[Alan Horowitz <alanh@infi.net>]

> > The "Library Awareness Program," administered by the Justice Department, is
> > designed to identify potential criminals before they have a chance to
> > commit their deeds. The visits to libraries made by the FBI are used to
> > determine who is reading subversive or dangerous material.

Do you really think the FBI believes that asking librarians to keep 
records of customer useage is an efficient way to read the customers minds?
Do you really think that the FBI foreign counter-intelligence squad has 
nothing better to do than keep a database of who is reading Che Guevara 
memoirs?

   When someone is being obtained as an asset by an intelligence
organization, they are very very carefully led down a path of increasingly
serious crimes that they are directed to commit (in return for the sex or
the paying off of their debts, which are the two standard hooks) by the
controller ("foreign spy"). The first event is something quite minor. The
aim is, from the very beginning, to put the asset into a compromised
status, so that he believes he cannot turn to his own security people and
confess - with the chance that he'll agree to become a double-agent, so
that the DOD can put disinformation into Soviet hands, and the FBI can
build up a dossier of admissable evidence against the foreign controller. 
Remember, you can't get your own guys out of the Russian Gulag unless
you've got a GRU man to trade for. 

One of the early stages is, being directed to steal a technical book from a 
library and deliver it to the controller.

Now do you see the signifigance of the Library Awareness Program?

When I worked in the Route 128 area (suburban Boston), we were briefed to
be especially suspicious about folks who would befriend us in local bars
after work and, for no identifiable reason, start giving us little tiny
favors; over time they would become real "angels"  that saved our asses
when we were having financial/marriage problems. The day might come when
they would start asking for "a little favor in return".  Something quite
innocuous. Then there would arrive a request that we hesitated to do, but
we knew we could get away with it without a problem.  Then a few weeks
later....