Liberty Minute December 10 2013

While researching a story dealing with abuse of power by a sheriff?s office in Oregon, this commentator contacted the FBI field office in Portland. I asked the public affairs officer to confirm that a civil rights complaint against the department had been filed and was being investigated by the Bureau.

After making the appropriate inquiries, the FBI official called me back and offered a studiously vague answer that neither confirmed nor denied the information I had been given. When I asked her name, the FBI employee replied that she did not make her name publicly available.

The fact that a public affairs official with the FBI wouldn?t provide her name demonstrates that the Bureau is quite literally a secret police agency. Their dealings are kept opaque to the public even as they seek to make our dealings entirely transparent to their scrutiny. For example, the Washington Post recently described how an ?elite hacker team? with the FBI has developed the capacity to activate cameras on laptop computers remotely and use them to spy on their owners ? without activating the indicator light.

This is a literal realization of the ?Telescreen? technology from Orwell?s 1984, which the FBI clearly sees as an instructional manual, rather than a precautionary tale.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.