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They know what you've been thinking, so be good for goodness sake

By adamg on Sat, 12/17/2005 - 10:27pm

The New Bedford Standard-Times reports that a couple of Homeland Security agents paid a visit to a UMass-Dartmouth student when he requested a copy of Mao's "Little Red Book" in an intra-library loan.

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Politics
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PATRIOT Act


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Comments

By Provincial Congress on Sun, 12/18/2005 - 1:29am.

This sounds made up. If Homeland Security (which branch?) does have such a program, and it's classified, why would agents disclose the existence of the program to the subject of investigation? Especially over such a well-known and heavily politicized book...has circulation for U.S. National Security Vulnerabilities and How to Exploit Them and International Terrorism for Dummies fallen lately? The only two possibilities I can think of are a) to scare him into thinking Big Brother was watching him, and b) to intentionally sabotage the operation. Perhaps some agents were getting tired of book detail.

But I wonder if there's something about the student's background that actually merits investigation? Like, for example, taking a class from someone who "regularly contacts people in Afghanistan, Chechnya and other Muslim hot spots" and thinks that "Mao Tse-Tung is completely harmless"?

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By L on Sun, 12/18/2005 - 9:52am.

I had an amazing professor once who was an American scholar of German literature, especially folklore and politics (he taught classes like "Heroes and Villains" and "Hitler and Wagner.") Fascinating man, but I digress...he was always a little concerned that the goverment was going to surprise him with a visit due to the materials he purchased on line - early editions of Mein Kampf, etc, and some of the research that he did at white supremacist websites.

But in response to the previous poster - I believe that the professor was calling the book itself harmless, which it most likely is. The student needed it for a report that was assigned in the context of a class. And it's not like the workings of communism are a secret, or he couldn't have found that information anywhere else. There's no reason to suspect that the student ordered a book through interlibrary loan to start the people's revolution.

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By gld on Sun, 12/18/2005 - 10:10am.

I agree with PC that this seems strange. I can think of two reasons for why it may still have happened:

1) The Federal government habitually wastes theresources it has been provided by the America people.

2) I can see som DHS big-wig adding totally unrelated literature to a watch list just to show how they're nor targeting Islam. Who wouldn't become a racist terrorist after reading Huck Finn?

But then again, maybe it's just a big hoax.

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