Quote Originally Posted by rory_20_uk View Post
Hear, hear.

If he'd been searched and anything was found, then fair enough. It seems that again due process has been barged aside.

Exactly, when it comes to anti-terrorism, there no longer is any "due-process". There is no way to defend yourself, there is no burden of proof. This bypasses the entire legal system in the US, and yet 70%+ of the population seem completely oblivious to the dangerous precedent this represents. All rights are trumped by "security" (even when the threat is miniscule), well don't complain when you find one day that you are living in a police state.

These institutions have lost all perspective. Clearly the contents of the e-mails were not even considered - contact was enough. I wonder if his e-mail had been one complaining about radicalism and extremism if the "system" still would have flagged him...what you want to bet it would? This is simply guilt by association.

When I was young, I remember the cold war slogans, it was supposedly about defending the "American way of life". The Iron Curtain of the USSR and infringements on their citizen's freedoms were portrayed as the greatest evils. The openness of our Western societies was heralded as essential to our way of life. The US would defeat the USSR, and they would do it while taking the high ground and maintaining moral authority! (Or at least appearing to) How could things change so much in just 30 years? Today, our people are freely giving up what we fought so hard to defend...those same freedoms that nobody could take away we now discard like last year's fashion. The constitution is ignored by the government and its agencies, who activey seek loopholes to bypass due process and civil rights. To have thrown away our moral position to the point where we justify torture. The Iron curtain and Berlin wall were evil...but now the US builds it's own walls, both literal and symbolic.

I used to dream of being an American. For my entire childhood (meaning right into my early 20's), I wanted nothing more than that (except for the possibility of being a pilot in the US Air Force). I couldn't wait to get my place in the mountains of N.H., complete with my licence plate proclaiming "Live Free or Die!". I got in fights because I was so pro-American.

Certainly I was an idealist. Certainly, I was naieve and ignored the sins of the Empire that were happening even then. But even knowing them now, I could live with them, because of the other values that I honoured. Because I still felt the US did more good than bad around the world, and because I bought into that ideal of the "American way of life".

I look today at what is happening there (and to a lesser degree throughout the West) and I am greatly saddened.

The USSR could not take away your freedoms. The Terrorists could not take your freedoms. The only people who could take away your freedoms were yourselves...and you let it happen. Don't you see the irony...by changing the dynamic of your society to face them, you have given the terrorists the victory they never could have gotten otherwise.