New law would encourage Americans to spy on each other

In a bid to convince Americans to follow orders and report “suspicious behavior,” which the DHS has defined as a variety of mundane actions and even political affiliations, security corporations are lobbying for the passage of the See Something, Say Something Act (H.R. 963), which would encourage Americans to frivolously snitch on each other by providing legal protection for people who report “suspicious behavior” to the authorities.

H.R. 963 Bill http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/124xx/doc12417/hr963.pdf
The law would provide immunity for anyone who reports “any suspicious transaction, activity, or occurrence indicating that an individual may be engaging, or preparing to engage, in a violation of law relating to an act of terrorism,” which judging by DHS standards and those set down by federal agencies and law enforcement bodies over the last decade, could be classified as almost any behavior whatsoever, including political activism, owning gold, being a Ron Paul supporter, or displaying a political bumper sticker.

So-called “suspicious behavior” as defined by the Department of Homeland Security includes talking to police officers, using cell phones and a myriad of other normal activities. Moreover, the DHS has gone to great lengths to portray white, middle class Americans as the primary terror threat.

By encouraging Americans to frivolously report anything as “suspicious behavior,” the federal government is mimicking the policy of some of the darkest dictatorships in history.

One common misconception about Nazi Germany was that the police state was solely a creation of the authorities and that the citizens were merely victims. On the contrary, Gestapo files show that 80% of all Gestapo investigations were started in response to information provided by denunciations by “ordinary” Germans.

“There were relatively few secret police, and most were just processing the information coming in. I had found a shocking fact. It wasn’t the secret police who were doing this wide-scale surveillance and hiding on every street corner. It was the ordinary German people who were informing on their neighbors,” wrote Robert Gellately of Florida State University.

Gellately discovered that the people who informed on their neighbors were motivated primarily by banal factors – “greed, jealousy, and petty differences,” and not by a genuine concern about crime or insecurity. This is precisely the kind of environment the ‘See Something, Say Something’ law, and the campaign itself, is designed to create.

Related Article:
NASCO Endorses "See Something, Say Something" Act to Protect Citizens Who Report Suspicious Activity

http://www.sacbee.com/2011/09/14/3910378/nasco-endorses-see-something-say.html

http://www.prisonplanet.com/law-would-encourage-americans-to-report-on-each-other.html