Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!uw-beaver!mit-eddie!xn.ll.mit.edu!hsdndev!cs!cs.umb.edu!ryan From: ryan@ra.cs.umb.edu (Daniel R. Guilderson) Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk Subject: Re: Was Bill Kennedy Really Out Of Line? Message-ID: Date: 27 Jun 91 00:24:39 GMT References: <1991Jun26.132906.3116@sulaco.Lonestar.ORG> Sender: news@cs.umb.edu (netnews) Organization: UMass Boston Dorchester, MA USA Lines: 58 In-Reply-To: allen@sulaco.Lonestar.ORG's message of 26 Jun 91 13:29:06 GMT Nntp-Posting-Host: ra.cs.umb.edu In article <1991Jun26.132906.3116@sulaco.Lonestar.ORG> allen@sulaco.Lonestar.ORG (Allen Gwinn) writes: If any of these allegations (and others that I may not have mentioned) are true, doesn't this qualify Len as a common criminal? Isn't prison an appropriate place for a common criminal? This whole discussion has to do with whether or not Len was responsible for people being unfairly investigated and mistreated by government agents. So why are you trying to change the subject? Let's assume for the purposes of this discussion that Len did *something* against the law (I won't concede that whatever he did was deserving of a year in prison). Look, Mike, I'm not implying that the Government conducted its business squeakily clean. Quite the contrary. They botched several things that they attempted to do, and even openly admitted at one point that they were unprepared for investigating this type of criminal activity. But it looks to me like the fact of the matter remains that Len Rose, almost singlehandedly started all of this. Why lay it on Len? Why not Neidorf? Why not the guy who actually snarfed E911? Whoever you finally decide to blame will not change the fact that the government agents are solely responsible for their own behaviour. If they mistreat people while making an investigation they must be made to answer and not the person or persons they are investigating. An example: you're staying in a hotel. Your room (or the room across the hall) is burglarized. When the police investigate, they find out that it was a friend of one of the maids... the one that cleans your room. Question: would the authorities be justified in questioning the maid at all? Would you be concerned about their relationship as a guest of the hotel? If, upon questioning, the maid said that she had no involvement with this "friend's" activities, would you simply drop the matter with no further questions asked? The way I see your claims is that if you even questioned the maid, you would be guilty of unethical practices? This example has almost nothing to do with the Len Rose case but it is interesting nonetheless. They would certainly be justified in asking the maid questions but unless they had some other evidence which pointed to a conspiracy, they should not be allowed to investigate her any further. Now my example: You may have heard about the Charles Stuart case in Boston. He shot and killed his pregnant wife and then blamed it on an unknown black man. He gave the police a description of this phantom assailant and based solely on the description police coerced statements out of some teenagers implicating a local thug. The police then proceeded to visit the thug's mother and completely destroy the interior of her home. Including smashing many holes in the walls and breaking up furniture. This is not some hypothetical case, it actually happened. As it turned out the thug was innocent and most assuredly his mother never had anything to do with any crime. So were the police justified? If we were to listen to your logic we would have to conclude that it doesn't matter whether or not they were justified because it's all the thug's fault for being a common criminal.