Re: CRIME Kudos to Acting Police Chief Andrew Kirkland

From: Crispin Cowan (crispin@private)
Date: Fri Nov 23 2001 - 15:14:44 PST

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    JACKSON Di M wrote:
    
    >Do we have any INS folks in this group .... My understanding is, and don't
    >quote me, but any person who enters USA on a work permit, visa and/or green
    >card are advised that they can be detained and/or held for no reason by the
    >INS.
    >
    For *any* reason? Or for suspicion of immigration violations? The former 
    would be rather horrifying, and makes "legal resident" a fairly 
    meaningless status if you can be arbitrarily detained by the state. I 
    went through the INS procedures, and while I do remember the FBI 
    background check, I do not recall being told about arbitrary detention. 
    But there was a lot of paperwork, and I could easily have forgotten it.
    
    >As for your law enforcement comments - I was just like you, till I did a
    >ride-along. Quiet frankly. Law enforcement is a thankless job, they deal
    >with all the undesirables and they are "dammed if they do and dammed if they
    >don't". Everybody deserves credit and/or praise for doing there job. A
    >Deputy I went on a ride-along with saved a boy at Multnomah Falls. He took a
    >rope from his patrol car and scaled down a rock face to save this boys life.
    >There was nothing in the newspaper about it ... pretty sad. 
    >
    I agree with all of that, and I am quite sure that most law officers 
    don't get half the credit they deserve. The problem is that law officers 
    have a great deal of authority, creating opportunity for abuse by a few 
    bad apples in the batch. The treatment for that abuse opportunity is 
    oversight, which is (in part) what the Bill of Rights (things like 
    Miranda) are about. My issue is not with hard-working law officers, it 
    is with the Federal administration seeking to strip away oversight 
    protections.
    
    Crispin
    
    -- 
    Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
    Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc. http://wirex.com
    Security Hardened Linux Distribution:       http://immunix.org
    Available for purchase: http://wirex.com/Products/Immunix/purchase.html
    



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