Surveillance State Delayed

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Fascinating article in last Saturday's New York Times about INS plans to 
revoke the U.S. citizenship of 5,000 people who got that citizenship sans 
criminal background checks so they could vote for Clinton in '96.

Now, the INS revokes a big 25 citizenships a year so they really have a job 
ahead of them.  Demonstrates the enforcement challenges of bureaucracies 
living in a mass society.  They think they can get away with administrative 
revocations but even those can be appealed to federal court.  5,000 appeals 
would be quite a burden.  If they wait too long and two years pass from time 
of granting, the Service will lose the administrative option and will have to 
do full court proceedings to revoke.

Even if they revoke, the "aliens" will still have their old proofs of 
citizenship (passports, etc) as well as their former status as permanent 
residents so revocation may be meaningless in any case.

That's not the cutest bit, though.

In addition to the 5,000 new Clinton voters with provable criminal records, 
they had to go through 180,000 records of people with various sorts of 
documentation problems to see if any of them were criminals.  But the Feds 
couldn't do it themselves.  They lacked the capability.  They hired one of
the 
big accounting firms (Peat-Marwick?) to CHECK THE NAMES against the NCIC.  
They got some 9,000 positive matches but naturally, they can't tell how many 
of those 9,000 matches are false positives.  Lots of work ahead.

The gloom and doom types like to claim that it is trivial for the almighty 
Feds to find out everything about every one, look inside the souls of all of 
us, separate the good from the evil and unerringly punish the evil.  
Omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence. Oddly enough, this claim is often
made 
by people who, otherwise, don't believe in God.

But this article on citizenship revocation gives lie to this claim of state 
power.  Citizenship applicants have submitted vast quantities of information 
about themselves to the Feds.  They have undergone years of a staged and 
complex process to move from nonresident alien to resident alien to citizen.  
At every point, they NARCed themselves out in detail directly to the federal 
government.  And yet, that same government can't even tell if these people
are 
"criminals."

If they can't efficiently surveil and regulate this group, what chance do
they 
have to regulate and surveil the other 260 million of us?

DCF
 


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Duncan Frissell wrote:
> 
<<snip>>
> But this article on citizenship revocation gives lie to this claim of state
> power.  Citizenship applicants have submitted vast quantities of information
> about themselves to the Feds.  They have undergone years of a staged and
> complex process to move from nonresident alien to resident alien to citizen.
> At every point, they NARCed themselves out in detail directly to the federal
> government.  And yet, that same government can't even tell if these people
> are
> "criminals."
> 
> If they can't efficiently surveil and regulate this group, what chance do
> they
> have to regulate and surveil the other 260 million of us?
> 
> DCF
The important thing to remember about police state tactics is that it is
not a case of hyper-efficient use of the police -- it is hyper-use of
those powers to harass and harrangue those that they Feel like doing it
to.  No need to worry about guilt or innocence or any of that, just pick
a target and get what you can, if it isn't enough - invent.

> 
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-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Paul H. Merrill                Merlyn Enterprises
paulmerrill@acm.org
I have no opinions (just facts)
    so it doesn't matter what my employer thinks.

>The gloom and doom types like to claim that it is trivial for the almighty 
>Feds to find out everything about every one, look inside the souls of all of 
>us, separate the good from the evil and unerringly punish the evil.  
>Omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence. Oddly enough, this claim is often
>made 
>by people who, otherwise, don't believe in God.
>

not sure if you are referring to TCM here as a "gloom and doom" type.
but it seems that we ought to be able to design a government that
does not rely on the supposed inherent incompetence of bureacrats
and or humans in general for security of the citizen. in other words,
your general argument that "see!! feds are really STUPID!! they 
wouldn't be SMART enough to infringe on your rights!!" is a pretty
lame argument overall.

>But this article on citizenship revocation gives lie to this claim of state 
>power.

state power in the US, as it stands currently. but what the past shows
is that government can change abruptly. it only matters who is in 
power. I think what people here are worried about are abrupt changes
in the government, which can happen quite fast 
with e.g. new laws that are legislated. there are plenty of cases
where the entire government has changed radically *without* even
law changes. the manipulation of the ITAR and e.g. the recent
changing in policy relative to the amount of money that is reported
to FinCEN by banks are good examples. the government can change its
mind on a dime. 

  Citizenship applicants have submitted vast quantities of information 
>about themselves to the Feds.  They have undergone years of a staged and 
>complex process to move from nonresident alien to resident alien to citizen.  
>At every point, they NARCed themselves out in detail directly to the federal 
>government.  And yet, that same government can't even tell if these people
>are 
>"criminals."
>
>If they can't efficiently surveil and regulate this group, what chance do
>they 
>have to regulate and surveil the other 260 million of us?

a totalitarian state is quite possible, although difficult to conceive
of. it's a problem that some people
are interested in solving. what is most difficult is an "invisible
tyranny" in which the inhabitants are not even aware of their
imprisonment, and perhaps even defend such a situation.
 a system that we live in right now, imho. (but to elaborate on 
this would rely on conspiracy theories)