By Eileen Sullivan (The Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) - Firefighters in major cities are being trained to take on a new role as lookouts for terrorism, raising concerns of eroding their standing as trusted American icons and infringing on people's privacy.

Unlike police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel need no warrants to enter hundreds of thousands of homes and buildings each year, which puts them in position to spot behavior that could indicate terror activity or planning. [...]

The American Civil Liberties Union says using firefighters to gather intelligence is another step (toward overt fascism). Mike German, a former FBI agent who now is national security policy counsel to the ACLU, said the concept is dangerously close to the Bush administration's 2002 proposal to have workers with access to private homes, such as postal carriers and telephone repairmen, report suspicious behavior to the FBI.

"Americans universally abhorred that idea," German said.

The Homeland Security Department is testing a program with the New York City fire department to share intelligence information so firefighters are better prepared when they respond to emergency calls. Homeland Security also trains the New York City fire service how to identify material or behavior that may indicate terrorist activities. If it is successful, the government intends to expand the program to other major metropolitan areas.

As part of the program, which started last December, Homeland Security gave secret clearances to nine New York fire chiefs, according to reports obtained by The Associated Press. [...]

When going to private residences, for example, (firefighters and paramedics) are told to be alert for a person who is hostile, uncooperative or expressing hate or discontent with the United States; unusual chemicals or other materials that seem out of place; ammunition, firearms or weapons boxes; surveillance equipment; still and video cameras; night-vision goggles; maps, photos, blueprints; police manuals, training manuals, flight manuals; and little or no furniture other than a bed or mattress.

The trial program with Homeland Security opens a clear information-sharing channel that did not exist before between the fire service and Homeland Security's intelligence division. [...]

Separately, the fire services in Washington, the nation's capital, Phoenix, Arizona, and Atlanta, Georgia, also have received terror-related intelligence training. Los Angeles County provides intelligence training so firefighters and inspectors can spot dangerous chemicals or other materials that could be used in bombs. And the fire service is also represented in at least 13 state and regional intelligence "fusion" centers across the country, where local, state and federal agencies share information about terror and other crimes.

Full text, courtesy of the radical news agency Truthout, at:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112607L.shtml

My Comment: what this means is that -- just like the subjects of Nazi Germany -- we can now be denounced as "terrorists" merely because our home libraries contain books the Ruling Class wants to suppress. For example, if we own a copy of the Qur'an -- particularly in combination with other books like The Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital or the works of Lenin -- we are now instantly subject to suspicion, harassment, perhaps even warrantless arrest, revocation of citizenship, lifetime internment or death under torture. And if we legally own firearms -- or cameras -- we are doubly at risk.

Indeed we may now legitimately ask if the legal ownership of cameras and computers will soon be restricted only to people the security services deem "politically reliable" -- just as the private ownership of cameras and typewriters was strictly controlled by the Gestapo in Nazi Germany.

Nor is this hyperbole -- not in the least. The following links put this newest disclosure in its fullest and most horrific context, the bipartisan Bush/Clinton, Democrat/Republican onslaught against constitutional governance:

http://populistindependent.org/phpbb/vi ... .php?t=677 (http://populistindependent.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=677)

http://populistindependent.org/phpbb/vi ... .php?t=690 (http://populistindependent.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=690)

(26 November 2007)

This is very disturbing. Even more disturbing are the blank looks I get from people when I attempt to explain the implications of this to them, or explain to them why anyone would be alarmed by it.

We saw so many similar things over the last two years in agriculture. There are all sorts of new (and absurd) regulations and paperwork being demanded by Homeland Security - terrible invasions of privacy - and the various agencies are being "cross-trained" just as the firefighters are in this story. So the food safety inspector might snitch on you and call in a warrantless dragnet by an ICE paramilitary swat team if he sees brown people working for you, for example - or of he just doesn't like you or if you shoot your mouth off and object to their behavior - and the FDA (?) crawled all over the place on some wild fishing expedition of warrantless searches - not based on any FDA jurisdiction or regulations, but on behalf of Homeland Security - but they can't or won't tell us what they are looking for or why. Then we had shipments of fruit arbitrarily and secretly seized from common carriers and the postal service and held indefinitely in secret locations.

As absurd as this new program is, I find is much more worrisome the way that people are rolling over for this sort of thing. By what stretch of the imagination is this "stopping terrorism?" People say to me that this is not a big deal and why does it "upset" me, and that it "won't really affect us" and "it is just smart and common sense" for firefighters to "be alert to suspicious things" and after all "if a person is a criminal don't we want them caught?" and "if you have nothing to hide what's the problem?"

An enormous apparatus is being set up to "catch terrorists." The problem is that there are no terrorists to catch. But they need to catch somebody, so those who object will become the stand-ins for the terrorists - of course - along with the "usual suspects." The general public will then say "well you should have kept your mouth shut. You brought this trouble on yourself."