Sunday, October 10, 2010

Caught Spying on Student, FBI Demands GPS Tracker Back

A California student got a visit from the FBI this week after he found a secret GPS tracking device on his car, and a friend posted photos of it online. The post prompted wide speculation about whether the device was real, whether the young Arab-American was being targeted in a terrorism investigation and what the authorities would do.

It took just 48 hours to find out: The device was real, the student was being secretly tracked and the FBI wanted its expensive device back, the student told Wired.com in an interview Wednesday.

The answer came when half-a-dozen FBI agents and police officers appeared at Yasir Afifi’s apartment complex in Santa Clara, California, on Tuesday demanding he return the device.

Afifi, a 20-year-old U.S.-born citizen, cooperated willingly and said he’d done nothing to merit attention from authorities. Comments the agents made during their visit suggested he’d been under FBI surveillance for three to six months.

An FBI spokesman wouldn’t acknowledge that the device belonged to the agency or that agents appeared at Afifi’s house.

“I can’t really tell you much about it, because it’s still an ongoing investigation,” said spokesman Pete Lee, who works in the agency’s San Francisco headquarters.

Afifi, the son of an Islamic-American community leader who died a year ago in Egypt, is one of only a few people known to have found a government-tracking device on their vehicle.

His discovery comes in the wake of a recent ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals saying it’s legal for law enforcement to secretly place a tracking device on a suspect’s car without getting a warrant, even if the car is parked in a private driveway.
Read the rest here.

Contemplating the once unthinkable... Am I the only one wondering how long before it's time to start thinking about where to immigrate to?

3 comments:

sjgmore said...

There's a country whose immigration policies I've actually looked into seriously. Unlike many Americans, I don't give my sense of patriotism any amount of religious fervor. I'll go where I feel my children can lead peaceful and productive lives.

I'll remain patient for a while though.

The Anti-Gnostic said...

The US is a failing state: an anarcho-tyranny where law enforcement spends thousands of man-hours tracking Arab-American students while ignoring the actual groups that are turning our cities into criminal feeding grounds.

Heavy-handed, arbitrary and incompetent law enforcement is a symptom of a failing state. Another is when the government and its affiliates engage in the wholesale looting of the Treasury.

In sum, the US is a failing state and will be replaced, probably within the next 25 years.

The Anti-Gnostic said...

John - in answer to your query, it is probably best to stay put among your people and wait for the government to leave. That's what the nations of the Italian peninsula have done for centuries.