That example is not extreme at all. It is all too commonplace. Innocent people are arrested all of the time, for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Others are set up by bad cops who get a kickback for every arrest, or are entrapped by folks overzealously enforcing RICO statutes (because they get to keep the cars and property and loot they seize). The Bush abuse of privacy rights just gives these bad apples encouragement to keep up their predatory practices.

Classic example, the fake drug scandal in Dallas a few years ago, when many non-English-speaking men were fingered by corrupt informants working with Dallas police.

Dallas police paid their drug informants based on the quantity of drugs seized. So some informants decided to manufacture cases by planting fake 'cocaine' -- variously described as the powder used to chalk billiard cues and as ground-up gypsum wallboard -- on about 80 Mexican immigrants." The bounty had been set at $1,000 per kilogram.

Another example, Tulia, Texas, where a bigoted white sheriff managed to charge a large percentage of the town's black inhabitants with drug crimes. From an article about resulting legislation is this explanation:

. . . The bill is named after the drug task force scandal in Tulia, Tex in 1999 during which 15 percent of the town's African American population was arrested, prosecuted and sentenced to decades in prison based on the uncorroborated testimony of a federally funded undercover officer with a record of racial impropriety. The defendants have since been pardoned, but Tulia was not an isolated incident. Earlier this month, in a similar case, a lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of 27 African Americans was settled out of court. The individuals were arrested in Hearne, Tex., a town of 4,500, on charges of possession or distribution of crack cocaine."

It is difficult enough to combat this kind of "wink wink" sanctioned crime in various communities, but when this "guilt by suggestion" behavior is blatantly practiced at the very top of the government, you can guess that this shit is going to run downhill and pollute lots of aspects of American civil liberties.

SRS