The extent to which the US has become a security and surveillance state was illustrated to me that last time I travelled there, a few years back on a book tour.<\/p>\n
I had 10 internal flights to make over the course of 2 weeks. When I was pulled out of line and taken for “extra security checks” on the first flight, I was told by the official that I was unlucky because such checks were entirely random. Except I kept being unlucky. In fact, I got extra attention on nine of my 10 flights – and I suspect that the occasion I wasn’t subjected to the extra checks was simply an oversight. I noticed that I had a large red “S” scrawled on my flight stub, as I did on the others. Presumably the security people missed it.<\/p>\n
I am reminded of this by a story showing that the FBI has had under surveillance the website anti-war.com, a place I have published on many occasions, for more than a decade.<\/p>\n
What triggered the FBI’s interest in antiwar.com? Well, what a surprise! A story about Israel – one of those many that get sucked into the memory hole. The site tried to find out who were those Israelis cheering on a rooftop at the fall of the World Trade Center. The Israelis were later spirited out of the country by US officials.<\/p>\n
The heavily redacted FBI memo, released under a FoI request, includes this observation:<\/p>\n