Radiating Good Will

Not only does this seem very dubiously legal, but it doesn’t even seem like a particularly effective idea:

In search of a terrorist nuclear bomb, the federal government since 9/11 has run a far-reaching, top secret program to monitor radiation levels at over a hundred Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C., area, including mosques, homes, businesses, and warehouses, plus similar sites in at least five other cities, U.S. News has learned. In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the program. Some participants were threatened with loss of their jobs when they questioned the legality of the operation, according to these accounts.

[…]

The nuclear surveillance program began in early 2002 and has been run by the FBI and the Department of Energy's Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST). Two individuals, who declined to be named because the program is highly classified, spoke to U.S. News because of their concerns about the legality of the program. At its peak, they say, the effort involved three vehicles in Washington, D.C., monitoring 120 sites per day, nearly all of them Muslim targets drawn up by the FBI. For some ten months, officials conducted daily monitoring, and they have resumed daily checks during periods of high threat. The program has also operated in at least five other cities when threat levels there have risen: Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas, New York, and Seattle.

[…]

"The targets were almost all U.S. citizens," says the source. "A lot of us thought it was questionable, but people who complained nearly lost their jobs. We were told it was perfectly legal."

The question of search warrants is controversial, however. To ensure accurate readings, in up to 15 percent of the cases the monitoring needed to take place on private property, sources say, such as on mosque parking lots and private driveways. Government officials familiar with the program insist it is legal; warrants are unneeded for monitoring from public property, they say, as well as from publicly accessible driveways and parking lots. "If a delivery man can access it, so can we," says one.

Yes, but if a delivery man isn’t actually delivering anything, and just hangs about with no legitimate reason to be there, it’s called trespassing. If that’s the best defense they’ve got, it’s not much of one.

Meanwhile, monitoring radiation levels does absolutely nothing to protect against the use of, say, C-4. And monitoring Muslims does absolutely nothing to protect against guys like this.

When, oh when, will it become patently obvious to the American electorate that these douchebags have no fucking clue about effectual national security or domestic civil liberties, and instead just randomly shoot buckshot everywhere and hope they hit something—and if an innocent bystander, or a dearly held right, is made a casualty in the process…oh, well. That’s the price of freedom.