Criticism
In 2002, the Justice Department eliminated regulations put in place after the Church Commission hearings in the 1970s, which disclosed evidence of politically motivated spying and obstruction of first amendments rights by the FBI's COINTELPRO division. Critics worry that JTTF actions may constitute violations of the First Amendment. Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the ACLU indicate that officers from the Colorado JTTF have been collecting personal information on nonviolent protesters. Agents involved with JTTFs have also infiltrated activist peace groups under assumed names.
On April 28, 2005, Portland became the only city in the nation to withdraw from a JTTF.
In June 2008, the City Pages broke news that the JTTF based in Minneapolis approached a source to infiltrate vegan potlucks and eventually report back to authorities on organized protesting activities in preparation for the 2008 Republican National Convention in nearby Saint Paul.
In the wake of the FBI's consistent performance in handling red flags of possible terrorist threats after the Fort Hood shooting case, Clarice Feldman of The American Thinker asked "Aside from racing to the scene of the massacre and declaring that this was not an act of terrorism, what is the FBI's role in counter-intelligence? Isn't it time we stripped them of a task they regularly perform so poorly?" The New York Post headline stated "FBI blew off killer e-mail to al Qaeda Officials admit shrugging off gunman's e-mails to Qaeda". The article wrote "The clueless G-men said that at the time, they simply chalked up the chilling e-mails between Hasan and a radical imam and other terror-tied Islamic figures to his 'research' as an Army shrink... red-faced agency vowed to get to the bottom of things itself."
Read more about this topic: Joint Terrorism Task Force
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“As far as criticism is concerned, we don’t resent that unless it is absolutely biased, as it is in most cases.”
—John Vorster (1915–1983)
“People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher—a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It’s the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Parents sometimes feel that if they don’t criticize their child, their child will never learn. Criticism doesn’t make people want to change; it makes them defensive.”
—Laurence Steinberg (20th century)