FBI Director James Comey Needs to Get Booted — a Little too Much Totalitarian Lip Flapping

27 October 2015

Monarchist sensibilities run wild

According to FBI Director James Comey, the violent crime rate is rising because modern technology makes a record of law enforcement’s occasionally illegal behavior:

Police anxiety in the era of ever-present cellphone cameras and viral videos partly explains why violent crime has risen in several large U.S. cities this year, FBI Director James Comey said Friday.

Comey told several hundred students during a forum at the University of Chicago Law School that it's critical to do more to address a widening gulf between law enforcement and citizens in many communities, particularly African-Americans.

"I don't know whether this explains it entirely, but I do have a strong sense that some part of the explanation is a chill wind blowing through American law enforcement over the last year, and that wind is surely changing behavior," Comey said.

Three days later, the Director returned to his theme:

FBI Director James Comey told a gathering of police chiefs Monday that he believes officers are changing their behavior because they fear being caught in viral videos, and that the rise of crime in some cities may be a result of police officers staying in their vehicles more often due to an overabundance of caution.

He described the law enforcement community and the black community as diverging further and further apart with each new controversy.

“Each time somebody interprets [the] hashtag 'Black Lives Matter' as anti-law enforcement, one line moves away, and each time that someone interprets [the] hashtag 'Police Lives Matter' as anti-black, the other line moves away," Comey said at a speech before the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

"I actually feel the lines continuing to arch away, and maybe accelerating, incident by incident, video by video, hashtag by hashtag, and that's a terrible place to be."

Translated

Why can’t y’all Black Folk be cooperative — and let us randomly execute ya — without the public relations hassle of being caught on video?

This is the same guy who wanted to “illegalize” encryption technology

So that his agency could continue to spy on everyone at whim:

James Comey said data encryption such as that employed on Apple’s latest mobile operating system would deprive police and intelligence companies of potentially life-saving information, even when judges grant security agencies access through a warrant.

“Criminals and terrorists would like nothing more than for us to miss out,” he said.

Framing his speech at the Brookings Institution as kickstarting a “dialogue” and insisting he was not a “scaremonger”, Comey said “encryption threatens to lead us all to a very, very dark place.”

The moral? — Do we really want a totalitarian leading the FBI?

In President Obama’ shoes, I would thank Director Comey for his well-intentioned service and simultaneously show him the door.

PeteFree.com

FBI Director James Comey Needs to Get Booted — a Little too Much Totalitarian Lip Flapping