Arkansas Police Plant Spyware on Lawyer’s Computer

Police in the town of Fort Smith in the U.S. state of Arkansas have been caught red-handed planting spying software on the computer of a lawyer, Matt Campbell, who is representing former police turned whistleblowers. (The details are at the references below.) [1] This latest outrage is probably an increasingly normal occurrence in the police state of America. It would be akin to the warrantless tapping of the lawyer’s phone (they probably did that too) or planting room bugs and hidden cameras in his office. The malware was planted in the guise of providing discovery documents to the attorney in the course of a lawsuit against the police department.

 

After Campbell, the lawyer who was the victim of this devious and malevolent computer attack, went to the Arkansas State police to lodge a criminal complaint, they blew him off, refusing to enforce the law.

We shouldn’t be surprised that police are doing this. After all, they can brutalize and murder certain classes of people with impunity. Why shouldn’t they feel empowered to spy on lawyers? They already know they are above the law, and that the alleged “guaranteed rights” in the U.S. Constitution place little restraint on them.

It’s degenerated to the point that even in some podunk Hicksville in rural America cops are acting as secret policemen against attorneys. It is implausible to think that these redneck coppers are innovative enough to be the first ones to do this. They’re just unsophisticated, crude and ham-fisted enough to be caught at it.

The U.S. establishment brainwashes people into believing that the people of this nation have “rights” that are “protected” by a Holy Relic called the U.S. Constitution. That scrap of venerated parchment does indeed intone limits on police powers and specifies requirements to conduct searches. In U.S. law there is also supposed to be something called attorney-client privilege, which means that communications between lawyers and those they represent are supposed to be inviolate to state intrusion. That has long been violated in political cases. From now on we should expect it to be violated in all manner of cases. [2]

What the Fort Smith police did was felonious under Federal law. So will the FBI secret police investigate the Fort Smith police criminally? Will the Department of “Justice,” now under the establishment-feted new attorney general Loretta Lynch prosecute the police?

No, and no.

How do I know this? Experience and knowledge, that’s how. The history of the FBI, DO”J,” and America virtually guarantees it. And if anyone wants to place a bet with me on this, get in touch through my blogsite.

“Law” in the U.S. (and in other places) is not someone that binds all people equally. It is used by those in power against their perceived enemies (such as those who interfere with their venal behavior, as do whistleblowers and whistleblowers' lawyers) and against those who must be ruled, namely us. They themselves are largely exempted from law, unless there is exceptional political pressure. Then a lower-ranking scapegoat must be sacrificed.

Ironically at the same time the news of the criminal activity of the Fort Smith, Arkansas police broke in mid-April, a hacker living in the borough of Staten Island, in New York City, was sentenced to three years for his computer crimes. (This was the article following the one about the Arkansas police on the Emsisoft website referenced in footnote #1.) Which nicely illustrated the dual-standard nature of the U.S. legal system. Laws and punishment are for Thee, not for Me who Rules.

Understand that fundamentally, “law” is nothing but a fine garment that power wears to cloak its nakedness. At least that is the reality. It should, and maybe could, be better than that. But it isn’t.

As a system of power becomes more decadent morally and politically, as in the U.S., those wielding power within the system become less and less restrained. This manifests itself not only in increasing attacks on dissidents, spreading to the general population over time, but in “scandals” such as orgies by DEA agents paid for by south American drug traffickers (and the use of children to make pornographic movies by agents) and drunkenness and patronization of prostitutes by Secret Service men supposedly guarding the president on his trips abroad. Moreover, there is scant or no punishment for these acts, except that the head of the agency may lose their job, as happened in these cases. The fact that people get away with such transgressions shows how deep the rot has spread. It means that the attack dogs of the establishment are out of control. In fact, they fear them. This is why the head of the policemen's union in New York City can openly attack the Mayor, claiming he has “blood on his hands” after a mentally ill man shot dead two cops in retaliation for the murder by the police of Eric Garner on Staten Island. And the bulk of the local media, controlled by plutocrats, sided with the police union and criticized the mayor for not apologizing, that is, for not groveling before the insubordinate, demagogic union boss. (The union being the so-called “Patrolmen's Benevolent Association,” headed by a fascist thug named Patrick Lynch, and the Mayor being the “progressive” Bill deBlasio, who came up through the Democratic Party ranks via the Clinton camp and who supports repressive police tactics and opposes outlawing chokeholds by police- a chokehold being how the NYPD murdered Eric Garner.)

Speaking of surveillance, New York City is in many ways a dystopian Total Surveillance State, with tens of thousands of cameras feeding directly into police headquarters, where software reads and stores license plate information and facial recognition technology tracks people the NYPD wishes to persecute in real time as they move physically through the city, among other malevolent software of repression. The NYPD maintains tight links with the FBI, CIA, and through them the NSA. American police are creating their dream state of total power for themselves and powerlessness for the citizenry- except for the tiny sliver of rich people whom they “protect and serve.”

1] The malware the police planted on the computer- and a lawyer FOR the police was involved, so at a minimum that lawyer should be disbarred, but he won’t be- stole passwords, kept the computer connected to the Internet in the background even if the user tried to disconnect, and allowed for the remote installation of additional malware. For the details of how the lawyer’s hard drive was infiltrated by the police and the specific malware used, see “Arkansas Police send malware-laden hard drive to lawyer representing whistleblowers,” Emsisoft blog, April 18, 2015. Emsisoft is a computer software company that produces security software such as anti-virus programs. For more information surrounding the police crime, see “Lawyer representing whistle blowers finds malware on drive supplied by cops: Says police department brass tried to infect him, seeks criminal sanctions,” ars technica, April 14.

The Alex Jones channel posted a one-minute video on youtube about the matter which is a summary in a nutshell and describes the malware. “Local Police Caught Acting Like The NSA,” April 16, 2015.

2] The evisceration of attorney-client privilege has been take to its logical extreme In the Kafkaesque burlesques of “trials” at the U.S. Naval base of Guantanamo Bay, on occupied Cuban territory, we have witnesses the total stripping away of any confidentiality between lawyers and the prisoners they’re supposed to represent and defend. Even in the “courtroom,” the CIA controls the video feed, and cut it off at one point, to the startlement of the military officer playing “judge.”