{"id":657,"date":"2010-08-15T10:57:23","date_gmt":"2010-08-15T17:57:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/?p=657"},"modified":"2010-08-15T10:57:23","modified_gmt":"2010-08-15T17:57:23","slug":"russias-new-police-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/?p=657","title":{"rendered":"Russia’s New Police State"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"image\"<\/a>I had a quite unpleasant experience with one branch of the US National Police, the Transportation Security Agency<\/a>, in the Phoenix airport last week, but that pales in comparison to what is happening in Russia.  According to the Newsweek article, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Russia\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s New Police State<\/a>,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the increasingly totalitarian Russian government has enacted two new laws giving Russia\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153spectacularly corrupt, inept, and brutal police\u00e2\u20ac\u009d sweeping new powers.<\/p>\n

In a nation whose government has apparently moved to restore the brutal excesses of the USSR secret police,<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Public trust in the police has cratered; according to a recent survey by the Moscow-based Levada Center, more than 70 percent of Russians distrust all branches of law enforcement. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcRussia is now one of those countries where citizens expect more unpleasantness, problems, and even criminality from the police than from actual criminals,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 says independent political analyst Nikolai Zlobin\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The first new law:<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u0153gives the FSB [Federal Security Service] powers to arrest people on suspicion of planning an act \u00e2\u20ac\u02dccontrary to the country\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s security\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 before they have actually done anything illegal. The law also establishes fines and detentions of up to 15 days for people seen as \u00e2\u20ac\u02dchindering the work of an FSB employee.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 The new powers given to the secret police under the new law was one of the reasons cited by presidential human-rights adviser Ella Pamfilova for her resignation<\/a> last month.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The second law goes even further:<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Despite some clauses included at the behest of the Presidential Human Rights Commission\u00e2\u20ac\u201dsuch as an explicit ban on torture\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmuch of the new law would extend the police\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s already extensive authority. They would have almost unlimited power to stop and search people and to detain them for up to an hour just to check their documents, a reversal of the presumption of innocence enshrined in the Russian Constitution. Police can also now enter private homes without a warrant.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So maybe the TSA, with all their snappy new police uniforms, condescending bravado and increasingly privacy-infringing search methods, aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t so bad \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 yet.  But we must always be wary and watchful.  The freedoms we enjoy, those guaranteed by an inspired constitution, must never be subjugated to over reaching police power.<\/p>\n

del.icio.us Tags: Police<\/a>,Law Enforcement<\/a>,TSA<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had a quite unpleasant experience with one branch of the US National Police, the Transportation Security Agency, in the Phoenix airport last week, but that pales in comparison to what is happening in Russia.  According to the Newsweek article, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[163,162,164],"class_list":["post-657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-freedom-article","tag-law-enforcement","tag-police","tag-tsa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}