Firefighters Trained to Report Dissenters

America's firefighters are being placed in the awkward position of being trained to report those who express discontent with their government. It seems that Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" is coming to life.

Firefighters are often known as heroes, and yet the government of the United States seems determined to turn them into anti-heroes as it is training them to sniff out and report dissent. Imagine this: There is an emergency call to your home. Firefighters enter to deal with the situation, and while there, they notice books by Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, or Greg Palast. Perhaps they engage you in conversation and find that you dislike the way our government is handling things. The next thing you know, you're getting a visit from the FBI, or you go to fly somewhere and find yourself on the watch list. That's how things are turning out, as firefighters are being trained to "identify material or behavior that may indicate terrorist activities". Why firefighters? They don't require warrants in order to enter a house like the police do. Firefighters are specifically being told to look for

"a person who is hostile, uncooperative or expressing hate or discontent with the United States; unusual chemicals or other materials that seem out of place; ammunition, firearms or weapons boxes; surveillance equipment; still and video cameras; night-vision goggles; maps, photos, blueprints; police manuals, training manuals, flight manuals; and little or no furniture other than a bed or mattress."

So, owning both a vidcam and a gun while not being happy with the government could be enough to get you labeled as a potential terrorist. Here's the kicker, this kind of "surveillance" has been going on now for three years. Keith Olbermann was interviewing former FBI agent Mike German, who is now with the ACLU and asked, "This program seems to be turning [firefighters], essentially, into legally protected domestic spies, does it not?" "That's the entire intent," German said. "There is actually still a fourth amendment, and what makes a firefighter's search reasonable is that it's done to prevent a fire. If now firefighters are going in with this secondary purpose, that end run around the fourth amendment won't work, and it's likely that they will find themselves in legal trouble." German agreed with Olbermann that first amendment rights could be easily violated in this way, and certain books could be considered "terrorist propaganda". In a different interview, German said "If in the conduct of doing their jobs they come across evidence of a crime, of course they should report that to the police, but you don't want them being intelligence agents." There is a video of the Olbermann/German interview here (scroll down).