Homeland Security officers monitor library patrons in Maryland

February 20, 2006

This story didn’t generate much attention over the weekend, in part because it appeared in the Washington Post’s local section, but it’s a disturbing tale.

Two uniformed men strolled into the main room of the Little Falls library in Bethesda one day last week and demanded the attention of all patrons using the computers. Then they made their announcement: The viewing of Internet pornography was forbidden.

The men looked stern and wore baseball caps emblazoned with the words “Homeland Security.” The bizarre scene unfolded Feb. 9, leaving some residents confused and forcing county officials to explain how employees assigned to protect county buildings against terrorists came to see it as their job to police the viewing of pornography.

This wasn’t just Homeland Security officials near the nation’s capital going on porn patrol; they peered over one guy’s soldier and asked him to step outside when they didn’t like what the guy was reading. Fortunately, a librarian and local police intervened — and the only people who were asked to leave were the Homeland Security officials.

Keep in mind, these two DHS officers are part of a security division that patrols about 300 county buildings just outside DC. “Porn patrol” is not exactly in their job description.

The Miami Herald’s Leonard Pitts Jr. suggested today the entire scene is something we might expect to see happen “in China, Cuba or North Korea.”

The only way I can explain it is that freedom — the right to do, say, think, go, live as you please — is so ingrained in our psyche, has been such a part of us for so long, that some are literally unable to imagine life without it. They seem fundamentally unable to visualize how drastically things would change without these freedoms they treat so cavalierly, what it would be like to need government approval to use the Internet, buy a firearm, take a trip, watch a movie or read these very words.

If that sounds alarmist, consider again the experience at Little Falls, where an agent of the government literally read over a man’s shoulder, Big Brother-like, and tried to prevent him from seeing what he had chosen to see.

I’m sorry, but the fact that we are at war doesn’t make that OK. The fact that we are panicked doesn’t make it OK. The allegation that the material is unsavory doesn’t make it OK.

Look, freedom is a messy business. It is also a risky business. But it means nothing if we surrender it at every hint of messiness and risk. That’s cowardly and it’s un-American.

Damn straight.

The resolution of this story was, fortunately, positive. The two DHS officers have been “reassigned” to other duties. The county’s chief administrative officer said the officers believed they were enforcing the county’s sexual harassment policy but “overstepped their authority” and had to be reminded that Montgomery “supports the rights of patrons to view the materials of their choice.” He called the incident “unfortunate” and “regrettable.”

Kudos to the library staff and local officials. As for the DHS, we can only hope the reassigned officials have new responsibilities that have nothing to do with protecting buildings from terrorists or harassing library patrons.

Not a surprise really — Ashcroft used his Patriot Act powers to go after porn operators in Nevada. Their cultural obsessions still outweigh their desire to actually protect Americans. I mean — how else do you explain when the United States sides with Cuba, Iran and Sudan in the U.N. on anti-gay measures? These are not politicians or even Republican ideologues in the truest sense — they are zealots. It’s funny that they are afraid of a theocracy taking hold in Iraq by winning elections when that’s exactly what they want for the U.S.

  • Ok people, we have to start reminding anyone who repeats the big lie about the country being at war, or this being a time of war. This is the BIG one that keeps all the masses in line, ‘commander-in-chief’, ‘time-of-war’, bigger than biggest pile o crap. Write your editor, reply to lame-assed web ‘news’, and tell them that the patriotic slant is not happening.

  • I was wondering if the library patrons were viewing porn, or maybe something more insidious — like The Carpetbagger Report. After all, we can’t have our citizens reading subversive materials that might cause independent thought.

    This country seems to lurching towards a police state by the day.

  • The two DHS officers should have been “reassigned” to the County Funny Farm.

    WE ARE NOT ‘AT WAR’! Is that so hard to understand? Saddam’s army was wiped out by Bush’s Dad a over decade before the Shrub arrived. Our swaggering “Commander-in-Chief” couldn’t even fulfill his National Guard obligations. He sent our troops into a quagmire of intertribal hostities which goes back to god-knows-when and will last until god-knows-when.

    Even the sometimes-mentioned religious divisions are more complex than Kurd-Sunni-Shiite, and most Americans can’t even grasp that much complexity – e.g., “Saddam gassed his own people”.

    The cost of the Regal Moron’s charade is 2,276 American lives in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, 20,000 dismembered Americans, perhaps 100,000 psychologically damaged Americans, half a trillion off-budget American dollars, hatred of our government by virtually everyone in the world. Obviously Bush was drunk in business school when they covered cost-benefit ratios. Either that or, more likely, he just doesn’t give a damn about anyone but his own loathesome self.

  • The only way I can explain it is that freedom — the right to do, say, think, go, live as you please — is so ingrained in our psyche, has been such a part of us for so long, that some are literally unable to imagine life without it.

    Indeed. And being unable to imagine life without freedom entails that when your freedom is removed, you are unable to imagine that it has happened, so you remain blissfully unaware. The idea that “America is a free country” is held more dearly by Americans than any empirical reality which would be necessary for the idea to be true.

  • Why is it only a relatively few of us realize how bad things look? We need change to come before three years. What we also need is our democratic leaders to stand up for what is right and quit being afraid to speak up. All of our republican democrats need to be defeated. It is time to stand up and be heard. We the people are tired of this SHIT!!!

  • Obviously those Homeland Security guys were hired with the same standards of quality and professionalism that gave us, oh, say, Michaels Brown and Bolton.

    And we’re supposed to trust this administration when they say it’s ok to sell our port security to a bunch of non-U.S. citizens??

  • Velcome to ze new Amerika. Ve must see your papers. You haf no papers? Ve have vays of makink you tawk! You vill now be taken to ze Reeducation Camp until you scream for mercy und conform to ze Republican Law for Supression of ze Masses und svear fealty to Uber Lord High King Bush!

    If you fail to conform after ze torture is ober zen you vill be SHOT!

    Und neffer forget that ve vill alvays be vatchink you und your family und zey vill be severely punished und shot in de face if you effer speak ill of ze King again! Zeig Heil! Long Live ze Fuhrer King George!

  • This incident is so totally bizarre that I have to
    believe there is more to it. This administration
    is a disaster, but we haven’t come to the thought
    police – yet. We don’t want to start our own version
    of the “war on Christmas” nonsense.

    I do agree with Ed’ s “We are not at war!”
    Until the Democrats have the guts to call the
    “war on on terror” for what it is, and to admit
    their collective guilt in the insane and monstrous
    invasion of Iraq, they’re not going to get back
    in the game. The American people need to know
    they’ve been had, and I mean really had. But who’s
    going to tell them? No one but ourselves and our
    pet trolls hear what we liberal bloggers say.

  • Are you kidding me?
    And people act like there is nothing wrong with the direction that the country is heading? I still say giving up freedom for the sake of giving up freedom is stupid. Too many people seem ok with this. Unfortunatly nobody will have a drastic solution until we have a drastic problem, but by then it may be too late.

  • Once we were known as the land of the free
    But we now practice homeland security
    So enjoy all our freedoms while we still can
    Cuz Bush takes them away when the shit hits the fan.
    The more things get worse, the more danger we see
    The more Bush can sink our democracy
    So now we can tell it is part of a plot
    To get awesome power, he just screws up alot.

  • I would find it suprising that anyone working in homeland security would actually be wearing hats that blatanly said so since anyone doing something “wrong” could see them coming. Plus, doesn’t homeland security have more important things to do like maybe inspecting containers coming into our ports? I have yet to hear about thousands of people being put at risk/dying from someone merely looking at porn but not watching our ports could lead to a potential disaster.

  • “doesn’t homeland security have more important things to do like maybe inspecting containers coming into our ports?” – Pete

    Ports are certainly very important, but PORN!! Now looking at that is like fraying the very fabric of the XXX-tian cloth from which our county was woven. If that foundation of our heritage is weakened by common citizens watching naughty stuff online, then we might as well just throw up our hands and kiss the rapture goodby. It just ain’t happenin’.

    A day without rapture potential is like a day without tax-cutting. It’s not worth living. So. Let’s not put the cart before the horse.

    Porn 1st. Ports 2nd. There’s got to be some priorities or the whole thing will just fall apart.

  • Cute Burro,

    Frankly, I hate the idea that -I- have to be -good- so that some pig evangelical name Pat Robertson can go to heaven without dying first.

    3000 or 300,000 years of humans dying to go to heaven should be good enough precedent.

    Now, if God wants to Rapture these twits off to heaven without all the social re-education, that would be fine with me 😉

  • Lance-Personally, I’d love it if Robertson’s redemption was tied to my behavior…

    The Homeland Security Stormtroopers didn’t goof, it was a low-grade procedures test. They wanted to see if anyone would fuss.

  • Ahh!

    Cute Curto.

    “So Miss, can you explain why you had an abortion?”

    “Certainly, I did it solely so Pat Robertson couldn’t be taken up to heaven in a Rapture.”

  • I saw that story and read it as officers from a Montgomery County “homeland security” dept., not from the federal DHS. Maybe that’s a small point, maybe not.

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