Forwarded by: "Thomas B. Baines" <tbaines@anl.gov>
Is it just me, or is anyone else bothered by the insistence on the
part of the general media to call that poor old P-3 a "spy plane?"
As a veteran of countless covert operations, I find it offensive that
the news geeks of the country can't get it through their collective
head that an aircraft collecting electronic data that has been
broadcast with a very low expectation of privacy is NOT spying. By
continuing to dumb down the news through the use of catch phrases that
eleminate the necessity of thought about the nuances of a story as
much as possible ([ANYTHING]GATE, for example, the various drama
school dropouts and frustrated novelists are creating a dangerous
level of ignorance that will bite us badly down the road. In
international law, a very clear distinction is made between uniformed
military personnel who fall into the hands of any foreign power, and
spys who suffer a similar fate. Uniformed military persons are to be
repatriated as soon as ongoing hostilities, if any, permit. Spys can
be tried and condemned under the domestic laws of the custodial
country. Be continuing to call the P-3 a spy plane, the media are, by
inference, branding the crew as spys. That strips surveilance crews
of their rights and exposes them to mistreatment for being engaged in
perfectly legal activities.
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Received on Fri Apr 20 05:53 CDT 2001