Thursday, April 19, 2007

Let's see what they'll swallow

Glenn Greenwald makes a remarkably good catch. First, he quotes an ABC report on the Virginia Tech shooter (emphasis added by me):
Some news accounts have suggested that Cho had a history of antidepressant use, but senior federal officials tell ABC News that they can find no record of such medication in the government's files. This does not completely rule out prescription drug use, including samples from a physician, drugs obtained through illegal Internet sources, or a gap in the federal database, but the sources say theirs is a reasonably complete search.
Greenwald then asks what you and I should have asked when we first scanned this paragraph: Files? Federal database?

This intrusion was foisted upon us without our permission, at a time when all three branches of government were controlled by alleged "small government" conservatives.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

We always find this stuff out by
accident. Remember the McDonalds
video of Tim McVeigh? I always
assumed that the McDonalds tape was
an endless loop that would only be
stopped if something like a robbery
happened.

That McDonalds was able to produce
the Tim McVeigh tape showed that
even in hick plains towns where
nothing had happened, several days
worth of tapes were preserved.

Anonymous said...

The comment is truly odd Cannon. The STATE keeps files on who buys medication, NOT THE FEDS> database? hmmmmm that is new. Very interesting

Anonymous said...

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2007/04/bush-administration-is-prying-into-your.html

Anonymous said...

I raised those same questions Tuesday at BoingBoing — and ran into the same problems [made the same mistakes?] Greenwald does. Most antidepressants are unscheduled and therefor not subject to NASPER reporting requirements. (As I later explained in a note to Xeni, “most of my experience with psychoactive drugs — or, at least non-Schedule I psychoactive drugs [ahem] — is vicarious, courtesy of assorted exes, and it now appears their particular drug cocktails contained a hefty shot of antianxiety (primarily Schedule IV) meds along with antidepressants (primarily unscheduled, which some states may refer to as ‘Schedule VI’).”

My assumption, now, is that either the reporter or his/her source either misunderstood or missimplified what s/he was told.

I mean, it’s not like Cho was taking a really dangerous drug, like an OTC decongestant. Then we’d have his signature and DL number for every blister-sealed 12-pack he’d purchased.