Saturday, January 05, 2013

"Terrorists and pedophiles and cannibals -- oh my!"

You've probably already heard about the NY cop named Gilberto Valle who stands accused of offering to kidnap women for money. The man who allegedly offered to pay for that service was a fetishist named Michael Vanhise, who wanted to cook the women alive and then eat them.

Here's the question everyone is asking: Was this plot serious, or was it just an online fantasy?

Here's the question everyone should be asking: How did the government find out about a matter discussed in private emails and private messages?

One good way to make the citizenry tolerate the government's continuing assaults on our right to privacy is to build a well-publicized case against a person who seems truly despicable. If Americans accept warrant-free intrusion in a case involving a possible plot to kidnap women, precedent is established. The government will be then be free to stick its nose into other private mailboxes, in situations that are far less outre.

If we sacrifice our rights in order to catch a potential cannibal kidnapper, then we will no longer possess those rights when the government wants to shut us down for political dissent.

Of course, the more sheep-like Americans will respond with their usual sheepish mantra: "If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about." Those are the precise words people used in Nazi Germany. 

The actual complaint is here. FBI agent Anthony Foto is far too vague about how he learned about this alleged plot:
6. In or about September 2012, the FBI learned that GILBERTO VALLE, the defendant, a New York City Police Office, was sending electronic mail ("e-mail") and instant messages from a home computer (the "Computer"), discussing plans to kidnap, rape torutre, kill, cook and eat body parts of a number of women.

7. Pursuant to a Court-authorized search warrant, the FBI performed a search of the Computer and discovered that GILBERTO VALLE, the defendant, had created files pertaining to at least 100 women and containing at least one photograph of each woman, the majority of whom are listed by their first and last name (the "Individual Files")....
The story told here leaves out the most crucial piece of information. Yes, the FBI got a search warrant -- eventually. They did so after the fact, because they already knew the nature of Valle's private email and private chats. How did the FBI discover the contents of those emails and chats in the period before the warrant was issued? 

That's the part they're not telling you.

That's the part that should matter dearly to all politically-engaged people, no matter how repellent you may find the accusations against Valle. If all you can talk about or think about is the "ick" factor of this story, you've been distracted.

The sheer outrageous spectacle of the Grand Guignol activities described here has blinded most people to the more important question: By what right does the FBI -- without a warrant -- learn the content of a citizen's private email?

We've all seen the pattern. Ever since the passage of the Patriot act, government agents have cried "Terrorists and pedophiles! Terrorists and pedophiles!" as their grand excuse for snooping without a warrant. Now we have a third scarecrow to frighten the gullible. "Terrorists and pedophiles and cannibals -- oh my!"

I hope it goes without saying that nobody should interpret this post as a plea for the toleration of terrorism, pedophilia and cannibalism. In the past, Cannonfire has never had a kind word for cannibal kidnappers, and you should not expect that policy to change any time soon. I am every bit as anti-cannibal-kidnapper as you are.

But this blog has repeatedly warned that the government uses extreme cases as a way to justify the erosion of rights we all used to hold dear.

How not to write a news story. The tale of Michael Vanhise took an odd turn yesterday. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what that turn was, because this report lacks basic comprehensibility.
A lawyer claims that the arrest of a man accused of trying to pay a police officer to kidnap a Manhattan woman was done to prevent him from testifying about Internet sexual fantasies at the officer's cannibalism-tinged trial.
Attorney Julia Gatto spoke after Vanhise, 22, of Trenton, appeared briefly in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, where he was ordered held pending a bail hearing Monday on a conspiracy to commit kidnapping charge.

"Mr. Vanhise is being used as a pawn by the government to bolster a very weak case," Gatto said outside court. She represents Valle, 28, of Queens, who is scheduled to go to trial later this month after he was charged in October with one count of kidnapping conspiracy and one count of accessing a computer without authorization.

She said Vanhise "would have exonerated our client" with testimony about his own participation in a world of Internet sexual fantasies where people could speak of unspeakable acts they would never commit. She said the arrest Friday appeared to be a tactical move by authorities to prevent testimony by Vanhise or others about Internet fantasies.

"He definitely could have been a defense witness, yes. We believe he would certainly support the defense," Gatto said.

The lawyer said the government appeared to be pressuring potential defense witnesses not to take the witness stand by saying in court documents filed against Vanhise that there were other co-conspirators who had not been charged in the case.
Again, I think that the concepts being discussed here -- Kidnap! Torture! Cannibalism! Conspiracy! -- are so bizarre and emotionally-charged that many people reading this report won't notice that it doesn't make much sense. I can't see how the arrest of Vanhise could prevent his being called to testify in the Valle case. Moreover, I can't see how the other (unnamed) witnesses can be so prevented.

Is Julia Gatto trying to tell us that people who are placed under arrest do not testify in court cases? I was under a very different impression.

8 comments:

stickler said...

Perhaps this case is similar to the sting operations whereby a law enforcement officer trolls internet chat rooms pretending to be an underage child, and sets up a meet with a sexual predator.

Once the predator is on the hook, so to speak, a warrant can be issued to search the computer and phone records.

There may be other "unindicted co-conspirators" as in the above examples that led to either/both Valle and/or VanHise, and the specific cases cited arose in further investigation.

It will be interesting to learn the actual facts of the case as it progresses, while speculation at this stage is surmise.

Stephen Morgan said...

What computer was he trying to obtain "unauthorised access" to?

Sounds like the standard terrorist thing: find a fantasist, or group of fantasists, enable them by providing equipment and anything else they need to do some LARPing, then round the fuckers up and pretend they were super terrorists. I think that second article seems to be implying that a policeman was on the inside of some sort of cannibal-fnatasy webring, and was pushing the whole "let's totally do some kidnapping" angle. Maybe I'm reading too much into it.

There was a story from Germany a few years ago, a man had killed a man he met on the internet and ate him. Well, part of him, the rest was in the freezer. It was completely consensual, the victim had allowed his penis to be cut off, then sat in a cold bath to slow the bleeding as it was flambeed, and apparently was most disappointed when it was too tough to eat. Then he was killed, butchered and put in the freezer. The cannibal was caught only when he went on the internet to advertise for a new victim, quite openly and honestly asking for someone to murder and eat. HE went to prison, in the end. Mistreating a corpse, or some similar crime.

It's a funny old world.

Andy Tyme said...

Perhaps we're seeing the initiation of a brand-new fear-meme, Joseph. Maybe sexualized cannibalism will be the 2013 (and beyond) version of "Monarch Mind Control," to which you recently made a passing/disparaging reference.

BTW, could you point us to a good/reassuring "Monarch Debunking" website or two?

And since your apparently have peered down this bottomless rabbit hole at some point in your checkered, conspiracy-theorist past, you might be amused to learn that Brice Taylor is now denouncing Mark Phillips for his allegedly CIA-ordered attempts to make her appear "delusional"(?)

http://aangirfan.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/brice-taylor.html

b said...

Meanwhile the New Delhi gang rape case is being headlined across most of the western media. There are many many cases like this in the world. The question is why shout about it in the west now. The most probable aim is to encourage support for the death penalty. 'Ick' is a powerful propaganda tool.

Maz said...

From the Daily Mail (and other reports have said similar):

"Smiling broadly just months after their summer wedding, today this picture must make Kathleen Cooke Mangan shudder.

"Next to her sits the man now accused as New York's 'Cannibal Cop,' Gilberto Valle. Kathleen, also 28, and a teacher, tipped off police when she found computer messages allegedly describing Valle's sick plans to abduct, cook and eat his targeted victims."

But on the topic of softening up the populace, when was the last time you heard a CIA agent on TV or the movies say, "Hmmm, this looks like trouble. Let's get the FBI in on it, since it's inside the U.S."?

prowlerzee said...

Add "drunk drivers" to the list of unforgivables, alongside terrorists and child rapists.

"Drunk driving" is also emotionally charged and used to justify unconstitutional stop and search roadblocks. Which, btw, don't catch drunk drivers but DO score a bonanza of driving without a license, and other infractions.

If you follow the drivers rights groups (which is a hoot), you'll notice that the propagandists lowered the standards from "drunk" to "buzzed" driving as "criminal." So no one can drive to and from a wedding or restaurant? Please.

Worse yet, in places in Texas the state troopers are allowed to forcibly draw blood if one refuses a dubious breathalizer test. Oh, sure those uniformed thugs are "trained" to jab resisting citizens with needles in the dark by the roadside.

"Drunk drivers" are so despised by the general populace via modern propaganda that they are easy targets both for revenue grubbing and power grabbing with full dumbass public support.

Just this week, the Washington Post blamed "abuse of alcohol" for violence as pertains to the mass shootings. I'm fairly certain close to zero of the disturbed mass shooters were drunk at the time and quite possibly 100 per cent were on prescribed meds.

But we mustn't rock the pharma industry, even tho the entire medical field seems to have devolved into pill pushers. So roll out the despised dregs of society to misdirect attention from the esteemed doctors in the pocket of big pharma. And send the lemming citizen population obediently over the cliff in ceding their rights.

None of the passive consumer public ardently cares about rights and what it should mean to be American. They bore the concerned citizens incessantly by regurgitating that phrase mentioned above: "if you're doing nothing wrong you don't have to worry" --- and they blithely believe that passes as free thought, as opposed to the infectious free pass to abusive authority that it is.

Stephen Morgan said...

And rape, always big for those who want to erode the presumption of innocence. Here in England the government tried to get rid of juries in fraud cases, too.

And on the Big Pharma note, I see Monsanto are marketing genital-baldening cucumbers.

prowlerzee said...

Stephen...genital baldening? What? Please indulge me with a link because my mouse is crippled currently and I'm struggling to keep up online...