this post was submitted on 12 May 2025
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I'm sorry, every time I read a comparison between secret police and plain clothes officers, I feel obligated to post this rant:
If you believe that "plainclothes officers" are the same as secret police, you know jack shit about the Gestapo, the Stasi and MSS or even ICE, all of which are undoubtedly secret police forces.
Officers in plain clothes are just that, they are a part of the normal law-enforcement operation, operate under the law and report to normal chiefs, normal prosecutors and normal courts, inside constitutional limits. Even if the justice system is rigged, racist, out of whack, and heavily skewed, they still operate inside of it, they're just sneaky about it.
Secret police on the other hand are often embedded as special units in organizations that otherwise operate as intelligence services and are therefore not easily recognizable to outsiders. A secret police force is an entirely different animal than just a couple of sneaky police officers. They are a quintessential feature of authoritarian regimes. Either de facto or even de jure unbound by constitutional limits, they are a tool of political repression and preemptive, unlawful violence. They are the ones who disappear people, they often run their own secret prisons and interrogation centers.
The fact that ICE is more and more morphing into a secret police service is FAR more alarming than the existence of plain clothes officers in the US.
That by definition makes it lawful and by definition is operating "inside of it".
Wouldn't a law that exempts a law enforcement agency from constitutional limits be an unconstitutional law - and therefore an illegal law - and therefore not lawful?
In theory, yes.
In practice, 'its legally complicated' and 'what have you done for me lately' and 'you and what army?'
Governments work untill they don't.
We are currently in a Constitutional crisis, a coup, a fascist takeover, call it what you will.
In this situation, some of, or maybe even all of the laws and rules and norms operate by Whose Line Is It Anyway standards: The rules are made up and the points don't matter.
The fun part is that theres no real way to predict precisely which rules and norms will matter, in what contexts, when, both as a citizen or subject of a government, or as some kind of official or representative acting within it.