Lawyer wrongly arrested in bombings: 'We lived in 1984' (http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/11/29/mayfield.suit/index.html)
POSTED: 2:11 a.m. EST, November 30, 2006

From Henry Schuster and Terry Frieden
CNN

PORTLAND, Oregon (CNN) -- The U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday it is paying $2 million and apologizing to an Oregon lawyer wrongly accused of being involved with the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, Spain.

Brandon Mayfield was arrested in Portland on a material witness warrant in May 2004, less than two months after the bombings.

According to an FBI affidavit at the time, his fingerprint was identified as being on a blue plastic bag containing detonators found in a van used by the bombers.

[More... (http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/11/29/mayfield.suit/index.html)]

I'm talking about the George Orwell, frightening brave new world...

Well Brave New World was Aldous Huxley.

Who took the title from a Shakespeare play.

"I, myself, have dark memories of stifling paranoia, of being monitored, followed, watched, tracked," he said, choking back emotion.

And you people think I am paranoid because the government monitors every one of my financial transactions and follows and tracks where I live(or don't live).

No, we think your protests ring hollow when you whine about that but then argue that because a US citizen has been accused by the government of being a terrorist, he deserves to have his rights removed.

So he gets a bunch of cash, yet the rest of us are still ripe for the picking. I only see a victory for the lawyers, not for civil rights.

So he gets a bunch of cash, yet the rest of us are still ripe for the picking. I only see a victory for the lawyers, not for civil rights.
His civil rights were violated. He fought it. He won. What part of it are you having trouble with (apart from lawyers making a living)? Also, as it states in the article, the settlement will allow him to continue the portion of his lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Patriot Act.

His civil rights were violated. He fought it. He won.No, he lost. He just got bribed with some cash afterwards to stop causing a headache.

The government successfully intruded into his life, got what it wanted, and only backed down when it realized that he's not the guy.

The government can still use the Patriot Act or all of the other apparatus of the terrorism-era totalitarianism to "investigate" anyone else and whisk them away to secret prisons where they disappear.

There is no victory here for him or for me. There's just a redistribution of cash from my pocket to his.