Fear and Cowardice

ABC News:

Now that authorities have captured Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old believed to be the second suspect in the bombings at the Boston Marathon on Monday, federal law enforcement officials are invoking the public safety exception regarding his Miranda rights, a senior Justice Department official told ABC News.
The exception, according to the FBI‘s website, “permits law enforcement to engage in a limited and focused unwarned interrogation and allows the government to introduce the statement as direct evidence.”
“Police officers confronting situations that create a danger to themselves or others may ask questions designed to neutralize the threat without first providing a warning of rights,” according to the FBI.
Anticipating that Tsarnaev may be in a condition to be questioned, expect the activation of the president’s High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG).
The group, set up in 2009, is made up of agents from the FBI, CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. They have been on standby waiting for the moment the suspect was taken in.
According to the FBI, the HIG’s “mission is to gather and apply the nation’s best resources to collect intelligence from key terror suspects in order to prevent terrorist attacks against the United States and its allies.”

Geez, what the hell?  Just read the guy his rights, treat him well while he receives medical treatment, remind him of his rights, then ask him why he and his brother did it.  If it is real religious/political terrorism, he'll probably tell you.  What the fuck good is getting sent to jail for the rest of your life if you don't let folks know why you did it.  As for gaining information about a larger number of terrorists, I don't think you are going to get much from him, whether he is read his rights or not.  These guys may have talked to a few other people about how to do this stuff, but they most likely got all the information they needed from the internet.

When we overreact to such events, and restrict basic civil liberties, we are slowly whittling away the rights of everyone.  If we get a wave of gang killings, will suspects be interrogated without having their rights read to them and that be justified by the public safety exception?  Our society is robust enough to withstand the tiny risk of slightly increased terrorist activity without throwing away our civil liberties.  Just look at the last week.  Two bombs went off in the crowd at the Boston Marathon and killed three people and injured over 100, plus the suspects shot and killed a police officer before being apprehended (with significant help of ever-present security cameras, which everyone should keep in mind while in public) after most of the metro area was shut down for a day.  Meanwhile, a number of events, many of which we still aren't sure of, led to a fire and explosion probably fifty times the size of the Boston bombs in West, Texas, and killed at least 14 people.  Even assuming there are thousands of potential terrorists in this country (a number I think is ridiculously high), how many fertilizer plants, propane plants, fuel depots, chemical plants, gas stations and other facilities are there which could potentially blow up and do much more damage than those potential terrorists.  I'm not exactly scared of all those facilities mentioned above, but I think we majorly overestimate the risks of terrorism.  In this case, I see no reason to not read the suspect his rights and treat him as an average criminal.  That's what he is.