Tennessee Official: Water Complaints Could be "Act of Terrorism"

An anonymous reader writes "A Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation deputy director is threatening citizens with being listed as terrorists for giving official complaints. Sherwin Smith, deputy director of TDEC’s Division of Water Resources said: 'But you need to make sure that when you make water quality complaints you have a basis, because federally, if there's no water quality issues, that can be considered under Homeland Security an act of terrorism.' 'In terms of the comments made by a member of the Water Resources Division at the meeting, we are just receiving the information and looking into this on our end,' spokeswoman Meg Lockhart said. 'The department would like to fully assess what was said in the meeting. I am told that the meeting was far longer than the audio clip provided by SOCM and that Mr. Smith actually clarified his remarks. But again, we are looking into it.'"

Treating free speech as terrorism IS terrorism

[schwit1]

This government official needs to be brought up on charges of making verbal threats and abuse of power.

Re:Scare tactics

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's where my imagination runs wild - I mean what I'm about to post is pure fiction:

Somewhere near this town, some very well connected industry and industrialist is polluting the water.

Now, a rich and powerful person who makes a lot of campaign contributions can order his bitch to order the state bureaucrat to hide the problem to intimidate people to shut up. I think it's called racketeering.

Because after all, it's not like corrupt government officials in Tennessee have ever tried to screw over their citizens before [wikipedia.org].

But this is PURE fantasy and it couldn't possibly happen in real life.Businesses are always trying to clean up the environment even if it hurts their bottom line!

That'll be what I say in my deposition.

Re:This has to end..

[Concerned Onlooker]

I am in agreement with Mister Transistor on this one. Abuse of the terrorist label seems to be going up, not down. I was going to suggest we call what's going on now McCarthyism v2.

Abuse of authority

[tarellel]

Talk about a massive abuse of authority, it's getting ridiculous how anything that the government doesn't agree with or makes them look bad and they'll use terrorism as excuse to indefinitely detain, control, and slander you.

Re:Scare tactics

[mhajicek]

Very much so. I have never in my life been afraid of a foreign terrorist, but often afraid of those who control this nation.

Re:Scare tactics

[cusco]

Nothing new here, Alcohol prohibition was enforced by police against the cop's competitors 'way back when my grandfather's uncle got his still smashed in the 1920s. The funniest thing to me is that most small town residents that I've known think that there's no official corruption in their community, that it's just a problem for the 'big cities'.