23 April 2014

The running of the Boston Marathon on Monday was universally hailed in the media as a demonstration of the American spirit and a defeat for terrorism. Last year’s event ended with the detonation of two pressure cooker bombs that exploded near the finish line, killing three people and wounding more than 260 others.

Authorities vowed that at this year’s marathon, Bostonians would “reclaim the city.” Monday’s event, which involved more than 36,000 runners and an estimated 1 million spectators, proceeded without apparent incident and was deemed a resounding success. What, in fact, transpired on the streets and in the skies of metropolitan Boston was a police security operation involving massive surveillance of those in attendance and an unprecedented coordination of local, state and federal agencies.

Last year’s Marathon bombings were seized on by authorities as a pretext to launch a lockdown of the city and its environs, as police hunted down the nineteen-year-old alleged perpetrator. The area was flooded with thousands of National Guard troops and police, who carried out warrantless house-to-house searches in blatant violation of constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

A blanket order was issued covering an area with 1 million residents for all people to “shelter in place,”

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