Latest Headlines
Obama Supports DNA Sampling Upon Arrest
Wired
March 10, 2010
Josh Gerstein over at Politico sent Threat Level his piece underscoring once again President Barack Obama is not the civil-liberties Knight In Shining Armor many were expecting.
Gerstein posts a televised interview of Obama and John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted. The nation’s chief executive extols the virtues of mandatory DNA testing of Americans upon arrest, even absent charges or a conviction. Obama said, “It’s the right thing to do” to “tighten the grip around folks” who commit crime.
When it comes to civil liberties, the Obama administration has come under fire for often mirroring his predecessor’s practices surrounding state secrets, the Patriot Act and domestic spying. There’s also Gitmo, Jay Bybee and John Yoo.
Now there’s DNA sampling. Obama told Walsh he supported the 18 states, including the federal government, that have varying laws requiring compulsory DNA sampling of individuals upon an arrest for crimes ranging from misdemeanors to felonies. The data is lodged in state and federal databases, and has fostered as many as 200 arrests nationwide, Walsh said.
The American Civil Liberties Union claims DNA sampling is different from mandatory, upon-arrest fingerprinting that has been standard practice in the United States for decades.
A fingerprint, the group says, reveals nothing more than a person’s identity. But much can be learned from a DNA sample, which codes a person’s family ties, some health risks, and, according to some, can predict a propensity for violence.
The ACLU is suing California to block its voter-approved measure requiring saliva sampling of people picked up on felony charges. Authorities in the Golden State are allowed to conduct so-called “familial searching” — when a genetic sample does not directly match another, authorities start investigating people with closely matched DNA in hopes of finding leads to the perpetrator.
Wondering whether DNA sampling is legal?
The courts have already upheld DNA sampling of convicted felons based on the theory that the convicted have fewer privacy rights. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that when conducting intrusions of the body during an investigation, the police need so-called “exigent circumstances” or a warrant. That alcohol evaporates in the blood stream is the exigent circumstance to draw blood from a suspected drunk driver without a warrant.
Student arrested over “Nobama” sticker gets settlement
Howard Pankratz
The Denver Post
January 7, 2010
 Blake Benson showed up for a Michelle Obama speech at Dakota Ridge High School wearing a “Nobama” sticker on his shirt. (provided by ACLU) |
A Dakota Ridge High School student who wore a “Nobama” sticker taped across the front of his shirt prior to an appearance by Michelle Obama will receive $4,000 from Jefferson County authorities, the ACLU of Colorado announced today.
The $4,000 settlement agreement with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department and the Jefferson County School District avoided a potential lawsuit, according to a news release from Taylor Pendergrass, ACLU staff attorney.
On Nov. 3, 2008, Blake Benson showed up outside the high school gym as others were lined up to enter the gym to hear Michelle Obama speak.
Benson was one of three students who chose to “stay and campaign” for Sen. John McCain at the school prior to the speech.
According to the ACLU, Dakota Ridge school officials told Benson to leave. When he refused, officials had Benson handcuffed, searched and arrested for interference — a charge that carries up to six months in jail and a $750 fine.
Dem-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee extends PATRIOT Act provisions
Capitol Hill Blue
October 9, 2009
Key US lawmakers passed legislation Thursday extending three key provisions of the PATRIOT Act, the sweeping intelligence bill enacted after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Backing a White House request, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the measure 11 votes to 8 to extend until 2013 three clauses that would have expired by 31 December. The bill now heads to the full Senate for a vote.
The provisions include the “roving wiretap” clause, used to monitor mobile communications of individuals using multiple telephone lines, and the “lone-wolf” provision, which enables spying on individuals suspected of terrorist activity but with no obvious connection to extremist groups.
Lawmakers also extended the life of controversial section 215, known as the “library records provision” that allows government agencies to access individual’s library history.
The committee had earlier met in a closed-door meeting with members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the intelligence community on ensuring their actions would not impede investigations already underway.
The senators also debated freeing up law enforcement actions that have been hampered by legislation and court rulings since the first program was launched by former president George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11, which enabled collecting sensitive information for years without a court order.
Republicans senators have remained critical of placing restrictions on the intelligence community, saying they should more of a free hand in the early stages of investigations.
But their Democratic counterparts have decried the fact that the provisions still do not in their view adequately respect the privacy of ordinary Americans.
Democratic Senator Russ Feingold said he feared handing a “blank check” to law enforcement agencies and criticized the Democrat-controlled committee for not passing safeguards that even Republicans supported during the Bush administration.
“Among the most significant problems is the failure to include an improved standard for Section 215 orders, even though a Republican controlled Judiciary Committee unanimously supported including the same standard in 2005,” he said in a media advisory.
“But what was most upsetting was the apparent willingness of too many members to defer completely to behind the scenes complaints from the FBI and the Justice Department, even though the administration has yet to take a public position on any of the improvements that I and other senators have proposed. … [While] I am left scratching my head trying to understand how a committee controlled by a wide Democratic margin could support the bill it approved today, I will continue to work with my colleagues to try to make improvements to this bill.”
Michael Macleod-Ball, acting director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington legislative office said the rights group was “disappointed” that further moves were not made to protect civil liberties.
“This truly was a missed opportunity for the Senate Judiciary Committee to right the wrongs of the PATRIOT Act,” he said.
“We urge the Senate to adopt amendments on the floor that will bring this bill in line with the Constitution.”
Outsourcing Torture To Continue Under Obama
Anthony Gregory
Campaign For Liberty
August 25, 2009
Flashback: Obama Orders Continuation Of Illegal CIA Renditions
About two years ago, candidate Obama, writing in Foreign Affairs, strongly criticized Bush’s practice of “extraordinary renditioning.” Under this policy, terror suspects were apprehended, transferred, sometimes through secret prisons and black cites, and handed over to foreign regimes like Egypt and Morocco. Sometimes this involved torture. Maher Arar, for example, was a Canadian citizen later determined to be innocent, captured in New York and sent to Syria where he was tortured in brutal ways. See this piece in the New Yorker chroniciling other such horror stories.
Obama’s criticism of renditioning, along with his general criticism of the Bush administration’s violations of habeas corpus, was one of his most serious indictments of the war on terrorism as managed by the Republicans.
Now the New York Times reports that “[t]he Obama administration will continue the Bush administration’s practice of sending terror suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation, but will monitor their treatment to insure they are not tortured.”
How will they monitor such treatment? The administration “would give the State Department a larger role in assuring that transferred detainees would not be abused.” This is the State Department headed by Hillary Clinton — the same politician whom Ann Coulter had said she’d vote for over John McCain because Clinton was more pro-torture!
The Times goes on to report:
“It is extremely disappointing that the Obama administration is continuing the Bush administration practice of relying on diplomatic assurances, which have been proven completely ineffective in preventing torture,” said Amrit Singh of the American Civil Liberties Union, who tracked rendition cases under President George W. Bush.
She cited the case of Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian sent in 2002 by the United States to Syria, which offered assurances against torture but beat Mr. Arar with electrical cable anyway.a new administrative interrogation unit, to be housed within the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which will oversee the interrogations of top terror suspects using largely non-coercive techniques approved by the administration earlier this year.”
RED ALERT: The Total Takeover Of America Enters Its Final Phase
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
June 29, 2009
The wholesale looting of America and the transfer of wealth and power over to a private banking elite who are setting up a world government, along with the complete obliteration of any remaining freedom to protest, resist, or even speak out against this agenda, is now entering its final phase as numerous different pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fall into place and portray a clear picture of tyranny.
We are about to sound the death knell for the United States if every one of the following attacks on our liberty, free speech, sovereignty, and right to not be ruled over by an unelected banking dictatorship is not fiercely opposed and crushed.
RED ALERT 1
The passage of the “Climate Bill” by the House and its likely approval by the Senate represents the entrée for the complete and total subjugation of any freedoms we had left and the beginning of nightmare regulation and suffocating control over every aspect of our personal lives by millions of green stasi tasked with enforcing impossible to attain goals of 80% carbon dioxide reduction – all based on the manufactured threat of global warming.
This bill will also sink the economy and create a new great depression, effectively obliterating America’s first world status. It represents a transfer of power and wealth from both the U.S. government and the American taxpayer over to the system of world government and global regulation now being erected by means of the climate change hoax.
This is far worse than just a “new tax” as Republicans are complaining – this is the total takeover of the American economy by private banking interests through the carbon trading system.
As we have attempted to warn, the major beneficiaries of the climate bill will be the elitists who own the carbon trading systems that will be used to handle the ‘cap and trade’ program, namely Al Gore and Maurice Strong, two figures intimately involved with a long standing movement to use the theory of man made global warming as a mechanism for profit and social engineering.
We must rally now to lobby members of Congress who voted for the legislation and demand they change their vote before July 2nd. Failing that, we must demand that the Senate does not rubber stamp this nightmare legislation. Failing that, we must support and organize to craft more legislation based on the example of Arizona, who recently passed state Senate legislation refusing to comply with insane climate laws coming from the federal level.
RED ALERT 2
The seemingly endless economic “bailouts” represent the wholesale looting of the American taxpayer and the grand theft of trillions of dollars by private banking interests who refuse to even disclose where the money went.
Not satisfied with stealing tens of trillions, under the Obama administration’s new regulatory reform plan, the Federal Reserve is now trying to enrich itself with dictator powers that will give it complete control over the U.S. economy, handing them the authority to “regulate” and shut down any company whose activity it believes could threaten the economy and the markets.
We must rally now and lobby more members of Congress to support Ron Paul’s H.R. 1207 bill to audit the Federal Reserve and highlight the fact that Bernanke is spewing financial terrorism when he threatens an economic collapse should the Fed be opened up to scrutiny.
RED ALERT 3
Federal hate crimes legislation, which in reality would criminalize “thought crimes,” has cleared the House and now faces the Senate as S.909, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act (officially, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act).
S.909 is a direct violation of the First Amendment. It allows the federal government to prosecute people involved in “hate speech” transmitted over television, radio, and the internet. The House version of the bill states:
“Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce [radio, TV, internet] any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both. (HR 1966, SEC 3, Sec. 881a)”
In other words, if a talk show host engages in “hostile” speech against a person or persons of the above mentioned federally protected group that talk show host will face federal prosecution and the prospect of a two year prison term.
The Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act would similarly criminalize free speech on the Internet if it can be deemed in any way to have been “harmful” to an individual. This represents the end of political blogging and free speech on the world wide web.
If both bills are not opposed and thrown out then the First Amendment will become nothing more than a relic of a bygone age.
RED ALERT 4
The Senate bill S.787, otherwise known as the Clean Water Restoration Act (CWRA), would replace language in the regulatory act currently using “navigable waters” with “waters of the United States.”
What this means is that “the government would essentially be able to regulate everything from standing water in floodplains to creeks that run behind business and residences,” according to an Environmental Leader report.
This represents a complete takeover of private land and waterways by the federal government, a total assault on private property rights and a complete federalization of America’s land and water.
“In a letter to Senate Environment and Public Works Chair Barbara Boxer and ranking member James Inhofe, the American Farm Bureau Federation said that the proposed law would “extend to all water — anywhere from farm ponds, to storm water retention basins, to roadside ditches, to desert washes, to streets and gutters, even to a puddle of rainwater,” stated the letter. “For the first time in the 36-year history of the act, activities that have no impact on actual rivers and lakes would be subject to full federal regulation.”
If this bill becomes law, it will empower the federal government to seize private property on a whim, using similar powers that Communist China employed during Chairman Mao’s “great leap forward,” where landowners had their property violently confiscated and stolen by the government.
If this bill passes the Senate, private property rights in the United States are effectively null and void and the federal government would legally have the power to bulldoze families from their homes as routinely happens in Communist China.
RED ALERT 5
Amongst the myriad of assaults on the Second Amendment rights of American citizens undertaken by the Obama administration during the course of its first year in office, the one that stands out as the most alarming is the attempt to ban people who appear on the terrorist watch list from buying guns.
But isn’t stopping terrorists from buying guns surely a sensible measure to take? The problem is that the terrorist watch list, sometimes called the no fly list, is not a list of likely terrorists, it is a sprawling database of of innocent people that contains the names of over one million Americans. This is a rise of 32% since 2007 alone.
Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes, reverends, the former assistant attorney general, toddlers and children, the ACLU administrator, people with difficult names and all American names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become caught in the vast tentacle of this list, documents the ACLU.
Moreover, once a person is included on the terrorist watch list it is virtually impossible to get off it.
The terrorist watch list is an ever-expanding tool with which to deny Americans basic rights as well as to strip them completely of the Fourth Amendment.
Now it is being used to prevent law-abiding citizens from purchasing firearms. Legislation sponsored by the The Government Accountability Office seeks to “close the gap” and prevent victims of the terrorist watch list from being able to purchase firearms.
This represents a new end run around the Second Amendment and a concerted effort on behalf of the federal government to classify millions of innocent Americans as potential terrorists, thus stripping them of their Constitutional right to own firearms.
This represents a new end run around the Second Amendment and a concerted effort on behalf of the federal government to classify millions of innocent Americans as potential terrorists, thus stripping them of their Constitutional right to own firearms.
RED ALERT 6
Our right to protest against any of the egregious assaults on the Constitution that are listed above is itself being removed by new law enforcement and Pentagon training manuals and guidelines that define protesting as domestic terrorism.
Current Department of Defense anti-terrorism training course material states that the exercise of First Amendment rights in the U.S. constitutes terrorist activity.
Over the last few years we have documented countless examples of security assessment reports from the likes of the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, as well as police training manuals, which state that anti-war protesters, gun owners, veterans, Ron Paul supporters and those who merely cite the Constitution should be equated with extremists and domestic terrorists.
The fact that the government is now treating people who merely criticize its conduct as domestic terrorists is the clearest signal possible that the United States has entered a period in history similar to Germany in the early 1930’s and that it can only be a matter of time before the right “emergency” provides the justification for dissidents to be targeted for round-ups and mass imprisonment.
No one can claim now that this is merely a paranoid delusion – the government itself is training its law enforcement and military arms that protesters and people who use their First Amendment rights are domestic terrorists. The last time this happened was under King George shortly before the American Revolution.
ONE MINUTE TO MIDNIGHT
If we don’t stand up in unison and exercise our right to protest and free speech now more than ever before, while pointing out that the real terrorists are those who would seek to destroy the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights, then we may find ourselves doing our protesting behind the barbed wires and the concrete blocks of an internment camp.
The hour is late, the clock stands at one minute to midnight, and the federal government, through all the examples documented above, is on the verge of implementing nothing less than a total environmental, financial and societal dictatorship and killing what once was the United States of America.
Almost identical programs of total enslavement are also being pushed through in almost every other major western country at the same time.
If we don’t stop obsessing about the minutia of life and actually concentrate on the imminent destruction of the very principles of our livelihoods, the bedrock freedoms that allow us to operate in relative comfort on a daily basis and be reasonably secure in our own homes, being able to pay our bills, put food on the table, earn money, and air our grievances when government threatens to impinge on those basic freedoms, then there will be nothing left but a rotten hollow carcass and a memory of what America once strived to be – land of the free, home of the brave – not land of the thief, home of the slave.
Joe Biden’s pro-RIAA, pro-FBI tech voting record
CNET
August 23, 2008
By choosing Joe Biden as their vice presidential candidate, the Democrats have selected a politician with a mixed record on technology who has spent most of his Senate career allied with the FBI and copyright holders, who ranks toward the bottom of CNET’s Technology Voters’ Guide, and whose anti-privacy legislation was actually responsible for the creation of PGP.
That’s probably okay with Barack Obama: Biden likely got the nod because of his foreign policy knowledge. The Delaware politician is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee who voted for the war in Iraq, and is reasonably well-known nationally after his presidential campaigns in 1988 and 2008.
Copyright
But back to the Delaware senator’s tech record. After taking over the Foreign Relations committee, Biden became a staunch ally of Hollywood and the recording industry in their efforts to expand copyright law. He sponsored a bill in 2002 that would have make it a federal felony to trick certain types of devices into playing unauthorized music or executing unapproved computer programs. Biden’s bill was backed by content companies including News Corp. but eventually died after Verizon, Microsoft, Apple, eBay, and Yahoo lobbied against it.
A few months later, Biden signed a letter that urged the Justice Department “to prosecute individuals who intentionally allow mass copying from their computer over peer-to-peer networks.” Critics of this approach said that the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, and not taxpayers, should pay for their own lawsuits.
Last year, Biden sponsored an RIAA-backed bill called the Perform Act aimed at restricting Americans’ ability to record and play back individual songs from satellite and Internet radio services. (The RIAA sued XM Satellite Radio over precisely this point.)
All of which meant that nobody in Washington was surprised when Biden was one of only four U.S. senators invited to a champagne reception in celebration of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act hosted by the MPAA’s Jack Valenti, the RIAA, and the Business Software Alliance. (Photos are here.)
Now, it’s true that few Americans will cast their votes in November based on what the vice presidential candidate thinks of copyright law. But these pro-copyright views don’t exactly jibe with what Obama has promised; he’s pledged to “update and reform our copyright and patent systems to promote civic discourse, innovation and investment while ensuring that intellectual property owners are fairly treated.” These are code words for taking a more pro-EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) than pro-MPAA approach.
Unfortunately, Biden has steadfastly refused to answer questions on the topic. We asked him 10 tech-related questions, including whether he’d support rewriting the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as part of our 2008 Technology Voters’ guide. Biden would not answer (we did hear back from Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Ron Paul).
In our 2006 Technology Voters’ Guide, which ranked Senate votes from July 1998 through May 2005, Biden received a mere 37.5 percent score because of his support for Internet filters in schools and libraries and occasional support for Internet taxes.
Privacy, the FBI, and PGP
On privacy, Biden’s record is hardly stellar. In the 1990s, Biden was chairman of the Judiciary Committee and introduced a bill called the Comprehensive Counter-Terrorism Act, which the EFF says he was “persuaded” to do by the FBI. A second Biden bill was called the Violent Crime Control Act. Both were staunchly anti-encryption, with this identical language:
It is the sense of Congress that providers of electronic communications services and manufacturers of electronic communications service equipment shall ensure that communications systems permit the government to obtain the plain text contents of voice, data, and other communications when appropriately authorized by law.
Translated, that means turn over your encryption keys. The book Electronic Privacy Papers describes Biden’s bill as representing the FBI’s visible effort to restrict encryption technology, which was taking place in concert with the National Security Agency’s parallel, but less visible efforts. (Biden was no foe of the NSA. He once described now-retired NSA director Bobby Ray Inman as the “single most competent man in the government.”)
Biden’s bill — and the threat of encryption being outlawed — is what spurred Phil Zimmermann to write PGP, thereby kicking off a historic debate about export controls, national security, and privacy. Zimmermann, who’s now busy developing Zfone, says it was Biden’s legislation “that led me to publish PGP electronically for free that year, shortly before the measure was defeated after vigorous protest by civil libertarians and industry groups.”
While neither of Biden’s pair of bills became law, they did foreshadow the FBI’s pro-wiretapping, anti-encryption legislative strategy that followed — and demonstrated that the Delaware senator was willing to be a reliable ally of law enforcement on the topic. (They also previewed the FBI’s legislative proposal later that decade for banning encryption products such as SSH or PGP without government backdoors, which was approved by one House of Representatives committee but never came to a vote in the Senate.)
“Joe Biden made his second attempt to introduce such legislation” in the form of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which was also known as the Digital Telephony law, according to an account in Wired magazine. Biden at the time was chairman of the relevant committee; he co-sponsored the Senate version and dutifully secured a successful floor vote on it less than two months after it was introduced. CALEA became law in October 1994, and is still bedeviling privacy advocates: the FBI recently managed to extend its requirements to Internet service providers.
CALEA represented one step in the FBI and NSA’s attempts to restrict encryption without backdoors. In a top-secret memo to members of President George H.W. Bush’s administration including Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and CIA director Robert Gates, one White House official wrote: “Justice should go ahead now to seek a legislative fix to the digital telephony problem, and all parties should prepare to follow through on the encryption problem in about a year. Success with digital telephony will lock in one major objective; we will have a beachhead we can exploit for the encryption fix; and the encryption access options can be developed more thoroughly in the meantime.”
There’s another reason why Biden’s legislative tactics in the CALEA scrum amount to more than a mere a footnote in Internet history. They’re what led to the creation of the Center for Democracy and Technology — and the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s simultaneous implosion and soul-searching.
EFF staffers Jerry Berman and Danny Weitzner chose to work with Biden on cutting a deal and altering the bill in hopes of obtaining privacy concessions. It may have helped, but it also left the EFF in the uncomfortable position of leaving its imprimatur on Biden’s FBI-backed wiretapping law universally loathed by privacy advocates. The debacle ended with internal turmoil, Berman and Weitzner leaving the group and taking their corporate backers to form CDT, and a chastened EFF that quietly packed its bags and moved to its current home in San Francisco. (Weitzner, who was responsible for a censorship controversy last year, became a formal Obama campaign surrogate.)
“Anti-terror” legislation
The next year, months before the Oklahoma City bombing took place, Biden introduced another bill called the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995. It previewed the 2001 Patriot Act by allowing secret evidence to be used in prosecutions, expanding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and wiretap laws, creating a new federal crime of “terrorism” that could be invoked based on political beliefs, permitting the U.S. military to be used in civilian law enforcement, and allowing permanent detection of non-U.S. citizens without judicial review. The Center for National Security Studies said the bill would erode “constitutional and statutory due process protections” and would “authorize the Justice Department to pick and choose crimes to investigate and prosecute based on political beliefs and associations.”
Biden himself draws parallels between his 1995 bill and its 2001 cousin. “I drafted a terrorism bill after the Oklahoma City bombing. And the bill John Ashcroft sent up was my bill,” he said when the Patriot Act was being debated, according to the New Republic, which described him as “the Democratic Party’s de facto spokesman on the war against terrorism.”
Biden’s chronology is not accurate: the bombing took place in April 1995 and his bill had been introduced in February 1995. But it’s true that Biden’s proposal probably helped to lay the groundwork for the Bush administration’s Patriot Act.
In 1996, Biden voted to keep intact an ostensibly anti-illegal immigration bill that outlined what the Real ID Act would become almost a decade later. The bill would create a national worker identification registry; Biden voted to kill an Abraham-Feingold amendment that would have replaced the registry with stronger enforcement. According to an analysis by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the underlying bill would have required “states to place Social Security numbers on drivers licenses and to obtain fingerprints or some other form of biometric identification for licenses.”
Along with most of his colleagues in the Congress — including Sen. John McCain but not Rep. Ron Paul — Biden voted for the Patriot Act and the Real ID Act (which was part of a larger spending bill). Obama voted for the bill containing the Real ID Act, but wasn’t in the U.S. Senate in 2001 when the original Patriot Act vote took place.
Patriot Act
In the Senate debate over the Patriot Act in October 2001, Biden once again allied himself closely with the FBI. The Justice Department favorably quotes Biden on its Web site as saying: “The FBI could get a wiretap to investigate the mafia, but they could not get one to investigate terrorists. To put it bluntly, that was crazy! What’s good for the mob should be good for terrorists.”
The problem is that Biden’s claim was simply false — which he should have known after a decade of experience lending his name to wiretapping bills on behalf of the FBI. As CDT explains in a rebuttal to Biden: “The Justice Department had the ability to use wiretaps, including roving taps, in criminal investigations of terrorism, just as in other criminal investigations, long before the Patriot Act.”
But Biden’s views had become markedly less FBI-friendly by April 2007, six years later. By then, the debate over wiretapping had become sharply partisan, pitting Democrats seeking to embarrass President Bush against Republicans aiming to defend the administration at nearly any cost. In addition, Biden had announced his presidential candidacy three months earlier and was courting liberal activists dismayed by the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping.
That month, Biden slammed the “president’s illegal wiretapping program that allows intelligence agencies to eavesdrop on the conversations of Americans without a judge’s approval or congressional authorization or oversight.” He took aim at Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for allowing the FBI to “flagrantly misuse National Security Letters” — even though it was the Patriot Act that greatly expanded their use without also expanding internal safeguards and oversight as well.
Biden did vote against a FISA bill with retroactive immunity for any telecommunications provider that illegally opened its network to the National Security Agency; Obama didn’t. Both agreed to renew the Patriot Act in March 2006, a move that pro-privacy Democrats including Ron Wyden and Russ Feingold opposed. The ACLU said the renewal “fails to correct the most flawed provisions” of the original Patriot Act. (Biden does do well on the ACLU’s congressional scorecard.)
“Baby-food bombs”
The ACLU also had been at odds with Biden over his efforts to censor bomb-making information on the Internet. One day after a bomb in Saudi Arabia killed several U.S. servicemen and virtually flattened a military base, Biden pushed to make posting bomb-making information on the Internet a felony, punishable by up to 20 years in jail, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time.
“I think most Americans would be absolutely shocked if they knew what kind of bone-chilling information is making its way over the Internet,” he told the Senate. “You can access detailed, explicit instructions on how to make and detonate pipe bombs, light-bulb bombs, and even — if you can believe it — baby-food bombs.”
Biden didn’t get exactly what he wanted — at least not right away. His proposal was swapped in the final law for one requiring the attorney general to investigate “the extent to which the First Amendment protects such material and its private and commercial distribution.” The report was duly produced, concluding that the proposal “can withstand constitutional muster in most, if not all, of its possible applications, if such legislation is slightly modified.”
It was. Biden and co-sponsor Dianne Feinstein introduced their bill again the following year. Biden pitched it as an anti-terror measure, saying in a floor debate that numerous terrorists “have been found in possession of bomb-making manuals and Internet bomb-making information.” He added: “What is even worse is that some of these instructions are geared toward kids. They tell kids that all the ingredients they need are right in their parents’ kitchen or laundry cabinets.”
Biden’s proposal became law in 1997. It didn’t amount to much: four years after its enactment, there had been only one conviction. And instead of being used to snare a dangerous member of Al Qaeda, the law was used to lock up a 20-year old anarchist Webmaster who was sentenced to one year in prison for posting information about Molotov cocktails and “Drano bombs” on his Web site, Raisethefist.com.
Today there are over 10,000 hits on Google for the phrase, in quotes, “Drano bomb.” One is a video that lists the necessary ingredients and shows some self-described rednecks blowing up small plastic bottles in their yard. Then there’s the U.S. Army’s Improvised Munitions Handbook with instructions on making far more deadly compounds, including methyl nitrate dynamite, mortars, grenades, and C-4 plastic explosive — which free speech activists placed online as an in-your-face response to the Biden-Feinstein bill.
Peer-to-peer networks
Since then, Biden has switched from complaining about Internet baby-food bombs to taking aim at peer-to-peer networks. He held one Foreign Relations committee hearing in February 2002 titled “Theft of American Intellectual Property” and invited executives from the Justice Department, RIAA, MPAA, and Microsoft to speak. Not one Internet company, P2P network, or consumer group was invited to testify.
Afterwards, Sharman Networks (which distributes Kazaa) wrote a letter to Biden complaining about “one-sided and unsubstantiated attacks” on P2P networks. It said: “We are deeply offended by the gratuitous accusations made against Kazaa by witnesses before the committee, including ludicrous attempts to associate an extremely beneficial, next-generation software program with organized criminal gangs and even terrorist organizations.”
Biden returned to the business of targeting P2P networks this year. In April, he proposed spending $1 billion in U.S. tax dollars so police can monitor peer-to-peer networks for illegal activity. He made that suggestion after a Wyoming cop demonstrated a proof-of-concept program called “Operation Fairplay” at a hearing before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee.
A month later, the Senate Judiciary committee approved a Biden-sponsored bill that would spend over $1 billion on policing illegal Internet activity, mostly child pornography. It has the dubious virtue of being at least partially redundant: One section would “prohibit the broadcast of live images of child abuse,” even though the Justice Department has experienced no problems in securing guilty pleas for underage Webcamming. (The bill has not been voted on by the full Senate.)
Online sales of Robitussin
Around the same time, Biden introduced his self-described Biden Crime Bill of 2007. One section expands electronic surveillance law to permit police wiretaps in “crimes dangerous to the life, limb, and well-being of minor children.” Another takes aim at Internet-based telemedicine and online pharmacies, saying that physicians must have conducted “at least one in-person medical evaluation of the patient” to prescribe medicine.
Another prohibits selling a product containing dextromethorphan — including Robitussin, Sucrets, Dayquil, and Vicks — “to an individual under the age of 18 years, including any such sale using the Internet.” It gives the Justice Department six months to come up with regulations, which include when retailers should be fined for shipping cough suppressants to children. (Biden is a longtime drug warrior; he authored the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act that the Bush administration used to shut down benefit concerts.)
Net neutrality
On Net neutrality, Biden has sounded skeptical. In 2006, he indicated that no preemptive laws were necessary because if violations do happen, such a public outcry will develop that “the chairman will be required to hold this meeting in this largest room in the Capitol, and there will be lines wandering all the way down to the White House.” Obama, on the other hand, has been a strong supporter of handing pre-emptive regulatory authority to the Federal Communications Commission.
Tommy Chong: Biden ’authored the bill that put me in jail’
KXMB
August 24, 2008
It turns out that Obama’s new running mate is one of the leading crusaders in the war on drugs. Which isn’t something that’s likely to sit well with Obama’s base of young, college-aged supporters
Earlier this week, in an interview with the Washington Post, Tommy Chong was asked what the average citizen can do to further the cause of decriminalization. “Check out the people you’re voting for,” Chong replied. “For instance, Joseph Biden comes off as a liberal Democrat, but he’s the one who authored the bill that put me in jail. He wrote the law against shipping drug paraphernalia through the mail – which could be anything from a pipe to a clip or cigarette papers.”
Barack Obama’s V.P. selection Sen. Joe Biden also spnsored the Rave Act, which targets music events where drug use is allegedly prevalent.
Barack Obama: The Next PRESIDENT Is Joe Biden
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RElChQ6g2Io
VP Choice Biden Unpopular in Iraq: He’s creator of the idea of dividing Iraq
http://africa.reuters.com/world/news/usnLN96984.html
Biden’s Bill: The Patriot Act
http://www.tnr.com/columnist..582-b6ec-444834c9df73&k=93697
Biden called for unilateral Iraq invasion – in 1998
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5492
Provocateurs Call For Violence to Demonize DNC Protesters
Media reports attempt to link individuals who screamed “Kill Michelle Malkin” to talk show host Alex Jones
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
August 26, 2008
The spectacle of two individuals caught on camera calling for violence and then affiliating themselves with peaceful demonstrators in Denver has raised questions about who is behind apparent “agent provocateurs,” intent on demonizing legitimate protest groups at the Democratic National Convention.
Several news outlets reported that nationally syndicated radio talk show host Alex Jones had “threatened” neo-conservative pundit Michelle Malkin during a confrontation between the two yesterday.
The same websites then claimed that people affiliated with Jones had screamed “Kill Michelle Malkin” and advocated violence against the columnist.
“Jones and his lackeys chased Michelle around the protest threatening to kill her!” claims the Gateway Pundit blog.
Other news sources, including People’s Press Collective and Political Byline, re-iterated the false charge and alleged that Jones had threatened Malkin.
In reality, the You Tube video of the incident shows two young men in court jester outfits approach Jones, claim they are fans of his and then put their arms around him for a photo opportunity. They then go off camera and advocate the murder of Malkin, continuing their threats despite the best efforts of Jones’ colleague Luke Rudkowski to make them cease their outburst.:
Tellingly, the man in green (and Jones’ “lackey” according to the reports) also shouts, ”Alex Jones is a capitalist stooge.”
This incident was clearly a staged set-up to fool the watching media into thinking that people affiliated with Jones were calling for violence, thus demonizing Jones himself and the rest of the peaceful protesters who were confronting Malkin.
It was “frat-boy type” instigators, notes Aaron Dykes, editor of The Jones Report, “wearing court jester hats and making inflammatory statements.” Dykes further states that, after chanting for Malkin’s death, these instigators asked why Alex had called for violence against Malkin.
Alex Jones nor any of his colleagues have ever called for violence against Michelle Malkin or any other individual. Confrontational protest is one thing, but assault and death threats are something that Alex Jones has vehemently denounced throughout his years of activism.
For clues about who the mysterious “court jesters” really belong to, consider the fact that members of the Re-Create 68 protest group, a self-proclaimed left-wing anarchist organization, voiced their support for right-wing Malkin throughout the confrontation with Jones, with one member, Kenneth Sanchez, at one point yelling “Michelle Malkin is a true patriot!”
According to other protest groups, Re-Create 68 is a COINTELPRO-style project designed to discredit legitimate antiwar groups by instigating violence in Denver during the DNC. According to Alex Jones, members of Re-Create 68 have habitually attempted to taunt police and provoke riots during the first few days of the convention.
Discovering the true identity and affiliation of the two individuals seen in the video calling for violence is key to preventing the wholesale demonization of legitimate protest groups as well as stopping a potential police crackdown which may come as a result of these instigators provoking riots.
Malkin’s Photographer Caught On Tape Attempting To Frame Alex Jones
Prison Planet
August 27, 2008
One of Michelle Malkin’s stooges is caught on tape lying to police in an attempt to frame Alex Jones, claiming that Alex punched her bodyguard and shouted death threats, when in reality Malkin’s bodyguard assaulted Alex and his crew, and the death threats were made by provocateurs completely unaffiliated with Alex Jones.
Media Distorts Malkin Confrontation
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
August 26, 2008
Reading Fort Collins Now, formerly Fort Collins Weekly, one has to ask if Julia Cobb got her journalism degree out of a crackerjack box. Reporting on the events outside the DNC yesterday, Cobb describes Alex Jones’ confrontation with the neocon Michelle Malkin as follows:
But soon, the attention was diverted from the peaceful protest by an altercation between a member of the conservative media and a citizen attending the protest. This was the second incident of its kind; on Sunday, protesters took exception to a Fox News reporter trying to question Ward Churchill, controversial former professor at the University of Colorado. Today it was radical Alex Jones, from the group 9/11 Truth, which believes that the September 11 terrorist attacks were planned by the U.S. government, verbally confronting Michelle Malkin, a conservative columnist and Fox News contributor.
“You support torture. Shame on you, you fascist piece of trash,” Jones yelled. He also accused Malkin of supporting the U.S. Marines when they drown puppies.
Malkin found an ally in Recreate 68’s Sanchez, who pushed his way into the crowd of TV cameras to yell at Jones: “Michelle Malkin is a true patriot!”
Sanchez later said he had no idea why Jones was attending the protest and added that Recreate 68 does not support Jones’ ideas. He added that although they strongly disagree with her views, Recreate 68 supports Malkin’s right to free speech.
Drown puppies? Lance Cpl. David Motari didn’t drown a puppy. He threw it over a cliff. This was a big story back in March, but for some reason Ms. Cobb didn’t bother to do any research.
She also did not mention the fact that Michelle Malkin insisted the puppy was not real. “The puppy doesn’t move. It’s clear to me that it’s either dead or a stuffed toy. The sound effects of a dog yapping seem to have been dubbed in,” Malkin wrote on her blog on March 3. “Disturbing whether the dog is real or fake, dead or alive? Yes. A hanging offense? No. But the clip is a useful cultural Rorschach test. Those who buy into the soldier-as-monster narrative are up in arms — demanding that the soldiers be hunted down and shot.”
Malkin then includes a few obscenity laced quotes that accompanied the video on YouTube. “I’m sure Gloria Steinem and the Berkeley City Council would agree,” she adds. This is the same Gloria Steinem who enjoyed “a 10-year association with the CIA,” according to Nancy Borman and the Village Voice. As a member of the CIA’s Mockingbird corporate media — Malkin works for Fox News — it would seem Michelle Malkin has more in common with Ms. Steinem than she would care to admit.
It is bizarre to claim Malkin “found an ally” in Recreate 68’s Kenneth Sanchez, who along with co-founder Mark Cohen attempted to “levitate” the U.S. Mint in Denver. Of course, this is not even original, it was ripped off from Abbie Hoffman. Back in 1967, 50,000 hippies attempted to levitate the Pentagon, turn it orange, and drive out the evil spirits responsible for the Vietnam War. Mark Cohen, wearing a red velvet wizard costume, and Recreate 68 managed to attract 50 people to this less than original stunt.
It makes sense Sanchez would declare Malkin a “true patriot,” although Recreate 68 allegedly disagrees with her views. According to Truth Alliance, Recreate 68 is a COINTELPRO project designed to discredit legitimate antiwar groups by instigating violence in Denver during the DNC. Malkin did her part, adding to the hype on her blog on March 21 when she wrote that Recreate 68 is part and parcel of “the history of left-wing violence against law enforcement” and admonished the cops to “take the nutballs seriously.” In response, nutball Sanchez embraced Malkin and disavowed the “radical” Alex Jones.
“Recreate 68 co-founder Glenn Spagnuolo agreed [with Sanchez] saying [Alex Jones] is “the true agent provocateur, he was so busy hating, he missed all the love.” Spagnuolo’s “love” is rather peculiar, as the point of Recreate 68 is to initiate a re-run of the 1968 police riot in Chicago. Is it possible Mr. Spagnuolo echoes Yippie Jerry Rubin, who wished for martial law in Chicago? Love has nothing to do with bashing heads.
Federally Funded Re-Create 68 Provocateur, Jerry Rubin
Rat Tube
August 26, 2008
Rat Says: Within the first nanosecond of seeing this clown (Jerry Rubin) I thought to myself, ‘could this be any faker’? This guy is void of sincerity and his clown suit seems forced and uncomfortable on him. What is so telling is the formulaic M.O. that the foundations use that hired him….. they are using the same scripts with ReCreate68.
But it takes two to tango and in this case it is Fox that has chosen (or better yet designated) to bed the fake anarchists. What you see on the ‘old media’ is all WWF.
1. Background and finances of the “Chicago 7?. Unknown to the public, Rennie Davis, Tom Hayden, and the others who became the “7?, and persons connected with them in the National Mobilization to End the War in Viet Nam, were funded by federal money, channeled to them through pass-through organizations connected with the government. $192,000 in federal money and $85,000 from the Carnegie Foundation, acting as a conduit for the Central Intelligence Agency, were funneled to Hayden, Davis, et al., through a front calling itself the Chicago Student Health Organization. To maintain the deep “cover” of this latter group, stories were planted in the press describing the group as being “communist” inspired or directed.
Another $193,313 was funneled to the “7? from the federal Office of Economic Opportunity by way of or through subsidiaries of the Institute for Policy Studies, Washington, D.C., an alleged “liberal” think tank posing as a left wing group, but acting as a conduit for the C.I.A. Other substantial funds came from the Roger Baldwin Foundation which has, nationwide, taken over the structure of the American Civil Liberties Union. The A.C.L.U., such as it was prior to 1967, ; no longer exists. The Roger Baldwin Foundation is funded by several pass-throughs, or conduits, for the C.I.A., among others being:
J.M. Kaplan Fund, Inc. [of New York]; New World Foundation; Aaron E. Norman Fund, Inc.
This is shown by a detailed analysis of I.R.S. form 990-A, filed by these foundations [one of the few public record tax returns]. Several persons acting for the C.I.A. sit on the Board of Overseers of the Roger Baldwin Foundation : Jacob M. Kaplan and John L.Saltonstall, among others……..” bellaciao.org
Dallas Morning News Libels Alex Jones
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
August 28, 2008
It’s no longer simply the neocon bloggers spreading lies about Alex Jones. Now the Dallas Morning News has engaged in slander. Mark Davis, described as a “radio guy and contributing columnist” to the newspaper’s “opinion blog,” writes:
Conservative writer and blogger Michelle Malkin was apparently attacked by violent idiots yesterday, egged on by one of the most repugnant human beings attending this convention — and the competition for that title is crowded.
I refer to the cretinous Alex Jones, who hosts what passes for a radio talk show on a few stations unwise enough to carry it. His blend of 9/11 conspiracy bunk and other baseless scaremongering makes him a complete idiot, a designation which gives him plenty of innocent company. But in shouting “Kill Michelle Malkin!” at a protest yesterday, he reveals himself to be not just a dismissible loon, but a despicable soul whom I would identify as a blight on my industry if I actually considered him to be a part of it. (Emphasis added.)In short, according to the Dallas Morning News, Alex Jones called for Michelle Malkin to be murdered. Infowars, Prison Planet, and no shortage of blogs and websites have spent the last two days revealing this for what it is — a complete lie, in fact a neocon dirty trick.
It really is quite amazing the Dallas Morning News would be so careless. It has committed libel, as there is plenty of irrefutable evidence that Alex Jones did not call for Malkin’s murder.
In the opinion of this writer, the Dallas Morning News not only needs to apologize and print a retraction, it needs to fire Mark Davis for violating journalistic ethics.
But then I forgot — the corporate media has no ethics.
Audio: Malkin Entourage Admits Alex Jones Did Not Say “Kill Malkin”
Infowars
August 29, 2008
In a clip taken from a Pajamas Media podcast, PJM producer Ed Driscoll gets an admission from videographer Andrew Marcus and blogger Charlie Martin that Alex Jones did not call for the murder of Michelle Malkin during a demo to “levitate” the Denver Mint on August 25. This admission by Malkin’s people should put to rest the claims, primarily on neocon blogs and, unfortunately, by Mark Davis at the Dallas Morning News, that Alex Jones threatened Malkin. Marcus and Martin, however, attempt to portray Jones as violent and attempting to incite a “mob,” although Malkin was not touched by Alex Jones and he was in no way responsible for the behavior of people in the crowd, including two individuals who acted as agents provocateurs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEng3DLsBNU
Inside Edition Smears Jones For Malkin Confrontation
http://www.prisonplanet.com/inside-e..es-for-malkin-confrontation.html
Alex Jones Confronts Neocon Michelle Malkin — Re-Create 68 Provocateurs Make a Mockery out of the Anti-War Movement
http://noworldsystem.com/2008/0..onts-neocon-michelle-malkin/
Video: Tour of Gitmo on the Platte
DNC Police Bulletin: People With City Maps Could Be Planning Violence
http://www.infowars.net/articles/august2008/210808.htm
Concentration Camp Set Up For DNC Protesters
Cells topped with barbed wire to be used to hold protesters rounded up in mass arrests
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
August 15, 2008
A CBS news crew has uncovered a huge warehouse holding facility in Denver, consisting of steel cages topped with barbed wire, ready to receive thousands of protesters at this year’s Democratic National Convention.
“This is a building filled with metal holding cells,” described CBS reporter Rick Sallinger. “We showed up at the facility unannounced today, the doors were wide open, and we managed to shoot for several minutes until a Denver sheriff’s captain asked us to leave.”
The warehouse is located on the north-east side of Denver and is owned by the city. It appears that officials wanted to keep it a secret until the convention began. The police captain captured on film warned that if made public, the facility could be compromised “by people who are potentially trying to be disruptive.”
The CBS footage shows a huge area of metal chain-link cells that measure 5 yards by 5 yards, topped with rolls of barbed wire. Each pen is adorned with an identifying letter.
Signs on the walls of the warehouse read “Warning! Electric stun devices used in this facility.”
On seeing the footage one local political organizer told the crew it resembled a “concentration camp”, while another described it as a “meat processing plant”. The facility has already been dubbed “Gitmo On The Platte”.
Watch the video:
Such “prison camps” were also used in 2004 during the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. The areas close to the DNC in Boston consisted of concrete walls, barriers and metal cages with barbed wire.
The areas were invisible to the Fleet Center where the convention was held and were referred to as “Boston’s Camp X-Ray”.
At the 2004 RNC in New York holding pens were also employed as protestors and innocent people were swept up in mass arrests and transferred to then-recently closed Hudson Pier Depot at Pier 57 on the Hudson River in Manhattan.
The facility was quickly dubbed “Little Gitmo” as thousands were bound and paraded into a large warehouse area behind steel caging.
This was taken from inside a portable bathroom at Pier 57. You can see people being lined up to get inside the huge pen. Throughout this 30 second clip, a chant of “Let Us Go!” starts in one part of the complex and quickly spreads to every corner. Learn more about the photographer’s experience here:
More recntly, such holding areas have been employed in conjunction with the Orwellian concept of “free speech zones”.
The Secret Service has been granted the power to declare “first amendment areas”. They scout locations where the president is scheduled to speak, or pass through, target those who carry anti-Bush signs and escort them to the protest pens prior to and during the event.
Inevitably the pens are far away from the event location and well away from any media spotlight.
Holding pens will also be employed at the RNC later this year with local law enforcement working with the secret service to designate the areas in Minneapolis.
We Are Change Colorado Check Out DNC Detention Camps and Break Exclusive Footage
Bush protesters get $50,000 settlement for unlawful strip-search at RNC 2004
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-ia-bushprotesters,0,2510112.story
City Defends ‘Secret Jail’ Built For DNC
http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=97741&catid=188
Huge protests expected at political conventions
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1250765520080815
DNC Protesters Outraged Over Makeshift Razor-Wire Jail in Denver Warehouse
http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=154223
News Crew Crashes DNC Concentration Camp
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/News_..s_DNC_massdetention_0815.html
Denver Cops Brutally Beat Man and Lie About it
Brutality, humiliation and sexual torture by police in Egypt
Cops Cleared In Katrina Bridge Shooting
http://ap.google.com/article/AL..hYVsz8iQ0hRepT5GkgD92HNQAO0
Police ordered to shoot protesters in Kashmir
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080813/ap_on_re_as/kashmir_shrine_protest_3
Iraqi detainees put in wooden crates
The Memory Hole
July 23, 2008
In Iraq, some prisoners/detainees are kept in wooden crates known as “prisoner boxes,” so I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the US Central Command asking for the following:
“Vanity Fair (Feb 2005 issue) has reported the existence of wood “prisoner boxes” being used by the US military in facilities in and around Baghdad. They are used to hold individual prisoners and detainees.
“I hereby request all photographs of these boxes, including empty boxes as well as boxes holding prisoners and detainees.”
Around nine and a half months later, CentCom responded by sending the three photographs on this page.
Another Secret Terror War Prison Found
Huffington Post
August 1, 2008
The existence of a secret, CIA-run prison on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean has long been a leaky secret in the “War on Terror,” and recent revelations in TIME — based on disclosures by a “senior American official,” who was “a frequent participant in White House Situation Room meetings” after the 9/11 attacks, and who reported that “a CIA counter-terrorism official twice said that a high-value prisoner or prisoners were being interrogated on the island” — will come as no surprise to those who have been studying the story closely.
The news will, however, be an embarrassment to the US government, which has persistently denied claims that it operated a secret “War on Terror” prison on Diego Garcia, and will be a source of even more consternation to the British government, which is more closely bound than its law-shredding Transatlantic neighbor to international laws and treaties preventing any kind of involvement whatsoever in kidnapping, “extraordinary rendition” and the practice of torture.
ACLU: Memos authorized CIA torture
http://rawstory.com//news/2008/A..horized_CIA_torture_0724.html
Former Gitmo Prosecutor Says Trials Rigged
http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/spytalk/2008/07/former-gitmo-prosecutor-says-t.html
MI5 Outsourced Torture
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/15/humanrights.civilliberties
`Terrorist’ Loses 60 Pounds on Cheney Torture Diet
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/new..8&sid=as7YVr4Wamak&refer=home
Why Pelosi won’t impeach: She knew about the torture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w88NXHsgi08
Ashcroft: Waterboarding ‘Consistently’ Seen As Legal, Refuses To Say Use On U.S. Troops Is ‘Unacceptable’
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/17/ashcroft-torture/
Forgetting His Vote To Allow Waterboarding, McCain Says ‘We Could Never Torture Anyone’
Think Progress
July 28, 2008
In February, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) voted against a bill banning the CIA from waterboarding and using other torture tactics in their interrogations. When the bill passed, McCain urged Bush to veto it, which he did.
In an interview with Newsweek published today, McCain defended his position, insisting that the CIA plays “a special role” in defending the U.S. and thus should be allowed to use harsh interrogation tactics such as waterboarding:
NEWSWEEK: On torture, why should the CIA be treated differently from the armed services regarding the use of harsh interrogation tactics?
MCCAIN: Because they play a special role in the United States of America and our ability to combat terrorists. But we have made it very clear that there is nothing they can do that would violate the Geneva Conventions, the Detainee Treatment Act, which prohibits torture. We could never torture anyone, but some people misconstrue that who don’t understand what the Detainee Treatment Act and the Geneva Conventions are all about.
McCain’s vote against the waterboarding ban did make one thing clear: that he condones torture. With Bush’s veto, waterboarding remains a distinct option for the CIA:
Still, waterboarding remains in the CIA’s tool kit. The technique can be used, but it requires the consent of the attorney general and president on a case-by-case basis. Bush wants to keep that option open.
“I cannot sign into law a bill that would prevent me, and future presidents, from authorizing the CIA to conduct a separate, lawful intelligence program, and from taking all lawful actions necessary to protect Americans from attack,” Bush said in a statement.
McCain is either clueless or ignorant about the fact that his vote allows the CIA to waterboard detainees. And as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), one of McCain’s chief surrogates, has said about waterboarding, “I don’t think you have to have a lot of knowledge about the law to understand this technique violates Geneva Convention common article three, the War Crimes statutes, and many other statutes that are in place.”
“Fusion Centers” to Gather Intelligence on Peaceful Protesters
The Progressive
July 30, 2008
On the heels of the Maryland State Police spying scandal, the ACLU is ringing the alarms over “fusion centers.”
These are the state-by-state groupings of various law enforcement agencies working together at all levels, from local police to the FBI, NSA, and CIA, ostensibly to share terrorism threat information. But, as we saw in the Maryland case, they may sometimes just be sharing information about lawful, peaceful First Amendment-protected speech.
There is “mission creep from watching out for terrorism to watching out for peace activists,” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, in a press conference July 29. She called the fusion centers an incipient “domestic intelligence apparatus.” And she warned that the kind of spying that occurred in Maryland was “very dangerous to our democracy.”
In December 2007, the ACLU published a report “What’s Wrong with Fusion Centers?”
It noted that there are more than 40 fusion centers already created. And it cited several problems with them, including the participation of military personnel in law enforcement, as well as “private sector participation.” “Fusion centers are incorporating private-sector corporations into the intelligence process, breaking down the arm’s length relationship that protects the privacy of innocent Americans who are employees or customers of these companies.”
On July 29, the ACLU issued an update to that report.
The fusion centers represent an attempt to create a “total surveillance society,” the update says.
It notes that the LAPD fed into its fusion center an array of ““suspicious activity reports” that included such innocuous activities as “taking notes” or “drawing diagrams” or “using binoculars.” (Since one out of six Americans is a birdwatcher, this last item could really swell the files.)
The “suspicious activity” criteria of the LAPD “gives law enforcement officers justification to harass practically anyone they choose, to collect personal information, and to pass such information along to the intelligence community,” the update says.
Frighteningly, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has called the LAPD program “a national model.”
The Director of National Intelligence urges state and local law enforcement to “report non-criminal suspicious activities,” the update says. According to the standards of the Director of National Intelligence, these activities are defined as “observed behavior that may be indicative of intelligence gathering or pre-operational planning related to terrorism, criminal, or other illicit intention.”
The ACLU notes that “other illicit intention” is not defined, and that fusion centers are fed intelligence before “reasonable suspicion” is established.
Fusion centers also engage in data mining, as they rely not only on FBI and CIA records. They also often “have subscriptions with private data brokers such as Accurint, ChoicePoint, Lexis-Nexus, and LocatePlus, a database containing cell phone numbers and unpublished telephone records,” the ACLU notes, referring to a Washington Post article from April 2.
The ACLU calls fusion centers “out-of-control data-gathering monsters.”
While the government is gathering more and more information about us citizens, it’s trying to shield itself from telling us what it’s doing. “There appears to be an effort by the federal government to coerce states into exempting their fusion centers from state open government laws,” the ACLU notes. “For those living in Virginia, it’s already too late: The Virginia General Assembly passed a law in April 2008 exempting the state’s fusion center from the Freedom of Information Act.”
As I noted in “The New Snoops: Terrorism Liaison Officers, Some from the Private Sector”, the Department of Justice has come up with “Fusion Center Guidelines” that flat-out recommend that “fusion centers and their leadership encourage appropriate policymakers to legislate the protection of private sector data provided to fusion centers.”
The ACLU is absolutely right: Congress must investigate these fusion centers and exercise appropriate oversight before law enforcement agencies and their private sector partners violate the rights of more Americans and usher us all into the total surveillance society.
Bush turning intelligence agencies on Americans
Raw Story
July 31, 2008
President Bush seems to be slowly turning the nation’s massive surveillance apparatus upon its citizens, and some worry that administration assurances to protect civil liberties are nothing but empty promises.
With his update to a decades-old executive order governing the Intelligence Community, Bush is giving the Director of National Intelligence and the 16 agencies of the US Intelligence Community more power to access and share sensitive information on Americans with little to no independent oversight. The update to Executive Order 12333, first issued by former President Ronald Reagan, introduces a more prominent role for the Attorney General in approving intelligence gathering methods, calls for collaboration with local law enforcement agencies, eases limits on how information can be shared and urges cooperation between the IC and private companies.
“This Intelligence Community that was built to deal with foreign threats is now being slowly and incrementally turned inward,” says Mike German, policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, in an interview with RAW STORY.
Bush’s latest update of a decades old executive order governing intelligence activities is a “lit fuse” that could end with the Constitution’s immolation, another ACLU official says.
“This kind of concentrated power, exercised in secret, is a lit fuse with our Constitution likely in danger of being burned,” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington legislative office.
The White House insists that the update to Executive Order 12333 maintains protections for Americans’ civil liberties, but senior administration officials who briefed reporters Thursday provided little reassurance that the new order would correct some of the Bush administration’s most egregious abuses.
Peaceful Activist labeled a “terrorist” in a federally-funded domestic terrorism database
http://noworldsystem.com/2008/07/19/..d-spy-on-protest-groups/
Leaked photo shows detainee’s lips sewn shut, wires coming out of the face
Wikileaks
July 22, 2008
Photo leaked from a military computer
Photo of a detainee held by the United States, with his face wired, lips sewn, red eyes and torso sacked. According to digital camera metadata the image was taken on Feb 9, 2003 03:49:25. The 6 Aug 2004 is also mentioned in relation to this photo. The facial wiring is clearly non-medical. The location of the detainee is unknown, possibly the US Bagram Theater Internment Facility in Afghanistan. Although there is a resemblance to the US Taliban supporter John Walker Lindh, the connection is superficial. The negative image to the right was created by Wikileaks to draw attention to certain regions of the photo on the left. Wikileaks staff have verified that the photograph came from a US military computer network.
ACLU: AG Wants Congress To Subvert Constitution
Raw Story
July 21, 2008
Attorney General Michael Mukasey prompted Congress Monday morning, during a speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute, to create new rules governing the rights of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The American Civil Liberties Union immediately responded to Mukasey’s request, calling his proposals nothing short of asking Congress to subvert the Constitution.
Mukasey “proposed that Congress subvert the right of habeas corpus with a new scheme of procedures that will hide the Bush administration’s past wrongdoing – an action that would undermine the constitutional guarantee of due process and conceal systematic torture and abuse of detainees,” the group charged.
“Mukasey is asking Congress to expand and extend the war on terror forever,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, in a media advisory. “Anyone that this president or the next one declares to be a terrorist could then be held indefinitely without a trial. This is clearly the last gasp of an administration desperate to rationalize what is a failed legal scheme that was correctly rejected four times by the Supreme Court.”
The Associated Press, acknowledging a Congress eager to transition into a busy election season, notes the rules are not likely to be approved. Mukasey’s requests come on the heels of a Supreme Court decision granting detainees the right to challenge their captivity in US federal court. Under Mukasey’s proposals, a detainee would be able to challenge their detention, but would receive no extradition to the United States for the proceedings.
According to the Washington Post: “Under the Justice plan that Mukasey talked about today, the U.S. government could hold prisoners indefinitely so long as the armed conflict with al-Qaeda persisted.”
Lawyer: U.S. Military Jails Are Legal Black Holes
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/US..black_holes_say_U_07202008.html
US tells lies about torture, say MPs
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/20/humanrights.uksecurity
Conservative Lawyers Urge Bush To Issue ‘Pre-Emptive Pardons’ To Officials Involved In Illegal Programs
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/21/bush-preemptive-pardons/
Guantánamo children
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/20..gusrc=rss&feed=worldnews
Police Infiltrate and Spy on Protest Groups
Peaceful Activist labeled a terrorist in a federally-funded database
Washington Times
July 18, 2008
Undercover Maryland state troopers infiltrated three groups advocating peace and protesting the death penalty — attending meetings and sending reports on their activities to U.S. intelligence and military agencies, according to documents released Thursday.
The documents show the activities occurred from at least March 2005 to May 2006 and that officers used false names, which the documents referred to as “covert identities” – to open e-mail accounts to receive messages from the groups.
Also included in the 46 pages of documents, obtained by the Maryland chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, is an account of an activist’s name being entered into a federally funded database designed to share information among state, local and federal law-enforcement agencies on terrorist and drug trafficking suspects.
ACLU attorney David Rocah said state police violated federal laws prohibiting departments that receive federal funds from maintaining databases with information about political activities and affiliations.
The activist was identified as Max Obuszewski. His “primary crime” was entered into the database as “terrorism – anti govern(ment).” His “secondary crime” was listed as “terrorism – anti-war protestors.” The database is known as the Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, or HIDTA.
“This is not supposed to happen in America,” said Mr. Rocah. “In a free society, which relies on the engagement of citizens in debate and protest and political activity to maintain that freedom … you should be able to attend a meeting about an issue you care about without having to worry that government spies are entering your name into a database used to track alleged terrorists and drug traffickers.”
Mr. Rocah called the surveillance “Kafka-esque insanity.”
State police Chief Col. Terrence B. Sheridan said the agency “does not inappropriately curtail the expression or demonstration of the civil liberties of protesters or organizations acting lawfully.”
The surveillance of Mr. Obuszewski, of Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore, and another person came to light during his trial for trespassing and disorderly conduct in a 2004 protest outside the National Security Agency’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Md.
Documents released by the prosecution revealed that the protesters had been under surveillance by an entity called the Baltimore Intelligence Unit.
The Maryland ACLU sued last month, claiming the state police refused to release public documents about the surveillance of peace activists.
The documents, which include intelligence reports and printouts from the database, show that several undercover officers from the state police’s Homeland Security and Intelligence Division attended meetings of three groups: Mr. Obuszewski’s group; the Coalition to End the Death Penalty; and the Committee to Save Vernon Evans, a convicted murderer who was slated for execution.
The documents show at least 288 hours of surveillance over the 14-month period. The undercover officers attended at least 20 organizing meetings at community halls and churches and a dozen rallies against the death penalty, including several at the state’s SuperMax jail in Baltimore.
Included in the documents are references to a proposed sit-in at the offices of Baltimore County State’s Attorney SandraA. O’Connor. However, they show no trooper reports of violence or threats of violence. Organizers repeatedly stressed the importance of peaceful and orderly demonstrations, the documents show.
“There were about 75-80 protestors at the rally and none participated in any type of civil disobedience or illegal acts,” said one report of a demonstration against the death penalty at the SuperMax jail. “Protesters were even careful to move out of the way for Division of Correction employees who were going into the parking lot for work.”
Still, information about the protesters and their activities was sent to seven agencies, including the National Security Agency and an unnamed military intelligence official.
“Americans have the right to peaceably assemble with others of a like mind and speak out about what they believe in,” Mr. Rocah said. “For state agencies to spend hundreds of hours entering information about lawful and peaceful political activities into a criminal database is beyond unconscionable. It is a waste of taxpayer dollars, which does nothing to make us safer from actual terrorists or drug dealers.”
Kucinich to investigate police surveillance of protest groups
Raw Story
July 18, 2008
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), who has figured prominently in recent political news for his attempts to begin impeachment hearings against President George W. Bush, today announced that the congressional subcommittee he chairs will look into reports of peace groups being surveilled by police and private investigators.
“[M]ost people would be upset to know that police were spying on lawful citizens and infiltrating peaceful organizations, rather than chasing down real criminals,” said Kucinich in a press release delivered to RAW STORY. “At a minimum, such police spying is clearly a waste of taxpayer dollars and a diversion from the mission of protecting and serving the people.
“I want the subcommittee to determine how widespread these activities are and who ordered them,” the Ohio Democrat and former presidential candidate said.
Kucinich chairs the House Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The press release referred to reports that Maryland state police officers infiltrated peace and anti-death penalty groups and that private investigators working on behalf of “several large corporations” had surveilled environmental groups.
Such surveillance is apparently not limited to law enforcement and private investigators. In January 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released a report showing “widespread Pentagon surveillance of peace activists.
U.S. terrorism watch list tops 1 million
Randall Mikkelsen
Reuters
July 14, 2008
A U.S. watch list of terrorism suspects has passed 1 million records, corresponding to about 400,000 people, and a leading civil rights group said on Monday the number was far too high to be effective.
The Bush administration disagreed and called the list one of the most effective tools implemented after the September 11 hijacked plane attacks — when a federal “no-fly” list contained just 16 people considered threats to aviation.
The American Civil Liberties Union publicized the 1 million milestone with a news conference and release.
It said the watch list was an impediment to millions of travelers and called for changes, including tightening criteria for adding names, giving travelers a right to challenge their inclusion and improving procedures for taking wrongly included names off the list.
“America’s new million-record watch list is a perfect symbol for what’s wrong with this administration’s approach to security: it’s unfair, out-of-control, a waste of resources (and) treats the rights of the innocent as an afterthought,” ACLU technology director Barry Steinhardt said in a release.
New Gitmo Video: Child Detainee Cries During Interrogation
Current
July 15, 2008
Omar Khadr was captured as a 15-year-old after being accused of throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan in 2002. Now his lawyers have released excerpts of a video showing their client being questioned by Canadian officials at Guantanamo Bay prison. The video is said to provide insight into the effects prolonged interrogation and detention had on Khadr.
The video was shot in 2003 over four days of interviews and is seven hours long in total. It was originally marked “Secret/No Foreign”.
Keeping America Safe: Prosecuting Children as Terrorists
Common Dreams
June 21, 2008
President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and the rest of the warmongers and terror-pimps in the White House would have us believe that Omar Khadr is a monster. Khadr is the 21-year-old Canadian who is facing one of the first show-trials at Guantanamo.
But let’s just step back a minute and consider Mr. Khadr’s case.
The son of an alleged Islamic fundamentalist, Khadr was sent to one of those fundamentalist madrassa schools in Pakistan back when he was 14. From there, he went to Afghanistan, to join with the Taliban in fighting against the remnant warlord backers of the Soviet Union, which had attempted to run Afghanistan as a vassal state.
Then came 9-11 and the October 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan. Young Khadr suddenly found himself fighting against the world’s most powerful military.
In 2002, after the Taliban government had fallen, Khadr was still out in the hills with the forces of resistance. The Taliban government was gone, but the war was not over. In fact it’s still not over, with the Taliban resurgent in much of Afghanistan.
In this situation, with some 20,000 US and European troops battling across Afghanistan, Khadr, by then at the ripe age of 15, found himself with a group of five older fighters in a compound up in the hills. Some US Special Forces came on the location, and, peeking through cracks in the door, saw the group, armed with AK rifles. They called on the men to surrender, but the men allegedly refused.
At that point the brave Americans called in an air strike, and clobbered the building. After that softening up, they went inside to pick up the pieces.
Someone at that point, and US military prosecutors claim it was the wounded Khadr, tossed a grenade while lying injured on the ground. The grenade killed Special Forces Sergeant Christopher Speer. Speer’s comrades opened fire, with three of them hitting Khadr.
When they went to check on him, the critically injured, yet miraculously still living Khadr reportedly pleaded, “Shoot me!” Reportedly, some of Sgt. Speer’s buddies were ready to do just that. Apparently the “clicking” of injured captives by American forces (a war crime) is not uncommon, and even has its own slang word. But a medic with the group interceded and stopped the battlefield execution, and took action to save Khadr’s life.
Khadr was eventually shipped off to Guantanamo, at the age of 15, in violation of a 2002 protocol signed by the US which extended the protection of the Geneva Conventions against imprisoning child soldiers from the prior “under 15″ standard to “under 18.” No matter, “bad guy” Khadr would be one of at least 2500 children that the US has admitted to incarcerating in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and elsewhere as “enemy combatants.”
Today, Khadr is 21. He has spent the second half of his teenage years confined in a prison camp on the naval base at Guantanamo.
This is what Bush and Cheney are really referring to when they assure us that they are holding “the worst of the worst” on the island of Cuba.
They are keeping us safe from 15-year-old boys.
And what, exactly, is Omar Khadr’s “crime”?
As far as I can tell, if he did toss that grenade (and there is testimony from American witnesses that the thrower may have been another man, who was killed in the resulting US barrage of fire), Khadr was simply demonstrating extraordinary bravery of the kind that would earn a silver star, at least, had it been a US soldier or marine doing the same thing under the same circumstances. Consider: he and his comrades-in-arms, battling in defense of their religion and, in some cases, their nation, were bombarded from the air. They were then approached by armed US troops-the very ones who had called in the air strike. This was a battle, and it was not over yet. For all Khadr knew, those US soldiers were going to kill them all. And in any event, Khadr and his fellow fighters had a right to defend themselves to the death to prevent capture. Sure it’s unfortunate that Sgt. Speer was killed, but that’s what happens in wars.
Still, a fighter killing another fighter during warfare is not the act of a “terrorist.” It may be brutal and it may be tragic, but it is the act of a soldier. That soldier, if captured, is not a criminal, but a POW. Moreover, if he is a child, the Geneva Conventions and the subsequent protocol mentioned above, require that he be treated not as a POW but as a victim of war.
Bush and Cheney don’t want to admit that the people fighting US forces in Afghanistan are legitimate soldiers, entitled to protection under the rules of war. They want us to believe that anyone who takes up a gun in defense of their homeland or of the homeland of their allies, and fights against the US military forces that are spread all over the globe like Roman Legions of old, are “terrorists,” deserving of whatever fate we hand them, by whatever rules we want to gin up.
But it’s worth remembering that this particular “terrorist,” at the time of his “crime,” was simply a scared and badly-wounded 15-year-old kid who had the balls to toss a grenade at well-armed soldiers on a search-and-destroy mission.
In an interesting twist that further highlights the absurdity of calling a 15-year-old a hardened terrorist, Speer’s widow, Tabitha, and another soldier who lost an eye in the grenade blast, sued not Khadr, but his father’s estate, claiming that his “failure to control his son” had been the proximate cause of their losses. A federal district judge, in February 2006, awarded the two $102.6 million in damages. In other words, the court concluded Khadr wasn’t responsible for his actions; his father was. And yet the US is prosecuting Omar Khadr for being a hardened terrorist at an age when he was too young to drive!
The Bush/Cheney administration’s incarceration and prosecution of this boy was a war crime. His continued incarceration and the attempt to prosecute him as a terrorist today makes a mockery of America’s motto: Home of the Brave.
We should all be ashamed.
Canadian PM brushes off evidence of Guantanamo abuse
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/..c;_ylt=ApU100eyhTE7E6X04pjztsIWIr0F
Gitmo Suspect Wants Classified Docs
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/200..ydW6ZuxuSioZmJznfRg.3QA
Iraqis Tortured By UK Military Settle For $6M
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080..7dWGmjBETqpCRueqUl5bbBAF
Obama Votes YES on FISA Spy-Bill, McCain Skips
The Nation
July 9, 2008
Hillary Clinton just voted “no” on cloture and final passage of the FISA bill expanding the government’s domestic spying powers and guaranteeing retroactive legal immunity for the telecom companies that assisted the spying program.
Barack Obama voted “yes.”
The New York Times calls the passage of the bill “one of Mr. Bush’s most hard-won legislative victories in a Democratic-led Congress where he has had little success of late. And it represented a stinging defeat for opponents on the left who had urged Democratic leaders to stand firm against the White House after a months-long impasse.”
Here’s the roll call.
Activist: Obama defense of FISA support a ’stiff arm’ to constitution
Raw Story
July 3, 2008
After more than a week of growing criticism of his support for a flawed surveillance bill, Barack Obama quietly responded late Thursday evening. He’s not likely to quell his growing cadre of critics.
In a blog response posted just before 5 p.m. headed into a three-day holiday weekend, Obama reiterated his support for an update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act the Senate is expected to vote on Tuesday. (No mention of the blog post seems to have been distributed to Obama’s normal press list, either.)
Obama says he is against a provision in the bill to give legal immunity to telecommunications companies that facilitated the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance of Americans as authorized by President Bush. He vowed to support amendments that would strip immunity but would vote for the final bill regardless.
“It’s a stiff arm to the people that care about the Constitution,” said Mike Stark, a blogger and liberal activist who started a group on Obama’s social networking page to urge him to fix the FISA bill.
“It’s left a question in a lot of people’s mind about how committed he really is to change,” Stark told RAW STORY.
Responding to the 17,000 supporters who made the group the largest on my.barackobama.com, the Democratic candidate said he was glad to hear their concerns but reminded them that they really didn’t have any other choice in this election.
“I think it is worth pointing out that our agreement on the vast majority of issues that matter outweighs the differences we may have,” Obama wrote. “After all, the choice in this election could not be clearer.”
Justifying his support for the FISA bill, Obama cited a provision in the latest version that provides FISA is the “exclusive means” through which a president can authorize surveillance. Of course, the original FISA bill, passed in 1978, had the same qualification, and three federal judges have ruled that President Bush did not have inherent authority to conduct warrantless surveillance like he claimed to have had.
He also noted the fact that surveillance authorizations under the Protect America Act, a stopgap FISA update Obama opposed when it passed last year, would expire in August. Glenn Greenwald debunks this justification here.
If opponents of Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program can take any encouragement from Obama’s statement, it is that he does repeat earlier pledges to instruct his Attorney General to fully investigate just what Bush authorized, if he’s elected.
“Given the choice between voting for an improved yet imperfect bill, and losing important surveillance tools, I’ve chosen to support the current compromise,” he writes. “I do so with the firm intention — once I’m sworn in as President — to have my Attorney General conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs, and to make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in the future.”
Stark allowed that electing Obama remained the larger goal for him, but said the disappointment many feel about his decision to support FISA could linger even if he were elected.
“Of course I’m going to vote for him in November,” he said. But “we’re keeping score, and there’s going to be a time when he needs us. … We have long memories.”
Obama Losing Voters Over FISA Support
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/07/10/1341207.shtml
Obama unequivocally says some constitutional rights must be suspended
http://www.huffingtonpost.co..sa-and-the-netroo_b_111116.html
Group urging FISA ’no’ vote is largest on Obama’s social site
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/..g_FISA_no_vote_largest_0703.html
Obama planning ’civilian national security force’ as powerful and well-funded as the US military
http://bulletin.aarp.org/states/il/a..plan_for_national_service.html
Obama: Blackwater Is Here To Stay
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/07/obama-blackwate.html
4th Amendment Destroyed: FISA Spy-Bill Passes
ACLU Announces Legal Challenge To FISA Law To Follow President’s Signature
ACLU
July 9, 2008
Today, in a blatant assault upon civil liberties and the right to privacy, the Senate passed an unconstitutional domestic spying bill that violates the Fourth Amendment and eliminates any meaningful role for judicial oversight of government surveillance. The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 was approved by a vote of 69 to 28 and is expected to be signed into law by President Bush shortly. This bill essentially legalizes the president’s unlawful warrantless wiretapping program revealed in December 2005 by the New York Times.
“Once again, Congress blinked and succumbed to the president’s fear-mongering. With today’s vote, the government has been given a green light to expand its power to spy on Americans and run roughshod over the Constitution,” said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “This legislation will give the government unfettered and unchecked access to innocent Americans’ international communications without a warrant. This is not only unconstitutional, but absolutely un-American.”
The FISA Amendments Act nearly eviscerates oversight of government surveillance by allowing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to review only general procedures for spying rather than individual warrants. The FISC will not be told any specifics about who will actually be wiretapped, thereby undercutting any meaningful role for the court and violating the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
The bill further trivializes court review by authorizing the government to continue a surveillance program even after the government’s general spying procedures are found insufficient or unconstitutional by the FISC. The government has the authority to wiretap through the entire appeals process, and then keep and use whatever information was gathered in the meantime. A provision touted as a major “concession” by proponents of the bill calls for investigations by the inspectors general of four agencies overseeing spying activities. But members of Congress who do not sit on the Judiciary or Intelligence committees will not be guaranteed access to the agencies’ reports.
The bill essentially grants absolute retroactive immunity to telecommunication companies that facilitated the president’s warrantless wiretapping program over the last seven years by ensuring the dismissal of court cases pending against those companies. The test for the companies’ right to immunity is not whether the government certifications they acted on were actually legal – only whether they were issued. Because it is public knowledge that certifications were issued, all of the pending cases will be summarily dismissed. This means Americans may never learn the truth about what the companies and the government did with our private communications.
“With one vote, Congress has strengthened the executive branch, weakened the judiciary and rendered itself irrelevant,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “This bill – soon to be law – is a constitutional nightmare. Americans should know that if this legislation is enacted and upheld, what they say on international phone calls or emails is no longer private. The government can listen in without having a specific reason to do so. Our rights as Americans have been curtailed and our privacy can no longer be assumed.”
In advance of the president’s signature, the ACLU announced its plan to challenge the new law in court.
“This fight is not over. We intend to challenge this bill as soon as President Bush signs it into law,” said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. “The bill allows the warrantless and dragnet surveillance of Americans’ international telephone and email communications. It plainly violates the Fourth Amendment.”
Constitutional expert Turley on FISA bill: ’The fix is in’
Raw Story
July 9, 2008
Bush wins passage of spy bill to protect telecoms
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSWAT00975320080709
Traitors In Senate Approve Surveillance Bill
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/2..Ar4mXNDa49uWmlkRl2iTP_hv24cA
Judge Walker ruled, effectively, that President George W. Bush is a felon
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/07/09/alharamain_lawsuit/
Report: Because of Bush obstinance, civil liberties board exists ‘in name only’
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Re..sh_obstinance_civil_0709.html
Domestic spying quietly goes on
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-te.fisa07jul07,0,2783557.story
As FISA nears toward vote, Feingold warns against immunity
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/As_F.._vote_Feingold_0708.html
Cops to Use “Top Secret” Weapons on Activists During Conventions
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
July 8, 2008
As CNN reports (see video), Congress is forking over $100 million for “security expenses” in Denver and St. Paul this summer. CNN’s Ed Lavendera says the types of weapons being purchased are “top secret” and this does not sit well with the ACLU, who is suing both cities to find out how the money is being spent. “In Minnesota where republicans are holding their convention, the ACLU says it’s trying to find out how security money is being spent but law enforcement agencies insist these weapons should be kept secret so they have the upper hand in keeping the convention safe,” explains Lavendera.
In other words, members of both factions of the globalist political party will be safe from agents provocateurs who are routinely dispatched to break a few windows and burn trash in the street in order to give the cops an excuse to attack peaceful demonstrators.
CNN and the corporate media are notorious for ignoring this fact, going back at least to late 1999 during the WTO demonstrations in Seattle. Neil deMause wrote for FAIR in early 2000, “most news outlets ignored the police assaults that preceded the looting, preferring to believe that it was the acts of a few out-of-control protesters that led to the violence, and downplaying police use of force…. numerous eyewitness reports would describe police ignoring vandals while busily assaulting demonstrators who were blockading the entrance to the WTO. The Seattle Times, in its timeline of the WTO protests (12/5/99), noted the first use of pepper spray and rubber bullets on demonstrators at 10 a.m. on November 30, nearly two hours before the first windows were broken.” Peter Cassidy, a police tactics researcher, said at the time that the lack of concern over Seattle police behavior “will lend credibility for other police departments to do the same thing.” In short, “opening your mouth becomes something that exposes you to danger. It exposes you to militarized forms of law enforcement.” As Alex Jones documents in Police State II: The Takeover, Delta Force sponsored and aided so-called “Black Bloc anarchists” in Seattle (see video).
Militarized “law enforcement” continued during the FTAA demonstrations in Miami in November, 2003. Miami Activists Defense (MAD) reported “thousands of militarized police, in full riot gear, including electrified shields, tanks, automatic and semi-automatic weapons, tear gas, rubber bullets and bean bags, violently arresting peaceful demonstrators,” absent any provocation or “direct action” on the part of activists. Kris Hermes, MAD spokesperson, noted that Miami mayor Diaz declared police violence against peaceful demonstrators would be the “model for homeland security,” according to Jennifer Van Bergen. In April, 2003, in Oakland, California, cops used wooden dowel projectiles and rubber bullets against peaceful antiwar activists (see photo). Oakland cops told the San Jose Mercury News that although the demonstration was peaceful, there were a “few agitators in the crowd,” a claim disputed by witnesses. “I was there from 5 a.m. on, and the only violence that I saw was from the police,” Joel Tena, the constituent liaison for Oakland’s vice mayor, told the newspaper. “What happened today was very surprising. It seemed the police were operating under the assumption that they were not going to let any kind of protest happen.”If sincere “agitators” are not present, the cops are often obliged to produce them, as they did during an anti-globalist demonstration in Montebello, Quebec, last year. “Police officials tried to justify the extraordinary measures deployed at Montebello by claiming they were needed to control ‘extremist’ demonstrators and prevent them from ‘overwhelming’ conference security forces,” writes François Tremblay. “In fact, video images reveal a long-established police practice, that is, the use of agent provocateurs to provide a pretext for a brutal intervention by riot police against anti-government demonstrators and still further restrictions on the right to protest and other basic democratic rights.” In fact, “restrictions on the right to protest and other basic democratic rights” is the point, as the globalists are sincerely worried about citizens resisting the plan to turn the world into a “free trade” labor gulag based on the China model. In Denver and St. Paul this summer, we are likely to see a new level of violence deployed against peaceful demonstrators. In order to provide a sufficient pretext to use “top secret” weapons against activists, “agitators” and “anarchists” will be unleashed. Notes the activist group JustGetThere:
There is a growing trend of peaceful events being infiltrated by agent provocateurs who operate under the umbrella of black-ops. The goal is to create radical groups who seek out violence either during events, or on corporate and federal property. The operatives will be in positions of power or influence, and will only promote violence instead of a peaceful information based strategy for activism. Most recently in Canada, undercover cops dressed like anarchists were caught causing violence and attacking cops at the WTO protest in Montebello. The cops at first stand down against their own agents, then engage the peaceful activists. This modus operandi has been used in the past, and seems to be in motion for this event by the group ReCreate 68. The DNC convention, of course, has a free speech zone and you have to receive a permit through a lottery system. It’s striking that this group amongst hundreds won a permit, while publicly espousing violence. This group has been challenged to behave peacefully during this event by the founder of another group “We Are Change Colorado” and their response was “The police only understand violence”. This is a red flag and has the earmarks of a operation ran by elements of black-ops to justify the end of our rights of protests, political dissidence and redress of grievances. Thanks to the great work of TruthAlliance.net, this operation has been exposed in the early stages. So when the event occurs we will be ready and prepared to expose this as an intentional act perpetuated by groups who have been influenced or directed by members of law enforcement and black-ops.
Of course, CNN and the corporate media will play right along. After the cops use their “pepper ball rifles, goo guns, sonic rays” against legitimate demonstrators concerned about the fascist cancer of unchecked globalization, we can expect the talking heads to follow the script, as they did in Seattle, and blame the victims.
Provocateurs Planning Violence At DNC
http://www.prisonplanet.com/provoc..anning-violence-at-dnc.html
The Nation’s Deathbed
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1429144751008474466&hl=en
Utility Workers Hired As Stasi Informants In Colorado, California, Arizona
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
July 2, 2008
Hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and utility workers have been trained and recently dispatched as “Terrorism Liaison Officers” in Colorado, Arizona and California to watch for “suspicious activity” which is later fed into a secret government database.
According to a Denver Post report, “It’s a tactic intended to feed better data into terrorism early-warning systems and uncover intelligence that could help fight anti-U.S. forces. But the vague nature of the TLOs’ mission, and their focus on reporting both legal and illegal activity, has generated objections from privacy advocates and civil libertarians.
“Suspicious activity” is broadly defined in TLO training as behavior that could lead to terrorism: taking photos of no apparent aesthetic value, making measurements or notes, espousing extremist beliefs or conversing in code, according to a draft Department of Justice/Major Cities Chiefs Association document.”
“We don’t snoop into private citizens’ lives. We aren’t living in a communist state,” claims Lt. Tony Lopez, commander of Denver’s intelligence unit – but the program bears close parallels to the East German Stasi system, which at its height employed one informant for every seven citizens.
Democracy Now interviewed the Denver Post writer and an ACLU representative about the program.
It is also reminiscent of the supposedly canned 2002 Operation TIPS program, which would have turned 4 per cent of Americans into informants under the jurisdiction of the Justice Department.
TIPS lived on in other guises, such as the Highway Watch program, a $19 billion dollar Homeland Security-run project which trains truckers to watch for suspicious activity on America’s highways.
More recently, ABC News reported that “The FBI is taking cues from the CIA to recruit thousands of covert informants in the United States as part of a sprawling effort…..to aid with criminal investigations.”
Since authorities now define mundane activities like buying baby formula, beer, wearing Levi jeans, carrying identifying documents like a drivers license and traveling with women or children or mentioning the U.S. constitution as the behavior of potential terrorists, the bounty for the American Stasi to turn in political dissidents is sure to be too tempting to resist.
Indeed, last month Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers and the New York Times heartily celebrated the fact that an increasing number of Americans are becoming informants and turning in their neighbors and family members to the authorities in return for cash rewards.
Citing gas prices, foreclosure rates and runaway food price inflation, The Times lauded the fact that citizens are reporting on each other, ensuring “a substantial increase in Crime Stopper-related arrests and recovered property, as callers turn in neighbors, grandchildren or former boyfriends in exchange for a little cash.”
As any budding dictator will tell you, the creation of an informant society where individuals self-regulate their behavior in fear of being turned in by a citizen spy is one of the key stepping stones to tyranny. To have the media celebrate the fact that people are reporting on their neighbors and grandchildren puts the icing on the cake.
LAPD won’t ask about immigration status
AP
June 26, 2008
A California judge blocked a lawsuit that sought to enlist Los Angeles police officers in weeding out illegal immigrants.
Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu on Wednesday rejected arguments that the city’s policy — under which most suspects are not asked about their immigration status — conflicted with federal and state law.
Los Angeles police work in communities with large numbers of illegal immigrants, and generally don’t inquire about immigration status because it could discourage undocumented people from helping officers and reporting crimes.
Police Chief William Bratton said the judge preserved “an essential crime-fighting tool for us.” Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said the ruling recognized that “turning local police into federal immigration agents would lead to fewer arrests, prosecutions and convictions.”
Under a 1979 order formally known as Special Order 40, LAPD officers do not ask about immigration status while interviewing victims, witnesses and suspects, and do not arrest people based on immigration status.
Officers alert immigration officials if a suspect is a gang member who has been previously deported, or if a suspect is arrested for a felony or multiple misdemeanors.
The lawsuit filed in April 2007 was brought on behalf of unidentified police officers who said they were afraid to speak out, but who depicted a revolving door legal system in which the same illegal immigrants are repeatedly arrested instead of deported.
The lawsuit sought to require officers to inform federal immigration officials when illegal immigrants are arrested on drug charges.
The judge referred to the national debate over immigration, but said he sought to “avoid considering the political aspects of the case and focus only on the legal ones.”
Paul Orfanedes, a lawyer for Harold P. Sturgeon, who brought the case, said the judge sidelined tens of thousands of law enforcers who could help immigration authorities.
Police “are being gagged. It’s don’t ask, don’t tell as regards to legal status,” Orfanedes said.
The ruling granted motions for summary judgment in favor of the Police Department and the American Civil Liberties Union, which intervened in the case.
Hector Villagra, an ACLU attorney, said the decision affirmed that the federal government, not local law enforcement, is responsible for carrying out immigration law.
By asking that Special Order 40 be thrown out, Villagra said, plaintiffs are “asking for carte blanche to engage in racial profiling,” he said.
Spy Bill Destroys 4th Amendment
AFP
June 20, 2008
In a late-term triumph for US President George W. Bush, the US House of Representatives on Friday approved spy-powers legislation that has drawn heavy fire on civil liberties grounds.
Lawmakers voted 293-129 for a bill that may shield telecommunications firms facing massive lawsuits over their work with Bush’s secret, six-year, warrantless wiretapping program, begun after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The measure now goes to the Senate, where Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid has opposed granting retroactive immunity to companies that cooperated with a program thought to have skirted established surveillance laws.
During often bitter House floor debate, many Democrats broke with the measure, the fruit of months of talks among Senate and House leaders of both parties that ultimately gave in to key White House demands.
“It’s Christmas morning at the White House thanks to this vote,” said Caroline Fredrickson, a top official with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) which has fiercely opposed the legislation.
Earlier, Bush had used a hastily announced public statement at the White House to press lawmakers to approve new funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and pushed hard for House passage of the intelligence bill.
“It’s vital that our intelligence community has the ability to learn who the terrorists are talking to, what they are saying, and what they are planning,” Bush said in the two-minute statement.
The spending bill would provide 162 billion dollars for conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, fuelling both for months after Bush’s successor takes over in January, without attaching a withdrawal timetable sought by Iraq war opponents.
But the bitterest feuding was over the intelligence bill, which came amid a pitched political battle raging over Bush’s decision to secretly launch a warrantless wiretapping program believed to have skirted surveillance law.
Critics charge the secret program was illegal because it ran afoul of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)’s requirement of a court order to spy on US citizens inside the United States.
The White House says Bush, who brought the program under FISA oversight in January 2007, made proper use of wartime presidential powers under the US Constitution, and that the often-updated law was ill-suited to deal with modern telecommunications and the nature of the terrorist threat.
If passed, the new measure could short-circuit about 40 court challenges targeting major US telecommunications firms that cooperated with the program, which the US public learned about in a December 2005 New York Times article.
Feingold, Dodd planning filibuster of wiretap bill
Raw Story
June 24, 2008
In a last-ditch attempt to fix a surveillance bill critics say would essentially legalize President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program, Sens. Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Chris Dodd (D-CT) have promised to filibuster the bill as long as it offers telecommunications companies retroactive immunity.
“This is a deeply flawed bill, which does nothing more than offer retroactive immunity by another name. We strongly urge our colleagues to reject this so-called ‘compromise’ legislation and oppose any efforts to consider this bill in its current form. We will oppose efforts to end debate on this bill as long as it provides retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies that may have participated in the President’s warrantless wiretapping program, and as long as it fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans,” the senators said in a joint statement Tuesday.
Read Full Article Here
Kucinich Slams FISA Bill
Constitutional expert: FISA bill ’is an evisceration of the Fourth Amendment’
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Turle.._is_evisceration_of_0619.html
Feingold: ‘Farce’ wiretap deal could be hiding ‘impeachable offense’
http://rawstory.com/news08/200..d-be-hiding-impeachable-offense/
Obama defends new FISA bill as ’compromise’
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Obama_defends_new_FISA_bill_as_0620.html
Government “Strike Teams” Break Into Houses of Flood Victims
Cops break down doors, threaten residents who question them as part of martial law conditioning, authorities prevent people from re-entering their homes
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
June 18, 2008
Shocking footage out of Cedar Rapids Iowa shows cops and government employee “strike teams” breaking into houses of flood victims and threatening anyone who questions their actions in complete violation of the 4th amendment right that protects against unlawful search and seizure. No warrant, no knock home invasions are being carried out on the flimsy pretext of “checking for structural damage” as cops harass and threaten with arrest people who refuse to have their homes ransacked by thugs in uniforms. Cedar Rapids police chief Greg Graham promised residents over the weekend that “Law enforcement officers are not entering homes,” and that firefighters would only enter homes through unlocked doors and windows yet the video clearly shows locked houses being broken in to.
People who attempt to gain access to their home before it has been “cleared” by authorities are being apprehended, and those who attempt to drive around police checkpoints that have been set up in the affected areas are arrested at gunpoint.
“Each strike team consisted of six or seven people, including police, firefighters, utilities workers, and city employees,” reports the Iowa Gazette.
Angela Tague, a member of the STAR 1 search and rescue team from Ames, ran into any angry homeowner on E Avenue NW.
“He was saying ’Where do you live?’ and ’How would you like it if someone busted your door open?,” Tague said.
Police Officer Josh Bell later had a heated exchange with the man, and told him that if he didn’t go back inside his house and stop harassing the strike team, he would be escorted out of the area.
The man was visibly agitated about his broken door and pointed at Bell.
“It’s wrong,” the man said, over and over.
So people who are uncomfortable with jackbooted thugs breaking down their door without even knocking and express their distaste for it are to blame for “harassing the strike team”?
Respondents to the You Tube clip and the newspaper article expressed their outrage at the behavior of those in the video tasked with “helping” flood-stricken people yet doing nothing more than intimidating and invading their homes.
“You break down the door of my private residence and when I object you threaten to escort me off my own property. Fine example of police work. Did anyone think to knock first? Thomas Jefferson said that the main reason for citizens to be armed was to protect themselves from tyrannical government. If this isn’t tyranny then I don’t know what is. A man’s home is his castle,” states Steve Delaloye.
“A sad day for America when government thugs abuse the trust of the citizenry like this,” writes one.
“So these cops and fire fighters are part time structural engineers, or what?? What are they inspecting for in the structures? Gas and electric could be shut off at the source, and any spills are so diluted they wont catch fire. The police chief said no police would enter any homes, and what do you know, mr fat ass cop goes piling through the window thinking he’s T.J Hooker. Damn, this is just sad, sad , sad,” adds another.
One Iowa resident expresses her anger that authorities will not let her re-enter her home.
“I sit here with tears streaming down my face. I have been trying to be patient and await to enter my home. Now today, I am told there will be no re-entry’s until further notice. I cannot express how ****ing mad I am. I understand the houses can be unsafe. Just let me at least see my house, so that I can assess if it hit my top floor. I have pictures and memories on my top floor of my deceased mother, all I want to do is rescue those,” she writes.
As we reported in 2005, Hurricane Katrina was exploited by the federal government and used as a martial law drill while victims were abused and treated like rats in a laboratory.
Door to door gun confiscations were ordered and cops ransacked homes and took weapons from multi-million dollar homes which were in the high and dry areas and completely unaffected by the hurricane. In some cases, residents were kicked out of their own homes for no reason.
Outrageous footage showed cops seizing handguns from the home of a grief-stricken old women as they assaulted and punched her in the face.
Where does the government think it derives the authority from to break into people’s homes whose lives have already been devastated by massive floods on the flimsiest of pretexts?
The 4th amendment states, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Even if there was a legitimate reason to inspect homes, why on earth do they not even bother to knock on the door?
Cops immediately attempt to break in or climb through windows uninvited because this procedure is all about sending a message – when a crisis unfolds we are the bosses and you – the peasants – will yield to our tyranny.
Lawsuits need to be filed immediately by people in Iowa and elsewhere who have had cops invade their homes in complete violation of the 4th amendment and a pretext needs to be set that will put a stop to the government’s routine exploitation of natural disasters as an opportunity to impose martial law measures on needy victims that have already had their lives devastated.
With reports indicating that the Mississippi river is in danger of bursting its banks, the precedent that was set with Hurricane Katrina could be set to advance as government minions and jackbooted thugs across the country lick their lips at the prospect of kicking down more doors and harassing innocent people.
Contact the Iowa ACLU and demand they pressure the authorities to stop these illegal home invasions immediately.
Cops Who Arrested Man For Attempting To Re-Enter His Own Home Praised
Police who apprehended Iowan at checkpoint with guns drawn “acted appropriately,” man charged with assault with a deadly weapon, faces 5 years behind bars
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
June 19, 2008
Cops who arrested a man at gunpoint for attempting to re-enter his flood-wrecked home in Cedar Rapids Iowa will not be disciplined and were in fact praised for acting “appropriately” as the man they apprehended was charged with assault with a deadly weapon and faces five years behind bars.
As we reported yesterday, “strike teams” consisting of police, firemen and government employees have been breaking into houses of flood victims and threatening anyone who questions their actions in complete violation of the 4th amendment right that protects against unlawful search and seizure.
No-knock home invasions are being carried out under the flimsy pretext of “checking for structural damage” and residents are being prevented from returning to their own homes whether they want to or not.
Police checkpoints have been set up in the affected areas to block access to streets and homes.
It was at one such checkpoint that Trooper Scott Devereaux and Trooper Paul Gardner were photographed arresting Ricky Blazek, 53, at gunpoint after smashing his window and hauling him out of his pick-up truck.
Blazek had dared to try and return to his home to check the damage without it first being properly inspected by the government’s friendly “strike teams”.
“The Iowa State Patrol said Wednesday that two state troopers were justified in arresting a Cedar Rapids man who tried to run a checkpoint Monday in an effort to return to his flood-damaged home,” reports the Des Moines Register.
“The State Patrol will not conduct an internal affairs investigation of the incident, state officials said.”
For his trouble, Blazek has now been charged with assault with a dangerous weapon on a peace officer, a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.
Government Terrorists Terrorize Iowa Homeowners
http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=10063
Mississippi River levees break, more at risk
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1346134820080618
Nazi Checkpoints In Iowa Piss Off Homeowners
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeq..qeZ8NtlJASvmwD91BEGSG0
U.S. School District to Begin Microchipping Students
Natural News
June 16, 2008
A Rhode Island school district has announced a pilot program to monitor student movements by means of radio frequency identification (RFID) chips implanted in their schoolbags.
The Middletown School District, in partnership with MAP Information Technology Corp., has launched a pilot program to implant RFID chips into the schoolbags of 80 children at the Aquidneck School. Each chip would be programmed with a student identification number, and would be read by an external device installed in one of two school buses. The buses would also be fitted with global positioning system (GPS) devices.
Parents or school officials could log onto a school web site to see whether and when specific children had entered or exited which bus, and to look up the bus’s current location as provided by the GPS device.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has criticized the plan as an invasion of children’s privacy and a potential risk to their safety.
“There’s absolutely no need to be tagging children,” said Stephen Brown, executive director of the ACLU’s Rhode Island chapter. According to Brown, the school district should already know where its students are.
“[This program is] a solution in search of a problem,” Brown said.
The school district says that its current plan is no different than other programs already in place for parents to monitor their children’s school experience. For example, parents can already check on their children’s attendance records and what they have for lunch, said district Superintendent Rosemary Kraeger.
Brown disputed this argument. The school is perfectly entitled to track its buses, he said, but “it’s a quantitative leap to monitor children themselves.” He raised the question of whether unauthorized individuals could use easily available RFID readers to find out students’ private information and monitor their movements.
Because the pilot program is being provided to the school district at no cost, it did not require approval from the Rhode Island ethics commission.
Britons visiting America will now have to register 72 hours in advance
UK Daily Mail
June 3, 2008
British visitors to the United States will have to register their trip with the American government 72 hours before they leave, it will be announced today.
The new plans – the latest in a series of measures designed to strengthen security – will see all travellers from countries which do not currently require a visa forced to register online three days before flying.
The scheme is expected to be announced today by Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff, to take effect from January
It will apply to citizens of the 27 visa waiver programme countries which include most of western Europe, Australia, Brunei, Japan, New Zealand and Singapore.
The US has also signed agreements with eight other countries including the Czech Republic, Hungary and South Korea which will put them on track to join the visa waiver programme.
Last year many European countries expressed concern about the idea of registering before travel.
The initial proposal was that passengers should register 48 hours in advance and many large European companies, including several in the UK, claimed the move would prevent deal-clinching, last-minute flights for business.
Now US officials say they want people to register even further in advance- but with the concession that once a traveller has registered under the new rules for the first time, it will be valid for multiple entries over two years.
Read Full Article Here
10 airports install body scanners
Devices can peer under passengers’ clothes
Thomas Frank
USA Today
June 6, 2008
Body-scanning machines that show images of people underneath their clothing are being installed in 10 of the nation’s busiest airports in one of the biggest public uses of security devices that reveal intimate body parts.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) recently started using body scans on randomly chosen passengers in Los Angeles, Baltimore, Denver, Albuquerque and at New York’s Kennedy airport.
Airports in Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas and Miami will be added this month. Reagan National Airport in Washington starts using a body scanner today. A total of 38 machines will be in use within weeks.
“It’s the wave of the future,” said James Schear, the TSA security director at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, where two body scanners are in use at one checkpoint.
Schear said the scanners could eventually replace metal detectors at the nation’s 2,000 airport checkpoints and the pat-downs done on passengers who need extra screening. “We’re just scratching the surface of what we can do with whole-body imaging,” Schear said.
The TSA effort could encourage scanners’ use in rail stations, arenas and office buildings, the American Civil Liberties Union said. “This may well set a precedent that others will follow,” said Barry Steinhardt, head of the ACLU technology project.
Scanners are used in a few courthouses, jails and U.S. embassies, as well as overseas border crossings, military checkpoints and some foreign airports such as Amsterdam’s Schiphol.
The scanners bounce harmless “millimeter waves” off passengers who are selected to stand inside a portal with arms raised after clearing the metal detector. A TSA screener in a nearby room views the black-and-white image and looks for objects on a screen that are shaded differently from the body. Finding a suspicious object, a screener radios a colleague at the checkpoint to search the passenger.
The TSA says it protects privacy by blurring passengers’ faces and deleting images right after viewing. Yet the images are detailed, clearly showing a person’s gender. “You can actually see the sweat on someone’s back,” Schear said.
The scanners aim to strengthen airport security by spotting plastic and ceramic weapons and explosives that evade metal detectors and are the biggest threat to aviation. Government audits have found that screeners miss a large number of weapons, bombs and bomb parts such as wires and timers that agents sneak through checkpoints.
Read Full Article Here
Raw Story
June 4, 2008
Over the last few months, city officials in Washington, DC, have instituted an array of tactics that has civil libertarians fearing the nation’s capital is looking at the Bill of Rights as little more than a suggestion.
The latest proposal from DC’s mayor and police chief would have officers patrolling Soviet-esque checkpoints limiting residents’ ability to travel to and from targeted neighborhoods. The plan was reported Wednesday in The Examiner:
D.C. police will seal off entire neighborhoods, set up checkpoints and kick out strangers under a new program that D.C. officials hope will help them rescue the city from its out-of-control violence. Under an executive order expected to be announced today, police Chief Cathy L. Lanier will have the authority to designate “Neighborhood Safety Zones.” At least six officers will man cordons around those zones and demand identification from people coming in and out of them. Anyone who doesn’t live there, work there or have “legitimate reason” to be there will be sent away or face arrest, documents obtained by The Examiner show.
A city councilman who represents some of the affected neighborhoods — in the District’s northeast quadrant — was cautiously optimistic about the proposal’s potential to “crack down on … open-air drug markets.” But the local lawmaker, Harry Thomas, did express worries about DC “moving towards a police state.”
Local blog DCist mocked the proposal and its defenders.
“Interim Attorney General Peter Nickles actually said that measures of this sort have ’been used in other cities,’” the blog noted. “Which cities are those, Mr. Nickles? Warsaw?”
Libertarian blogger Megan McArdle asked, “Where the hell am I living?”
DC has had a spate of violence recently, and I applaud the police department’s urge to do something. However, this something seems to follow the logic outlined by Bryan Caplan:
1. Something must be done
2. This is something
3. Therefore, this must be doneCrime tears the fabric of society, but so does a government which believes that it may at any time control the movements of its citizens like so many (presumptively suspicious) sheep…
This latest draconian move follows several other recent proposals from DC officials that seemed to look upon individual rights and privacy concerns as little more than afterthoughts.
After outrage from civil liberties and gun-rights groups, DC delayed implementation of one plan that would send police door-to-door in targeted neighborhoods to conduct warrantless searches looking for drugs or guns. The so-called “safe homes” initiative has not been called off, however, so the local ACLU chapter is holding training sessions to educate people of their rights.
Another plan with Orwellian echos has the District creating a 24-hour surveillance network that aims to link together and constantly monitor thousands of closed-circuit video cameras distributed throughout the district.
The neighborhood checkpoint plan is scheduled to go into effect next week in the Trinidad neighborhood in northeast DC, according to the mayors office.
A local law school dean who leads DC’s ACLU chapter called the idea “cockamamie” and ineffective.
“I think they tried this in Russia and it failed,” Shelley Broderick told The Examiner. “It’s just our experience in this city that we always end up targeting poor people and people of color, and we treat the kids coming home from choir practice the same as we treat those kids who are selling drugs.”
Barclays uses USA Patriot Act to close British citizens’ accounts
Barclays is closing the bank accounts of British customers, who are working in this country for businesses linked to Iran, to conform with US anti-terror laws.
Telegraph
June 6, 2008
The bank, which has considerable business interests in the US, is using guidelines drawn up under the Patriot Act to target firms which have not broken any laws in the UK.
The development emerged after a letter, which was written to lawyers representing employees of the Iranian-owned Bank Saderat and Melli Bank, was leaked to The Times newspaper.
Both banks have bases in the City of London, they are fully licensed to operate in Britain and are regulated by the Financial Services Authority.
There are Treasury and European Union sanctions in place against Iranian firms but neither of the banks are punished under those rules.
However, they both appear on the US government Office of Foreign Assets Control list of specially designated nationals (SDNs).
The US has accused Melli Bank of links to weapons of mass destruction and described Bank Saderat as a terrorist financier. Both banks deny the allegations strongly.
Calgary Police Brutality against a Black Man
Why are the police using surveillance on journalists?
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=41307&c=1
SWAT Tech: New Radar/Antenna Combo Lets LA Cops ‘See Through Walls’
http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=105983
FEMA Trailer Occupant Killed By Police
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200..AggpKsCmNi1I3.Kjn4rj03tH2ocA
Martial Law Excercise in India (June 4-19, 2008 )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOU934hhuEQ
6th-grader warned: Stop wearing pro-life T-shirts
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=66100
Teenager Tased In School By Police For Not Complying and Showing I.D.
http://infowars.net/articles/june2008/040608Tased.htm
noworldsystem.com 