FBI Wants ISPs to Spy on You

Fourth Amendment Goes the Way of Habeas Corpus

From Cnet News:

WASHINGTON--The FBI is pressing Internet service providers to record which Web sites customers visit and retain those logs for two years, a requirement that law enforcement believes could help it in investigations of child pornography and other serious crimes.

FBI Director Robert Mueller supports storing Internet users' "origin and destination information," a bureau attorney said at a federal task force meeting on Thursday.

As far back as a 2006 speech, Mueller had called for data retention on the part of Internet providers, and emphasized the point two years later when explicitly asking Congress to enact a law making it mandatory. But it had not been clear before that the FBI was asking companies to begin to keep logs of what Web sites are visited, which few if any currently do.

The FBI is not alone in renewing its push for data retention. As CNET reported earlier this week, a survey of state computer crime investigators found them to be nearly unanimous in supporting the idea. Matt Dunn, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in the Department of Homeland Security, also expressed support for the idea during the task force meeting.

Greg Motta, the chief of the FBI's digital evidence section, said that the bureau was trying to preserve its existing ability to conduct criminal investigations. Federal regulations in place since at least 1986 require phone companies that offer toll service to "retain for a period of 18 months" records including "the name, address, and telephone number of the caller, telephone number called, date, time and length of the call."

But the good news is that if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about. Frankly I'd describe this as universal warrantless wiretapping. If this is allowed the government would essentially have the 'right' to enter your home without a warrant and gather evidence against you for a crime that you have not yet formed any intention of committing. Shades of 'Minority Report.'

TAGS: Police State, Fascist Tactics, Fourth Amendment 'Rights'
Adolph Hitler Would Have Given His Remaining Testicle For This Ability

No Way Out

When Innocence Is No Defense.

If we can just pry our eyes away from the disaster that is the US economy, I'd like to bring your attention back to the equally disastrous US 'justice' system. The story began with some good news, as reported on Tuesday by the BBC:

Anger over Guantanamo Bay ruling

The White House has reacted angrily after a judge ordered that 17 Chinese Muslims held at Guantanamo Bay should be released into the United States. District Judge Ricardo Urbina said the US could not hold the 17 as they were no longer considered enemy combatants. The Uighurs were cleared for release in 2004 but the US says they may face persecution if returned to China.

The White House said the ruling could set a precedent that would allow "sworn enemies" to seek US entry. The government says the 17 also pose a security risk if released into the US. Lawyers for the Bush administration have argued that federal judges do not have authority to order the release into the US of Guantanamo detainees.

Analysts say the ruling is a rebuke for the US government and could set the stage for the release of dozens more detained at the military jail in Cuba.
[...]
They have been held at Guantanamo for nearly seven years. The judge said there was no evidence that they were "enemy combatants" or a security risk.

"Because the constitution prohibits indefinite detentions without cause, the continued detention is unlawful," he said.

So the good news was that finally these 17 detainees - who in 2004 were found NOT to be enemies of the United States, who had NEVER been charged with any crime - were ordered released from their Kafkaesque imprisonment at the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison facility, aka America's Gulag. Never mind the outrageous fact that these people had been captured and detained without cause to begin with in 2001, never mind that they had been illegally held for nearly seven years. They were ordered to be released, and that was good news not just in itself, but because it demonstrated that the Constitution still held sway in America, and the rule of law had some force.

I mean really, any legal system that would tolerate someone being confined for seven years for no reason whatsoever is not worthy of the name. Any judge who would countenance such a thing is not fit to administer a traffic court. Which is why anyone with a conscience should have been outraged to the max to read the follow-up story on Wednesday, reported by the BBC and Reuters.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Wednesday temporarily blocked the release of 17 Chinese Muslims held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

The appeals court granted the Bush administration's emergency request for a stay of a federal judge's order that the members of the Uighur ethnic group be released into the United States at the end of this week.
[...]
The three-judge panel said it granted the stay only to give the appeals court more time to consider the dispute. The court ordered that briefs be filed by both sides on various dates through October 16.
[...]
Lawyers for the detainees opposed the request and said granting the stay would prolong the imprisonment of the Uighurs "by months and perhaps years." They said, "The government has delayed long enough."

There are two elements of this case that merit further examination. The first is the problem, "if we release these people, where do they go?" And that problem arises from the circumstances of their capture. The Bush administration has maintained that if they cannot be returned home and no other country will take them, they should stay at Guantanamo. (BBC article)

The 17 Uighurs had been living in a camp in Afghanistan during the US-led military campaign that began in October 2001. They fled into the mountains and were held by Pakistani authorities who handed them over to the US. Beijing has demanded that all Uighurs held at Guantanamo be repatriated to China. Many Muslim Uighurs from Xinjiang in western China want greater autonomy for the region and some want independence. Beijing has waged a campaign against what it calls their violent separatist activities.

These people are from China, and were not in Afghanistan or Pakistan legally. So they can't be returned there, and they can't go back to China because they would probably be executed for their 'violent separatist activities.' The Bush administration refuses to recognize their responsibility for the Uighurs' current circumstances and continues to maintain, in the absence of any evidence whatsoever, that they would be a security risk if released on US territory. (There is apparently a small Uighur community in the US willing to take them in.)

The second element that should be examined concerns the merits of the administration's argument, "that federal judges do not have authority to order the release into the US of Guantanamo detainees." WTF!?! If federal judges don't have the authority to determine the legality of actions taken by the military the country can only be described as being under martial law. There is some indication here that the Bush White House considers the courts to be intruding on his 'unitary executive' powers as the Commander in Chief During Times of War. The problem is, the constitution makes it plain that only Congress has the authority to declare war, which it has not done. Even if it had, there is ample precedent from prior wars that the courts do indeed have authority over the president when the latter's actions are unconstitutional, as they clearly are here. So if there is a Separation of Powers issue here, the intrusion is purely on Bush's behalf.

There is another related story that makes this not only infuriating but terrifying.
From Raw Story:

ACLU: Bush admin tried to create 'Gitmo inside the US'

The US military was using the same procedures employed at the controversial Guantanamo Bay prison at other facilities inside the United States where US citizens and legal residents were detained, according to documents released Wednesday.

At least one Navy officer was concerned that a detainee was being slowly driven insane by the policies, which prohibited detainees from having items such as shoes or socks, according to 91 pages of e-mails between officers at military brigs in Virginia and South Carolina released Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union.

"These documents are the first clear confirmation of what we've suspected all along, that the brig was run as a prison beyond the law. There was an effort to create a Gitmo inside the United States," Jonathan Hafetz of the ACLU's National Security Project in New York told the Associated Press, using the slang word for the U.S. naval facility in Cuba.
[...]
“Guantánamo was designed as a law-free zone, a place where the government could do whatever it wanted without having to worry about whether it was legal,” said Jonathan Freiman, an attorney with the Lowenstein Clinic at Yale. “It didn’t take long for that sort of lawlessness to be brought home to our own country. Who knows how much further America would have gone if the Supreme Court hadn’t stepped in to stop incommunicado detentions in 2004?”

Ask not for whom the cell door clanks. It could very well clank for you.

---

UPDATE:Glenn Greenwald discussed the Uighur case with Jonathan Hafetz of the ACLU HERE.

TAGS: Guantanamo Bay, Uighurs, Illegal Detention, Bush Police State

Give Me Liberty

Interview With
Naomi Wolf
Author of
"Give Me Liberty:
A Handbook for American Revolutionaries"

Unrulies ♥ Naomi Wolf!

Hat/tip - Amerikagulag

TAGS: Naomi Wolf, Give Me Liberty, Fascism, Resistance to Oppression

The New Chicago Eight

..."The RNC Eight" Charged as Terrorists

A disturbing story from Information Clearing House explains why the RNC was held in Minnesota, and why the police there acted as if war had been declared on America's population.

In what appears to be the first use of criminal charges under the 2002 Minnesota version of the Federal Patriot Act, Ramsey County Prosecutors have formally charged 8 alleged leaders of the RNC Welcoming Committee with Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism. Monica Bicking, Eryn Trimmer, Luce Guillen Givins, Erik Oseland, Nathanael Secor, Robert Czernik, Garrett Fitzgerald, and Max Spector, face up to 7 1/2 years in prison under the terrorism enhancement charge which allows for a 50% increase in the maximum penalty.

Affidavits released by law enforcement which were filed in support of the search warrants used in raids over the weekend, and used to support probable cause for the arrest warrants, are based on paid, confidential informants who infiltrated the RNCWC on behalf of law enforcement. They allege that members of the group sought to kidnap delegates to the RNC, assault police officers with firebombs and explosives, and sabotage airports in St. Paul. Evidence released to date does not corroborate these allegations with physical evidence or provide any other evidence for these allegations than the claims of the informants. Based on past abuses of such informants by law enforcement, the National Lawyers Guild is concerned that such police informants have incentives to lie and exaggerate threats of violence and to also act as provocateurs in raising and urging support for acts of violence.

WHAT?!? Minnesota has its own version of the constitutionally dubious USA PATRIOT Act? What folly is this? It does explain how and why the modern-day version of the 1968 'police riots' at the DNC in Chicago occurred in Minnesota. The sonsabitches want to establish a test case that equates protest, dissent, or simply thinking for yourself as TERRORISM.

They also want to send a message to legitimate political dissidents - STFU!! It's like Bill O'Reilly became the the head of DHS or something (shudder at the thought.) This is the government trying to cut off everyone's microphone at once.

I've already made my comparisons of the violence in 2008 with that in Chicago in 1968 in my recent post Police State 101 - but this development brings them into high relief. This is a nakedly aggressive crackdown designed to suppress people's constitutionally protected rights of assembly and expression. If you still want more background on the DNC riots of 1968, or the Chicago Eight (Later Chicago Seven) trials, consult Wikipedia. There's also a good article here at History and Education blog.

The evidence that the authorities are relying on in these cases seems to be paper-thin, and one wonders if they intend to use the dubious 'rules of evidence' established for the Guantanamo Bay military 'trials' as a precedent. None of this passes either the laugh test or the smell test.

The criminal complaints filed by the Ramsey County Attorney do not allege that any of the defendants personally have engaged in any act of violence or damage to property. The complaints list all of alleged violations of law during the last few days of the RNC — other than violations of human rights carried out by law enforcement — and seeks to hold the 8 defendants responsible for acts committed by other individuals. None of the defendants have any prior criminal history involving acts of violence. Searches conducted in connection with the raids failed to turn up any physical evidence to support the allegations of organized attacks on law enforcement. Although claiming probable cause to believe that gunpowder, acids, and assembled incendiary devices would be found, no such items were seized by police. As a result, police sought to claim that the seizure of common household items such as glass bottles, charcoal lighter, nails, a rusty machete, and two hatchets, supported the allegations of the confidential informants.

One has to assume that TPTB (the powers that be) really don't care about getting convictions in these cases. It will suffice for them if a pall of fear is cast over any act of political independence, and even if it doesn't they've got at least eight people who might question their 'patriotic' motives locked up at least until after the elections are over.

Anyone with two functioning synapses could have seen this coming from a long way off. The USA PATRIOT Act and its successors clearly were written in such a way that they sound like they are directed against foreign terrorists, but conveniently can be applied against domestic political opponents and critics of the government. "We'll try these draconian methods out on brown people for a while at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. If we get away with that we're clear to bring them home to Peoria, Bakersfield, Des Moines and St. Paul Minnesota." That's how I perceive their thinking.

What worries me the most about this is not what the government is doing, but what I fear the Lamestream Media won't do - report this as a major story, which it surely is. It's after all an indication of a fundamental shift in society, the breaking of a covenant between the government and the people that has endured since the American Revolution. And ultimately I fear that the American people themselves won't respond with the energy required to put a stop to this, and turn back the judicial clock to a time when fairness mattered.

A little voice in the corner of my mind asks, "is it fascism yet?" I don’t know, but as a rule I’d say that if you can actually smell the polish on the stormtrooper’s boot, it’s probably too close to your neck.

---

UPDATE: Firedoglake has this post, with the video below about how Americans were tortured Guantanamo style after being arrested in Minnesota.

Sadism, Cruelty, Torture In The Twin Cities:
Professional Cultural Norms For US “Law” Enforcement

The shocking thing is that it would be very unusual for any of these thugs cops to face discipline over these various crimes of assault and failure to recognize the rights of their fellow citizens.

TAGS: Police State, America: The Cradle of Democracy Fascism, Sniff the Jackboot

Police State 101

There's been lots of buzz in Greater Left Blogsylvania over the pre-emptive strikes that the cops have been making on potential protesters in Minnesota. It seems like they want the upcoming RNC to be held in an atmosphere of respectful shock and awe. From Glennzilla:

There is clearly an intent on the part of law enforcement authorities here to engage in extreme and highly intimidating raids against those who are planning to protest the Convention. The DNC in Denver was the site of several quite ugly incidents where law enforcement acted on behalf of Democratic Party officials and the corporate elite that funded the Convention to keep the media and protesters from doing anything remotely off-script. But the massive and plainly excessive preemptive police raids in Minnesota are of a different order altogether. Targeting people with automatic-weapons-carrying SWAT teams and mass raids in their homes, who are suspected of nothing more than planning dissident political protests at a political convention and who have engaged in no illegal activity whatsoever, is about as redolent of the worst tactics of a police state as can be imagined.

(Bold emphasis mine) Glenn has a follow-up post HERE, demonstrating that this is an effort by local police, but it is being directed by the feds. There's lots more at Firedoglake, Firedoglake, Firedoglake, Firedoglake, Firedoglake, Firedoglake again, Crooks and Liars, and Raw Story. To name a few. But mostly Firedoglake, who have taken to this like a pitbull on a postman's ankle.

So what can this blogger add? In a word, history. We'll consider three major past events and how they relate to current events. If you were wondering why the current crop of thugs in uniform is so utterly blasé in their regards for the law - it's because they know damned well that there are never any consequences. And this is by no means a brand new phenomenon characteristic of the Bush administration.

Consider first the violence that occurred at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The contradictions arising out of this fiasco are indicative of the times. From Wikipedia's article on the subsequent and infamous Chicago Seven trial:

Background

The 1968 Democratic National Convention, held in late August – convened to select the party's candidates for the November 1968 Presidential election – was the scene of massive demonstrations protesting the Vietnam War, which was at its height. Thousands of people showed up with signs and banners, music, dancing and poetry. A pig, "Pigasus the Immortal", was brought into the city to be "nominated" for President. Initially, there was a carnival atmosphere. The police were edgy. Some people responded to a night-time curfew announcement with rock-throwing. Police used tear gas and struck people with batons, and arrests were made. In the aftermath of what was later characterized as a "police riot" by the U.S. National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence,^[1] a grand jury indicted eight demonstrators and eight police officers

The NCCPV did indeed characterize this incident as a 'police riot.' That didn't prevent them from making the following bizarre statement:

"There is a criminal justice process through which each offender passes from the police, to the courts, and back unto the streets. The inefficiency, fall-out, and failure of purpose during this process is notorious."

Frickin' weird - it makes it sound like all the protesters were repeat offenders -hardened political criminals who could have been prevented from their opposition to the Vietnam War if only they'd been left behind bars.

But before I get sidetracked by some of the bizarre elements of this story (and there are many), back to my main point. Five of the Chicago Seven protesters were convicted of crossing state lines to start a riot (all convictions were reversed on appeal) despite the fact that this was OFFICIALLY described as a POLICE RIOT! Of the eight police officers indicted in the matter, seven were acquitted, and charges against the eighth were dismissed despite the fact that this was OFFICIALLY described as a POLICE RIOT!

For more background see 1968 Democratic National Convention Protests. For context consider that Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy were both assassinated earlier in 1968, on April 4th and June 5th respectively.

Fast forward to May 4th, 1970, the massacre of four students at Kent State University in Ohio. I've blogged before about this dark day in American history. Reading about this still makes me sick to my stomach, even almost 40 years later.

Four students were killed and nine others were wounded, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.

Some of the students who were shot had been protesting against the American invasion of Cambodia, which President Richard Nixon announced in a television address on April 30. However, other students who were shot had merely been walking nearby or observing the protest from a distance.
[...]
Killed (and approximate distance from the National Guard):

• Allison Krause 343 ft (105 m); fatal left chest wound
• Jeffrey Glen Miller 265 ft (81 m); shot through the mouth - killed instantly
• Sandra Lee Scheuer 390 ft (120 m); fatal neck wound
• William Knox Schroeder 382 ft (116 m); fatal chest wound

Consider those distances relative to something familiar: a professional ballpark. 343 feet would be a home run in left or right field in many parks, 390 and 382 would clear the fence even in deep center. How does this threaten armed and helmeted National Guard troops? Even at 265 ft a professional outfielder is not going to throw a baseball directly to home plate for an out, but will relay it in. So the idea of 'rock-throwing radicals' just doesn't hold water.

Students had been bayoneted by troops on the two days before the shootings. That's right, BAYONETED! Fucking unbelievable. Barbaric.

Just like the Chicago 'police riots', a subsequent government investigation (this one was called the Scranton Commission) found the armed authority figures in uniform to be at fault.

The Commission issued its findings in a September 1970 report that concluded that the Ohio National Guard shootings on May 4, 1970 were unjustified. The report said:

Even if the guardsmen faced danger, it was not a danger that called for lethal force. The 61 shots by 28 guardsmen certainly cannot be justified. Apparently, no order to fire was given, and there was inadequate fire control discipline on Blanket Hill. The Kent State tragedy must mark the last time that, as a matter of course, loaded rifles are issued to guardsmen confronting student demonstrators.

Just like the Chicago 'police riots', the armed authority figures in uniform suffered no consequences for their actions, even though this time it descended to the level of cold-blooded murder.

Bottom Line:

Eight of the guardsmen were indicted by a grand jury. The guardsmen claimed to have fired in self-defense, which was generally accepted by the criminal justice system. In 1974 U.S. District Judge Frank Battisti dismissed charges against all eight on the basis that the prosecution's case was too weak to warrant a trial.

In May 2007, Alan Canfora, one of the injured protestors, demanded that the case be reopened, having found an audiotape in a Yale University government archive allegedly recording an order to fire ("Right here! Get Set! Point! Fire!") just before the 13 second volley of shots.

Flash forward again to the 2004 RNC in New York City. The NYPD are under investigation (since May 17, 2006) alleged to have systematically infringed on protesters' constitutional rights. Democracy Now! is the go-to place for this story, which has received far too little attention.

During the week of the 2004 convention, police arrested some 1800 protesters—more than at any previous political convention in the country’s history. It is unclear as to the extent of the Justice Department"s criminal investigation of the NYPD, but the FBI appears to be focusing on the arrest of Dennis Kyne, a Gulf War veteran turned anti-war activist. Kyne was arrested on the steps of the New York Public Library on multiple charges including inciting a riot. His case went to trial but it was dismissed after his legal team presented videotaped evidence that proved the police lied to the court. As part of the criminal investigation, the FBI is seeking to interview other protesters whose constitutional rights have been violated by the police.

The bottom line of this story is that the investigation into police wrongdoing didn't even begin until nearly two years after the events, so the memory of witnesses can be put in question and the prospect of getting any physical evidence is pretty much shot. It appears that the investigation would never have started at all if it hadn't been for the existence of the video tape proving that the NYPD were lying about this from the get-go.

Not that the effort has been without any fruits, as you can see by searching Democracy Now's archives. Here's two short samples and one longer one:

Mar. 23, 2006: NYPD Caught Lying About RNC Arrests in 2004
"For the first time a high-ranking police supervisor has admitted that police arrested about 400 people around Union Square even though the police never gave an order to disperse."
Mar. 26, 2007: Report: NYPD Conducted Widespread Spy Campaign Before RNC
"The New York Times has revealed that undercover New York City police officers traveled around the country, Canada and Europe to spy on protesters planning to attend the 2004 Republican National Convention. The city set up an “R.N.C. Intelligence Squad” and sent undercover officers to attend meetings of political groups, posing as sympathizers or fellow activists."

May 17, 2007: NYPD Forced to Release RNC Spy Files
A federal judge has ordered the New York City police to release about 600 pages of internal documents that detail the department’s wide-ranging surveillance of activists ahead of the 2004 Republican National Convention. The judge ordered the first batch of documents to be made public following a lawsuit by the New York Civil Liberties Union and the New York Times. Donna Lieberman of the NYCLU: “What’s shocking is the breadth of the surveillance activity. They were in lots of different cities across the nation and internationally. We have in here of people doing grafitti in Germany in Croatia,. We have reports from Berkeley, from Baltimore, from Syracuse, from Fresno. The police department was all over the country, all over the globe.” The city is still fighting to keep secret other documents related to the convention including the raw intelligence collected by the police department.

Not entirely without fruits, and yet completely devoid of the sweet ripe fruit that protects civil liberties going forward, into say the next Republican National convention following the one in NYC in 2004. No cop has been disciplined. Ray Kelly is still New York's Police Commissioner. All costs of the investigation and its result have so far been borne by the New York taxpayer. And unless some consequences are felt by those who conspire to deprive their fellow citizens of their liberty, the erosion of constitutional rights will continue.

---

Some Joni Mitchell lyrics came into my head while I was writing this. From Judgement of the Moon & Stars, they were written about Beethoven's deafness, but oddly could just as well been referring to the Bill of Rights. I take poetic license in my reinterpretation.

Revoked but not yet cancelled
The gift goes on/ In silence/ In a bell jar
Still a song ...
You've got to shake your fists at lightning now
You've got to roar like forest fire
You've got to spread your light like blazes
All across the sky
They're going to aim the hoses on you
Show 'em you won't expire
Not till you burn up every passion

Not even when you die
Come on now/ You've got to try
If you're feeling contempt/ Well then you tell it
If you're tired of the silent night
Jesus, well then you yell it
Condemned to wires and hammers
Strike every chord that you feel
That broken trees/ And elephant ivories/ Conceal

UPDATE: The Station Agent has the scoop on the arrest of Democracy Now's Amy Goodman.

TAGS: Police State, History, RNC
"Under Color of Authority"

Authoritarianism Is A One Way Street

- Yep.
Read this story.

An account from the comments section of that story:

I was there! Just taking pics, but I decided to gtfo when somebody yelled 'GAS!!', and I saw a cop holding said gas canister.

Basically the protesters went into the street in front of the City & County building and the cops weren't keen on it, so they started lining up and telling everyone to get back on the sidewalk, at which point somebody hit the deck in
the street (pepper spray perhaps?) and a mob sort of formed from there. It was
about that point that I whipped out my camera and at the same time my boyfriend
and I both got shoved by a couple of riot cops for doing nothing more than
standing there. We would have moved if they said so, but you know Denver cops,
violence for no real reason. From there the protesters bolted across the park,
past the Seal Fountain, across Colfax and started heading down 15th. Some kid
pulled one of the road closed signs into the middle of the intersection of 15th
and Colfax and the mob made it about a block or two before the cops cut them off
and they sort of got cornered against a building. It was soon after that I heard
somebody yell gas and to run, so I joined a small herd of people in running
cause getting pics is one thing, getting gassed...not so keen on it.

Contrast that story, where the cops motivation is to keep the street open, with my eyewitness account of what happened on the 16th Street Mall earlier in the afternoon.

I was on the Mall Shuttle, heading down to Wyknoop where the "Big Tent" is located. Many powerbloggers like Kos, Greenwald, the crew from FireDogLake and so forth are down there and I wanted to see if I could catch any of them. Well, the Shuttle stopped and there was this huge ruckus.

Notice that the cops didn't pepper spray the hateful fundies. Nope they protected them, and let them block the Mall for a good 20 minutes! One person was arrested at this incident - and you guessed it, he wasn't one of the fundie whack jobs.

Also, after this pepper spray ruckus in front of the Civic Center, the cops asked RTD to shut down the Mall Shuttle for an extended period:

Police officials asked RTD to shut the 16th Street Mall bus shuttle service shortly after 7 p.m., said RTD spokesman Scott Reed. The mall service resumed
around 9:30 p.m

So it's abundantly clear to me that the cops interest was not the free flow of traffic.

If you wish to agitate or protest in accordance with the right wing agenda, no matter how extreme, you have the blessings of the authoritarians. If you wish to agitate or protest against that right wing, you get pepper sprayed and taken to jail.

Freedom of Speech - it's a one way street my friends.

TAGS: DNC, Protesters, Freedom Of Speech, Authoritarianism

Democracy Now! Comes to Denver

Gotta tell ya, I just love Amy Goodman. Yesterday, she was here in Denver, and broadcast her show.

Natural folks to interview in Denver would of course be Mark Cohen from Recreate '68, and the legal director of Colorado ACLU, Mark Silverstein, who has been lecturing/teaching what a person's rights are to protest during the Democratic National Convention this coming August.

You can watch the whole broadcast here, but I am just posting the transcript of the interview with Cohen and Silverstein. (The supplemental links are mine.)

AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from Denver, Colorado, from the PBS station KBDI, where Democracy Now! broadcasts here in Denver. Yes, Denver will play host to the Democratic National Convention this August, and preparations are well under way for the big event. It remains to be seen whether the Democrats will ultimately take their fight for a presidential candidate all the way to the convention. But for many activists tired of the two-party system and the ongoing war, they will be demonstrating at the convention, regardless of who the final nominee is.

As Denver readies to sign contracts with dozens of security agencies ahead of the convention, we look at some of the concerns around the rights of the protesters and how lawyers and activists are preparing to protect demonstrators.

Mark Silverstein is on the phone with us, legal director of the ACLU in Colorado. We’re also joined in the studio at KBDI by Mark Cohen. He is an organizer with Recreate ’68, a group of activists attempting to greet this year’s Democratic National Convention with the same demands of accountability and ending the war that animated protesters in Chicago forty years ago. We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Mark Cohen, what are your plans for this convention?

MARK COHEN: Thank you, Amy. We plan to have a massive presence during the Democratic National Convention in August. We will be having a number of major demonstrations, including on the Sunday, the day before the convention begins, what will probably be the biggest antiwar march and rally that Denver has seen at least since Vietnam. We’re also working with some of the major immigrant rights groups on the Tuesday, to have what we think will be a very large immigrant rights march and rally.

But we’re not only involved in protest activities. We’re also staging what
we’re calling the Festival of Democracy, which will be a five-day event in
downtown Denver, during which we will have trainings, workshops, teach-ins, and provide people the opportunity to come together and learn about alternatives to the two-party system, solutions that communities can provide to their own problems. We’re also, during that, going to have a 24/7 free health clinic, legal services, two feedings a day in cooperation with Food Not Bombs and other services for the community.

AMY GOODMAN: And who is “we”?

MARK COHEN: We are Recreate ’68, which is a group of local Denver activists. We began planning for the Democratic National Convention actually before we found out that Denver had been given the convention. It looked like a fairly certain thing. So we’ve been planning for about a year and a half now. We’ve been talking with the city to try to ensure that people’s First Amendment rights would be protected during the convention. We’ve been working with national organizations, among them United for Peace and Justice, CODEPINK and others, as well as numerous Colorado organizations, to prepare for this event, to try to use the attention and the excitement and the energy generated by this major event to kind of kick organizing in Denver up to another level.

AMY GOODMAN: Mark Silverstein, you’re legal director of the Colorado ACLU. What are the city’s plans for these protests?

MARK SILVERSTEIN: Well, you’re asking me to tell you the city’s plans, and unfortunately the city has not responded to some of our requests for information about those plans. I can tell you that political conventions like this have historically been marked by struggles over law enforcement’s attempt to balance interest in security with the First Amendment rights of the public and protesters. And in the past, that balance has sometimes been subjected to judicial review, and courts have disagreed with law enforcement about the proper balance.

And since 9/11, I think the issues have even gotten more intense. We
know in Boston in 2004, the city provided what it called a “demonstration zone” outside of the convention that the district court said was like a concentration camp and an affront to the First Amendment. But there wasn’t enough time for the court to fully evaluate it and issue an order that would remedy the problems.

We have been trying to find out what it will look like, what kind of
regulations will apply to First Amendment activity near the site of the
convention. And so far, Denver has been either unwilling or unable to discuss any of that in detail, pointing to the Secret Service as the ultimate shot caller for security at the convention. And the Secret Service has said, well, it won’t have details to reveal to the public until sometime this summer, maybe as late as August. And, of course, that might be far too late to have any negotiation over the arrangements for First Amendment activity and certainly too late for an opportunity for judicial review. So that’s very much a concern for us.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m looking at a piece just recently in the Denver Post, “No Cages for DNC Protesters,” that according to Denver City Councilman Charlie Brown, protesters will not be confined to cages during the Democratic National Convention. The city wants to get away from the long lines of shoulder-to-shoulder, riot gear-clad police that typified security, saying, “We don’t want to provoke violence.” Mark?

MARK SILVERSTEIN: And that’s a very commendable sentiment. And, you know, at the ACLU, we certainly hope that what Councilman Brown says will indeed be the reality. But, you know, there’s a question that I always ask when somebody in government makes an assurance like that. I ask, “Well, how do they know?” because when we’ve talked with the city officials or when we’ve read what’s quoted in the newspaper, the answer always is, “Well, we don’t know yet, because the Secret Service ultimately makes the decision, and the Secret Service isn’t saying, at least publicly.”

So there’s a rumor that there’s going to be a one-mile radius hard security
perimeter around the convention site. And then you can occasionally read in the paper, somebody will debunk that as a rumor. It’s not true that there will be a one-mile security zone around the convention, but yet, when you talk to the city people who ought to know, they say, “Well, we don’t know yet.” And if they don’t know, then how do they know there won’t be a one-mile security radius? There must be some plans already formulated.

AMY GOODMAN: Keeping protesters one mile away from the Pepsi Center? That’s where the Democratic Convention is going to be?

MARK SILVERSTEIN: That’s correct. That’s correct.

AMY GOODMAN: According to Colorado Confidential, a web publication, the Denver Police Department is using taxpayer money to buy new security equipment in preparation for the DNC but is refusing to disclose exactly what the purchases are, saying that revealing the information would be contrary to the public interest. Mark Cohen, what do you know about that?

MARK COHEN: We do know that the city council has allocated $5 million for new weapons for the Denver Police Department. We know that in St. Paul, they have issued tasers to every single officer on the force. We’re aware that there are new weapons out there that are being ostensibly used for crowd control in places like Iraq. But we’ve seen a report on 60 Minutes, for example, where they were doing field tests with these weapons, and the people they were testing on were dressed as protesters and carrying protest-type signs. So we have a feeling that the field tests for these new weapons are going to be at the Democratic National Convention and possibly the Republican Convention, as well. So, the weapons that are being designed primarily for military use are going to be used on peaceful, nonviolent protesters.

AMY GOODMAN: One of the things that we’ve seen at the conventions past is the level of infiltration by police and also surveillance. Now, Mark Cohen, you were a plaintiff in the Denver spy files case.

MARK COHEN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what that was.

MARK COHEN: We discovered in—I believe it was 2001, that the—or maybe earlier than that, but we discovered that the Denver Police Department had been keeping what they called “criminal intelligence files” on people who had engaged in no criminal activity but simply exercised their First Amendment rights in protests and demonstrations. There were labels on these files, such as “criminal extremist.” And the information in these files was, first of all, not the kind of information that had any relationship to criminal activity. They had – people had written letters to the editors of local papers - and they had stuck these in files. And they also had a good deal of false information.

My wife, who is a middle-aged Jewish woman, was identified as belonging to a white racist motorcycle gang that dealt in drugs and weapons. So, we’re obviously very concerned about this, especially because we discovered that these files were being shared with other law enforcement agencies. And in the atmosphere after 9/11, this is a very dangerous thing to be identified as a criminal extremist and as, presumably, a security threat. So we did sue the city and got out of the suit a change in policy, which prevents the Denver Police Department from collecting intelligence information on people who are not actually engaged in criminal activity.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we are going to leave it there for now but certainly will continue to follow this. Mark Cohen with us from Recreate ’68 and Mark Silverstein on the line with us, legal director of the Colorado ACLU, I want to thank you both for being with us.

MARK COHEN: Thank you.

TAGS: DNC, Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman, Freedom of Speech

The Shape of Things to Come

"Oh gosh, actually it isn't lawlessness any more, now is it?"

I've been hatching a lament for several days now, on the sorry state of what passes for justice anymore in the nation that used to be America. Naomi Wolf posted recently at Huffington Post on a topic that was pretty much where I was going anyway. Long story short, that handbasket that America's future is riding in is not just nipping down to the store for a quart of milk. The erosion of anything resembling justice is pretty much complete.

As the Australian reported earlier this week, New South Wales Justice of the Peace Mamdouh Habib is suing the Australian federal government -- which under the Howard administration had colluded with the US in committing various abuses against detainees and due process -- for having allowed him to be arrested wrongly in Pakistan in 2001, kidnapped and sent illegally to Egypt. There this Justice of the Peace was illegally imprisoned and tortured for six months. After that the United States held him for FOUR YEARS in Guantanamo.
[...]
Get that? A justice of the peace in a developed-world democracy. Had you heard of that?

Me neither.
[...]
They rendered an Australian justice of the peace -- and that rendition did not even make the US news. So how can we be sure there is something so sacred about an American justice of the peace or even a judge? Say, an American judge who ruled against the Military Commissions?

I could quote much more of this article, but it's better if you just read the whole thing yourself. You might be angry, but you won't be disappointed.

My lament was going to mention things like the well-documented Don Siegelman kangaroo court in Alabama. Ms. Wolf touched on that. I was also going to mention the Supreme Court's recent decision to not even consider the ACLU's petition on illegal warrantless wiretapping. This is a replay of another decision they made last April regarding the odious Military Commissions Act. I blogged about that then, my opinions haven't changed, you can read about it HERE. There are other signs that the entire court system has gone over to the dark side, all the way over. There's THIS STORY about the Supremes' outrageous behavior in an appeal by Exxon over the still unpaid judgement almost twenty years later over the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

What bothered the chief justice was that Exxon was being ordered to pay $2.5 billion -- roughly three weeks' worth of profits -- for destroying a long swath of the Alaska coastline in the largest oil spill in American history.

"So what can a corporation do to protect itself against punitive-damages awards such as this?" Roberts asked in court.

There's not even any pretense that this case is going to be decided in an unbiased manner on its merits, or with reference to the Constitution and legal precedent. The will of the Corporatist government of Pricktator Extraordinaire George W. Bush is all that matters. The Constitution, after all, is just a Goddamn Piece of Paper. And there are more stories from just this week indicating how far the rule of law has diverged from the idea of 'a nation of laws, not men.'

How about this one?
Mukasey Rebuffs Contempt Referrals, House to Head to Court

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey refused yesterday to refer two new House contempt citations to a federal grand jury, saying the White House aides involved in the case cannot be prosecuted because they were following legal advice from the Justice Department.

In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Mukasey said the refusal by White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten and former presidential counsel Harriet E. Miers to comply with congressional subpoenas "did not constitute a crime."

Or how about the sham that has attended the fight over the renewal of the Protect America Act, which is about anything but protecting America? Over 80% of the riders in the aforementioned proverbial handbasket can catch a distinct whiff of sulfur, but you'd never know it from watching FOX "news" or CNN.

Ms. Wolf's post touches on a number of the Ten Points To Close Down an Open Society from her book, The End of America, notably #10; Suspend the Rule of Law. But you can't ignore #2; Create A Gulag, #4; Set Up an Internal Surveillance System, #6 Engage in Arbitrary Detention and Release or #8; Control The Press. The suspension of normal legal procedures is what enables all but #8 anyway. And reflexively, it is #8 that enables all the others. As Ms. Wolf observes, "They rendered an Australian justice of the peace -- and that rendition did not even make the US news."

If you carefully consider Ms. Wolf's analysis of any potential resistance to the worst case scenario of martial law, (and I think you should consider it very carefully indeed) where do you put your hopes when "NO ONE KNOWS WHERE THE RAMPARTS ARE?" After all, "THEY HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT WHAT IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN and we have not. They aren't surprised or shocked; we are. They have a plan; we don't."

When it happens, and I increasingly fear that if it can happen it probably will, it won't be a Taxi to the Dark Side, it will be a humongous fleet of windowless prison buses. Speaking of Taxi to the Dark Side,

[It] won't be seen by most Americans. This is because the Discovery Channel bought it hoping to air it -- but then backed out. (Its affiliates have close ties to the military-industrial complex.) Will the Oscar win get it on the airwaves? Doubtful.

Call me paranoid, but I can't help thinking that perhaps the Discovery Channel bought this documentary not hoping to air it, but to ensure that no-one else could air it. At any rate there are numerous signs and portents that bode ill for the near future of America. One is reminded of the ominous opening of Act IV, scene 1 of Hamlet,

By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.

TAGS: Police State, Fascism, Underground, RESISTANCE IS FUTILE

Stripped Safe

Once upon a time, in Stark County, Ohio, a woman was assaulted by a family member, and was injured badly enough that her cousin called 911 for help. Help arrived. The police officer mistook the victim for the perpetrator, slammed her around a bit, and hauled her away to jail. For some mysterious reason, the patrol car video camera was not turned on during this arrest. The injured assault victim was then taken to a jail cell, where she was held down, at one point, by no less than seven individuals, who forcibly removed every shred of her clothing. They then left her naked in a jail cell for the next six hours. She was not allowed to use the telephone. She was not treated for the injuries which had prompted her cousin to call for help on her behalf in the first place.

It's not a surprise that it is against policy for a male deputy to strip search a female in custody, and in this case, men were not only present, but clearly participated in the removal of the woman's clothing. That seven individuals were simultaneously involved in the stripping of this 125 pound woman seem to suggest a certain eagerness on the part of those engaged in forcibly separating the woman from her clothes. I believe the quote from the Sherrif's office characterizing the incident was: "by the book." They simply declared that what had occurred was not, in fact, a strip search. It was something else, and that made it A-OK.

Alright, I find myself horrified by the footage, which the victim and her husband released, and now resides on YouTube. (See the C&L post with video, and also this.) I keep asking myself why I'm so horrified, given that our government does things in the name of security that horrify me daily.

I might be horrified because this incident seems to trace back to a taser happy police force that has killed nearly 300 people, 5 people last month alone. And, I suppose the tasing tide can be described as a predictable outcome in a society that allows a powerful politician who had been consuming alcohol to shoot someone in the face at dusk, wait until the next day before allowing the police to question him, later having the victim who was shot in the face and subsequently had a heart attack apologize publicly.

Gunshot wound at dusk
Smell of beer and wife not his
Fresh blood spills to earth

This, I think, is what happens when a society allows a man who tortured animals as a child and delights in sentencing people to death as an adult, to control the world's largest standing army. I do see a link between the war and occupation in Iraq and the way in which the woman in this case was "handled" by the Sherrif's Department.

That could be the reason I am so horrified, but I don't think it is. I think I am horrified because this case is so highly symbolic to me. When I watch what occurred on video, I feel this woman has been violated. And I feel that I have been violated. In fact, I have been violated. We all have been. By the present administration. Our rights and protections have been stripped away from us as this woman's clothes have been stripped from her, though I will argue with much less complaint; we gave up our rights and protections rather a bit more quietly.

The very people whom we count on to protect us did this to us, after we had been assaulted and were vulnerable--after 9/11. They have been stripping away our Individual rights; our right to Due Process; our First Amendment freedoms: Speech, the Press, Religion, Assembly and Association; our Fourth Amendment right to protection from illegal Search and Seizure; and our Sixth Amendment right to Counsel. And they took away these rights and protections, and continue to do so, "to keep us safe."

Guess what? That's the same argument the Sherrif's Office used to explain why they forcibly stripped the assault victim held in custody. Unable to call it a "strip search" because of the man hands involved, they said it wasn't a strip search. They said it was, "for her own safety." They did it to "protect her."

So the people who were supposed to protect her when she was hurt, turned on her, stripped her bare, and left her naked in a jail cell for her own safety.

That may be the reason I am so horrified. Because here, in the twilight of Democracy, that is what I feel the Bush administration is doing to us all.

Torn Liberty, originally uploaded by Mr. Guybrarian.

TAGS: Strip Search, Police Brutality, Rights and Protections, Stark Ohio, Twilight of Democracy

Count On Yahoo!

To Sell You Out

Sometimes business just gets in the way of democracy.

Just ask the people running that second rate search engine Yahoo!

When they were confronted with the possibility of alienating a massive client--the People's Republic of China--Yahoo! decided they would be better served to hand over the information of a pro-democracy journalist than defend the principles our country was founded on. Well, why should they be the only one?

That journalist--Shi Tao--he's now serving a decade in prison.

Thanks, Yahoo! You jerks.

Yesterday, Yahoo's CEO Jerry Yang executive vice president Michael Callahan faced the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Al Jazeera English covered the hearing.

To Yang and Yahoo's partial credit, they apologized. Maybe Shi's mother can console herself with that apology while her son rots in a Chinese jail through 2015.

Committee chair Tom Lantos had the line of the century, but first he built up to it:

A company of Yahoo’s resources should have taken every conceivable step to prevent the automatic compliance with a request from the Chinese police apparatus.

To this day, Yahoo has failed to change any of its practices in order to prevent such collaboration.

While Mr. Callahan may not have known the relevant facts, other Yahoo employees, in fact, did know the nature of the Chinese investigation against Shi Tao prior to our committee hearing. (Yahoo’s actions were) spineless and irresponsible.

I do not believe that America’s best and brightest companies should be playing integral roles in China’s notorious and brutal political repression apparatus.

Much of this testimony reveals that while technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies.

In 2005, the Chinese government had Shi arrested after he posted a warning about a crackdown on Chinese dissidents returning to mainland China during the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Protests. Shi used his Yahoo email account to send a warning to the website for the Asia Democracy Foundation.

Beijing police found Shi by using information provided by Yahoo, the committee said.Yahoo's senior vice president Michael Callahan testified last year that Yahoo didn't know why the Chinese government asked the company for personal information about Shi.

In June, Shi's mother accepted the Golden Pen of Freedom on behalf of her son (video here).

Yahoo is trying to have a lawsuit filed in Northern California that accuses Yahoo of violating U.S. and international law when they provided the Chinese government with the information that led to the arrest of Shi and other dissidents.

The BBC looks at some of China's activists including Shi.

Amnesty International has a campaign on Shi's behalf here.

By the way something, if any pygmies were insulted by Lantos's line... I'm sure the Republicans will make him apologize real soon.

UPDATE: Turns out pygmy is a rather insulting term. I didn't know that. Thanks to Tireiron Chef for schooling me. I'd edit the post, but then you wouldn't know what this update was all about. Still Yahoo! are jerks and Lantos did a good thing by calling them out. Next time, just do what I do and call them assholes. You can do that on the floor of the Senate right?

TAGS: Yahoo, Democracy, Shi Tao, Squashing Dissent

The End of America

I'm experiencing somewhat more than my usual rage today. Frankly I'm pretty disappointed at the lukewarm response to my recent post about the failure in the Senate to gain a cloture vote for the Habeas Corpus Restoration bill sponsored by Chris Dodd and Patrick Leahy. I've been concerned about this cornerstone of human rights since the odious Military Commissions Act gutted its authority last year.

Simply stated, without habeas all other rights are moot - you need a day in court to state your case. They don't call it the Great Writ for nothing.

People, you've got to stop acting like the United States of America is somehow inoculated against tyranny. Remember, Germany was a constitutional democracy before Hitler's Nazis took over. And as Naomi Wolf pointed out on The Colbert Report last night, there is a blueprint for the overthrow of legitimate government by dictators. And Bu$hCo are following it religiously.

George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four as a warning.
George Bush reads it like an operations manual.

Watch the Video

You can read the blueprint in this review of her book The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot in The Guardian. It's full of hard to confront what ifs.

What if the publisher of a major US newspaper were charged with treason or espionage, as a rightwing effort seemed to threaten Keller with last year? What if he or she got 10 years in jail? What would the newspapers look like the next day? Judging from history, they would not cease publishing; but they would suddenly be very polite.

Right now, only a handful of patriots are trying to hold back the tide of tyranny for the rest of us - staff at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who faced death threats for representing the detainees yet persisted all the way to the Supreme Court; activists at the American Civil Liberties Union; and prominent conservatives trying to roll back the corrosive new laws, under the banner of a new group called the American Freedom Agenda. This small, disparate collection of people needs everybody's help, including that of Europeans and others internationally who are willing to put pressure on the administration because they can see what a US unrestrained by real democracy at home can mean for the rest of the world.

We need to look at history and face the "what ifs". For if we keep going down this road, the "end of America" could come for each of us in a different way, at a different moment; each of us might have a different moment when we feel forced to look back and think: that is how it was before - and this is the way it is now.

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... is the definition of tyranny," wrote James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to carry.

It ain't gonna carry itself.

TAGS: Fascism, Tyranny, Police State
Naomi Wolf, The End of America

UF Student Tased at Kerry Appearence

As He Says, "Don't Tase Me, Bro."

This takes the cake.



A firebrand, an earnest college kid packing a book, Armed Madhouse by Greg Palast, got a little full of himself at a John Kerry appearance at the University of Florida on Monday evening. Instead of being able to handle a situation, the police had to cook the guy.

Unbelievable.

When a student was brutally tased at UCLA, you would have thought that campuses around the country would have taken notice. Of course, it had to be my University that smooches the pooch.

It's not difficult for police, with a five-on-one advantage, billy clubs, training, back up, even pepper spray, to remove one admittedly spastic, hyperactive activist.

Also of note, they cut the student's microphone because he said, "blow job" in reference to the Clinton impeachment. And what was up with John Kerry? He's up there cracking jokes as the kid is getting smeared by the brute squad. Kerry did come out against the police's use of the taser today.

This was bowling shoe ugly. A sad day for the University of Florida.

TAGS: University of Florida, Police Brutality, Tasers, John Kerry

They've Admitted It

But Still Insist They Did Nothing Wrong

The Québec Sureté (Provincial Police) have admitted that the three unwise men identified as police agents provocateurs by David Coles (bearded man in suit, right) were indeed members of the force.

From CBC.ca;
Quebec provincial police admitted Thursday that their officers disguised themselves as demonstrators during the protest at the North American leaders summit in Montebello, Que.

"At no time did the police of the Sûreté du Québec act as instigators or commit criminal acts," the police force said in French in a news release. "It is not in the police force's policies, nor in its strategies, to act in that manner."

"At all times, they responded within their mandate to keep order and security."

Police said the undercover officers were only at the protest to locate and identify non-peaceful protesters in order to prevent any incidents.

Ri-ight. I just have a few follow-up questions on this matter.

• Why have you been forcefully denying these men were police since Monday?
• Why was one of the men carrying a large rock in his hand?
• Why were they wearing identical bandanas?
• Why were the uniformed police in full battle dress, with batons and gas masks?
  

David Cole, president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, said at the time, "[Our union] believes that the security force at Montebello were ordered to infiltrate our peaceful assembly and provoke incidents." It really looks like that to me too. And I'll tell you why.

The identical bandanas, unlike the boots (which were just unbelievable stupidity on the dumbass police's part) could be used so that the uniformed police could identify the provocateurs when the billy clubs started swinging. The gas masks indicate that the police were indeed expecting trouble, even though the demonstration was so peaceful that;

On Wednesday, the mayor of Montebello thanked police and protesters, praising the fact that there wasn't a single report of damage during the two-day summit.

I'm not the only one who has noticed these discrepancies. As Matthew Good reports;

Two NDP MP’s, Libby Davies of East Vancouver and Peter Julian of Burnaby-New Westminster, have sent a letter to Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day calling for an inquiry into the Montebello security allegations.

And from that letter;

Along with hundreds of other Canadian citizens who participated in the Monday protest, we were both alarmed at the enormous police presence. We are more shocked at the allegations that inside agents, appearing to be working with riot police, attempted to provoke a violent incident during the peaceful demonstration. Video and photograph evidence has led to many unanswered questions.

We're waiting for some answers. My previous post on this, with the YouTube video of the incident is here.

Related Links: This piece from the Ottawa Citizen has the Sûreté du Québec's statement and more reaction from David Coles.

TAGS: Montebello, Agents Provocateurs, SPP Summit, Bu$hCo™
Caught Red-handed

Enemy of the State

Bu$hCo Grabs More Domestic Spying Power

Now that they've gotten the spineless DINOcrat-controlled Congress to cave on their NSA Warrantless Wiretapping Program(s?), the Bush crime family is moving on to bigger and better things. Well higher and more expensive anyway - enabling law enforcement agencies to use imagery acquired from spy satellites on US soil. From the Wall Street Journal:

The U.S.'s top intelligence official has greatly expanded the range of federal and local authorities who can get access to information from the nation's vast network of spy satellites in the U.S.

The decision, made three months ago by Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell, places for the first time some of the U.S.'s most powerful intelligence-gathering tools at the disposal of domestic security officials. The move was authorized in a May 25 memo sent to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff asking his department to facilitate access to the spy network on behalf of civilian agencies and law enforcement.
...
Access to the high-tech surveillance tools would, for the first time, allow Homeland Security and law-enforcement officials to see real-time, high-resolution images and data, which would allow them, for example, to identify smuggler staging areas, a gang safehouse, or possibly even a building being used by would-be terrorists to manufacture chemical weapons.
...
Unlike electronic eavesdropping, which is subject to legislative and some judicial control, this use of spy satellites is largely uncharted territory. Although the courts have permitted warrantless aerial searches of private property by law-enforcement aircraft, there are no cases involving the use of satellite technology.

In recent years, some military experts have questioned whether domestic use of such satellites would violate the Posse Comitatus Act. The act bars the military from engaging in law-enforcement activity inside the U.S., and the satellites were predominantly built for and owned by the Defense Department.

If you watched the 1998 film Enemy of the State, you may remember the tagline, "It's not paranoia if they're really after you."

If you didn't see the film, spoiler alert! Will Smith is pursued by rogue elements of the US intelligence community after unknowingly coming into possession of evidence implicating the head of the NSA (played by John Voight) in the murder of a recalcitrant Senator. They track him using every means - wiretaps, bugs put in his clothing, and satellites - until he enlists the aid of retired spook Gene Hackman, who helps him shake the tail. It's a good movie, and I recommend it.

The only thing different between reality and this movie is that now you could remove the word 'rogue' from the first sentence of the preceding paragraph. Now OFFICIAL NSA types could hunt you down like a dog using government resources, and there's nothing you could do about it.

Some civil-liberties activists worry that without proper oversight, only those inside the National Application Office will know what is being monitored from space.

"You are talking about enormous power," said Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel and director of the Project on Freedom, Security and Technology for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit group advocating privacy rights in the digital age. "Not only is the surveillance they are contemplating intrusive and omnipresent, it's also invisible. And that's what makes this so dangerous."

Mr. Allen, the DHS intelligence chief, says the department is cognizant of the civil-rights and privacy concerns, which is why he plans to take time before providing law-enforcement agencies with access to the data. He says DHS will have a team of lawyers to review requests for access or use of the systems.

"This all has to be vetted through a legal process," he says. "We have to get this right because we don't want civil-rights and civil-liberties advocates to have concerns that this is being misused in ways which were not intended."

Vetted through a legal process? Like the FISA courts, you mean? We all know how well that works when the government wants to ignore it.

TAGS: Surveillance, Spy Satellites, Privacy
Fourth Amendment Violations

Open For Business To Abuse

What's The Worst That Could Happen?

With the new FISA amendments having now been signed into law, "the Bush administration has successfully forced on Congress a law that largely authorizes open-ended surveillance of Americans' overseas phone calls and e-mails." As this excellent article in Alternet observes,

The law's most important effect is arguably not its expansion of raw surveillance power but the sloughing away of judicial or Congressional oversight. In the words of former CIA officer Philip Giraldi, the law provides "unlimited access to currently protected personal information that is already accessible through an oversight procedure."

This is a really important point, so much so that I'm going to restate it in bullet form, so even any Republicans reading this can understand:

• The Bush administration throughout the known history of the NSA warrantless wiretapping affair has not been seeking an expansion of surveillance power.
• What they have been seeking is a reduction or complete elimination of oversight.
• Prior to the program being revealed to the public in Dec. '05, they were willing to commit repeated felonies in order to avoid oversight.
• Whatever they were doing it almost led to mass resignations in a Justice Department that was and still is almost completely made up of hand-picked Loyal Bushies.
• The program was in fact SO illegal that it did lead to the infamous visit by Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card to John Ashcroft's ICU ward.
  

You see the import of this distinction? If there is no oversight, then it doesn't matter what the rules are, because if and when they are broken, no-one will ever know. For instance, the rules say that only communications with someone "reasonably believed" to be on foreign soil can be put under surveillance. But if no-one is allowed to know who is being tapped or why, what's to stop them from tapping you and your significant other arranging a hot date?

So what should we worry about? What is the worst that could happen? Here's just a couple of things that worry me, I'm sure you can come up with more on your own.

Politicians, contributors, and/or journalists could be wiretapped looking for 'dirt' to be used as blackmail. "Hey Senator _________, we know about ___________ so if you don't vote for the _________bill your wife and kids, and the public will find out." Maybe this has already happened, and that's why some of the 41 House Dems and 15 Democratic Senators voted for the latest travesty in the first place. Can we expect a bill in the near future authorizing the government to blackmail people?

Unscrupulous members of government (*cough*Dick Cheney*cough*) could wiretap the communications of businesses, find out about significant deals and events before they were public, and use the information for insider trading. Without the giveaway of being an insider. NSA 'professionals', (whom the government keeps portraying as totally trustworthy), could make a tidy second income selling proprietary information to business competitors.

In fact, lured by the vast potential of this ability to spy on America protected by such legal barriers as Executive Privilege and the State Secrets Act, I doubt if the 'professionals' will have time to spy on the foreign terrorists anymore. I mean, screwing America for a profit seems to be the chief operating principle of the Bush administration. How would this scenario deviate one iota from what they've already been caught doing. And being the most secretive government America has ever known, what the hell might they have gotten away with? As Glenn Greenwald noted in a recent column,

As much as we think we know about the range of controversial Bush policies, it is almost certainly the case that what we do not know, what remains concealed, vastly outweighs what we know.

Now there's a sobering thought.

---

If that worries you a bit too much, Mark Fiori has this animation to remind you that 'We're watching you because we love you.'

TAGS: NSA Wiretapping, Fourth Amendment, Police State, Insider Trading