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.”
The House has sent articles of impeachment against George Bush to the House Judiciary Committee, however Speaker Nancy Pelosi now says that an actual impeachment VOTE isn’t on the table. On Wednesday’s Countdown, Jonathan Turley gives his expert analysis on this epic fail as well as the latest attempt by the president to obstruct Congressional oversight by claiming executive privilege in the CIA/Plame leak investigation.
As for Bush’s executive privilege claims, Turley goes right for the jugular. Attorney General Michael Mukasey all but begged the president not to make him testify about Dick Cheney’s role in the Plame case and has ignored a subpoena to appear to testify about the matter before Congress — which Turley says should prompt Congress to charge him with Inherent Contempt. That’s not likely to happen, and as Jonathan points out, Democrats who voted for Mukasey are now getting what they paid for:
“…This is why, when Senators Shumer and Feinstein saved Mukasey’s confirmation, this is what they purchased. And, what Congress needs to do, the only thing they can do, is bring back Inherent Contempt and to say they’re going to start to exercise contempt on their own, that the deal is off. Attorney General Mukasey has broken a very long standing promise to be a faithful broker, to bring these cases to the grand jury - he won’t. And Congress has a right to now say we’re going back to doing this stuff ourselves.”
A federal court has issued two rulings, the New York Times reports: One favoring President Bush’s indefinite detentions of “enemy combatants,” and another granting one of said “enemy combatants” the opportunity to challenge his detention in court.
The court effectively ruled that President Bush has the same right to indefinitely detain a civilian on American soil as he does an enemy soldier on a battlefield.
Ali al-Marri, the only “enemy combatant” to be held in the continental United States, is in military custody in Charleston, South Carolina. He was arrested in Peoria, Illinois on December 12, 2001 on charges of credit card fraud and lying to federal agents before being sent to Charleston in 2003. A 5-4 majority of the United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit, said that a sworn statement from an intelligence official as the government’s sole testimony in an earlier proceeding was “inadequate.” The official, Jeffrey N. Rapp, said that al-Marri was an al-Qaeda sleeper agent whose objective in the United States was to “commit mass murder and disrupt the banking system.”
The other ruling effectively reverses an earlier ruling by a three-judge panel with the same court that ordered that al-Marri be either charged with a crime or released.
Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse, saying that al-Marri had “already received all the process he was due,” added that the decision recognize the president’s authority to “capture and detain [al-Qaeda] agents who, like the 9/11 hijackers, come to this country to commit or facilitate warlike acts against American civilians.”
“This decision,” countered Jonathan L. Hafetz, counsel for al-Marri, means the president can pick up any person in the country–citizen or legal resident–and lock them up for years without the most basic safeguard in the Constitution, the right to a criminal trial.”
Terrorism liaison officers have been getting a lot of attention in the national press lately. But the bottom line of what they do is basically old-fashioned police work, according to the state police coordinating the effort in Arizona.
The TLOs, as they are called, keep their eyes and ears open for any suspicious activity.
The three-year-old program is part of the Arizona Department of Public Safety and its Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center, the state’s intelligence fusion center. The 75 to 80 TLOs are specially trained police officers, firefighters and police crime analysts. They report suspicious behavior they see in the course of their jobs. The reports are put in the state database for further investigation, and could be sent to federal terrorist databases.
DPS Lt. Larry Perry, the man in charge of Arizona’s TLOs, thinks they are necessary. Although he admits their jobs include a concept that all police officers and firefighters should follow, he says TLOs have learned a lot more than that during 40 hours of special training.
“This is situational awareness where people who work in critical infrastructures throughout the state are reporting suspicious activities,” Perry said. “TLOs are not getting information on private citizens in their homes. This is a speciality unit that links TLOs together for the purpose of reporting suspicious activity.”
Perry said TLOs in Arizona have reported theft of military clothing, police or fire uniforms and equipment. He added that TLOs are deployed to large public gatherings of 500 or more people where the potential for terrorism exists so they can assist law enforcement officials.
“If we were to see one person taking a lot of pictures of the power plant at Palo Verde (nuclear plant), that could be a terrorist opportunity,” Perry said.
The program has received four federal and state grants ranging from $200,000 to $500,000, according to Perry. They range from 24 months to 36 months.
Sgt. Brent Olson, a member of the Mesa Police Department emergency services and counter terrorism teams, is a TLO. He believes the program provides an important link between law enforcement and fire protection agencies.
“A lot of it is straight-up crime prevention, but with a twist,” Olson said.
“We’re focused with speciality other units. Something may happen here in Mesa and TLOs can work their counterparts in other cities to check if there’s anything going on there. We can contact each other directly and share information. We don’t have to go through others as we might have had to do. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a good program.”
Perry scoffs at the notion that the program may be likened to snooping.
“It’s not ‘Big Brother’ at all, but I can see that the ACLU might have a problem with it,” he said.
Alessandra Soler Meetze , executive director of the Arizona chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said her concern is the program might give inexperienced or undertrained volunteers the opportunity to target people because of ethnicity or religion.
“What we don’t want is a policy that encourages non-law enforcement personnel to keep tabs on their neighbors,” Meetze said. “This sounds like good police work and smart profiling based on behavior rather than racial or ethnic factors. The policy clearly targets behavior. We just need to keep tabs on DPS to make sure their officers and volunteers in practice don’t cross the line and begin replacing suspicious activity with skin color when targeting individuals.”
Perry said the reporting of suspicious information by TLOs is based upon suspicious activities and incidents, not on race or religious preference.
Suspicious activity is defined in TLO training as behavior that could lead to terrorism, such as 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.
Tomorrow, July 8th, could mark the beginning of official condoning of warrantless surveillance of law-abiding citizens in the US, not to mention foreign nationals. Much of this information has been covered by Glenn Greenwald in the past week.
In the video below, I talk about what every American needs to know — and do in the next 24 hours — about the new FISA (Federal Information and Surveillance Act) amendments. The interview, and below partial transcription, answers questions like…
-I don’t have anything to hide. How does this affect me?
-What if this type of surveillance is what has prevented another 9/11 from happening?
-What are common inaccuracies about FISA reported in the media?
Find below how you can make a real impact in less than 60 seconds. Every person counts — the Senators who will vote are watching the numbers. 41 Senators can block the bill, and it’s not too late.
Please do the following: How I ask you to spend 60 seconds
1. ALL AMERICANS: Go to the EFF website here and put in your zipcode to find your Senator’s phone number. Call them and read the short script on the same page. If no answer, click the link at the bottom of the page to e-mail them.
(Tell others verbally to go to “www.eff.org” and click “take action”)
2. OBAMA SUPPORTERS: Go to My.BarackObama.com here and join the group requesting he oppose (as he did earlier) the amendment. This takes about 30 seconds. I suggest changing “ListServ” in the bottom right to “Do not receive e-mails.” (Tell others verbally to search “obama please vote no” on Google and My.BarackObama.com will be in the top 3 results, currently #1)
1. Why does the vote this Tuesday, July 8th matter to normal people who have nothing to hide?
Ordinary citizens who want to live in a democracy — including those with nothing to hide — should be concerned about the ability of the government to use private, sensitive personal information to blackmail, manipulate, and intimidate their representatives, journalists and their sources, potential whistleblowers, and activists or dissenters of any sort.
2. Couldn’t it be argued that this type of surveillance ability has prevented another 9/11 from happening? Isn’t it possible that this type of legislation has saved American lives?
The administration has claimed that is has, but without presenting a single piece of evidence that this is so, even in closed hearings to Senators with clearances on the Intelligence Committee. The FISA court has granted warrants in virtually every request that’s been made of it that has any color of helping national security. The administration’s decision to bypass that court, illegally, leads to a strong suspicion that they are abusing domestic spying, as some of their predecessors did, in ways that even the secret FISA court would never approve.
3. What are the most important factual inaccuracies about FISA found in the media?
Advocates of the bill take pride that it makes this amended FISA the exclusive basis for overhearing citizens, but that exclusivity is, in fact, in the current 30-year-old FISA bill already. President Bush simply ignored it in bypassing FISA, and there’s not reason that he and his successors would not continue to do the same here.
It’s been inaccurately stated that if this amendments didn’t pass, FISA would expire. This is flatly false. FISA is open-ended and will continue as it already has, adequately for 30 years. What would expire are some blanket surveillance orders authorized last year, which the majority of Democrats, including Senator Obama, voted against.
The current bill does include one useful amendment to FISA, which could be passed with virtually unanimous approval in an afternoon, to allow warrantless interception of foreign-to-foreign communications that happen to pass through the United States. No one opposes this.
Various administration officials have claimed that the requirement of applying for a warrant from the FISA court deprived them of speed and flexibility. This is false. The FISA allows for surveillance to be implemented in an emergency situation before a warrant is sought, and that could undoubtedly be extended with Congressional approval without controversy.
What the administration seeks, and this bill provides, is permanent warrantless surveillance.
4. Let’s consider an analogy: police officers have the legal right to stop you if you’re going 56 mph in a 55-mph zone, but this right isn’t often abused or applied to harass citizens. What makes you think the administration would abuse their surveillance powers if this amendment is approved?
The abuses of surveillance to which governments are drawn are those that keep them in office, used to intimidate and manipulate their rivals, and to avoid debate and dissent on their policies. These are exactly the abuses that the Church Committee discovered in 1975, which had been conducted on a wide-scale by the Johnson and Nixon administrations, and in some cases even earlier, which is what lead to FISA in the first place.
To remove judicial oversight, which this amendment would effectively do, is to invite the same kind of repressive abuse that lead to FISA in the first place.
5. Why would the current administration want this amendment to pass, if not for safety of citizens and prevention of attacks?
Using NSA to spy without judicial oversight or constraint on American citizens provides the infrastructure for dictatorship. George W. Bush has frequently said what other presidents may only have thought: “It would be a heck of a lot easier in a dictatorship, if only I were the dictator.”
Other presidents have violated the law and the Constitution in much the same way as Bush, so long as they could do it secretly, but they haven’t proclaimed that as a right of their office as Bush, Cheney and their legal advisors have done.
The oath of office they took, along with all members of Congress, was to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign or domestic. I believe that, in the matters we’ve been discussing, the Founders had it right, not only for their time but for ours.
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is considering letting the FBI investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial and ethnic groups.
urrently, FBI agents need reasons — such as evidence or allegations that a law probably has been violated — to investigate citizens and legal residents. The new policy, law enforcement officials say, would let agents open terrorism investigations after mining public records and intelligence to build a profile of traits that, taken together, are deemed suspicious.
Although President George W. Bush has disavowed targeting suspects based on their race or ethnicity, the new rules would let the FBI consider those factors among traits that could trigger a national security investigation.
Among factors that could make someone subject of an investigation is travel to regions of the world known for terrorist activity, access to weapons or military training, along with the person’s race or ethnicity. Law enforcement officials say the policy would help them find terrorists before they strike.
“We don’t know what we don’t know. And the object is to cut down on that,” said one FBI official.
FBI agents wouldn’t be allowed to eavesdrop on phone calls or dig deeply into personal data — such as the content of phone or e-mail records or bank statements — until a full investigation was opened.
More than a half-dozen senior FBI, Justice Department and other U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the new policy agreed to discuss it on condition of anonymity.
The change, expected later this summer, is part of an update of Justice Department policies amid the FBI’s transition from traditional crime fighting to protecting the nation from attacks. Attorney General Michael Mukasey acknowledged the overhaul was under way in early June.
If adopted, the guidelines would be put in place in the final months of a presidential administration that has been dogged by criticism that its counterterrorism programs trample privacy rights and civil liberties.
Critics say the presumption of innocence is lost in the proposal. The FBI could begin investigations simply “by assuming that everyone’s a suspect, and then you weed out the innocent,” said Caroline Fredrickson of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Courts across the country have overturned criminal convictions when defendants showed they were targeted based on race. Racial profiling generally is considered a civil rights violation, and former Attorney General John Ashcroft condemned it in March 2001 as an “unconstitutional deprivation of equal protection under our Constitution.”
Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the guidelines wouldn’t give the FBI more authority than it now has.
“Any review and change to the guidelines will reflect our traditional concerns for civil liberties and First Amendment liberties and our traditional investigative emphasis on using the least intrusive means feasible,” he said Wednesday.
Just days before the Senate will convene to give a final blessing to President Bush’s secret, warrantless wiretapping program, a federal court judge ruled that his legal justification for the surveillance has no legal merit.
He’s the same judge Congress is trying to save the nation’s telecoms, such as AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, from having to face in court.
Late Wednesday, U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker issued a ruling (.pdf) in a case against the government alleging illegal spying, finding that in 1978 Congress had clearly set out the rules for wiretapping inside the United States and that Bush’s claims to have inherent authority outside of those rules did not pass Constitutional muster.
Congress appears clearly to have intended to — and did — establish the exclusive means for foreign intelligence surveillance activities to be conducted. Whatever power the executive may otherwise have had in this regard, FISA limits the power of the executive branch to conduct such activities and it limits the executive branch’s authority to assert the state secrets privilege in response to challenges to the legality of its foreign intelligence surveillance activities.
Walker, the chief judge of the Northern District of California, affirmed that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is the exclusive legal method for conducting surveillance inside the United States against suspected spies and terrorist. The Bush Administration argues that Congress’s vote to authorize military force against Al Qaeda and the president’s inherent war time powers were exceptions to the exclusivity provision.
Not so, according to Walker:
This provision and its legislative history left no doubt that Congress intended to displace entirely the various warrantless wiretapping and surveillance programs undertaken by the executive branch and to leave no room for the president to undertake warrantless surveillance in the domestic sphere in the future.
As Threat Level pointed out last night, the ruling is likely to have little real consequence other than embarrassing Congress for failing to have the courage to stand up to defend the laws it itself passed. Instead of holding hearings and sending subpoenas, Congress is set to largely legalize dragnet surveillance being set up inside American telecom infrastructure and to make it very clear that they are serious about stopping warrantless wiretapping, they are adding exclamation points to the exclusivity provision.
They will also likely give retroactive amnesty to telecom companies that agreed to illegal and sweeping surveillance requests from the same government agencies that dole out fat secret contracts to the very same telecom companies.
So thanks to Congress’s pending meddling with the courts in capitulation to the President, Vaughn Walker’s ruling is the closest we will likely come to a judicial ruling on the limits of presidential power to spy on Americans.
Judge Vaughn Walker is no raging San Francisco liberal. He was appointed to the bench by President George H W Bush, and is known for his intellect and libertarian streak.
Walker also ruled that the government’s claims that the case would endanger national security did not overrule the provisions of law that let a spied-upon person sue the government for breaking the law.
But Walker dismissed the underlying case, which was based on a Top Secret document accidentally provided to American lawyers for a Muslim charity that the government was in the process of designating as a terrorist organization. The plaintiffs have been barred from using the document to prove they were spied on and thus can not prove standing. If they can find another way to prove they were spied on, they can refile the suit.
He’s the same judge who’s overseeing all the cases against the telecoms.
When the Senate votes Tuesday, they are voting to keep Judge Walker from examining whether the nation’s largest telecoms massively violated federal privacy laws by helping the government spy on Americans.
The vote for or against amnesty not about whether telecoms participate in the future. In the future, they are supposed to get court orders — that’s the promise of the bill.
The planned July 8 vote is whether or not Americans can get justice for a violation of federal law, or whether some of the nation’s largest companies — and by extension, the nation’s highest elected officials — are above the law.
Transcript:
Some Democratic Leaders say Impeachment is off the table.
So, let us set a new table for our nation, upon which we place the Constitution and where we demand that all those who have taken an oath to defend it .. keep their promise and protect our nation from the threat within.
Please go to kucinich.us now and sign the petition, which calls for impeachment. This is the one petition that will make a difference because I will be delivering it personally to your member of congress. Please circulate word of this petition far and wide, to all your friends and family. This is the one opportunity that we have right now to actually change events in this country.
Two hundred and thirty-two years ago, our nation was conceived in liberty. We have once again reached a moment of truth, one that Lincoln recognized at Gettysburg as to whether “this nation or any nation so conceived or so dedicated can long endure”.
Through the ashes of war, Lincoln prayed that “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom…and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
This Fourth of July, 2008, we face a different kind of war; one which is trying our souls.. a war based on lies. But with the power of truth and the power of the people we can achieve a new birth of freedom, standing up for what is good in America, insisting on the rule of law, demanding adherence to the Constitution, and supporting the impeachment of a President who lied to take us into a war against Iraq.
Be the answer to Lincoln’s Prayer. Please pledge your support now to restoring the rule of law in America. As we once again celebrate our Independence, let us celebrate freedom from fear and pledge that this government of the people will survive in this land that we love.
Please go to kucinich.us now. This is your chance to make a difference; truly celebrate our Independence. Thank you.
The British government is developing a plan to track current and former prisoners by means of microchips implanted under the skin, drawing intense criticism from probation officers and civil rights groups.
As a way to reduce prison crowding, many British prisoners are currently released under electronic monitoring, carried out by means of an ankle bracelet that transmits signals like those used by mobile phones.
Now the Ministry of Justice is exploring the possibility of injecting prisoners in the back of the arm with a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip that contains information about their name, address and criminal record. Such chips, which contain a built-in antenna, could be scanned by special readers. The implantation of RFID chips in luggage, pets and livestock has become increasingly popular in recent years.
In addition to monitoring incarcerated prisoners, the ministry hopes to use the chips on those who are on probation or other conditional release. By including a satellite uplink system in the chip, police would be able to use global positioning system (GPS) technology to track subjects’ exact locations at all times. According to advocates of such a measure, this could help keep sex offenders away from “forbidden” zones like schools.
Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers, blasted the measure as degrading to the people chipped and of no benefit to probation officers.
“Knowing where offenders like pedophiles are does not mean you know what they are doing,” Fletcher said. “Treating people like pieces of meat does not seem to represent an improvement in the system to me.”
Shami Chakrabarti of the civil rights group Liberty had even stronger words:
“If the Home Office doesn’t understand why implanting a chip in someone is worse than an ankle bracelet, they don’t need a human-rights lawyer; they need a common-sense bypass.”
“Never appease political bullies, President Bush admonished at the Israeli Knesset,” MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann opened. “Oddly, House Democrats chose to ignore him on the subject of dealing with him.”
Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley sees a “very frightening bill” in a proposed “compromise,” currently in the House, that would update the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to effectively grant immunity from civil lawsuits to telecommunications companies that agreed to spy on their customers as part of the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program, starting shortly before the World Trade Center attacks in 2001. If the White House asked a phone company to spy with its assurance that it was legal, the measure says, that’s enough to dismiss a case.
Congressional Democrats, Turley went on, knew about surveillance and torture programs, but were politically unable to oppose them at the same time they were touting themselves to the public as defenders of civil liberties. The bill, he said, is part of a campaign of collusion between Congress and the Bush administration, immunizing not only the telecommunications companies, but the administration and any members of Congress, on either side of the aisle, that may have been involved.
“The proposed FISA deal is not a compromise; it is a capitulation,” Senator Russ Feingold said today. “The House and Senate should not be taking up this bill, which effectively guarantees immunity for telecom companies alleged to have participated in the President�s illegal program, and which fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans at home. Allowing courts to review the question of immunity is meaningless when the same legislation essentially requires the court to grant immunity. And under this bill, the government can still sweep up and keep the international communications of innocent Americans in the U.S. with no connection to suspected terrorists, with very few safeguards to protect against abuse of this power. Instead of cutting bad deals on both FISA and funding for the war in Iraq, Democrats should be standing up to the flawed and dangerous policies of this administration.”
“The Democrats never really were engaged in this,” said Turley. “In fact, they repeatedly tried to cave in to the White House, only to be stopped by civil libertarians and bloggers.”
“I think they’re simply waiting to see if the public’s interest will wane,” he went on, referring to repeated attempts to float said legislation past the public. “This bill has quite literally no public value for citizens or civil liberties. It is reverse engineering, though the type of thing the Bush Administration’s famous for, and now the Democrats are doing–that is, to change the law to conform to past conduct.”
“It’s what any criminal would love to do,” Turley continued. “You rob a bank, go to the legislature, and change the law to say that robbing banks is lawful.”
“People need to be very, very much aware of this bill,” he charged. “What you’re seeing in this bill is an evisceration of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. It is something that allows the President and the government to go into law-abiding homes, on their word alone–their suspicion alone–and to engage in warrantless surveillance.
“That’s what the framers who drafted the Fourth Amendment wanted to prevent.”
