‘Ridiculous’ to think program doesn’t violate Posse Comitatus, ACLU lobbyist tells War On You
The Department of Homeland Security has been given the money it needs to begin turning international spy satellites within the country’s borders, despite lingering fears about the program’s lack of focus and the potential for it to infringe upon Americans’ civil liberties.
After more than a year of delay, Congress quietly authorized DHS to begin sharing data gathered by military satellites with civilian and law enforcement agencies. A $634 billion spending bill signed into law earlier this week provides funds for DHS to establish the satellite surveillance program, known as the National Applications Office, without addressing the myriad concerns about NAO privacy and civil liberties protections that had been delaying its implementation.
Supporters of the program claim, according to the Wall Street Journal, that its scope will be limited to “emergency response and scientific needs,” but civil liberties advocates and some members of Congress fear the door has been open for the highly classified satellite surveillance program to shift into high gear.
“I’m kinda shocked it got through,” Tim Sparapani, an American Civil Liberties Union lobbyist, told Raw Story, saying the spending bill language authorizing the NAO is not “strong enough to forbid what we would want to see forbidden.”
Essentially, the bill only requires the Homeland Security Secretary to assure lawmakers that NAO programs comply with exisiting laws. Congress also has required the DHS Inspector General to provide quarterly classified reports on how much information has been collected by the domestic satellite surveillance, although the bill required those reports be made to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, not the Homeland Security Committees that are traditionally in charge of DHS oversight.
House Homeland Security Committee members recommended the program be put on hold a year ago, when they requested documents outlining its legal framework and privacy protections. Those reports still have not been handed over, and committee members are not happy at the apparent subversion they suffered by Appropriations Committee members.
“It would appear they have not been satisfied in their demands,” Sparapani said of the Homeland Security Committee members who have objected to the satellite surveillance.
Rep. Jane Harman, who has compared the Bush administration’s efforts to expand the use of spy satellites to its warrantless wiretapping program, has been one of the key members attempting to block implementation of the program until all these questions are answered.
“Having learned my lesson,” she told the Journal, “I don’t want to go there again unless and until the legal framework for the entire program is entirely spelled out.”
Lawmakers also have seen a 60-page report from the Government Accountability Office, on the condition they not release the report publicly. Sources described its contents for the Journal’s Siobhan Gorman, who reports that GAO found that DHS “lacks assurance that NAO operations will comply with applicable laws and privacy and civil liberties standards.”
The report cites gaps in privacy safeguards. The department, it found, lacks controls to prevent improper use of domestic-intelligence data by other agencies and provided insufficient assurance that requests for classified information will be fully reviewed to ensure it can be legally provided.
A DHS official told Gorman the department worked hard to include privacy protection and a spokeswoman justified the satellite surveillance’s legality because GAO did not specifically say it violates any current laws.
That justification misses the point, Sparapani says, because GAO simply answers questions posed by Congress, and since its latest report has not been made public, no one outside of the government knows what those questions are.
Besides, he says, it’s not GAO’s job to determine whether programs are legal or not.
“That’s like asking the FDA to talk about Internet communications,” he says.
Raw Story has left a message with DHS seeking further comment.
There are further concerns about whether the surveillance program would violate Posse Comitatus, which prohibits the military from participating in domestic law enforcement activities. It’s “ridiculous” to think that’s not what would be happening under this program, Sparapani says.
The ACLU is examining all its options in trying to prevent implementation of this program, which has dramatic potential to violate citizens rights, he says, but filing a lawsuit against DHS may be untenable because of the classified nature of the activities and the difficulty in being able to demonstrate any particular defendant was directly harmed.
Mostly, the ACLU will continue to push Congress and encouraging efforts of lawmakers like Harman and Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson to stop the program.
“The Homeland Security Committee has the right instinct,” Sparapani says. “It smells a rotten fish, and the only thing you can do with a rotten fish is throw it out in the trash.”
New microchipped passports designed to be foolproof against identity theft can be cloned and manipulated in minutes and accepted as genuine by the computer software recommended for use at international airports.
Tests for The Times exposed security flaws in the microchips introduced to protect against terrorism and organised crime. The flaws also undermine claims that 3,000 blank passports stolen last week were worthless because they could not be forged.
In the tests, a computer researcher cloned the chips on two British passports and implanted digital images of Osama bin Laden and a suicide bomber. The altered chips were then passed as genuine by passport reader software used by the UN agency that sets standards for e-passports.
The Home Office has always argued that faked chips would be spotted at border checkpoints because they would not match key codes when checked against an international data-base. But only ten of the forty-five countries with e-passports have signed up to the Public Key Directory (PKD) code system, and only five are using it. Britain is a member but will not use the directory before next year. Even then, the system will be fully secure only if every e-passport country has joined.
Some of the 45 countries, including Britain, swap codes manually, but criminals could use fake e-passports from countries that do not share key codes, which would then go undetected at passport control.
The tests suggest that if the microchips are vulnerable to cloning then bogus biometrics could be inserted in fake or blank passports.
Tens of millions of microchipped passports have been issued by the 45 countries in the belief that they will make international travel safer. They contain a tiny radio frequency chip and antenna attached to the inside back page. A special electronic reader sends out an encrypted signal and the chip responds by sending back the holder’s ID and biometric details.
Britain introduced e-passports in March 2006. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the United States demanded that other countries adopt biometric passports. Many of the 9/11 bombers had travelled on fake passports.
The tests for The Times were conducted by Jeroen van Beek, a security researcher at the University of Amsterdam. Building on research from the UK, Germany and New Zealand, Mr van Beek has developed a method of reading, cloning and altering microchips so that they are accepted as genuine by Golden Reader, the standard software used by the International Civil Aviation Organisation to test them. It is also the software recommended for use at airports.
Using his own software, a publicly available programming code, a £40 card reader and two £10 RFID chips, Mr van Beek took less than an hour to clone and manipulate two passport chips to a level at which they were ready to be planted inside fake or stolen paper passports.
A baby boy’s passport chip was altered to contain an image of Osama bin Laden, and the passport of a 36-year-old woman was changed to feature a picture of Hiba Darghmeh, a Palestinian suicide bomber who killed three people in 2003. The unlikely identities were chosen so that there could be no suggestion that either Mr van Beek or The Times was faking viable travel documents.
“We’re not claiming that terrorists are able to do this to all passports today or that they will be able to do it tomorrow,” Mr van Beek said. “But it does raise concerns over security that need to be addressed in a more public and open way.”
The tests also raise serious questions about the Government’s £4 billion identity card scheme, which relies on the same biometric technology. ID cards are expected to contain similar microchips that will store up to 50 pieces of personal and biometric information about their holders. Last night Dominic Grieve, the Shadow Home Secretary, called on ministers to take urgent action to remedy the security flaws discovered by The Times. “It is of deep concern that the technology underpinning a key part of the UK’s security can be compromised so easily,” he said.
The ability to clone chips leaves travellers vulnerable to identity theft when they surrender their passports at hotels or car rental companies. Criminals in the back office could read the chips and clone them. The original passport holder’s name and date of birth could be left on the fake chip, with the picture, fingerprints and other biometric data of a criminal client added. The criminal could then travel the world using the stolen identity and the original passport holder would be none the wiser.
The Home Office said last night that it had yet to see evidence of someone being able to manipulate data in an e-passport. A spokesman said: “No one has yet been able to demonstrate that they are able to modify, change or alter data within the chip. If any data were to be changed, modified or altered it would be immediately obvious to the electronic reader.”
The International Civil Aviation Organisation said: “The PKD ensures that e-passports used at border control points . . . are genuine and unaltered. In effect it renders the passport fool-proof. However, all states issuing e-passports must join the PKD, otherwise that assurance cannot be given.”
Going biometric
1999 International Civil Aviation Organisation begins study into possibility of worldwide use of travel documents carrying biometric data
2002 After 9/11 US announces all passports issued from 2006 and used to enter the country must contain biometric information or holder will require a visa
2006 Britain and many EU countries introduce biometric passports
2008 45 countries have introduced biometric passports. 100 million have been issued globally
NEW YORK (Reuters) - New Yorkers can soon take a bite out of city crime by uploading video or photo evidence directly to the New York Police Department, in a move welcomed on Thursday by civil rights groups.
“We’re putting that technology in place to enable us to do that,” said Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, adding that the service will be available soon.
“It’s a fact of life,” Kelly said. “Everybody has a camera in their telephones. When people can record an event taking place that helps us during an investigation, it’s helpful.”
Soon citizen sleuths can transmit evidence of criminal activity directly to the police and 911, including evidence of police misconduct, such as the recent video of a police officer shoving a bicyclist to the ground in Times Square.
The video of the incident has received over one million views on YouTube and has generated online discussion about police brutality and abuse of power.
Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union said, “I think that while it’s appropriate for the police department to invite video reports of wrong doing both by ordinary people and police officers, the New York Police Department has a long way to go to ensure that police officers who engage in wrongdoing like what was captured in the two video tapes that were recently disclosed are held accountable.”
Friday, July 25, 2008 The media hailed Obama’s Berlin speech in front of hundreds of thousands yesterday as a call for a vision of America as part of a “new world order”.
Excerpts from The International Herald Tribune:
“I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before,” Obama said, confronting the delicate issue of campaigning abroad. “Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen — a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world.”
Obama was warmly embraced by the German press, which frequently referred to his aura, or as the newspaper Bild put it in Thursday’s paper, the “political pop star.”
“Yes, there have been differences between America and Europe,” Obama said. “No doubt, there will be differences in the future. But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together. A change of leadership in Washington will not lift this burden. In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more — not less. Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.”
When travelers go to the airport, they know what kind of security to expect: luggage searches, metal detectors and shoe inspections.
It’s all part of our post 9-11 reality enforced by the Transportation Security Adminstration. But as CBS 2 Investigator Pam Zekman reports, thousands of travelers have complained that some of these screenings can become abusive and even x-rated.
For arguing with a TSA agent, Robin Kassner wound up being slammed to the floor. She’s filed a lawsuit.
“I kept begging them over and over again get off of me … and they wouldn’t stop,” Kassner said.
And it wasn’t enough for another woman to show TSA agents nipple rings that set off a metal detector. The agents forced her to take them out.
Mandi Hamlin said, “I had to get pliers and pull it apart.”
In Chicago, people like Robert Perry are subjected to exhaustive security checks. He was patted down, his wheel chair was examined and his hands were swabbed, all in public view in a see-through room at the security checkpoint. Perry, 71, is not alone
“It’s humiliation,” Perry said.
Perry was also taken to a see-through room by a TSA agent when his artificial knee set off the metal detector.
“He yelled at me to get the belt off. ‘I told you to get the belt off.’ So I took the belt off. He ran his hands down over and pulled the pants down, they went down around my ankle,” Perry said.
At that point, Perry was standing in his underwear in public view. He asked to see a supervisor. That made things worse.
“She was yelling ‘I have power, I have power, I have power,” Perry said. The power to stop him from flying to Florida with his wife that day to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.
“It makes you feel like you have no rights,” Perry said.
Perry said he always alerts TSA agents about his metal knee and wonders why they can’t just check his leg.
“If somebody told me that I would save the people on the airplane by taking my pants off out in public out there, I wouldn’t mind doing it, but this was not necessary,” Perry said.
TSA officials said that when the metal detectors go off, their agents must resolve what caused the alarm. But experts have said it’s important to use common sense when balancing security and customer service.
Carlos Villarreal, former director of security for the Sears Tower, said proper training is crucial. “When you’re wanding somebody and you can identify which part of the body set of the alarm, that should be sufficient to clear a person,” Villarreal said.
But all too often, it’s not enough for 16-year old Michael Angone. She frequently flies as a member of the Chicago Children’s Choir.
“I’ve had to completely take my pants off and show them like my entire leg,” Angone said.
As a baby, Angone was diagnosed with cancer. Her parents, both Chicago police officers, had to have her leg amputated. She said she always warns TSA security agents that her prosthetic leg will set off the metal detector, but many insist on doing an embarrassing full body pat-down.
“I feel like I’m being felt up in public,” Angone said.
Her father Bob Angone wanted to know, “What’s the reason for all the feeling up, you know the groping at the back of the neck, the chest, underneath the bra, all the groping on her body, her buttocks?”
CBS 2 News asked the TSA those questions, but got no answers.
“The key word here is reasonable, and they have gone off the track. They are not reasonable,” Bob Angone said.
The TSA declined to comment on the Angone and Perry cases, but the agency has announced that soon, passengers who set off an alarm that cannot be resolved will have a choice: Agree to a physical pat-down or what some believe is an even worse invasion of privacy.
This fall, O’Hare International Airport will get its first advanced digital x-ray machine. It allows TSA agents to see through clothes and discover any hidden weapons. Critics have likened it to a virtual strip search.
A spokesman said that out of 2 billion passengers screened nationwide since 9-11, there have been only 110,000 abuse complaints.
As for the nipple ring case, TSA did change its procedures regarding body piercings.
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.”
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.
Last night on MSNBC’s Coundown, George Washington law professor Jonathan Turley noted that just this week, a federal judge rejected President Bush’s claim that his “constitutional authority as commander in chief trumped” the FISA wiretapping law. Judge Vaughn Walker explicitly stated that the President is bound by FISA
Congress appears clearly to have intended to — and did — establish the exclusive means for foreign intelligence 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.
In other words, when Bush contravened the FISA law by authoring warrantless wiretaps through the National Security Agency, he broke the law. Turley said last night that this is an “inconvenient fact” for many in Congress to admit:
Nobody wants to have a confrontation over the fact that the President committed a felony – not one, but at least 30 times. That’s a very inconvenient fact right now in Washington.
Bush has acknowledged that he reauthorized his illegal wiretapping program “more than 30 times since the September the 11th attacks.”
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.
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.
Mark Klein, the retired AT&T engineer who stepped forward with the technical documents at the heart of the anti-wiretapping case against AT&T, is furious at the Senate’s vote on Wednesday night to hold a vote on a bill intended to put an end to that lawsuit and more than 30 others.
[Wednesday]’s vote by Congress effectively gives retroactive immunity to the telecom companies and endorses an all-powerful president. It’s a Congressional coup against the Constitution.
The Democratic leadership is touting the deal as a “compromise,” but in fact they have endorsed the infamous Nuremberg defense: “Just following orders.” The judge can only check their paperwork. This cynical deal is a Democratic exercise in deceit and cowardice.
Klein saw a network monitoring room being built in AT&T’s internet switching center that only NSA-approved techs had access to. He squirreled away documents and then presented them to the press and the Electronic Frontier Foundation after news of the government’s warrantless wiretapping program broke.
Wired.com independently acquired a copy of the documents (.pdf) — which were under court seal — and published the wiring documents in May 2006 so that they could be evaluated.
The lawsuit that resulted from his documents is now waiting on the 9th U.S. Appeals Court to rule on whether it can proceed despite the government saying the whole matter is a state secret. A lower court judge ruled that it could, because the government admitted the program existed and that the courts could handle evidence safely and in secret.
But the appeals court ruling will likely never see the light of day, since the Senate is set to vote on July 8 on the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which also largely legalizes Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program by expanding how the government can wiretap from inside the United States without getting individualized court orders.
Klein continues:
Congress has made the FISA law a dead letter–such a law is useless if the president can break it with impunity. Thus the Democrats have surreptitiously repudiated the main reform of the post-Watergate era and adopted Nixon’s line: “When the president does it that means that it is not illegal.” This is the judicial logic of a dictatorship.
The surveillance system now approved by Congress provides the physical apparatus for the government to collect and store a huge database on virtually the entire population, available for data mining whenever the government wants to target its political opponents at any given moment—all in the hands of an unrestrained executive power. It is the infrastructure for a police state.
Neither the House nor the Senate has had Klein testify, nor have telecom executives testified in open session about their participation.
The bill forces the district court judge handling the consolidated cases against telecoms to dismiss the suits if the Attorney General certifies that a government official sent a written request to a phone or internet provider, saying that the President approved the program and his lawyers deemed it legal. Judge Vaughn Walker of the California Northern District can ask to see the paperwork, but would not be given leeway to decide if the program was legal.
Under the old FISA bill, you could eavesdrop on foreign powers (or agents of foreign powers) who were trying to engage in “sabotage” and “international terrorism.” To that, the new bill adds the practice of trafficking in weapons of mass destruction as being grounds for eavesdropping.
And exactly what are WMDs under the new FISA bill, you ask? Let’s go to Thomas, that very useful government database, and find out. Under title VII, section 110, there is the new definition:
`(1) any explosive, incendiary, or poison gas device that is designed, intended, or has the capability to cause a mass casualty incident;
`(2) any weapon that is designed, intended, or has the capability to cause death or serious bodily injury to a significant number of persons through the release, dissemination, or impact of toxic or poisonous chemicals or their precursors;
`(3) any weapon involving a biological agent, toxin, or vector (as such terms are defined in section 178 of title 18, United States Code) that is designed, intended, or has the capability to cause death, illness, or serious bodily injury to a significant number of persons; or
`(4) any weapon that is designed, intended, or has the capability to release radiation or radioactivity causing death, illness, or serious bodily injury to a significant number of persons.’
Now, two things of interest leap to my attention here. First is the qualifier of “significant number of persons” as the definition of a mass casualty incident. That’s good; many discussions just default to explaining WMDs as “any chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapon.” Thus, you get the ridiculous examples of the FBI calling a few grams of ricin or a cylinder of chlorine a “WMD” if someone threatens to use it against the public. They don’t consider quantity to be a factor in prosecuting a case. When the term “WMD” was defined by the United Nations in 1948, they specifically meant “things on the scale of an atomic bomb.” No one has defined what “significant number of persons” is, though. I guess it’s like pornography, you know mass casualties when you see them (100 people? 1,000? 10,000?). Again, at the least, it takes more than a few (or a few dozen) casualties to constitute a mass-casualty event (FBI, take note).
Second, see subparagraph where it says that “any explosive, incendiary, or poison gas device”? Here’s where they screwed up big time, by not asking anyone with a Defense Department background for advice. The military (and arms control community) deliberately excludes incendiary devices from the definition of a chemical weapon (and thus, would exclude incendiaries from the WMD definition). They are conventional weapons with specific guidelines (see Protocol III here). Just because incendiary weapons use chemicals does not make them unconventional weapons, and I don’t think we need to track nations or arms dealers who traffic in napalm, fuel-air explosives and flamethrowers.
I really wish they would leave explosives out, too. They are not on the scale of WMDs — again, by the UN definition, a single explosive device doesn’t come close to the effect of an atomic bomb (although kudos to the Air Force for trying). Oklahoma City was a tragedy, but it was not a WMD event, and the two planes that hit the World Trade Center on 9/11 were not WMDs — they were improvised high-explosive devices. If I had to guess, this is the work of some eager beaver who has Justice Department background and he wants to ensure that older (and inaccurate) Title 18 definitions of WMD still apply for the law enforcement community. There continues to be debate within the Defense Department about including high-yield explosives in the definition — a strategy document from the Office of the Secretary of Defense says no, the antiterrorism community says yes.
This is a significant addition, however, and I’d be very curious to find out who sponsored this part of the legislation. It is certainly an expansion of powers for the “combating WMD” community and demonstrates that the government is still afraid of the WMD boogeyman (but not enough to get its definition straight). So, no more nuclear weapons conversations with Iranians or North Koreans on the phone. Big Brother is listening.
House Democrats who flipped their votes to support retroactive immunity for telecom companies in last week’s FISA bill took thousands of dollars more from phone companies than Democrats who consistently voted against legislation with an immunity provision, according to an analysis by MAPLight.org.
In March, the House passed an amendment that rejected retroactive immunity. But last week, 94 Democrats who supported the March amendment voted to support the compromise FISA legislation, which includes a provision that could let telecom companies that cooperated with the government’s warrantless electronic surveillance off the hook.
The 94 Democrats who changed their positions received on average $8,359 in contributions from Verizon, AT&T and Sprint from January, 2005, to March, 2008, according to the analysis by MAPLight, a nonpartisan organization that tracks the connection between campaign contributions and legislative outcomes.
Retroactive immunity could squash about 40 lawsuits pending against telecommunication companies that helped the government monitor the telecommunications traffic of Americans without warrants. The telecom industry has lobbied hard to insure that the provision is included in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act update Congress is currently considering.
Nick Papas, spokesman for the House Democratic Caucus, said, “Many members of the caucus opposed the earlier version of this legislation and ultimately supported better legislation that was the product of bipartisan negotiations. Months of hard work, not campaign contributions, earned the support of many members.”
MAPLight executive director Daniel Newman agreed that there are many factors that affect a lawmaker’s vote but, unlike pressure from constituents, campaign cash is not a “democratic influence.”
The 116 Democrats who remained opposed to telecom immunity received an average of $4,987 from the telecoms during the three-year period, the analysis showed.
“Regardless which way the legislators’ vote, the fact is most of them get money from the telecom industry and that buys access even if it doesn’t buy a favorable result for telecom,” Newman said.
The members who voted yes on June 20 received, on average, $9,659 from the big three phone companies while those who opposed the bill received an average of $4,810, MAPLight found.
The money provides special interests with a bigger megaphone, Newman said.
“Who’s more likely to get a meeting you or AT&T, which donates million of dollars and has the legislator’s ear?”
Four young residents of a North Philadelphia house who circulated petitions questioning police-surveillance cameras were rousted from their home Friday and detained 12 hours without charges while police searched their house.
Daniel Moffat, 28, a co-owner of the house, said police had no warrant when they entered. The house was examined by officials from several government agencies and then shuttered by the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections.
“This leaves me homeless, without access to things I need. My whole life is disrupted,” Moffat said yesterday.
The raid on the property on Ridge Avenue near Parrish Street was led by 9th District Police Capt. Dennis Wilson, who was quoted in an online story by the City Paper as saying of the residents: “They’re a hate group. We’re trying to drum up charges against them, but unfortunately we’ll probably have to let them go.”
Reached yesterday by the Daily News, Wilson said he was unable to comment.
Police spokesman Lt. Frank Vanore said police had gone to the property because a nearby surveillance camera had been spray-painted and rendered inoperable, and interviews with neighbors led police to suspect that “people in this house were possibly involved.”
Vanore said that when Moffat and others declined to identify themselves and cooperate, police entered the property because “they had probable cause to believe there was trespassing or even burglarizing.”
Once inside, Vanore said, police saw things that prompted them to obtain a search warrant, such as protest literature, anti-police graffiti on walls, and the construction of what police thought might be a bunker on the roof.
Before the day ended, the property also was visited by members of the state police, the Fire Marshal’s Office, and the Philadelphia Housing Authority. Details of the story are in dispute.
Viewed from the sidewalk, the property doesn’t look inhabited. The first floor is a decrepit storefront covered by a metal gate. The second-floor windows are covered with plywood.
But Moffat said that since he and Robert Gilbert bought the place four years ago, they’ve repaired the roof and worked to restore the interior. Moffat said he and three friends who live there are active in the Francisville community, distributing free food at times and helping with a community garden. Co-owner Gilbert does not live there.
Moffat grew up in Southern California and attended San Francisco State University before moving to Philadelphia in 2003.
He said he isn’t a member of any political group, but he said he and others in the house recently circulated petitions that raised questions about the appearance of surveillance cameras in the neighborhood and about the beating of three suspects by police that was seen on a TV video.
Moffat said police did not mention damage to any surveillance camera when they arrived Friday morning. He said Wilson had told him police had received a complaint that the residents of the house were living there illegally.
Moffat said he had been intimidated by the presence of the officers and told Wilson, falsely, that he didn’t own the property, but could call the owner. He said he asked Wilson if he had a warrant, and none was produced.
Moffat said he was handcuffed and placed in a patrol car while police entered the building, began a search and arrested the other three residents. Moffat said once the search began and L&I officials were called, he told Wilson that he owned the property and could show him a deed inside, but that Wilson wasn’t interested. He asked what they were accused of.
“You’re not being charged,
you’re being investigated,” he said Wilson told him. At another point Wilson said, “call it a kidnapping.”
Then after about two hours, Moffat said, he was taken to jail.
“We’re going to do you a favor,” Moffat said Wilson told him. “It’s a very hot day, and we’re going to bring you down the district and put you in a cell so you don’t overheat.”
Moffat and his housemates weren’t released until after midnight. but Moffat said he was told the house was sealed, and they could only come in the next day with a police escort to retrieve personal belongings.
“When I got to my room, it had been thoroughly searched,” Moffat said. “All my photographs on the floor, all my filing cabinets emptied. It was a wreck. Some of the stuff from my room was in other rooms.”
Moffat said he was given a property receipt indicating his laptop computer is now in the possession of the State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation, Intelligence Division.
State Police spokeswoman Cpl. Linette Quinn said she didn’t know anything about the raid or whether state police had the computer.
“You have to talk to Philadelphia police,” she said.
Philadelphia police spokesman Vanore said he didn’t know why the state police were brought in, but said there may have been protest literature involving the issue of police-surveillance cameras in other states.
Vanore said when police entered the property, they saw anti-police graffiti on walls, including the phrase, “kill the pigs.” He said there was spray paint, including some that matched the color spayed on the police surveillance video.
And he said the structure on the roof “was similar to what we saw on Osage Avenue,” referring to the rooftop fortification built by the radical group MOVE before the 1985 confrontation that killed 11 people.
The bunker charge provoked a chuckle from Moffat.
“It’s a greenhouse,” he said.
Moffat said the anti-police graffiti was on the wall of an adjacent building accessible from his roof, he said, and it was there when they moved in.
Moffat said they had a box with some spray paint, since they’d been doing renovations. But he adamantly denied having anything to do with spraying the surveillance camera.
Kirk Dorn of the Philadelphia Housing Authority said the city called his agency to seal up the property because they’d determined it was unfit for human habitation. It didn’t have proper running water and had holes in walls and floors.
Moffat acknowledged that he didn’t have proper permits for renovations he was doing, but insisted that the place had running water and flushing toilets, and that any holes in floors were “tiny, where vents had been.”
Vanore said police will conduct a forensic examination of the items taken from the property to see if any charges are warranted.
Moffat and co-owner Gilbert said they’re exploring their legal options. Moffat is now staying with friends. *
