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Civil Liberties Safe and Free Zone"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion."
DHS aide bashed Bush online National Security Department: Listening In Eavesdropping, Gagging, and the Constitution The Wiretapping Scam Congressional Castration American Bar Association will review Bush's Signing Statements Power Grab Bill of Rights Defense Committee Fierce Watchdog of the Constitution While Napolitano has indeed been informing American citizens about what's dangerous in the Patriot acts—as well as about Ashcroft's defiance of the Bill of Rights in his executive orders—the news media, in all its forms, has not been anywhere near as sustained and persistently analytical as Napolitano in educating the public. Most citizens are largely uneducated about their own constitutional rights and liberties, let alone those of others. And journalists are—or should be—educators on what the rule of law is, and specifically how it is being abused by government in Washington and elsewhere. A month after the September 11 terrorist attacks, Judge Napolitano wrote in the New Jersey Law Journal: "In a democracy, personal liberties are rarely diminished overnight. Rather, they are lost gradually, by acts of well-meaning people, with good intentions, amid public approval. But the subtle loss of freedom is never recognized until the crisis is over and we look back in horror. And then it is too late." Never before in our history—in view of the government's unprecedentedly vast surveillance technology and other resources—have we needed more ceaseless watchdogs over the Constitution. Why, throughout the media including in daily newspapers, are there not more Judge Andrew Napolitanos? See you in a month. Ashcroft Bundles Drugs Into Terror Target: 'Narco-Terror' Miami federal court has 'secret docket' to keep some cases hidden from public A secret docketing system hiding some sensitive Miami federal court cases from public view has been exposed and is being challenged in two higher courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. "We don't have secret justice in this country," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. The Washington-based journalists watchdog group is asking the appellate courts to open up two Miami federal cases it says were litigated in secret. F.B.I. Scrutinizes Antiwar Rallies "The F.B.I. is dangerously targeting Americans who are engaged in nothing more than lawful protest and dissent," said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "The line between terrorism and legitimate civil disobedience is blurred, and I have a serious concern about whether we're going back to the days of Hoover." FBI let innocents get death sentences Earlier this year in New York City, In What Language?, a piece of musical theatre by Vijay Iyer, the son of Indian immigrants, opened off off-Broadway. The work explored how ill-formed suspicions of Arabs, south-east Asians and Muslims in American airports are making life in transit impossible for this group of the population. (The phrase "Flying While Brown" can now be added to that equally pithy, but accurate description of American discrimination, "Driving While Black".) Bush's Monitoring of Protests Belies FBI Hoover's Long Shadow Looms FBI Publicly Denies Spying on Protesters FBI Plans for Antiwar Movement Spur Opposition Patriot Act Author Has Concerns New surveillance guidelines fuel debate in California He Respected the Badge, But `Not in Miami' "As the story comes out, over the next few hours and days and weeks, the public is going to learn what we saw on the street, that the police provoked these exchanges and went way out of their way to increase the magnitude of their response," said Ron Judd, a regional director for the AFL-CIO. "There was nothing measured in their response. We had retired steel workers, retired firefighters, retired teamsters harassed and arrested Thursday. "When you start shooting seniors with rubber bullets and using pepper spray on them and arresting them, it's just outrageous," Judd said. "And if their stories don't get people's dander up and the public isn't outraged by this, then folks in South Florida have no heart." As far as the national leadership of the AFL-CIO is concerned, what happened in Miami was an insult to every member of the organization. "You are going to hear from us loud and clear over the next few weeks and months," he said. "All of the options are open -- asking the Justice Department to investigate civil rights abuses, filing our own lawsuits against the city and the county and whatever we can think of. That is how outraged we are by this." When Attorney General John Ashcroft announced in May 2002 that he was lifting restrictions on domestic spying by the FBI - rules that had been put in place in response to the bureau's excesses during the 1960s and '70s - he promised the sweeping new powers would be used only "for the purpose of detecting and preventing terrorism." Now we know better. A classified FBI intelligence memorandum has recently come to light demonstrating that the FBI is using this new authority to spy on nonviolent antiwar demonstrators. Ashcroft seems to be ushering us back to the bad old days of J. Edgar Hoover, when the FBI made enemies of those who engaged in political dissent and civil disobedience. US fires Guantanamo defence team "It's like you took military justice, gave it to a prosecutor and said, 'modify it any way you want'," the source said. "The government would like to say we have done these commissions before. But what happened after [the Nazi cases] was the military justice system changed. What we have done is stupid. It is, I would say, an insult to the military, to the evolution of the military justice system. They want to take us back to 1942." "There is no rule of law in Guantanamo; that is the whole idea," Steyn observed of the U.S. legalism of using the fact that the prisoners did not wear uniforms as justification to exclude them from the protections of the Geneva Convention. Instead, they are to be tried by secret military tribunals with the power to impose death sentences. There was not "a vestige of legitimacy in domestic or international law," to this interpretation, said Steyn. Steyn quoted an American authority's observation that these procedures "are the kinds of trials one associates with the most lawless totalitarian regimes." He then asked the essential question: "What must authoritarian regimes, or countries with dubious human rights records, make of the example set by the most powerful of all democracies?" Who's Behind the Attack on Liberal Professors? Anti-Patriot Act Measure Drops From Bill Naked Gun Sex, Blood and the FBI Last week, the U.S. Congress approved an expansion of FBI powers that will allow Attorney General John Ashcroft's federal police to arbitrarily seize records from a range of private businesses without bothering a judge or grand jury with any silly-billy nonsense about evidence or even suspicion of criminal intent. All Ashcroft's boys have to do is say, "Boo! Terrorism!" and they can take whatever they want. FBI applies new rules to surveillance The result is that the FBI, unhindered by the restrictions of the past, will conduct many more searches and wiretaps that are subject to oversight by a secret intelligence court rather than regular criminal courts, officials said. Civil liberties groups and defense lawyers predict that more innocent people will be the targets of clandestine surveillance. Bush signs bill extending FBI powers The Creeping Militarization of the Home Front Justice Dept. Finds Evidence of Abuse of Sept. 11 Detainees The Justice Department's inspector general announced today that investigators had found hundreds of prison videotapes that were not turned over by federal prison officials during an earlier investigation and that the tapes confirm reports of serious physical and verbal abuse of immigrants detained after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Inspector General Glenn A. Fine found that "some officers slammed and bounced detainees against the wall, twisted their arms and hands in painful ways, stepped on their leg restraint chains and punished them by keeping them restrained for long periods of time," according to a report released today. Appeals court: Guantanamo prisoners should have access to lawyers, U.S. court system Ashcroft Admonished for Meddling in Terror Case POLICE SPYING OPERATION EXPOSED Appeals Court Orders Release of American Held as Combatant Audio of Attorney-Detainee Interviews Called Illegal Miami Judge: I Saw Police Commit Felonies The Two Troublemakers Courts Put a Dent in Bush's 'Say-So' Detentions Cops defend use of 'spy' tactics Ashcroft Recuses Himself From Leak Investigation Republican legal sources who have discussed the case with the White House and the Justice Department said the announcement would have the effect of providing political cover for the administration if no indictment were issued. One of these sources added that administration officials had expressed a desire to "depoliticize" the issue before the presidential campaign begins in earnest. Ashcroft to Remove Himself From Inquiry Into C.I.A. Leak Ashcroft Recuses Self From CIA Leak Probe WASHINGTON (AP) - Attorney General John Ashcroft on Tuesday recused himself from the politically sensitive investigation of who leaked the name of a CIA operative. The Justice Department quickly named a special prosecutor to take over the investigation. How US Manipulates News to Suit Its Interests Terrorism Case Thrown Into Turmoil Gay images removed from National Mall video In Greensboro, after Stuber showed his passport he was told that he could not fly overseas or domestically. Undeterred, he next traveled an hour-and-a-half to Charlotte. In Charlotte, the same thing happened. Then Stuber drove three hours to his home after 43 hours of trying to catch a flight.
Stuber said he could only conclude that the Greens, whose values include nonviolence, social justice, etc., are now labeled terrorists by the Ashcroft-led Justice Department. The Government's Air Passenger Blacklist How to Find That Needle Hopelessly Lost in the Haystack The Defense Department's decision to follow Wal-Mart's lead was another lift for EPCglobal. The department has been a leader in the use of a different type of R.F.I.D. technology, known as an "active" system, which requires tags to have batteries or other power sources to contact the scanning device. Those systems are linked to global positioning satellites that track equipment in remote areas like Afghanistan and Iraq. The new commercial version of the technology, in which the tags do not have a power source, has a maximum range of about 20 feet. The next big event for R.F.I.D. developers is a Nov. 4 meeting at which Wal-Mart will provide details for how suppliers can comply with its needs. Fierce Fight Over Secrecy, Scope of Law Last year, the House and Senate Judiciary committees -- charged with overseeing the Justice Department -- began to send the agency written requests for statistics summarizing how often Patriot Act provisions had been used. The first replies largely made clear that the information sought by lawmakers was classified. Ashcroft tours the country in a quest for power The vote caught Ashcroft by surprise. Quickly, however, his spin machinery rolled into high gear, cranking out news releases blasting the House vote. The administration declared that any move to limit its sneak-and-peek power would essentially gut the war against terrorism and would lead directly to loss of lives. It is precisely this exaggerated, fear-inducing attitude that has given rise to much of the skepticism. Legal or not, the campaign seeks to shore up a deeply flawed piece of legislation. The Patriot Act is the Bush administration's attempt to make the country safe on the cheap. Rather than do the hard work of coming up with effective port security and air cargo checks, and other programs targeted at actual threats, the administration has taken aim at civil liberties. The administration is clearly worried, as opposition to the excesses of the Patriot Act grows across the country and the political spectrum. Instead of spin-doctoring the problem, Mr. Ashcroft should work with the law's critics to develop a law that respects Americans' fundamental rights. Ashcroft Bundles Drugs Into Terror Target: 'Narco-Terror' The department recently posted a new Web site www.lifeandliberty.gov ,with questions and answers addressing many of the complaints critics have about the Patriot Act. That may sound reasonable, and current law does permit investigators in certain types of cases to use administrative subpoenas, which FBI agents can issue with far less oversight. But until now there have been important limits to administrative subpoena power. While investigators can use an administrative subpoena to obtain documents, they cannot normally compel testimony in criminal cases. The exception is a provision of federal drug law on which the Bush proposal, contained in a bill introduced this week by Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.), is modeled. Yet even there, prosecutors generally use the power to obtain records, not testimony, law enforcement experts say. In this country, in other words, if you don't want to talk to the FBI, you don't have to -- and the only way the Justice Department can force you to talk is to put you in front of 23 of your fellow citizens with a court stenographer making a detailed transcript. All of this significantly deters abuse. Justice Pushes for Looser Subpoena Rules "It's just a grab for more and more power," said Gerald Lefcourt, a New York attorney and past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "They want to do things that they know a judge won't approve of." In a Reversal, Ashcroft Lifts Secrecy of Data Memo shows US has not used Patriot Act to seek library data Ashcroft Mocks Librarians and Others Who Oppose Parts of Counterterrorism Law The association, which has argued for months that the government's new antiterrorism powers risk encroaching on the privacy of library users, took some satisfaction from the broadside. "If he's coming after us so specifically, we must be having an impact," said Emily Sheketoff, executive director of the library association's Washington office. John Ashcroft's Patriot Act Summer Tour - Mark Fiore
As long as people have sought information at libraries and bookstores, the government has sought information about what they're reading. History is filled with instances in which politicians and law enforcement officials have monitored the public's reading habits, often in secret. Perhaps the most well-known example, the Library Awareness Program, debuted 30 years ago and lasted well into the 1980s. Beginning in 1973, FBI agents visited libraries to track the reading habits of people from communist countries, people with foreign-sounding names and people with foreign accents. Liberty in the balance: Citizens across the U.S. speak out Security Aide Prods Airlines to Yield Data on Travelers WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 (New York Times) Needing information on airline passengers for a test of the government's new computerized screening system, the Transportation Security Administration, rebuffed by JetBlue Airways, is looking for a substitute that can provide it, the agency's administrator said today. But the official, Adm. James M. Loy, said that because no one airline wanted to single itself out as the provider, he hoped to get the data from the industry as a whole. And if he cannot get the airlines' cooperation, he said, he will simply order them to turn over the information. Liberty Island Libertarians are increasingly isolated in the GOP. Will they bolt in 2004? Patriot Act Opponents Say Law Endangers Rights Nat Hentoff: Bush's Vanished Prisoner As attorney Jonathan Freiman's brief to the Second Circuit--for a coalition of prominent civil liberties organizations--says in Padilla v. Rumsfeld, Bush's commander-in-chief argument "would give every President the unchecked power to detain, without charge and forever, all citizens it chooses to label as 'enemy combatants.' " U.S. Muslims Warn of New Government Crackdown More Surveillance Equals Less Liberty The men held at Guantánamo are prisoners of the United States. While they may not have the same rights as American citizens, they should be treated in the highest tradition of American justice. That means they must be given some forum in which to contest their imprisonment, and there must be reasonable rules and some individualized proof for the detentions to be upheld. That the Pentagon should be allowed to run this prison camp in total secrecy and in utter disdain of what America stands for should be heavy on the conscience of all Americans, whether libertarian or liberal, Republican or Democrat. For this reason alone, the detainees should be brought to justice or released. A local group wants Shasta County and its three cities to pass resolutions calling the USA Patriot Act a threat to residents' civil liberties. The Anderson City Council will consider tonight the Citizens for Responsible Government's statement calling on agencies to refrain from practices that could infringe on individuals' constitutional rights. Similar resolutions will be brought to the Redding and Shasta Lake city councils and the county Board of Supervisors in coming weeks, said Doug Milhous of Mountain Gate, the group's chairman. Ashcroft Reducing Plea Bargain Discretion The Case Against Dr. Butler He reported to university officials that the vials were missing, and in no time, 60 FBI agents showed up. Butler was questioned for nine hours, and his lab and his home searched thoroughly. After finding no evidence of a break-in, the FBI concluded there had been no theft and honed in on Butler. Butler says if he had destroyed the vials, he’d remember, which he didn’t. But he says the FBI pressed him anyways to sign a statement that he had “accidentally destroyed” the vials -- and that he had done so long before he reported them missing. In other words, that he had lied. “They told me that I would not be charged if I were able to confirm the accidental destruction,” says Butler. While John Ashcroft’s Department of Justice focuses on acquiring more power to conduct surveillance, every outside group that has studied this problem agrees that the key problem is the culture of the FBI and the CIA and that we need to strengthen border protections and key facilities —starting with the inspection of incoming cargoes for radioactive material. Little if any progress toward those goals has been made, and America is less safe for it today. Georgia Won't Join Anti-Terror Crime Database The move also casts doubt on the future of a database that tracks personal details of all citizens, not just those accused of a crime. "I have held serious concerns about the privacy issues involved with this project all along, and have decided it is in the best interest of the people of Georgia that our state have no further participation,'' Gov. Sonny Perdue said in a statement Tuesday. Perdue's decision not to join the database came a day after the state attorney general said it would be illegal for Georgia to release its driver's license records to the private company putting the database together. Matrix, controlled by Seisint Inc., was billed as a speedy way for law enforcement agencies to find records. Seisint representatives declined comment Tuesday, referring calls to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which oversees the database. States build anti-terror database “It’s federally funded, it’s guarded by state police, but it’s on private property? That’s very interesting,” said Christopher Slobogin, a University of Florida law professor and expert in privacy issues. “If it’s federally funded, the federal government obviously has a huge interest in it.”
Grenada detainees still in jail, 20 years on The New Inquisition President Bush's televised answer to the growing concerns of many - including some Republicans - about the powers granted to him in the USA Patriot Act was to ask for even stronger measures, particularly the expanded use of "nonjudicial subpoenas." That means a federal agency such as the FBI can write its own subpoenas to conduct a search - no judges needed. EFF EFF Analysis of USA PATRIOT Act (Oct_ 31, 2001) Text of the Rockford College graduation speech by Chris Hedges Activists: Intelligence reforms not enough Yet Lockyer still allows his intelligence analysts to issue warnings under the letterhead of his Justice Department, if no longer under the insignia of the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center, or CATIC, as they have for almost two years. Analysis of hundreds of CATIC documents obtained by the California Public Records Act shows a pattern of keeping tabs on protest groups and frequently portraying them as threats to the public. Political activists and civil liberties advocates who have seen the state terrorism bulletins are skeptical that anything has changed. "It's not the general accuracy or the quality of the intelligence," she charges. "It's that they're intentionally falsifying their reporting to justify their spying." US anti-war activists hit by secret airport ban After more than a year of complaints by somethat they were being unfairly targeted by airport security, Washington has admitted the existence of a list, possibly hundreds or even thousands of names long, of people it deems worthy of special scrutiny at airports. The list had been kept secret until its disclosure last week by the new US agency in charge of aviation safety, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). And it is entirely separate from the relatively well-publicised "no-fly" list, which covers about 1,000 people believed to have criminal or terrorist ties that could endanger the safety of their fellow passengers.It is impossible to know for sure who might be on the list, or why. The ACLU says a list kept by security personnel at Oakland airport ran to 88 pages. More than 300 people have been subject to special questioning at San Francisco airport, and another 24 at Oakland, according to police records. In no case does it appear that a wanted criminal was apprehended. Surveillance Proposal Expanded CAPP-II Paul Applauds Congressional Restrictions on Patriot Act FCNL REPORT: Attorney General John Ashcroft testimony before the House Judiciary Committee June 5, 2003 House Votes 309-118 to Scale Back Patriot Act Privacy invasions 'R U.S. Patriot Act committee goes before city council At the July 14th Mount Shasta council meeting, more than 30 citizens showed up to show support for and to speak in favor of the council placing on the agenda a resolution instructing the police department not to cooperate with provisions of the Patriot Act. Lockheed Sues Peaceful Anti-War Protesters Dark side of supermarket 'savings cards' Technology automatically IDs consumers Patriot Act battle is fought locally The USA Patriot Act We Deserve Better Have you noticed how many Americans get upset over the comparisons that are increasingly being made between the United States and National Socialist Germany? After all, it’s not as though we’re living in a police state, right? I am in Washington, DC this week, and I have good news and bad news to report. The good news is that our Federal Government has not lost its copy of the Constitution. The bad news is that they don’t use it anymore. Court Affirms Bush's Power to Detain Citizen as Enemy Man Held as 'Combatant' Petitions for Release Mr. Marri's petition argues that the authority to imprison people like him as enemy combatants goes beyond the military power granted to the president by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks and represents an unprecedented "usurpation of power" by Mr. Bush. "The president lacks constitutional or other legal authority to unilaterally designate an individual captured on American soil as an enemy combatant, to detain such person without charge or judicial review, to deny such person his due process and other constitutional rights," or to circumvent the courts, the filing said.
City agrees to abandon march-permit process Over the years in Philadelphia, protesters often found it difficult to get city permission to demonstrate or march. To the protesters, the explanation was simple: if the city fathers didn't like their "cause," they simply refused to issue a permit and hoped the demonstrators would throw in the towel. Landmark Decision Protects Activists Who Challenge the Government Libraries quietly sound alarm against PATRIOT Act Nat Hentoff "By civil liberties, I mean an individual's immunity from governmental oppression. A society which respects civil liberty realizes that the freedom of its people is built, in large part, upon their privacy. The Bill of Rights, in the eyes of its framers, was a catalogue of immunities, not a schedule of claims. It was, in other words, a Bill of Liberties. The immunities defined in this Bill of Liberties were set forth in order that the promise of individual freedom might be made explicit. The framers dreamed that if their hope were codified, man's energies of mind and spirit might be released from fear." Nat Hentoff - Village Voice For all the growing rebellion around the country against Ashcroft's contorting of the Constitution, the conduct of his office has been most severely attacked so far in the June 2 report of Glenn A. Fine, inspector general of Ashcroft's own Department of Justice. As usual, most of the media did not stay on this story long, but the inspector general's stingingly detailed internal exposure of Ashcroft's reckless disregard of the Bill of Rights has finally aroused disquiet among enough Democrats and Republicans to lead, they say, to sustained congressional oversight. A necessary target of scrutiny is the attorney general's sweeping, reckless violation of due process in the dragnet arrests and imprisonments (not just "detentions") in the months after 9-11. Also to be questioned is his insistence—during his June 5 testimony before the House Judiciary Committee—on demanding even more extractions of parts of the Bill of Rights. Nat Hentoff - Village Voice The attorney general claimed, in his testimony, that the president does have the power to arrest citizens on any American street, designate them "enemy combatants," and imprison them indefinitely, without access to lawyers or their families. After all, Ashcroft said, "The last time I looked at September 11th, an American street was a war zone." So, all of us, not just aliens in America, can become the disappeared. The Justice Department still will not name the "detainees" in the previous roundup. It's necessary, said Ashcroft, "to protect their privacy." Paintball Terrorist? Homeland Security Bill Compromises Federal FOI Act
Law Experts Say Terror Trial Rules Unfair Thursday 26 June 2003 House Condemns Hong Kong Security Measure WASHINGTON -- The House has overwhelmingly condemned an anti-sedition proposal being considered by the Hong Kong Legislative Council, saying it threatens the liberties of Hong Kong's 7 million people.
Shredding rights for no security gain Protesting? Atlanta Police Department is watching What’s Your ‘Risk Score’? League of Women Voters California Resolution on Civil Liberties & Patriot Act I Fiore's new Total Information Awareness cartoon. Arrests and weapons allegations spark activists' anger Lockyer: Don't Link Activists, Terrorists Surveillance State Welcome to America under the Patriot Act. One person claims to “smell something,” and the feds can round up everyone’s records. From books you check out to credit card purchases, money transfers to medications, your activities are now subject to federal surveillance. Uncle Sam now has a blank check to search and pry—all in the name of security Rose: Your Bill of Rights repealed Justice Dept. Detained Fewer Than 50 Without Charges The following article about state (CATIC) intelligence agency suggests that a very broad definition of "criminal activity" is used. State monitored war protesters
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An Unpatriotic Act
Liberty Bushwhacked
Libraries were focus of dubious Cold War probe
