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Bush Operatives Helping With Nader's Campaign
(Sam Hananel, Associated Press, June 30, 2004)
A watchdog group says it will file a complaint with federal election officials, accusing two conservative organizations of illegally helping Ralph Nader presidential campaign, possibly with support from President Bush re-election campaign. . . . the Oregon Family Council and Citizens for a Sound Economy violated election laws last week by telephoning people and urging them to help Nader get on Oregon's ballot in November. . . . Both groups acknowledge trying to influence Nader's petition drive Saturday in Oregon, in hopes that getting him on the ballot would take votes away from Democrat John Kerry and help Bush win the battleground state. . . . Sloan said she also would name the Nader and Bush campaigns in her complaint because of reports that some Bush-Cheney volunteers may have made similar calls from Bush campaign offices. . . . "If Bush-Cheney was soliciting those corporations to assist the Nader campaign, then that's a violation," she said.

[COMMENT: The Bush people are obviously aware that they cannot win the upcoming election on the merits of their policies. Actually, this is no surprise, as they also lost the 2000 election. So they have now gotten behind Nadar and are also making plans to suspend the US elections in November.

. . . Read more!

posted by LoZo 10:27 AM

 

Americans Must Show Identity Papers, High Court Rules
(Associated Press, June 21, 2004)
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that people do not have a constitutional right to refuse to tell police their names. . . . The 5-4 decision frees the government to arrest and punish people who won't cooperate by revealing their identity. . . . The decision was a defeat for privacy rights advocates who argued that the government could use this power to force people who have done nothing wrong to submit to fingerprinting or divulge more personal information. . . . The justices upheld a Nevada cattle rancher’s misdemeanor conviction. He was arrested after he told a deputy that he didn't have to reveal his name or show an ID during an encounter on a rural road in 2000. . . . The ruling was a follow up to a 1968 decision that said police may briefly detain someone on reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, without the stronger standard of probable cause, to get more information. Justices said that during such brief detentions, known as Terry stops after the 1968 ruling, people must answer questions about their identities. . . . Justices had been asked to rule that forcing someone to give police their name violated a person’s Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable searches and the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

[COMMENT: Here is another case where the Supreme Court is trashing the Bill of Rights. My advice to recent college graduates who are looking for work is to take your valuable skills to another country. It will not be long now before we will be forced to carry National Identity Cards. The Amerikan Gulag is about to slam the cell door shut on anyone who exercises the rights that so many of our gallant service personnel have given their lives for. This is a very sad day for anyone who loves freedom.]

. . . Read more!

posted by LoZo 3:06 PM

 

US Government Now Monitoring All Movement and Purchases of Most Citizens
(Teresa Hampton & Doug Thompson, Capitol Hill Blue, June 8, 2004)
You're on your way to work in the morning and place a call on your wireless phone. As your call is relayed by the wireless tower, it is also relayed by another series of towers to a microwave antenna on top of Mount Weather between Leesburg and Winchester, Virginia and then beamed to another antenna on top of an office building in Arlington where it is recorded on a computer hard drive. . . . The computer also records you phone digital serial number, which is used to identify you through your wireless company phone bill that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency already has on record as part of your permanent file. . . . A series of sophisticated computer programs listens to your phone conversation and looks for "keywords" that suggest suspicious activity. If it picks up those words, an investigative file is opened and sent to the Department of Homeland Security. . . . If you are lucky, an investigator at DHS will look at the entire conversation in context and delete the file. Or he or she may keep the file open even if they realize the use of words was innocent. Or they may decide you are, indeed, a threat and set up more investigation, including a wiretap on your home and office phones, around-the-clock surveillance and much closer looks at your life. . . . Welcome to America, 2004, where the actions of more than 150 million citizens are monitored 24/7 by the TIA, the Terrorist Information Awareness (originally called Total Information Awareness) program of DARPA, DHS and the Department of Justice. . . . Although Congress cut off funding for TIA last year, the Bush Administration ordered the program moved into the Pentagon's "black bag" budget, which is neither authorized nor reviewed by the Hill. DARPA also increased the use of private contractors to get around privacy laws that would restrict activities by federal employees. . . . privacy experts and contractors who worked on the TIA facility at 3701 Fairfax Drive in Arlington reveal a massive snooping operation that is capable of gathering - in real time - vast amounts of information on the day to day activities of ordinary Americans. . . . Going on a trip? TIA knows where you are going because your train, plane or hotel reservations are forwarded automatically to the DARPA computers. Driving? Every time you use a credit card to purchase gas, a record of that transaction is sent to TIA which can track your movements across town or across the country. . . . Use a computerized transmitter to pay tolls? TIA is notified every time that transmitter passes through a toll booth. Likewise, that lunch you paid for with your VISA becomes part of your permanent file, along with your credit report, medical records, driving record and even your TV viewing habits. . . . Subscribers to the DirecTV satellite TV service should know - but probably don't - that every pay-per-view movie they order is reported to TIA as is any program they record using a TIVO recording system. If they order an adult film from any of DirecTV's three SpiceTV channels, that information goes to TIA and is, as a matter of policy, forwarded to the Department of Justice’s special task force on pornography. . . . "We have a police state far beyond anything George Orwell imagined in his book 1984," says privacy expert Susan Morrissey. "The everyday lives of virtually every American are under scrutiny 24-hours-a-day by the government." . . . "JetBlue has assaulted the privacy of 5 million of its customers," said Scannell. "Anyone who flew should be aware and very scared that there is a dossier on them." . . . But information from TIA will be used the DHS as a major part of the proposed CAPSII airline passenger monitoring system. That system, when fully in place, will determine whether or not any American is allowed to get on an airplane for a flight. . . . JetBlue requested the report be destroyed and the passenger data be purged from the TIA computers but TIA refuses to disclose the status of either the report or the data. . . . Although exact statistics are classified, security experts say the U.S. Government has paid out millions of dollars in out-of-court settlements to Americans who have been wrongly accused, illegally detained or harassed because of mistakes made by TIA. Those who accept settlements also have to sign a non-disclosure agreement and won't discuss their cases. . . . Hawken refused to do business with DARPA, saying TIA was both unethical and illegal. . . . TIA uses NSA's technology to listen in on wireless phone calls as well as the agency's list of key words and phrases to identify potential terrorist activity. . . . "I know NSA employees who have quit rather than cooperate with DARPA," Hawken says. "NSA's mandate is to track the activities of foreign enemies of this nation, not Americans."

. . . Read more!

posted by LoZo 1:46 PM

 

The Son of Patriot Act Also Rises
(Kim Zetter, WiredNews, June 14, 2004)
Patriot Act II legislation is rearing its head again in a new bill making its way through Congress. . . . The bill would strengthen laws that let the FBI demand that businesses hand over confidential records about patrons by assigning stiff penalties (up to five years in prison) to anyone who discloses that the FBI made the demand. The bill would also let the FBI compel businesses to cooperate with record requests, and it would expand the government's secret surveillance powers over noncitizens in the United States. . . . "There is no reason for this legislation," said lawyer Chip Pitts, head of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee of Dallas and a former constitutional law professor. "Given the expanse of powers and secrecy already granted in the Patriot Act, and given the unclear security benefits and possible security detriments of that legislation, why do we need a further amendment of the law to grant more powers to the government? . . . The bill, known as the Anti-Terrorism Intelligence Tools Improvement Act of 2003, or HR 3179, was introduced last September by Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) and was co-sponsored by Rep. Porter Goss (R-Florida), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a possible contender to replace departing CIA chief George Tenet. . . . But critics, like conservative former Rep. Bob Barr (R-Georgia), say that rather than abandoning the legislation altogether, the department has been extracting provisions and having sympathetic lawmakers slip them one by one into new bills to pass the legislation piecemeal. At least five other bills pending in Congress also contain provisions from Patriot Act II, but HR 3179 is the one that's in imminent danger of being passed under the radar. . . . The new bill, HR 3179, was set to pass through Congress without a hearing last year, but the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Sensenbrenner, changed its mind and held a hearing May 18. The bill is waiting for markup in that committee, but critics fear that Rep. Goss and the House Intelligence Committee will slip the bill into this year's Intelligence Authorization Act during a closed-door hearing on June 16, and pass it quickly before lawmakers can revise or further debate it. . . . opponents say the bill grants the government more power to investigate people without probable cause and to do so under a cloak of secrecy. As a result, individuals being investigated will have no chance to protest unconstitutional searches and seizures. . . . Under the Patriot Act and Patriot Act II provisions passed in the Intelligence Authorization Act last year, the FBI doesn't need a court order or probable cause to obtain the transaction records for patrons of libraries, Internet service providers, telephone companies, casinos, travel agents, jewelers, car dealers or other businesses. . . . The FBI can simply draft a "national security letter" stating records are needed for a national security investigation, without being specific about the data being sought or the people being investigated. . . . Under HR 3179, anyone who knowingly violates the secrecy clause could be imprisoned for up to a year, and anyone who violates it with "the intent to obstruct an investigation or judicial proceeding" could be imprisoned up to five years. The bill also lets authorities force individuals and companies to comply with security letters under contempt-of-court threats. . . . Dempsey, director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said the bill tips the balance of power further into government hands while hampering the ability of people "to push back" and provide balance to government powers. . . . Currently, if government investigators request data that is too broad or intrusive, a company has some wiggle room to protect patrons' Fourth Amendment rights by resisting and negotiating a more targeted search, Dempsey said. But letting the FBI force cooperation while at the same time demanding secrecy and threatening imprisonment would make it unlikely that unreasonable secretive searches would ever be prevented or challenged. . . . Barr, a member of the American Conservative Union who has been practicing law since leaving Congress last year, testified against the bill during the May hearing and said that Congress should not be passing new laws to strengthen the Patriot Act while there are concerns about how the legislation has been used to date. The FBI has admitted using the Patriot Act for nonterrorism investigations, such as cases involving corruption in a Las Vegas strip club, drug trafficking and other criminal activity. . . . "If the government is able to conduct its powers in secret, then we never know the extent to which its power is being used or being abused," he said. "If the government wants to conduct more of its business in secret and without probable cause, then (we should) just amend or repeal the Fourth Amendment, not allow the government to eat away at it in small steps and pretend it's still there." . . . Barr said the law should allow recipients of national security letters the right to challenge them, just as they can challenge grand jury subpoenas. . . . "The last time (a Patriot Act II provision) slipped through and got signed was on the day of Saddam Hussein's capture," Pitts said. "There was not a single activist who knew it was coming down the pike. At least this time we know about it in advance." . . . In total, six bills pending in Congress contain provisions taken from Patriot Act II.

In addition to HR 3179, three other House bills (and two Senate companion bills) were introduced late last year:
HR 3179: Anti-Terrorism Intelligence Tools Improvement Act of 2003
HR 3037: Anti-Terrorism Tools Enhancement Act of 2003
HR 2934 and S 1604: Terrorist Penalties Enhancement Act of 2003
HR 3040 and S 1606: Pretrial Detention and Lifetime Supervision of Terrorists Act of 2003.

. . . Read more!

posted by LoZo 3:36 PM

 

The Pentagon - Spying in America?
(Michael Isikoff, Newsweek, June 21 Issue)
Last February, two Army counterintelligence agents showed up at the University of Texas law school and demanded to see the roster from a conference on Islamic law held a few days earlier. Their reason: they were trying to track down students who the agents claimed had been asking "suspicious" questions. "I felt like I was in 'Law & Order'," said one student after being grilled by one of the agents. The incident provoked a brief campus uproar, and the Army later admitted the agents had exceeded their authority. But if the Pentagon has its way, the Army may not have to make such amends in the future. Without any public hearing or debate, NEWSWEEK has learned, Defense officials recently slipped a provision into a bill before Congress that could vastly expand the Pentagon's ability to gather intelligence inside the United States, including recruiting citizens as informants. Ever since the 1970s, when Army intel agents were caught snooping on antiwar protesters, military intel agencies have operated under tight restrictions inside the United States. But the new provision, approved in closed session last month by the Senate Intelligence Committee, would eliminate one big restriction: that they comply with the Privacy Act, a Watergate-era law that requires government officials seeking information from a resident to disclose who they are and what they want the information for. The justification: "Current counterterrorism operations which require greater latitude ... both overseas and within the United States." "This... is giving them the authority to spy on Americans," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, a group frequently critical of the war on terror. "And it's all been done with no public discussion, in the dark of night."

. . . Read more!

posted by A Curmudgeon 1:44 PM

 

US Law Creates Police State
[COMMENT: The paragraph below is only a brief glimpse of an important essay that should be read in its entirety to gain the full sense of the deep trouble we are in.]
The "Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001" is almost unbelievable in the degree to which it will turn the USA into a full-scale police state. Terrorism is very loosely and broadly defined, and life imprisonment is authorised for any offense which comes under this definition. The bill is retroactive and there is no statue of limitations. This means that people who were activists back in the 1960s or 1970s could be imprisoned for life, if their acts in the past could be construed as 'terrorism' under this new police-state bill. Even those who merely attended the demonstrations, or helped plan them, could be punished equally with those who actually committed the acts. Broad new powers of surveillance, preventive detention, and searches of homes without warrants are included in the police-state bill. Even minor computer hacking would be 'terrorism' and would be punishable by life imprisonment. And there many, many other equally frightening provisions.

. . . Read more!

posted by LoZo 4:38 PM

 

Cities Say No to the Patriot Act
(Kim Zetter, WiredNews, June 7, 2004)
Forget drug-free and nuclear-free zones. A growing grassroots movement seeks to make the United States a Patriot Act-free zone, one city at a time. . . . Or, at the very least, the people behind the movement hope to make their cities constitutional safe zones. . . . In the past two years, more than 300 cities and four states have passed resolutions calling on Congress to repeal or change parts of the USA Patriot Act that, activists say, violate constitutional rights such as free speech and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. . . . local authorities will insist on complying with federal orders only in ways that do not violate constitutional rights. The resolutions are not binding, however, and do not affect the federal government's actions. . . . The national movement was launched in 2001 by the Bill of Rights Defense Committee . . . Word spread quickly to other communities, four of which passed their own resolutions before Northampton passed its declaration the following May. . . . Two years later, 322 municipalities and four states -- Alaska, Hawaii, Maine and Vermont -- have [anti]-Patriot Act resolutions. . . . Congress passed the USA Patriot Act swiftly in October 2001, 45 days after the Sept. 11 attacks, easing restrictions on the government's ability to dig up personal information about citizens and non-citizens, and obtain wiretaps and search warrants. Only one senator, Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin), and 61 House of Representative members voted against the legislation. . . . Under the act, federal investigators can obtain individuals' library, financial, health and education records from cities while barring municipal workers from letting anyone know authorities have seized the documents. Officials can also monitor the activities of people who have not been identified as suspects and search a home or office without prior notice. . . . The municipal resolutions, crafted individually by each community, vary in language. They affirm, for the most part, that city employees aiding federal authorities in national security investigations will not violate the rights of people under investigation, such as monitoring political and religious gatherings where people are engaging in activities protected by the First Amendment. . . . Hawaii was the first to pass a statewide resolution, citing the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II as a motivating factor.

. . . Read more!

posted by LoZo 1:01 PM

 

Civil liberties and the MBTA
(Carol Rose | June 7, 2004)
REPORTS THAT the MBTA is implementing a first-in-the-nation plan to stop subway passengers for random identification checks and to question them about their activities at T-stops should alarm anyone who worries about civil liberties. Having to carry and produce identification has historically been a method of control. In 19th century America, the requirement of carrying identity documents was for the most part limited to slaves and Asian immigrants. More recently, we have the example of identification papers in Nazi Germany and the infamous pass system used to control the movements of black South Africans. "Your papers, please," is a phrase that is alien to a free society. More than that, it should worry anyone who cares about effective security in an age of terrorism. Random stops and ID checks have never been shown to prevent terrorism, either here or abroad. The MBTA plan is pretend security. Under the Fourth Amendment, you have a right to be free from unconstitutional searches and seizures. In practice, however, police officers are always free to approach you on the street, at the airport, at the T, and ask for identification -- without reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing or probable cause. You, however, have a constitutionally protected right to refuse to show any ID. You can just say no. We do not require people to carry identification, and the police have no authority to demand its production. Even when a police officer has reason to suspect that a person may be involved in something illegal and is authorized to stop him on the street for purposes of questioning to determine whether there is "probable cause" for an arrest, there is no obligation to produce identification. But that may soon change. Allowing sweeping identification checks would substantially increase the government's power in ways that we may come to regret. But as an antiterrorism tool, it puts us on the wrong track.

. . . Read more!

posted by A Curmudgeon 6:17 PM

 

Where Big Brother Snoops on Americans 24/7
(TERESA HAMPTON & DOUG THOMPSON, Capital Hill Blue, Jun 7, 2004)
...if the woman knew what was happening inside the nondescript office building at 3701 Fairfax Drive (Arlington, Virginia), she might think it really does matter because the building houses the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's Total Information Awareness Program, the "big brother" program Congress thought it killed. When the woman in line deposited her paycheck at the Bank of America branch, a record of that deposit showed up immediately in the computer databanks in the office across the street, just as financial, travel and other personal transactions of virtually every American do millions of time every minute. Despite Congressional action cutting funding, and the resignation of the program's controversial director, retired admiral John Poindexter, DARPA's TIA program is alive and well and prying into the personal business of Americans 24 hours a day, seven days a week. "When Congress cut the funding, the Pentagon - with administration approval - simply moved the program into a 'black bag' account," says a security consultant who worked on the DARPA project. "Black bag programs don't require Congressional approval and are exempt from traditional oversight." Lt. Col. Doug Dyer, a program manager for DARPA, defends TIA as a necessary sacrifice in the war on terrorism. "Americans must trade some privacy for security," he says. "Three thousand people died on 9/11. When you consider the potential effect of a terrorist attack against the privacy of an entire population, there has to be some trade-off."

[COMMENT] ****** ACTUALLY, Dougie, there does NOT have to be a trade-off of privacy for security. That's why there is a Bill of Rights, thought it is sorely battered and tattered at this point. No one should be in favor of trading real privacy for faux-security - especially to the current version of a government. Our privacy is all that we have left to protect us from Big Brother and I'd like to hold onto it for as long as I can. But, that's just this old Curmudgeon's opinion...*******

. . . Read more!

posted by A Curmudgeon 5:58 PM

 

The Padilla Doctrine Doesn't Infringe on Freedom -- It Destroys It
(Jacob G. Hornberger, FFF, June 4, 2004)
Critics of the federal government's two-year incarceration of accused terrorist Jose Padilla without charges or trial correctly point out that the government has violated Padilla's right to counsel and his rights to due process of law, habeas corpus, and jury trial, all of which are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. But let's be clear about the real significance of the Padilla case: the Padilla doctrine does not constitute just another governmental infringement of constitutional rights. Instead, it constitutes the destruction of freedom in America. "Oh, Mr. Hornberger, you go too far! Don't you know that here in America, people have the right to vote and to protest? Do you see the military arresting them? And here in America, people have freedom of speech. Do you see the military arresting newspaper editors?" They're missing the point. When the executive branch of our government implemented the Padilla doctrine, it crossed its own Rubicon in terms of freedom in America. Under the Padilla doctrine, executive branch officials, including the military authorities, have the power to arrest any citizen and punish him, even execute him, without indicting him, giving him a trial, according him due process of law, or letting him retain an attorney to battle on his behalf. All the government has to do is secure a paper from the president labeling an American citizen as an "enemy combatant" in the "war on terrorism" and the military authorities are then free to inflict any punishment on any citizen whatsoever, and without any external restraints whatsoever. The Padilla doctrine applies to every American, including newspaper editors, protesters, and people who vote the wrong way. Once the president triggers the process by formally labeling a person an "enemy combatant," the unrestrained power of the U.S. military to take that person into custody and execute him is unleashed. The Padilla doctrine is not simply another infringement of liberty, but instead makes freedom in America a dead letter. How can a person be considered truly free when his own government has the omnipotent power to punish him without according him the procedural guarantees provided in the Constitution and Bill of Rights?

[COMMENT]****** Is anyone paying attention? *******

. . . Read more!

posted by A Curmudgeon 5:20 PM

 

FBI ABDUCTS ARTIST, SEIZES ART
The Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) is an internationally-recognized group of five artists and intellectuals whose work examines and critiques biotechnology, information technology and media studies. The arrest and pending indictment of CAE member Steve Kurtz on "bioweapons" charges reveals the current fragility of freedom of thought and freedom of expression. The CCLE urges all our supporters to read the following press release and contribute what you can to Dr. Kurtz's legal defense. // CCLE & Matrix Masters

Steve Kurtz is Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the State University of New York's University at Buffalo, and a member of the internationally-acclaimed Critical Art Ensemble. Kurtz's wife, Hope Kurtz, died in her sleep of cardiac arrest in the early morning hours of May 11. Police arrived, became suspicious of Kurtz's art supplies and called the FBI. . . . Within hours, FBI agents had "detained" Kurtz as a suspected bioterrorist and cordoned off the entire block around his house. (Kurtz walked away the next day on the advice of a lawyer, his "detention" having proved to be illegal.) Over the next few days, dozens of agents in hazmat suits, from a number of law enforcement agencies, sifted through Kurtz's work, analyzing it on-site and impounding computers, manuscripts, books, equipment, and even his wife's body for further analysis. Meanwhile, the Buffalo Health Department condemned his house as a health risk. . . . Kurtz, a member of the Critical Art Ensemble, makes art which addresses the politics of biotechnology. "Free Range Grains," CAE's latest project, included a mobile DNA extraction laboratory for testing food products for possible transgenic contamination. It was this equipment which triggered the Kafkaesque chain of events. . . . FBI field and laboratory tests have shown that Kurtz's equipment was not used for any illegal purpose. In fact, it is not even possible to use this equipment for the production or weaponization of dangerous germs. Furthermore, any person in the US may legally obtain and possess such equipment. . . . "Today, there is no legal way to stop huge corporations from putting genetically altered material in our food," said Defense Fund spokeswoman Carla Mendes. "Yet owning the equipment required to test for the presence of 'Frankenfood' will get you accused of 'terrorism.' You can be illegally detained by shadowy government agents, lose access to your home, work, and belongings, and find that your recently deceased spouse's body has been taken away for 'analysis.'" . . . Though Kurtz has finally been able to return to his home and recover his wife's body, the FBI has still not returned any of his equipment, computers or manuscripts, nor given any indication of when they will. The case remains open. . . . HELP URGENTLY NEEDED . . . A small fortune has already been spent on lawyers for Kurtz and other Critical Art Ensemble members. A defense fund has been established at www.rtmark.com/CAEdefense/ to help defray the legal costs which will continue to mount so long as the investigation continues. . . . Donations go directly to the legal defense of Kurtz and other Critical Art Ensemble members. Should the funds raised exceed the cost of the legal defense, any remaining money will be used to help other artists in need.

For more information on the Critical Art Ensemble, please visit . . .
www.critical-art.net/
www.rtmark.com/CAEdefense/

On advice of counsel, Steve Kurtz is unable to answer questions regarding his case. Please direct questions or comments to Carla Mendes (CAEdefense@rtmark.com).

. . . Read more!

posted by LoZo 2:47 PM