Discourse.net

Confused Reports from the Twin Cities

There was at least sporadic violence in the Twin Cities today, as well as a very very heavy police presence including herding demonstrators, firing rubber bullets, and using tear gas. That much is clear.

From reading Campaign Silo and other sources, however, I’m unable to get much of a feel from what’s going on.

In particular, it’s very hard to sequence disparate reports of overlapping events. I’m pretty sure that by the end of the sequence at least a small number of the demonstrators were behaving very badly — blocking streets, attacking a vehicle. It’s impossible to tell whether that was their plan from the start (although in the case of Black Flag, that’s what I would suspect), or whether they lost it, as mobs sometimes do, after being pushed around. Reports of the heavy police tactics came in before reports of the violence, but I’m not confident that proves anything.

At least some of these marchers had a valid permit — although they had to go to federal court to get it, as the city fought them tooth and nail. That history certainly raises the question about the extent to how professionally the police would choose to deal with the march they didn’t want, although it certainly doesn’t answer the question.

Suspicions are not eased by reports of journalists, videographers, and other seemingly innocent parties being detained, gassed and/or arrested.

On the other hand, people barricading streets and smashing things is what police are supposed to arrest people for, and there seems to have some of that.

This NYT report, Broken Windows and Pepper Spray Mark Protests, seems as likely to be accurate as anything when its says,

A large march, which had a permit from local authorities, got underway around 1 p.m. at the Minnesota capitol. Many in the group marched peacefully along the designated route, but not everyone wanted to follow the rules.

Near the start of the march, two women and a young man secured themselves with chains to a car that obstructed traffic.

“I would like a world of direct democracy,” said one man, who gave his name only as Alex, as he was led away by officers.

A larger group of about 200 protesters dressed in black roamed through the streets of downtown St. Paul, shouting and chanting and throwing street signs and concrete planters into the roads. Many of them wore black bandanas across their faces and some wore black balaclavas.

At one point, a police officer grabbed one of the youths. Others wrested him away, then appeared to knock the officer to the ground. On one knee, the officer released an arc of pepper spray that gushed into the air in a thick cloud.

The crowd backed off. A young man scattered bundles of nails secured with duct tape in the street. Over the next 40 minutes or so, the crowd weaved through streets, sometimes pursued or approached by police, but often eluding groups of police officers or sheriffs deputies.

Some members of the group smashed windows while others objected.

“Is this really protesting?” a young woman shouted, apparently in anger.

[Meanwhile…ABC News reports, GOP parties as Gustav rages]

Twin Cities: Will the Courts Step In?

Latest news via blogger Lindsay Beyerstein:

• Breaking: As Police Mass Downtown and 9 More People Are Arrested, Legal Groups File Emergency Motion to Stop Cell and Camera Seizures During RNC
• Habeas Corpus in Ramsey County, MN

The 6 activists arrested during police raids in advance of the Republican National Convention are being held without charge by the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office, the Minnesota Independent reports.

The arrestees are being held on probable cause holds. These holds give the authorities 36 hours to charge them or let them go. Holds are typically used to give investigators more time to gather evidence before filing formal charges.

Holds allow police to charge first and ask questions later. Sometimes that’s a good thing. Arrest opportunities are unpredictable. A suspect could slip away in the time it takes to turn a solid suspicion into sufficient evidence to file charges. A probable cause hold buys the police some time to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.

However, it doesn’t take a genius to see how the power to detain people without charge can be abused. For example, unethical police officers have been known to use frivolous holds as quickie jail terms. Piss off the police, spend 3 days in jail—no trial required.

In Minnesota, a probable cause hold can be issued by an officer without review by a judge or a prosecutor. The 36-hour window doesn’t include weekends and holidays. So the protesters arrested over the long weekend could be locked up until Wednesday.

The National Lawyers Guild is asking a judge to review these detentions in the hopes of getting the arrestees out sooner.

Imagine if the police could hold these protesters as long as they wanted.

The United States is holding suspects without charge at Guantanamo—many of whom were apprehended without anything approaching probable cause. Of course, Bush administration asserts the right to put off their trials forever.

Scenarios like these illustrate why habeas corpus is vital to the rule of law.

Other resources:

Locals write about events in the Twin Cities (interactive online issues forums):

• St. Paul
• Minneapolis
• Minnesota Politics

More On Twin Cities - Developing

Here’s another account, with a statement from the National Lawyer’s Guild:

National Lawyers Guild dondemns fabrications of Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher and preventative detention arrests
National Lawyers Guild Press Release

The Minnesota Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild condemns the coordinated raids carried out by Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher against citizens planning to engage in demonstrations at the Republican National Convention.

The primary prop used by Sheriff Fletcher in his afternoon press conference, where he displayed items seized in three early morning raids conducted in south Minneapolis, were three buckets of alleged urine. As shown by inventory sheets left by law enforcement, these buckets were seized at 2301 23rd Avenue South in Minneapolis, MN. Two buckets contain grey water and were being used to flush toilets, to conserve water, in the upstairs bathroom. Both were identified in the inventory as “unidentified liquid.” The third bucket, as shown by inventory sheets, was seized from illegal apartment over a garage in the rear. This apartment has been occupied for several years by a person unconnected to the house occupants or the RNC. No bathroom was in the illegal apartment and urine was collected in a bucket. This was listed as “unidentified yellow liquid” in the inventory sheets.

Bruce Nestor, chapter President of the Minnesota National Lawyers Guild, was present at both locations during the execution of the search warrants. “Police seized political literature, cellphones, computers, cameras, personal diaries, and many common household items such as paint, rope, and roofing nails. These items are present in almost any home in south Minneapolis and are not evidence of a crime,” said Nestor. “Seizing boxes of political literature shows the motive of these raids was political. Sheriff Fletcher has staged a publicity stunt, violated constitutional rights, and misrepresented what was seized during the raids,” he said. Another raid was carried out the evening before on a political meeting hall in St. Paul. Inventory sheets for that raid show that no contraband items were taken. Literature, computers, maps of St. Paul, and banners were the vast majority of the items seized.

In addition, during the raids, four persons were arrested without arrest warrants or formal charges. They are being held on probable cause holds for “Conspiracy to Commit Riot,” which will allow their detention until Wednesday, September 3, 2008, at noon. Two other persons were also arrested without warrants, off the streets of Minneapolis, one after she addressed a mass rally of over 200 people at Powderhorn Park. “Conspiracy to commit riot was the charge used against the Chicago 8 after the police riots in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention,” said Heidi Boghosian, Executive Director the National Lawyers Guild. “Guild attorneys defended those charged in 1968 and we will do so again now.”

Something Very Bad is Happening in the Twin Cities

Early reports are flooding in of what sound - at first blush - as police state tactics designed to disrupt and intimidate anyone who authorities think might be protesting — peacefully — at the Republican National Convention.

Some of these accounts are from reputable sources, including both lawyers who were called in to help clients only to be arrrested an handcuffed, and from a group called Founders of I-Witness, which specializes in filming police behavior and that was at the 2004 GOP Convention and took film that cost New York Police seven figures in settlements. Their account is chilling: Armed police surrounded their house and held them hostage for hours while waiting for a warrant to enter.

The house where I-Witness Video is staying in St. Paul has been surrounded by police. We have locked all the doors. We have been told that if we leave we will be detained. One of our people who was caught outside is being detained in handcuffs in front of the house. The police say that they are waiting to get a search warrant. More than a dozen police are wielding firearms, including one St. Paul officer with a long gun, which someone told me is an M-16.

The first thing you do is silence the witnesses. Police are also detaining reporters.

“Food Not Bombs” — so far as I know a peaceful group — was also raided. Jane Hampsher of firedoglake has an account and links to a video..

See Glenn Greenwald for more, with updates.

I believe some people got quite upset when similar tactics were used recently in China to prevent demonstrations at the Olympics.

Land of the Free

At JFK Airport, Denying Basic Rights Is Just Another Day at the Office.

There is a cancer eating the Republic. This is clearly part of the cure. But is this? We have to hope.

One Million Suspected 'Terrorists'

That didn’t take long: Terrorist Watch List Hits One Million Names.

In comparison, it took us two centuries to get to one million lawyers (play Tom Paxton snippet).

Senator Bill Nelson Lets Us Down Again, This Time on FISA

Senator Bill Nelson (“D”-FL) voted against stripping telco immunity from the FISA bill. That’s why they wouldn’t give me a straight answer the other day — they were planning the sellout all along. (See Calling My Senator About FISA [Updated]).

I am in no way surprised. This is the same Bill Nelson who voted for torture, after all. (See Senator Bill Nelson Votes for Torture.)

Florida, and the US, deserve better.

(It goes without saying that soon to be one-term Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL) also voted to support the ‘if the President says so, it’s legal’ version of liability.)

Update: the vote was 32-66, so they had plenty of company. Cf. Amanda Simon, ACLU Blog, FISA Vote, or How I Lost Complete Faith in Our Legislative Branch.

Vote tally on Dodd-Feingold-Leahy below.

YAYS 32 NAYS 66

YAYS:

Akaka
Baucus
Biden
Bingamon
Boxer
Brown
Byrd
Cantwell
Cardin
Casey
Clinton
Dodd
Dorgan
Durbin
Feingold
Harkin
Innouye
Kerry
Klobuchar
Lautenburg
Leahy
Levin
Menendez
Murray
Obama
Reed
Reid
Sanders
Shumer
Stabenow
Tester
Whitehouse
Wyden

NAYS:

Alexander
Allard
Barasso
Bayh
Bennett
Bond
Brownback
Bunning
Burr
Carper
Chambliss
Coburn
Cochran
Coleman
Collins
Conrad
Corker
Cornyn
Craig
Crapo
DeMint
Dole
Dominici
Ensign
Enzi
Feinstein
Graham
Grassley
Gregg
Hagel
Hatch
Hutchinson
Inhofe
Innouye
Isakson
Johnson
Kohl
Kyl
Landrieu
Lieberman
Lincoln
Lugar
Martinez
McCaskill
McConnell
Mikulski
Murkowski
Nelsen (NB)
Nelson (FL)
Pryor
Rockefeller
Roberts
Salazar
Sessions
Shelby
Smith
Snowe
Specter
Stevens
Sununu
Thune
Vitter
Voinovich
Warner
Webb
Wicker

Be a Strange Bedfellow

I’m one of the ‘strange bedfellows’ — a coalition that spans the political spectrum — supporting accountability for illegal spying by this administration and its telco helpers.

You can be one too, by clicking below.

Meanwhile, Glen Greenwald, who has a lot more stamina that I do, continues to document and explain the whole catastrophe. The latest, which discusses plans is here. In it he explains the Strange Bedfellows,

…the campaign we have been conducting is intended to be only the first step — not the last — in taking a stand against the endless erosion of core constitutional protections and the rapidly expanding Lawless Surveillance State. We have created a new organization, Accountability Now, to conduct the ongoing battle to target and remove from power those who enable these abuses; to force these issues into our political discourse; and to prevent the Washington Establishment from continuing to trample on basic constitutional protections with impunity.

The first campaign of this new organization is the formation of Strange Bedfellows, the ideologically diverse coalition we have formed with liberals, libertarians and others who are devoted to the preservation of our core constitutional liberties and the rule of law. …

To initiate and fund our new campaign, we have teamed with the individual who was behind the innovative and extraordinarily successful Ron Paul “money bombs” — Trevor Lyman, along with Rick Williams and Break the Matrix — to plan an “Accountability Money Bomb” for August 8. That is the day in 1974 when Richard Nixon was forced to resign from office for his lawbreaking and surveillance abuses. That day illustrates how far we have fallen in this country in less than 35 years, as we now not only permit rampant presidential lawbreaking and a limitless surveillance state, but have a bipartisan political class that endorses it and even retroactively protects the lawbreakers.

Calling My Senator About FISA [Updated]

I called Senator Nelson’s (D-Fl) office today to find out what his position was on the Dodd-Feingold-Leahy Amendment to FISA. (I used the great tool set up to help voters make these FISA calls as an experiment and it worked perfectly. Try it, it’s free.) The amendment would remove the immunity provision from the bill, making it less bad in one respect, although still bad in others.

Only problem is, the two staff people I spoke to said they did not know how the Senator plans to vote. It seems strange to me that on a matter of such public interest neither the front-line staff nor the person who happened to be in the press office (not the actal press secretary) would know, but there you have it. Maybe Floridians have not been calling in droves. (This is your chance, guys.)

The staff were very charming, took my number, said they’d try to find out and would call me back.

Interestingly, saying I was a law professor got not a spark of reaction. But mentioning that I have a blog…that got their attention.

Update: I received the following email:

Nelson supports new intelligence-gathering legislation that enables the U.S. to get the information it needs to stop terrorist plots - as long as the final version contains protections for our civil liberties, such as requiring a court order before any American is targeted for eavesdropping.

Previously, in committee, he offered an amendment to deny telephone companies immunity for prior acts. That was defeated.

Subsequently, on the Senate floor, he offered an amendment to have the FISA court review requests for immunity. That amendment was defeated, too.

And, last week he co-sponsored an amendment that would allow the federal courts to determine whether the telephone companies acted in good faith and with reasonable belief that compliance with the government requests was lawful. The Senate has not acted on the amendment.

The current version of the legislation requires federal courts to review legal opinions that the telephone companies received from the government. Nelson will support that approach.

Mara Sloan
Press Assistant
United States Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL)
716 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

Does that answer the question? And if so, is that a “no” or a “yes”?

Dutch MEP Sues US To Release Her Airport Blacklist File

In How America is snooping on YOU … and may soon be snooping a whole lot more, “This is London” describes a lawsuit by Dutch Liberal MEP Sophie In’t Veld in which she seeks to find out why the US government keeps pulling her over for security searches at airports.

The article claims that this is the first lawsuit of its kind. Can that really be so?

Obama Acts Like a Coward

I think Obama will be great on foreign policy. On domestic policy, not so much.

Today he as good as sold out the fight against FISA’s immunity provisions. While the statement below might sound OK, it’s failure to say that the bill is unacceptable in its current form, or to say ‘filibuster’ amounts to a surrender to the fix put in by the leadership. (And, no, this bill is not in any noticeable way an improvement over its predecessor draft. The judicial review provisions are a sham — they don’t test for the legality of any wiretapping, they don’t test for the legality of any request by the administration to engage in wiretapping, they don’t test for whether the recipients of those requests thought or had reason to think that the requests were legal — no, all the court will test is whether the administration says that it made a request. Big deal.)

As one person put it to me, “Obama’s national security state is going to be so much cooler than McCain’s.”

The full text of Obama’s weasly statement is below.

Update: Jack Balkin says, from Obama’s perspective, what’s not to like?.

Statement of Senator Barack Obama on FISA Compromise

“Given the grave threats that we face, our national security agencies must have the capability to gather intelligence and track down terrorists before they strike, while respecting the rule of law and the privacy and civil liberties of the American people. There is also little doubt that the Bush Administration, with the cooperation of major telecommunications companies, has abused that authority and undermined the Constitution by intercepting the communications of innocent Americans without their knowledge or the required court orders.

“That is why last year I opposed the so-called Protect America Act, which expanded the surveillance powers of the government without sufficient independent oversight to protect the privacy and civil liberties of innocent Americans. I have also opposed the granting of retroactive immunity to those who were allegedly complicit in acts of illegal spying in the past.

“After months of negotiation, the House today passed a compromise that, while far from perfect, is a marked improvement over last year’s Protect America Act.

“Under this compromise legislation, an important tool in the fight against terrorism will continue, but the President’s illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over. It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance – making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law and disregard the civil liberties of the American people. It also firmly re-establishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance in the future. It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses. But this compromise guarantees a thorough review by the Inspectors General of our national security agencies to determine what took place in the past, and ensures that there will be accountability going forward. By demanding oversight and accountability, a grassroots movement of Americans has helped yield a bill that is far better than the Protect America Act.

“It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives – and the liberty – of the American people.”

Democratic Leaders Join GOP In Selling Out the Constitution

The Democratic Congressional leadership has endorsed the new FISA sellout. (Text here; instant analysis by EFF here.)

The ACLU is enraged. See ACLU Blog: Because Freedom Can’t Blog Itself: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union » This Spade is a Spade: FISA Deal Is Bunk

You should be enraged too. Perhaps you might even consider a donation to the fund that seeks to punish elected officials who should know better (starting with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer), the Act Blue PAC vs. Retroactive Immunity, also known as the Strange Bedfellows Fund, as it’s attracting support from a group ranging from progressives to supporters of Ron Paul.

Our only hope in stopping this is going to be the Senate. Is Obama going to step out to lead on this? (Meanwhile see the statement by Sen. Feingold.)

I have no idea why our congressional leaders feel a need to be so craven on this issue. Their position doesn’t even poll well. It’s as if they are suffering from some sort of battered person syndrome or something.

TSA Announces Policy of Viewpoint Discrimination

TSA: TSA Announces Enhancements to Airport ID Requirements to Increase Safety

Beginning Saturday, June 21, 2008 passengers that willfully refuse to provide identification at security checkpoint will be denied access to the secure area of airports. This change will apply exclusively to individuals that simply refuse to provide any identification or assist transportation security officers in ascertaining their identity.

This new procedure will not affect passengers that may have misplaced, lost or otherwise do not have ID but are cooperative with officers. Cooperative passengers without ID may be subjected to additional screening protocols, including enhanced physical screening, enhanced carry-on and/or checked baggage screening, interviews with behavior detection or law enforcement officers and other measures.

Under the law that created TSA, the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, the TSA administrator is responsible for overseeing aviation security (P.L. 107-71) and has the authority to establish security procedures at airports (49 C.F.R. § 1540.107). Passengers that fail to comply with security procedures may be prohibited from entering the secure area of airports to catch their flight (49 C.F.R. § 1540.105(a)(2).

This initiative is the latest in a series designed to facilitate travel for legitimate passengers while enhancing the agency’s risk-based focus - on people, not things. Positively identifying passengers is an important tool in our multi-layered approach to security and one that we have significantly bolstered during the past 18 months.

I take this to mean that a person who says, “I have not lost my ID but contest your right to demand it” will be deemed “uncooperative.”

If that supposition is correct, then this is both unconstitutional and underhanded.

It is unconstitutional because — if my supposition is correct — it is viewpoint discrimination: the same person will get different treatment based on whether they acknowledge in principle that they don’t have rights.

It is underhanded, because TSA has prevailed in a number of court cases, not least Gilmore v. Gonzales, based in part on their saying that people who wouldn’t show ID could still fly, they’d just be searched more. (“Gilmore had a meaningful choice. He could have presented identification, submitted to a search, or left the airport. That he chose the latter does not detract from the fact that he could have boarded the airplane had he chosen one of the other two options. “)

Having won the cases, they are doing a takeback.

On the other hand, I guess they get one point for being honest about it.

(spotted via Emergent Chaos, Praises for the TSA)

FBI Recruiting Infiltrators for GOP Convention Protestors

This gets complicated. According to - City Pages (Minneapolis/St. Paul), Moles Wanted, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force is recruiting people to infiltrate anti-GOP protest groups in the run-up to the upcoming Republican convention.

The law is clear that police may attend public meetings undercover to see what people are up to. And of course undercover operations in private settings are also legal, although there should be guidelines as to when they are appropriate. And of course it’s good citizenship for private citizens to report crimes when they witness them.

But this story raises a number of serious questions.

First, there’s this: the FBI told the potential informant that he “would be compensated for his efforts, but only if his involvement yielded an arrest. No exact dollar figure was offered.”

In other words, the FBI is recruiting unpaid volunteers to become infiltrators. And they get paid only if they give information leading to an arrest. Which creates a serious incentive for agents provocateurs. This is not a sensible policy at all. It is in fact a very bad idea.

Second, there’s the weird description of the targets — “vegan potlucks” — and the general sense of massive overkill, which contributes to the chilling effect discussed in the article.

I also wonder whether a similar effort is underway for the Democratic convention (not that two wrongs make a right). If it is not, would that be because of a political bias in the FBI, or a considered judgment that McCain is more likely to be a target of violence than the first Black (or female) major-party Presidential candidate?

Bottom line: we don’t want violence, but we also don’t a stifling police presence that — whatever its motives — feels like an attempt to stifle dissent.

And we especially don’t want to live in an informer nation in which people with no training and who knows what personal agendas are offered a chance to make money by stirring up trouble and then phoning the FBI.

How does one equate vegan potlucks with this restriction on permissible terrorist investigations?

Mere speculation that force or violence might occur during the course of an otherwise peaceable demonstration is not sufficient grounds for initiation of an investigation under this Subpart, but where facts or circumstances reasonably indicate that a group or enterprise has engaged or aims to engage in activities involving force or violence or other criminal conduct described in paragraph (1)(a) in a demonstration, an investigation may be initiated in conformity with the standards of that paragraph. [her emphasis]

Civil Liberties Blog: 'Don't Tase Me, Bro!'

I may be the last to know of it, but Don’t Tase Me, Bro! is a nifty web site with lots of depressing anecdotes about regular folks having their civil liberties trampled.

Today’s is 7 Year Old Boy Removed from Father and Placed in State Custody Over mistaken Order of Hard Lemondade.

If you watch much television, you’ve probably heard of a product called Mike’s Hard Lemonade.

And if you ask Christopher Ratte and his wife how they lost custody of their 7-year-old son, the short version is that nobody in the Ratte family watches much television.

The way police and child protection workers figure it, Ratte should have known that what a Comerica Park vendor handed over when Ratte ordered a lemonade for his boy three Saturdays ago contained alcohol, and Ratte’s ignorance justified placing young Leo in foster care …
The 47-year-old academic says he wasn’t even aware alcoholic lemonade existed when he and Leo stopped at a concession stand on the way to their seats in Section 114.

“I’d never drunk it, never purchased it, never heard of it,” Ratte of Ann Arbor told me sheepishly last week. “And it’s certainly not what I expected when I ordered a lemonade for my 7-year-old.”

But it wasn’t until the top of the ninth inning that a Comerica Park security guard noticed the bottle in young Leo’s hand.

“You know this is an alcoholic beverage?” the guard asked the professor.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Ratte replied. He asked for the bottle, but the security guard snatched it before Ratte could examine the label. …

But it would be two days before the state of Michigan allowed Ratte’s wife, U-M architecture professor Claire Zimmerman, to take their son home, and nearly a week before Ratte was permitted to move back into his own house.

As an academic (at a different UM), a parent, and non-TV person, I sympathize. That said, I was not only aware of hard lemonade, I’ve even tried it once. It’s not very nice.

If I’m going to have hard fruit juice, I very much prefer dry cider. But the kids are sticking to Izzes for now.

Just Don't Mention the War

Newsday.com, Police arrest anti-war protester, 80, at mall

An 80-year-old church deacon was removed from the Smith Haven Mall yesterday in a wheelchair and arrested by police for refusing to remove a T-shirt protesting the Iraq War.

House Passs FISA Without Telco Immunity

The House today passed a FISA bill with some bad aspects, but without the immunity clause. See the EFF press release.

While there’s stuff not to like in this bill, all of it can be repealed at some later date — except the immunity, which would not be subject to repeal.

Florida’s Senator Nelson voted wrong last time this came up before the Senate. Any chance he’ll do better this time?

Wonders Never Cease

Daily Kos: FISA fight: Leadership maneuvers you’ll actually like.

Nice to have something mildly cheerful for a change.

Important FISA Statement by House Judiciary Committee

I don’t know if this will be important politically, but it is important intellectually.

The Gavel » Blog Archive » Judiciary Committee Members: Administration Has Not Made the Case for Telecom Immunity Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and 19 Members of the Judiciary Committee issued a statement regarding telecommunications immunity, as the House prepares to consider the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. Following a review of classified information relating to the warrantless surveillance program and immunity for telecommunications companies, the Members reported their conclusion that the Administration has not established a valid and credible case to justify granting blanket retroactive immunity at this time.

The full text of the statement is quite long and careful.

Not only does it give new details of what’s been going on, but it demolishes the case that there’s some justification lurking in the secret documents that might justify the Rockefeller retreat from legality.

A Ray of Hope on FISA

House leaders plan to introduce Substantially improved FISA bill. Not a good bill, but not an evil bill either. Notably it doesn’t have a telecom immunity provision. In other words, much better than anything to emerge from the Senate so far.

Could it be that the results from the recent Illinois special election — in which the losing GOP candidate tried to demagog on FISA and fell flat — have stiffed a spine or two?

Actually, the House text has a pretty clever move in it: the bill makes clear beyond doubt that telecoms may submit classified exculpatory evidence to the court reviewing the legality of their behavior notwithstanding the administration’s assertion of state secrets privilege. As this alleged lack was often cited as a major reason for the immunity provision, there’s one fewer specious argument available for immunity — and a lifeline for anyone who’d like to climb down from that increasingly unpopular viewpoint.

UK ISPs Join the Spy Brigade

UK ISPs to Spy on Google Users (and Others):

Greetings. Given the CCTV surveillance fetish in the UK these days, it seems somehow sickly appropriate that British ISPs are in the forefront when it comes to spying on the content of their subscribers’ Web browsing — and it appears that Google users are in the bull’s-eye.

Most of the related media attention so far has revolved around the manner in which the three largest UK ISPs have gone to bed with “Phorm” — toward the goal of monetizing Web browsing habits of subscribers and providing targeted ads ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/29/phorm_roundup/ ).

Of course, there’s a lot “soothing” promotional blather on the BT site claiming that the data collected regarding the sites that you visit is quickly deleted or anonymized. And while officially the ISPs claim that they haven’t made a decision about opt-out vs. opt-in, the current British Telecom limited deployment — they call the “service” “Webwise” ( http://webwise.bt.com/webwise/index.html ) and promote it as mainly an anti-phishing system — appears to be opt-out (requiring either maintaining a special cookie in your browser or blocking all cookies from a particular site).

Third-party tracking of the Web sites that you visit is bad enough, but Webwise (and presumably the other incarnations of the Phorm system) go one big step farther — they actually spy on your Web content and extract for their own use the search terms that you enter into search engines:

“We [Webwise] use the website address, keywords and search terms from the page viewed to match a category or area of interest (e.g., travel or finance).”

Given that the vast majority of searches these days are conducted with Google, it’s obvious that this ISP-based system will be attempting to monetize the vast number of search transactions between users and Google, in a technical manner that seems eerily similar to wiretapping.

What is this, an epidemic?

1984: We're Behind Schedule (Irish Edition)

Ireland’s SiliconRepublic.com, In a State of surveillance:

We are about to enter into a state where every digital step you take is recorded. At the end of March, the Government will introduce the most draconian law in the history of personal privacy in Ireland: 24-hour internet monitoring. A log will be made of everyone’s internet activity and every email sent and received.

Greetings from the State of surveillance.

Sen. Bill Nelson Prefers Telcos to Constituents

When I called Senator Bill Nelson’s office last week, the guy on the phone assured me that Nelson would vote with Senator Dodd to eliminate telco immunity from the FISA bill. [Update: I relied on that call for this post on Feb. 1.]

That turns out to be false.

Like many of his Senate colleagues, Sen. Bill Nelson sold us out to the telcos. See the full Vote on the Dodd Amendment.

I vaguely get the politics of cowardice, although you can be damn sure I won’t forget this vote (or the vote for torture, either). But I sure don’t get the politics of lying to constituents.

FISA Senate Order of Battle

Here’s what the Senate Leadership has cooked up for FISA. Sen. Reid’s office spins this as “the GOP blinked” as they backed down from their insane demand that no amendments be considered, or at least that they all require 60 votes.

From here, it looks somewhat different: the GOP is graciously allowing a majority vote to prevail on small things, or on things where there isn’t a Democratic majority. Big things that the Democrats could win still take 60 votes — a concession that is achieved by the empty threat of a real GOP filibuster…the political equivalent of suicide.

Meanwhile, Sen. Reid’s office also says that Sen. Dodd was involved in these negotiations and implies that he signed off on it. I’d like to hear that from him. I find the details of this agreement a bit opaque, but if I understand it, there is no opportunity for Sen. Dodd to mount his filibuster if his amendment to remove telecom immunity fails.

Note that the Democrats start from a bad position — one imposed on them unnecessarily by Sen. Reid — since the base bill is the Intelligence committee one not the much preferable Judiciary Committee version, and the rules favor inertia.

Has Senator Dodd caved in here? Or does he think he can find 50 votes? Senator Nelson (FL) now says he will vote for Dodd’s amendment, but I don’t think many others of the dozen DINOs who voted to table the Judiciary version of the bill have announced they are switching.

This would be a good time to call your Senator and ask nicely but firmly that Dodd’s amendment to remove the retroactive immunity for illegal wiretaps be removed fromadded to the FISA bill.

(Some people have asked why I focus on this rather than some other, possibly worse, features of the bill that make Richard Nixon seem unambitious. It’s because the others can be undone later. There’s real doubt that this can be.)

Update Thanks to James Tyre for a link to the final version as agreed by the Senate

Bush Blinks

Like the House, the Senate yesterday also passed a 15-day FISA extension. Bush had said he had to have six years on nuthin’ and previously threatened to veto a 30-day extension. But the WashPo says that he’ll sign it — I guess that someone over there grasped that unlike three years ago, if you say the sky will fall without the authority the bill gives you and you veto it at the same time, someone might ask an embarrassing question before printing your press release.

I remain very pessimistic about the ability of Senate Democrats to grow spines on this issue, although it is encouraging that weathervane Nelson (D-Fl.) voted for cloture on Monday, and that his DC phone people are saying he’ll vote to remove telecom immunity from the bill; this seems something of an about-face from last week’s vote to bury the Judiciary Committee version of the bill, but I’ll take what I can get.

The bright spot in the story is that prospects on the House side are somewhat better. It helps that key right-wing Democrats are facing some tough primary challenges from progressives. Sometimes, just sometimes, elections help keep people focused on what their constituents want.

Now, about that war…

FISA Short Course

Sen. Feingold demonstrates how he explains problems with FISA to constituents in a 30-second demo.

Meanwhile, the House passed a 15 day extension of the current (awful) version of FISA. And then it went into recess. Which is actually good, as it puts the Senate GOP on the spot and will probably spike some of their worst parliamentary delay tactics.

What He Said (Greenwald on FISA Dept.)

Glenn Greenwald,

Of all the creepy post-9/11 phrases to which we’ve been subjected (“The Patriot Act” - “Protecting the Homeland” - “enhanced interrogation techniques” - “Department of Homeland Security”), I think the creepiest and most Orwellian is the phrase “good patriotic corporate citizen,” used to describe companies which broke our laws because the President told them to. It’s now apparently a Patriotic Duty to obey the President even if he tells you to violate the law.

The accompanying claim that companies should never “second-guess” the “judgment of the President regarding what’s legal” — which I just heard from John Cornyn and Saxby Chambliss — is equally creepy, and is the crux of the authoritarian case for telecom immunity.

The cloture vote failed, so there will actually be debate on the current (evil) draft of FISA.

But don’t get too excited,

In one sense, this is an extremely mild victory, to put that generously. All this really means is that they will now proceed to debate and vote on the pending amendemnts to the bill, almost certainly defeat all of the meaningfully good ones, approve a couple of amendments which improve the bill in the most marginal ways, and then end up ultimately voting for a bill that contains both telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping. Moreover, it seems clear that Senate Republicans deliberately provoked this outcome and were hoping for it, by sabotaging what looked to be imminent Democratic capitulation so that Bush could accuse Democrats tonight of failing to pass a new FISA bill, thus helping their friend Osama.

Lots more chances for spines to vanish.

Meanwhile, however, things have got weird,

The vote on the Motion for Cloture on the 30-day extension (i.e., to proceed to a vote on it) just failed — 48-45 (again, 60 votes are needed). All Democrats (including Clinton and Obama) voted in favor of the Motion, but no Republicans did — not a single one. Thus, at least as of today, there will be no 30-day extension of the PAA and it will expire on Friday.

Reid, however, indicated that it was certain that the House will vote in favor of an extension tomorrow, which means it will be sent to the Senate for another vote. It’s possible, then, that the Senate will vote again later in the week on an extension, but it’s hard to imagine any Republicans ever voting in favor of an extension since Bush has vowed to veto it.

By blocking an extension, Republicans just basically assured that the PAA — which they spent the last seven months shrilly insisting was crucial if we are going to be Saved from The Terrorists — will expire on Friday without any new bill in place.

Even milquetoast Jay Rockefeller accused Bush of committing Political terrorism. Of course there’s still time for a vote on an emergency extension originating in the House…

NYC Proposes to Ban Unlicensed Environmental Monitors

Here’s news from the Village Voice about a proposed NY city ordinance which, I suspect, is not unconstitutional — it’s just monumentally stupid.

NYPD Seeks an Air Monitor Crackdown for New Yorkers:

Richard Falkenrath, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for counterterrorism …. and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have asked the City Council to pass a law requiring anyone who wants to own [machines that detect traces of biological, chemical, and radiological weapons] to get a permit from the police first. And it’s not just devices to detect weaponized anthrax that they want the power to control, but those that detect everything from industrial pollutants to asbestos in shoddy apartments. Want to test for pollution in low-income neighborhoods with high rates of childhood asthma? Gotta ask the cops for permission. Why? So you “will not lead to excessive false alarms and unwarranted anxiety,” the first draft of the law states.

Note that there is no actual evidence to date of police resources being wasted on such false alarms. They’re just planning ahead.

It may not be irrelevant that when the Environmental Protection Agency pronounced the air surrounding Ground Zero as safe, independent testers proved this to be a lie. The proposal would presumably shield the tender psyche of New Yorkers from being confronted with such discomforting truths.

There is a case to be made for thinking about the profusion and deployment of sensors, not least cameras, in our cities. Some rules about how personally-identifiable data can be stored and shared might be a good idea (although there are first amendment constraints).

But this proposal is just wrongheaded at best and the product of a deeply statist mind at worst. And Bloomberg thinks he wants to be President?

… researchers are developing a radiation detection system that would rely on sensors within cell phones to locate and track potentially hazardous material. From the Purdue news service: “Such a system could blanket the nation with millions of cell phones equipped with radiation sensors able to detect even light residues of radioactive material. Because cell phones already contain global positioning locators, the network of phones would serve as a tracking system, said physics professor Ephraim Fischbach. ‘The sensors don’t really perform the detection task individually,’ Fischbach said. ‘The collective action of the sensors, combined with the software analysis, detects the source. Say a car is transporting radioactive material for a bomb, and that car is driving down Meridian Street in Indianapolis or Fifth Avenue in New York. As the car passes people, their cell phones individually would send signals to a command center, allowing authorities to track the source.’”

Nobody's Safe

Well, for now, nobody poor is safe. But give them time.

McClatchy, Immigration officials detaining, deporting American citizens:

Thomas Warziniack was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia, but immigration authorities pronounced him an illegal immigrant from Russia.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has held Warziniack for weeks in an Arizona detention facility with the aim of deporting him to a country he’s never seen. His jailers shrugged off Warziniack’s claims that he was an American citizen, even though they could have retrieved his Minnesota birth certificate in minutes and even though a Colorado court had concluded that he was a U.S. citizen a year before it shipped him to Arizona.

On Thursday, Warziniack was told he would be released. Immigration authorities were finally able to verify his citizenship.

“The immigration agents told me they never make mistakes,” Warziniack said in a phone interview from jail.

It’s really worth reading the whole article: no right to a lawyer, no help getting documents, no one believes the documents you get or the witnesses you find, and you have the burden of proof of showing you are a citizen — while in custody.

(spotted via Emergent Chaos, “We have to be careful we don’t release the wrong person”)

Bill Nelson Sells Out America

Senator Bill Nelson of Florida voted with the GOP today to table — in effect kill — the Judiciary Committee version of FISA. In other words, he voted for the version of the bill that gives total immunity to the telephone companies for conspiring with administration officials to do a massive series of illegal wiretaps — even before 9/11. (Glenn Greenwald is great on this at Salon today and yesterday.)

How sad that even the less reactionary of my Senators believes the government should be able to conduct illegal wiretapping at will, and that its aiders and abettors in the private sector — multi-billion dollar firms with the best legal advice — should get immunity for disregarding the clear words of a statute which told them not to do it.

And the man has the nerve to send me email that says he is very concerned about protecting my civil liberties.

Then again, this is the same Bill Nelson of Florida who voted for torture, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

Sen. Feingold on FISA

Senator Feingold has released a good statement on FISA:

It’s Not Just About Immunity When the Senate reconvenes next week, legislation to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) will be among the first issues we address. I am as determined as ever to use all procedural tools at my disposal, including a filibuster, to try to stop the FISA legislation if it doesn’t protect the privacy of law abiding Americans or if it includes immunity for telecom companies. I am also deeply grateful for the energy this community has put behind stopping this assault on the rights and liberties of Americans - it gave a huge boost to our successful effort in December to stop a bad FISA bill being rammed through the Senate. But while we had some temporary success last month, we face an uphill battle to fix the bill, particularly since the Democratic leadership still seems intent on bringing the flawed Intelligence Committee bill to the floor, rather than the better version approved by the Judiciary Committee.

Much of the debate so far has focused on the issue of granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that allegedly participated in the president’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program. But as this legislation moves forward, a critical part of our battle is going to be making people understand how dangerous and flawed the proposed FISA legislation is, even beyond the issue of immunity.

Don’t get me wrong – the inclusion of any amnesty provision for telecom companies is a deal breaker for me. Senator Dodd and I will offer an amendment to strike retroactive immunity from the Intelligence Committee bill likely to be taken up by the Senate. Granting this kind of amnesty is totally unjustified since these companies already receive immunity if they follow the law. And it’s not as if these companies don’t have lawyers to tell them what’s legal and what’s not – especially when these laws have been on the books for 30 years. It is particularly outrageous that companies think they deserve immunity for allegedly participating in an illegal program when we found out last week from the DOJ Inspector General that telecom carriers are perfectly willing to shut off wiretaps – including a foreign intelligence wiretap – when the FBI doesn’t make its payments on time.

But immunity is only one of the very serious problems with the Intelligence Committee FISA bill. We all agree that when foreign terrorists are communicating with each other overseas, the U.S. government shouldn’t need a warrant to listen in. But both the so-called Protect America Act (PAA) – the law we passed last year - and the Intelligence Committee bill go far beyond addressing that issue. They grant unprecedented powers to the executive branch to engage in widespread surveillance involving Americans, with virtually no judicial involvement. There is a better alternative in the Senate, and that is the Judiciary Committee bill. It is vastly preferable not only because it does not contain immunity, but also because it provides for meaningful, independent judicial oversight of the new wiretapping authorities, and more protections for the communications of Americans that get swept up in these broad new surveillance powers. Here are some of the serious problems with the Intelligence Committee bill:

• The PAA and the Intelligence Committee bill allow the government to acquire communications between foreigners and Americans inside the United States, without a court order and regardless of whether anyone involved in the communication is under any suspicion of wrongdoing. There is no requirement that the foreign targets of this surveillance be terrorists, spies or other types of criminals. The only requirements are that the foreigners are outside the country, and that the purpose is to obtain foreign intelligence information, a term that has an extremely broad definition. No court reviews these targets individually; only the executive branch decides who fits these criteria. The result is that many law-abiding Americans in the U.S. who communicate with completely innocent people overseas will be swept up in this new form of surveillance, with virtually no judicial involvement. Even the Administration’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program, as described when it was publicly confirmed in 2005, at least focused on particular suspected terrorists. Not even the Judiciary bill adequately addresses this very serious problem.

• The role of the FISA court is also at issue. The Intelligence Committee bill doesn’t give adequate authority to the FISA court to do what it is supposed to do - operate as an independent check on the executive branch. The bill passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee does give the court authority to assess the government’s compliance with its wiretapping procedures, to place limits on the use of information that was acquired through unlawful procedures, and to enforce its own orders – all of which are critical checks and balances.

• The Judiciary Committee bill also does a much better job than the Intelligence Committee bill or the Protect America Act of protecting Americans from widespread warrantless wiretapping. It ensures that if the government is wiretapping a foreigner overseas in order to collect the communications of the American with whom that foreign target is communicating – what is called reverse targeting – it has to get a court order on that American. The Judiciary bill also prohibits bulk collection – that is, the sweeping up of all communications between the United States and overseas, which is something the Director of National Intelligence has admitted is legal under the Protect America Act.

So we have a lot of work to do on the Senate floor to fix the Intelligence Committee bill, not only by stripping the immunity provision, but also by adding back the protections from the Judiciary Committee bill and by addressing the broader problem of adequately protecting Americans’ privacy rights. Rather than acquiesce to another Bush administration power grab, the Senate should stand up for the rights of Americans and fix the bill.

It won’t be easy. Already we’re seeing grossly misleading rhetoric, if not outright falsehoods, coming from the White House in another attempt to intimidate Congress into quickly passing bad legislation – the same old Administration play from the same old Administration playbook. We must not be intimidated by this fear-mongering. I will continue to do all I can to urge my colleagues to stand up to this administration and fix FISA so we can go after suspected terrorists without robbing law-abiding Americans of their rights.

At the Archives, the First Amendment Is Just for Show

The National Archives is one of my favorite DC attractions. It has a small public display area showing some major documents in American history. Among other treasures, it displays one the original copies of the Bill of Rights — with all twelve of the original proposed amendments. (There’s even a special vault to protect the original Constitution and Bill of Rights at night.)

What became our First Amendment is actually the third on the original list. Sadly, it seems that the Archive’s guards think the Bill of Rights is just for show.

According to this account in a Daily Kos diary, Vistiors to the Archives were kicked out for wearing “Impeach Bush and Cheney, Change History” T-shirts:

With the original First Amendment “Freedom of Speech” looking on, admirers of the U.S. Constitution in the Washington D.C. National Archives Building today were ordered to leave for wearing tee-shirts reading “Impeach Bush and Cheney.” Many of the tourist-activists were in town to hail the arrival of impeachment marcher John Nirenberg, the 61 year-old college professor who has just walked from Boston to D.C. to call attention to the need for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney.

In a telephone interview, one of the participants, Susan Serpa, age 56, told me she was looking at the displays when a female security guard approached her and said “You need to go speak to that man over there” indicating a burly security guard. When Serpa asked why, the woman said: “Your shirt.” Serpa’s shirt reads on the front: “Impeach Bush and Cheney, Change History.” On the reverse it says: “MaineImpeach.org.”

Other security guards then approached Serpa and told her: “You need to leave because of your shirt.

Assuming this account is correct, what the guards did is completely, totally illegal, as the Archives is federal property, open to the public, and the wearers were not committing a disturbance. But the guards either didn’t know that or didn’t care.

How have we sunk to this state?

Land of the Free

Please read JUSTICE BUILDING BLOG: IF YOU WIN….. for the appropriate response to the latest US Justice atrocity:

A jury acquits a lawful US resident who has no prior criminal record, has lived in the US for over twenty years, and has a wife and children at a home in South Florida.

What does the US government do to this Defendant who had a trial in the United States? Yes- these United States, about which our president travels the world extolling the virtues of freedom, democracy, due process, trial by jury, presumption of innocence; the bill of rights; this wonderful government of ours throws this INNOCENT man back into custody and in the dark of night drags him off to some concentration camp in Georgia, to await removal for being something he was just acquitted of.

More where that came from.

BREAKING: DODD WINS (for now)

I have it on excellent authority that Senator Reid has put off the FISA immunity bill until the New Year.

Congratulations (for now) to Senator Dodd, and to Russ Feingold and the many Senators who made it clear they were going to assist him in his filibuster.

Update: More at Crooks and Liars.

Chris Dodd's Filibuster for the Constitution

Crooks and Liars » Dodd To Filibuster FISA Bill.

It’s pretty sad that the nominally Democratic Senate leadership has

• Refused to recognize Dodd’s “hold” on the FISA bill with full retroactive blanket amnesty for telecom companies that we now know abetted illegal spying on US citizens starting before 911.
• Scheduled the vote just before the Iowa caucuses to make it harder for candidates to take part, and shortly before the recess — creating pressure to vote.

I would have hoped that some other Senators would share Dodd’s conviction that this issue is worth going to the mat on — one Senator can’t keep up a filibuster forever. Three can. Where are the others on this issue?

Thank you Senator Dodd for picking this issue and taking it seriously. (This is Dodd’s first filibuster in a 27-year career).

Romney's Orwellian View of Freedom

I used to say that I could see Romney as the least bad of the Republican candidates. Surely no principles was better than bad ones?

I may have to reconsider. On the one matter where one has to assume he is least likely to lie to us, the place of religion in public life, former Gov. Romney has some very strange views, such as: “Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom.”

The clearest statement I’ve seen of the problem may be slacktivist, Mitt vs. atheists, martyrs,

Let’s deal with the latter assertion first: “religion requires freedom.” There are far too many counter-examples for this to be true. Think of China, where the government denies religious freedom to millions of Christians and Falun Gong adherents and Tibetan Buddhists. Yet despite this lack of freedom, despite this active oppression — and, in a way, in response to this oppression — these faiths are all thriving. ….

“Freedom requires religion,” Romney said. Had he said, “Freedom requires religious freedom,” then I would agree, absolutely. Try to imagine if you can a society in which people were denied this most intimate of freedoms, the freedom of conscience, yet remained in all other respects free. Such a thing is impossible. This is part of the genius of the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Take away any one of those freedoms and you take away the others as well. Each of those freedoms requires the others.

But Romney did not say that freedom requires religious freedom. He said, “Freedom requires religion.” And that’s a contradictory statement — a very different, and very frightening, thing.

If freedom requires religion, then the a-religious and irreligious, the non-religious and un-religious are the enemies of freedom. Romney believes, in other words, that atheism is incompatible with freedom. Whatever it is he means by “religious liberty,” he does not believe it can safely be applied to atheists.

Don’t get me wrong: I have no problem at all with devout candidates. I respect people who want to actualize their faith — just as long as in their public life they put the First Amendment first, and don’t try any back-door establishment of religion. Thus, I respect, but disagree with, people who say abortion is murder and wish to change the law to protect what they see as unborn people. I also disagree pretty strongly with people who want use state power to enforce their versions of morality, but I often do understand where they are coming from — even though I think that many of these efforts have serious constitutional difficulties and wish they were much more sensitive to these issues.

I don’t respect people who want to create special programs whose real purpose is to funnel money to churches (although I don’t mind at all having churches compete on a level playing field for federal funds so long as they observe the rules that apply to all recipients of federal money).

But I also respect (and would rather vote for) people whose faith — be it religious or secular — leaves more scope for individual choice and autonomy on most questions of morality.

Mitt Romney’s position that atheists are or should be second-class citizens hearkens back to an old American idea, mostly abandoned in the Enlightenment period, that the irreligious were fundamentally untrustworthy because without a fear of Hell they could not be trusted to keep their oaths.

It’s deeply depressing to consider that a major GOP candidate who is 200 years behind the times may still seem modern when part of a field that seems anxious to compete on who is more for torture of more detainees, and who has the cruelest plan for deporting and deterring undocumented workers.

Oh, wait. He’s campaigning as just as much a troglodyte as most of the others. Romney thinks we should double the size of the Guantanamo prison camp. I suppose that since Romney thinks Muslims are unfit for top government jobs this shouldn’t be totally surprising.

Race to the bottom. Dragging us down with it.

Foreigners Still Don't Realize How Dumb Our Government Is

More dumb police work: Man angry with son-in-law fingers him as terrorist to FBI

A man in Sweden who was angry with his daughter’s husband has been charged with libel for telling the FBI that the son-in-law had links to al-Qaeda, Swedish media reported on Friday.

The man, who admitted sending the email, said he did not think the US authorities would stupid enough to believe him.

The 40-year-old son-in-law and his wife were in the process of divorcing when the husband had to travel to the United States for business.

The wife didn’t want him to travel since she was sick and wanted him to help care for their children, regional daily Sydsvenska Dagbladet said without disclosing the couple’s names.

When the husband refused to stay home, his father-in-law wrote an email to the FBI saying the son-in-law had links to al-Qaeda in Sweden and that he was travelling to the US to meet his contacts.

He provided information on the flight number and date of arrival in the US.

The son-in-law was arrested upon landing in Florida. He was placed in handcuffs, interrogated and placed in a cell for 11 hours before being put on a flight back to Europe, the paper said.

Neither the FBI nor the TSA can afford to ignore emails with specific accusations. Stopping someone directly accused of being a terrorist is entirely reasonable — although you have to wonder whether the Swedish authorities were consulted at any point between receipt of the email and the passenger’s arrival.

Still, if the FBI and the TSA can’t do a better job of distinguishing a terrorist from an innocent visitor after 11 hours in which they have him to interrogate and during which they can presumably contact the Swedes to go talk to the sender (if they haven’t already), then TSA really is not much use, since all air travel will be subject to a trivial denial of service attack. This is worse than “security theater” — it’s security Grand Guignol.

Apparently the FBI did eventually get around to contacting the Swedes.

FBI contacted Swedish intelligence agency Saepo, which discovered that the email tipping off the FBI had been sent from the father-in-law’s computer.

What’s unclear from the story is when the request was made, and why they deported the traveler pending this report.

Bonus ‘security’ horror story, brought to you by those dangerous Episcopalians.

Dodd Stands Up, Late But Tall

What’s amazing is not that Senator Chris Dodd gave a really good speech drawing a line against further Administration depredations against the Constitution.

No, what’s amazing is that it took so long before he did it.

And what’s disheartening is that speeches like this are rare and wonderful things in this (supine) Democratic-in-name-only (“DINO”) Congress. Because contempt for law (and for Congress) are hallmarks of this Administration.

The Senate Flirts With Irrelevance (or Worse)

Since they are aggressively not talking about the war, the two most important domestic policy issues before Congress at present are the FISA re-authorization and the nomination of Michael B. Mukasey, a man who is an intelligent prevaricator about torture and a straight-forward authoritarian about Presidential power to be our next Attorney General.

The Senate’s capitulation on FISA includes retrospective amnesty, without even a need for truth and reconciliation, for all the telecom companies that violated the law, knowingly, and allowed illegal eavesdropping of telecoms traffic just because someone in government asked them to do so. There is now some evidence, arising from the Nacchio fraud trial, that the illegal spying program started well before 9/11 — the smoking gun that this amnesty plan may be designed to hide.

The whole idea of these companies going along with oral requests that they had to know were illegal is positively Soviet. So too are the all-too-credible allegations that when Qwest failed to play ball with these illegal requests, it got punished by being denied government contract work for which it was best qualified.

That the Senate would agree to an amnesty with no disclosure in these conditions is one of the best arguments for term limits that I have ever heard.

Senator Chris Dodd, emerging as the conscience of the Presidential field, has placed a hold on the FISA bill. I hope his colleagues are grateful to him for saving them from their own folly.

Even so, no hold seems likely for the Mukasey nomination, further cementing the irrelevance of the Senate and its quiet complicity in torture and other outrages. Yes, there’s a tradition of allowing most nominees to go through, but torture ought to be exceptional. And if that won’t do it, why on earth is the Senate going to confirm a man who testifies that he believes the President can violate statutes on national security grounds more or less whenever he wants to?

Asked, for instance, if the president was free to violate a law enacted by Congress, Mr. Mukasey said, “That would have to depend on whether what goes outside the statute nonetheless lies within the authority of the president to defend the country.”

…

Mr. Mukasey also said that Congress might be powerless to bar the president from conducting some surveillance without warrants.

“The statute, regardless of its clarity, can’t change the Constitution,” Mr. Mukasey said. “That’s been true since the Prize cases.”

But the Prize cases concerned whether President Lincoln had the power to impose a blockade of Confederate ports without Congressional authorization — not in the face of a Congressional ban. (Indeed, Congress later retroactively authorized Lincoln’s actions.)

The distinction between Congressional silence, as in the Prize cases, and Congressional limitation, as in the 1978 law that required warrants for some intelligence surveillance, is an important one.

…

“So you are telling the committee, Judge, that anytime the president is acting to safeguard the national security against a terrorist threat, he does not have to comply with statute?” asked Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, referring to the 1978 law.

Mr. Mukasey did not answer directly…

I think this means that confirmation would be a grave error — even if failure to confirm keeps Peter Keisler, the perhaps equally absolutist temporary AG, in office for a long time. (I happen to have known Keisler reasonably well a long time ago, back in college and law school. He always seemed a deeply decent person on a human level. He was also one of the most right-wing people I knew and his political viewpoints were extreme even then. But then he might well say the same about me for all I know.)

As for the Senators, if they don’t care about the Constitution, is there at least no jealousy left for the legislative prerogative? Primaries for them all, I say.

How to Dress for the Airport

Item One: Henry Jenkins is the Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program. He has a very thoughtful summary of the Star Simpson story, which you may recall was the recent incident in which an MIT student triggered a bomb alert at Logan airport because she turned up wearing a t-shirt with blinking lights and other funny looking stuff. Plus she was playing with a roll of Play-Dough.

Prof. Jenkings also has good things to say about what this teaches us about the difference between dead-tree media and blogs, and also what this tells MIT students about how to dress for the airport.

Item two: Today’s Miami Herald reprises the case of Kyla Ebbert, who was told she couldn’t fly on Soutwest Airlines because she was wearing a short skirt, and expands it to discuss the online fashion police more generally. These print version of the article has a photo of the offending garments, which are certainly not eyebrow-raising by south Florida standards, and which the article tells us involve more fabric than the outfit Ms. Ebbert is required to wear on her job as a Hooters waitress.

In a separate incident, Southwest’s fashion police also required a passenger to change what it called a sexually suggestive T-shirt or risk getting thrown off the plane. Apparently this sort of thing happens with some frequency. Apparently too much skin prevents airplanes from getting sufficient lift to fly or something.

Could the “no-fly rule” have taken on a new meaning?

Or is could it just be irrational, arbitrary, behavior on the part of (some) flight attendants? Consider this from Ms. Ebbert,

What really tops the whole story off is that Ebbert wore the same outfit on the return flight to San Diego later that day. A female flight attendant also took note of it, according to Ebbert.

“I was complimented by the stewardess on my return flight,” she said.

Rev. Yearwood Update

Curiouser and curiouser.

Rev Lennox Yearwood, Jr., who had his leg broken by Capitol Police the last time he tried to get into a congressional hearing had most of the charges against him stemming from that incident dropped, but he still is having a hard time getting into hearings. No one has come forward to explain why.

We shall overcome… harassment and intimidation | Iraq Veterans Against the War

Yesterday I announced that the US Attorney dropped the charges against me of assaulting a police officer (http://www.citizensforethics.com *).

Today, Tuesday Oct 2nd, I was in line for the Blackwater hearing on Capitol Hill at 9:15 in the morning. When I got to the front of the line at 11:30, Capitol Police stopped the line. I stood there for two hours while the same officers who leapt on me three weeks ago outside of the Petraeus hearing, pointed and stared at me. I stood there, humming “we shall overcome.”

Congresswoman Maxine Waters showed up at 1:30 and saw me standing there. She demanded that I be let into the hearing. Cops were swarming the door, and the honorable Congresswoman from California escorted me into the hearing. Once I got in, three cops stood near me, so I would not forget that I was in their territory.

It is just incredible that as a peace activist, a former Chaplain candidate in the Air Force Reserve, and a Minister, I would be treated so disrespectfully in the halls of Congress.

But, this is part of the struggle, and like my brothers and sisters before me, I know that we shall overcome.

* Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, who represents me in this case, have been incredible allies, and show true courage in their work to expose corruption and injustice in Washington.

As I understand it, there’s still a charge of disturbing the peace outstanding from the earlier incident, but the man is presumed innocent isn’t he?

Earlier related posts:

• Violence at the Iraq War Hearing
• Rev. Yearwood Talks About His Arrest

It Can't Happen Here

This clip from an Australian comedy show, the Chaser’s War on Everything, which purports to be man-in-the-street interviews of somewhat ordinary Americans (conducted by US-based reporter Charles Firth?) must be a spoof. It’s probably a spoof. I mean, it has a laugh track. I hope it’s a spoof.

People wouldn’t really say that stuff just sixty years after the Holocaust, would they?

Wayne Slavin's No-Good Horrible TSA Bad Day

Wayne Slavin, missed his trip to South Africa because the TSA (and hired airport security) acted really badly. (And Delta Airlines wasn’t much help.)

The question is, does this mean that the TSA staff are regressing to the mean for people with guns and power treating the powerless (that is, you and me)?

It’s not surprising that we are seeing the emergence of occasional airport petty tyrants. The sheer scale of the operation ensures there will be some. When TSA began, however, it was notable for the unusual courtesy with which the staff treated the passengers, especially as compared to their predecessor contract screener. Was that focus on decent interaction just the police equivalent of a credit card teaser rate, or the TSA ready to crack down on its bad apples?

History offers little ground for optimism here.

[Bonus TSA follies posting.]

The Audience Sat Quietly

I’m happy to report that the Chemerinsky affair has come to what appears a happy conclusion. But even at its worst, that kerfuffle might be small potatoes compared to the worst interpretation (which is not the only one possible) of what is recorded in this video of U.Florida police tasering a student:

The video begins at the end of what appears from the excerpt to be the student’s mildly confrontational question. But we don’t know what went before — for example, did the student hog the mike for 10 minutes, refusing calls to relinquish it?

University spokesman Steve Orlando said Meyer was asked to leave the microphone after his allotted time was up. Meyer can be seen refusing to walk away and getting upset that the microphone was cut off.

As two officers take Meyer by the arms, Kerry, D-Mass., can be heard saying, “That’s all right, let me answer his question.”

Did he go over time a little, or a long time? Does U.Fla have a 10-second rule — go over 11 seconds and it’s the pokey?

I’m certain the police will say they tasered the student for resisting arrest, and viewed strictly from the point of police procedure and starting from the rule that even people subject to false arrest are supposed to go quietly that seems plausible from the video. The student isn’t going quietly — he’s shouting for help and asking what he’s done to merit arrest.

Yet, at another level, that defense elevates procedure over substance: Why was this student arrested at all? Dragging people away for asking a question in a public forum at a public university suggests we may be reaching a new low in civic values and freedom.

1) Did this actually happen in the United States of America?
2) How is it that 98 percent of the audience sat in silence?
3) Can you believe that Kerry just kept on answering the question as if everything were normal?
4) What would have happened if the Senator stood up and told the cops to stop instead of offering weak protestation?

I think the second question is the key: Why did the audience fail to react?

Did the audience fail to react because this is a known crank who was looking for trouble and was abusive in the (seconds? minutes?) preceding this video, and they felt he had abused the audience as much as Senator Kerry, or did the audience fail to react because we’re no longer shocked by people being dragged away if they ask unpleasant questions in public?

Comments — and eyewitness reports — particularly welcome.

Rev. Yearwood Talks About His Arrest

Rev. Yearwood talks about his arrest. He certainly has a way of sounding very reasonable. It would be nice to hear the other side, if there is one. Have the Capitol Police (or the Speaker and Majority Leader’s Offices to whom I believe they report?) said anything about the incident?

Violence at the Iraq War Hearing

This has all the markings of a very strange story: Rev. Lennox Yearwood Arrested at Petraeus Hearing.

I hope we get to hear more about what exactly happened; certainly the first, perhaps one-sided, report is disturbing; on the other hand, the video is less clear-cut — after being singled out for some reason and denied admission after waiting in line (could it really be for wearing a button that said “I love the people of Iraq?”) did Rev. Yearwood really lunge for the door saying “I will not be arrested”? And even so, does that justify breaking his leg?

Rev. Yearwood is the same person who recently won a stay or delay in his case against the Air Force which had tried to honorably (not dishonorably) discharge him as a chaplain; according to his supporters, his offense was preaching against the war. And indeed, when he got an opportunity to preach at Andrews Air Force Base, “the message that I preached was ‘Who Would Jesus Bomb?’”—not the best way to be popular on the base, I’d imagine.

I spent some time trying to find out if there’s a Senate rule about what you can wear to a committee hearing, and whether buttons are prohibited. Couldn’t find anything. Links to facts most welcomed.

Art from Annoyance

It Came From Airport Security, the anthology announced about a year ago of fiction based on new security measures at airports, is now available (and is forwardthinkingly licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5).

Judge Rules National Security Letters are Unconstitutional

In a big win for the rule of law, Federal District Judge Marrero issued a 103 page decision today holding National Security Letters unconstitutional despite their being blessed by the reauthorization of the Patriot Act.

Text of the decision in .pdf

Congratulations to the legal team from the ACLU and others who won this big victory — sure to be appealed.

Justice!

Feds pay $80,000 to couple arrested for wearing Bush protest T-shirts.

It’s nice when the Constitution wins one.

This Is Not Good for America

A Case So Shielded One Side Is in the Dark (behind Times paywall; archived Copyright violation?)

Mr. Eisenberg is suing the government on behalf of clients who say they were illegally wiretapped by the National Security Agency. Yet he was required to write an appellate brief in a government office, supervised by a Justice Department security officer.

…

“Yesterday, under the auspices and control of my litigation adversaries, at their offices and on their computer, I wrote a brief, of which I was not allowed to keep a copy, responding to arguments which I was not permitted to see, which will be met by a reply which I will not be permitted to see.”

That this doesn’t make for justice as we (ought to) know it will, I hope, go without saying.

The Wages of Spinelessness

Privacy News:

Four days after President Bush signed controversial legislation legalizing some warrantless surveillance of Americans, the administration is citing the law in a surprise motion today urging a federal judge to dismisss a lawsuit challenging the NSA spy program. The lawsuit was brought by lawyers defending Guantanamo Bay prisoners. The lawyers and others alleged the threat of surveillance is chilling their First Amendment rights of speech, and their clients’ right to legal representation. … Justice Department lawyers are asking (.pdf) U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker to toss the case, citing the new law — which says warrantless surveillance can continue for up to a year so long as one person in the intercepted communications is reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States.

Tell me again why the Speaker allowed this FISA revision to come to a vote so quickly?