Category Archives: Civil Liberties

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.

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.

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 (“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.

Continue reading →

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.

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”?