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?
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?.
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: 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)
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.
Update: Emptywheel at Firedoglake has some good comments, notably:
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]
It's a very good question. Rule of Law anyone?
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.
Jotwell Blenderlaw