Category Archives: Civil Liberties

One view: Daily Kos: UTAH RAVERS TREATED LIKE TERRORISTS!

The other view: Rave Party: Utah County Sheriff’s Office shuts down Rave Party in Spanish Fork Canyon.

The accounts differ as to whether the ravers had all the permits they needed (you need a permit to have more than 250 people on private land way out in the middle of nowhere? So it seems…)

Note however, that there is little but very violent resistance that would justify the kind of force the police are alleged to have used.

Not having been there or knowing any of the participants personally, I am unwilling to rush to judgment as to which account more closely captures the truth, although I’ll say this much: if it proves to be true that the the cops were impounding cameras and trying to stop filming, I think it’s fair to suspect that they might have had something to hide.

And if the accounts of violence, or raiding-despite-a-permit-and-without-a-warrant prove true, then the Utah police are simply out of control — or worse, controlled by really bad and evil people.

Update: As is increasingly often the case, info central on this issue is the wikipedia entry. And what to make of this unsourced claim: “A source inside the Utah government reports that this action was undertaken out of fear that the Rave would be used to rally support for the protest against Bush’s upcoming Utah visit.” They couldn’t be that crazy. Could they?

It's those wacky folks at homeland security again: freezing the assets of a puppeteering club (they dared to change bank branches! the temerity!).

But that's really OK, because there are not going to be so many children flying around to see puppets — you see, there are babies on the no-fly list.

Oddly, some people don't see the humor in the TSA randomly preventing Americans from moving about freely in their own country.

Bruce Schneier has a good analysis of the latest horrible idea to emerge from the TSA.

Schneier on Security: Secure Flight News

According to Wired News, the DHS is looking for someone in Congress to sponsor a bill that eliminates congressional oversight over the Secure Flight program.

The bill would allow them to go ahead with the program regardless of GAO’s assessment. (Current law requires them to meet ten criteria set by Congress; the most recent GAO report said that they did not meet nine of them.) The bill would allow them to use commercial data even though they have not demonstrated its effectiveness. (The DHS funding bill passed by both the House and the Senate prohibits them from using commercial data during passenger screening, because there has been absolutely no test results showing that it is effective.)

In this new bill, all that would be required to go ahead with Secure Flight would be for Secretary Chertoff to say so.

There’s lots more.

The Carpetbagger carps,

How ‘free’ will our ‘Freedom Walk’ be? There are any number of reasons to find the upcoming “America Supports You Freedom Walk” disconcerting. This is an event, organized by Rumsfeld’s Defense Department, which will honor the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks with a “freedom walk” from the Pentagon’s parking lot, past Arlington National Cemetery, to the reflecting pool on the National Mall. …

Some have said that this is ham-fisted nationalism gone awry. Others have noted the distastefulness of exploiting the attacks like this. Salon mentioned the less-than-subtle effort to connect 9/11 to Iraq. ….

But here’s the part that caught my attention: to participate in the “Freedom Walk,” you’ll need to register with the Department of Defense. …

That’s right, in order to participate in a government-sponsored “Freedom Walk” on public streets past public monuments, from one outdoor public landmark to another, you have to give your name address, phone number, and email address to the Pentagon.

Double plus ungood.

The American public is a sleeping giant. Most of the time life is good, and it doesn’t worry about politics. Or life is busy and it doesn’t worry about politics. It can be very hard to get its attention. But when it does focus, it focuses hard.

Could the sleeping giant be about to wake on issues like Guantanamo and Padilla?

Poll on Court Cites Detainee Rights as Concern: Americans seem as interested in the Supreme Court’s approach to the rights of detained terrorists as they are in abortion, according to polling released yesterday. Both are considered very important issues facing the high court.

…

“This important question of the trade-off of civil liberties and protection is one the public takes very seriously,” said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. “The public has been reminded recently of the ongoing threat of terrorism and what we should or should not have to sacrifice for our safety.” He did note that, until now, the question of detainees’ rights “has not been one of the issues at the forefront of debate about the Supreme Court.

Wouldn’t be the first time that the public was ahead of the media and the inside-the-beltway crowd.

Liberty is often lost in little drips.

The Citizen’s Guide to Refusing New York Subway Searches | FlexYourRights.org: While Flex Your Rights takes no position on the usefulness of these searches for preventing future attacks, we have serious concerns that this unprecedented territorial expansion of police search powers is doing grave damage to people’s understanding of their Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

In addition, as innocent citizens become increasingly accustomed to being searched by the police, politicians and police agencies are empowered to further expand the number of places where all are considered guilty until proven innocent.

Fortunately, this trend is neither inevitable nor irreversible. In fact, the high-profile public nature of these random subway searches provides freedom-loving citizens with easy and low-risk opportunities to “flex” their Fourth Amendment rights by refusing to be searched.

If you’re carrying a bag or package into the subway, here’s what you need to know and do in order to safely and intelligently “flex” your rights: