Category Archives: Civil Liberties

In some countries, if you post something that is critical of the Maximum Leader, the police come around and suggest that maybe you are psychologically disturbed. Maybe they mention this idea to your family and your boss. Maybe they 'suggest' you'd like to retract your critique.

Amazingly, that's the United States today: When Bears Growl (Or how I become the subject of a Secret Service Investigation).

I don't object to the Secret Service following up on complaints. And if the subject of the complaint is web art on “Bush and guns” I don't think it is unreasonable to go and visit the author to see if he seems like someone likely to engage in violence.

But if the account linked above is accurate, then I think its fairly clear that somewhere in the investigative process the Secret Service crossed a line.

Bad apples or agency policy?

The headline is far too tame: New Swedish Documents Illuminate CIA Action. Here's the real meat regarding Sweden's new report an an extraordinary rendition conducted by the US CIA which removed an Egyptian national from Sweden to Egypt (chained to a mattress no less):

… in Sweden a parliamentary investigator who conducted a 10-month probe … recently concluded that the CIA operatives violated Swedish law by subjecting the prisoners to “degrading and inhuman treatment” and by exercising police powers on Swedish soil.

“Should Swedish officers have taken those measures, I would have prosecuted them without hesitation for the misuse of public power and probably would have asked for a prison sentence,” the investigator, Mats Melin, said in an interview. He said he could not charge the CIA operatives because he was authorized to investigate only Swedish government officials, but he did not rule out the possibility that other Swedish prosecutors could do so.

…

Swedish security police said they were taken aback by the swiftness and precision of the CIA agents that night. Investigators concluded that the Swedes essentially stood aside and let the Americans take control of the operation, moving silently and communicating with hand signals, the documents show.

“I can say that we were surprised when a crew stepped out of the plane that seemed to be very professional, that had obviously done this before,” Arne Andersson, an assistant director for the Swedish national security police, told government investigators.

Yes, the US is very experienced in barbarity these days.

The two Egyptians later told lawyers, relatives and Swedish diplomats that they were subjected to electric shocks and other forms of torture soon after their forced return to their country.

Which was, of course, the point of the whole exercise.

Note that the two men had applied for asylum, but been refused, and were subject to an expulsion order.

Swedish security police wanted to arrest the men and put them on a flight to Cairo immediately to avoid giving their lawyers a chance to file an emergency appeal in court.

Swedish government ministers hastily scheduled a meeting for Dec. 18, 2001, to formally approve the expulsion. But the security police were unable to charter a flight to take the Egyptians to Cairo until the next morning. Police officials, worried about an overnight delay, turned to the CIA for help, according to the documents.

I'm sure there's a Swedish fable about getting help from ogres or something.

Remember this, the next time you are tempted to dismiss accusations of political harassment as somehow implausible.

Protesters Subjected To 'Pretext Interviews': New FBI documents to be released today show that anti-terrorism agents who questioned antiwar protesters last summer in Denver were conducting “pretext interviews” that did not lead to any information about criminal activity.

The memos were obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union as part of ongoing litigation and provide a glimpse of the FBI's controversial efforts to interview dozens of members of leftist protest groups before the party conventions last year in Boston and New York.

…

Instead, one heavily censored memo from the FBI's Denver field office, dated Aug. 2, 2004, characterized the effort as “pretext interviews to gain general information concerning possible criminal activity at the upcoming political conventions and presidential election.”

This is how freedom gets eroded, drip by drip.

If this story is true, then it seems that the federal police apparatus is now at least as corrupt (morally, not in the bribery sense) as it was in Nixon's day. Given everything else we are hearing, maybe even more so.

Democracy was in danger then, and it's in danger now.

Earlier “boiling frog” post.

Secrecy News 04/28/05 breaks the story of a new report from the Congressional Research Service that disputes the Bush Administration's claim that the President has unlimited authority to detain American citizens in wartime if he deems them to be enemy combatants.

Significantly, “Detention of U.S. Citizens,” Congressional Research Service, April 28, 2005, is by the highly respected Louis Fisher, an authority on constitutional law.

The introduction says that the report is aimed at a core issue raised in the Padilla case:

In 1971, Congress passed legislation to repeal the Emergency Detention Act of 1950 and to enact the following language: “No citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress.” The new language, codified at 18 U.S.C. §4001(a), is called the Non-Detention Act. This statutory provision received attention after the 9/11 terrorist attacks when the Administration designated certain U.S. citizens as “enemy combatants” and claimed the right to detain them indefinitely without charging them, bringing them to trial, or giving them access to counsel. In litigation over Yaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla, both designated enemy combatants, the Administration has argued that the Non-Detention Act restricts only imprisonments and detentions by the Attorney General, not by the President or military authorities.

And the conclusion is blunt:

Legislative debate, committee reports, and the political context of 1971 indicate that when Congress enacted Section 4001(a) it intended the statutory language to restrict all detentions by the executive branch, not merely those by the Attorney General. Lawmakers, both supporters and opponents of Section 4001(a), recognized that it would restrict the President and military authorities.