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Thursday, September 2, 2010 – Posted by One (PST)Series 3 / Day 3 of 3It’s all about who’s looking into our life and why, and how we, individually and collectively, have come to say no way, no more.

Editor — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:50:55 +0000

Patriot Act: to Peel or Re-Peel?

Editor — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:48:57 +0000

Patriot Act: Peel or Re-Peel - A cartoon by "America's Most Wanted Cartoonist" - Khalil Bendib

Congress Should Re-Examine The Patriot Act: A Statement By The ACLU

Editor — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:46:13 +0000

Posted by Art Kunkin

The following statement was issued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to update its opposition to the Patriot Act.

The ACLU is urging Congress to use 2010 to examine all of our surveillance laws, (including the Patriot Act that was made law after the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001) and amend those that have been found unconstitutional or have been abused to collect information on innocent people, including last year’s changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the Attorney General Guidelines (AGGs).

On February 25, 2010, Congress passed a one-year extension of three expiring Patriot Act provisions without making much-needed changes to the overly broad surveillance bill. In late 2009, to avoid expiration on December 31, Congress briefly extended the provisions. Despite bills pending in both the House and the Senate to amend the three expiring provisions and other sections of the Patriot Act, Congress decided instead to move ahead with a straightforward re-authorization.

Despite the many amendments to these laws since 9/11, Congress and the public have yet to receive real information about how these powerful tools are being used to collect information on Americans and how that information is being used. All of these laws work together to create a surveillance superstructure – and Congress must understand how it really works to create meaningful protections for civil liberties.

The ACLU’s recent report, Reclaiming Patriotism, provides more information on parts of the Patriot Act that need to be amended.

National Security Letters (NSLs). The FBI uses NSLs to compel internet service providers, libraries, banks, and credit reporting companies to turn over sensitive information about their customers and patrons. Using this data, the government can compile vast dossiers about innocent people. Government reports, as recent as February of 2010, confirm that upwards of 50,000 of these secret record demands go out each year. In response to an ACLU lawsuit (Doe v. Holder), the Second Circuit Court of Appeal struck down as unconstitutional the part of the NSL law that gives the FBI the power to prohibit NSL recipients from telling anyone that the government has secretly requested customer Internet records.
Material Support Statute. This provision criminalizes providing “material support” to terrorists, defined as providing any tangible or intangible good, service or advice to a terrorist or designated group. As amended by the Patriot Act and other laws since September 11, this section criminalizes a wide array of activities, regardless of whether they actually or intentionally further terrorist goals or organizations. Federal courts have struck portions of the statute as unconstitutional and a number of cases have been dismissed or ended in mistrial.
FISA Amendments Act of 2008. This past summer, Congress passed a law to permit the government to conduct warrantless and suspicion-less dragnet collection of U.S. residents’ international telephone calls and e-mails. This too must be amended to provide meaningful privacy protections and judicial oversight of the government’s intrusive surveillance power.

For more information, go here: http://www.reformthepatriotact.org/

Will You And I Have To Carry A National Identity Card That Controls And Possibly Prevents Our Personal Travel?

Editor — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:10:07 +0000

by Art Kunkin

As I sit in front of my computer writing this article, I am very aware of how dangerous this same useful computer technology is and can be to our civil rights and personal freedoms by giving government the ability to know everything about us. This amazing computer technology is really a two-sided sword! However, on the positive side, it is indisputable that the linked computers of the internet have made real democracy possible by making government operations in far-off Washington D.C. immediately transparent to the ordinary citizen.

These conflicting thoughts came to mind because this article is about the efforts of both the previous Republican administration of President George Bush and the present Democratic Party-dominated government of President Obama to pass national legislation making our present State Driver’s Licenses the equivalent of a national identity card. Given computer technology, such a national identity card would permit the federal government to monitor and control the movements and activities of every individual in this country.

Among other things, a national identity card could conceivably prevent you and I from boarding an airplane, entering a government building, driving an automobile or even paying a simple telephone bill without presenting a plastic card containing a computer chip giving our social security number, age, address and many other personal details about us.

Our story seems to begin on September 11, 2001 with the terrorist air bombings of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington D.C. The response of our government in D.C. was the Patriot Act and the formation of a Homeland Security Department, placing limitations on American citizens that presumably would inhibit the planning and carrying out of more terrorist actions.

Among these governmental actions in response to 9-11 was the introduction in early 2005 of national legislation called the REAL ID (Identification) ACT. REAL ID was quietly added to the very end of a military spending bill providing the Defense Department with additional monies for Iraq and Afghanistan as well as aid efforts for the victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The new addition passed without discussion because it was tied to the popular “support the troops” spending bill. REAL ID contained all the obnoxious provisions of a national identity card mentioned above. There was a deadline of December 2009 for States to ratify the bill.

Last night, in researching another subject, I came across notice of this deadline. I began to wonder what had happened to this deadline. Using my fast Internet connection I googled REAL ID ACT. On my computer in Joshua Tree, California, I was able to read the actual bill, all the references in the pages of the Congressional Record to this legislation, and the reactions of many State Legislatures and civil rights organizations to the Act, etc.

What I learned was that 24 State legislatures had passed strongly-worded resolutions saying they would not submit to the dictates of the federal REAL ID Act. In addition, I learned that many other State Legislatures have been moving in that rebellious direction. Many liberal organizations, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), also had issued strong statements against REAL ID. Similar opposition had been expressed by conservative organizations such as the Cato Institute. The politicians in state government were so influenced by this rage from both Left and Right that they were forced to oppose REAL ID. The legislation, therefore, was effectively dead. However, the December 2009 deadline still remained on the federal books.

In January 2009, the new Obama administration and a new head of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, took office. By February 2009, Secretary Napolitano began to suggest that the failing Real ID ACT and its deadlines should be replaced by new legislation called PASS ID. However, in July through September 2009, the ACLU, CATO and many other organizations, again from extreme conservative to extreme radical, came out against PASS ID saying “Cosmetic changes should not be allowed to resuscitate this ill-advised law…Beyond creating a National ID, both the bill and the law invade American’s privacy, endanger victims of domestic violence by failing to adequately shield their addresses, raise fees associated with identification cards, expose consumers to identity theft and fail to boost security.”

However, because of the recent huge attention paid to the health bill, there has been little coverage of this issue. PASS ID may be still alive in the present Congress and may still be supported by the Obama administration even though it will cost billions of dollars to implement.

My research indicates that PASS ID may well become the law of the land in the future unless there is continued significant opposition.

Therefore, this writer recommends readers going on the internet, googling PASS ID to better familiarize yourself with the issue than I can do in this brief article and sign up, according to your own beliefs, with one or more of the organizations opposing this dangerous legislation.

Meanwhile, please note that I started this article by saying, “This story seems to begin on Sept. 11, 2001.” I actually believe this story begins several years before the end of World War Two, possibly by 1943. At that time the Nazi government of Germany began to realize they were losing the war. That probability led the German leaders to begin secretly sending billions of dollars and thousands of undercover fascists into North and South American corporations and organizations. This huge amount of investment into American society was designed to keep the fascist program for changing the world on target even after the Nazi’s lost the war. The full story of this secret invasion is told in a factual and well-researched 2008 book by Jim Marrs titled “The Rise of The Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten To Take Over America.”

If Jim Marrs is correct, this means that right now there are secret agents of European fascism buried deep in American government and American corporations.

If Marrs is correct, and he probably is, the discussion of such issues as converting driver’s licenses into a national identity card is really part of a much larger discussion about whether the United States will use its computers to be more democratic or more totalitarian. The choice is ours!

Credit Cards Threaten Privacy! (Says 1969 LAFree Press Article)

Editor — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:00:56 +0000

More than 40 years ago(!) the LA Free Press printed this article. Then, many readers might have thought this was ‘far out’. And, now??

Credit Cards Threaten Privacy! Los Angeles Free Press, 1969

Yesterday, it was the Counter Culture. Today… it’sThursday, September 2, 2010More Here @ 3 pm (PST)

Editor — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:00:46 +0000

Est. 1964 Re-Incarnated by Public Demand

This is the original, 60’s, counter culture, LA Free Press. Today’s Best Alternative View & Our Old Hippie Headlines, Too! A Head Trip for Smart Minds.

(This article refers directly to today’s issue of the Los Angeles Free Press. If you have not yet seen it, please, before reading further, click HERE.)

Yesterday, it was the Counter Culture. Today it’s…

all about who’s looking into our life and why, and how we, individually and collectively, have come to say no way, no more.

by Steven M. Finger

Private companies all have reasons for meddling into your life… money motivated, for sure. After all, they are in business. Any opportunity for them to find out personal information so that they can make a dollar… I think we can all understand that.

But the Patriot Act is something altogether. Is it protecting our liberties, or chipping away at our civil rights, keeping us safe from terrorists or putting us under the same rule that seek to institute?

Today, I’m most sure that I do not want all factions of society to go unwatched, too many people who believe anti-social actions have value and the fact that one crazy can do much more harm than ever before. But, still, and it is a difficult balance to strike, freedom with social order thru self-governance is the premise on which this country founded. And the one that we’ve adopted and regularly pledge to continue.

And so, its intrusion rankles our majority, even if we do wish that every corner can be looked into to find the bad guys; the downside, the good that it keeps from blossoming, the opportunity it stifles for self vigilance is not worth the maintenance of that Act.

And our acceptance – tolerance – of its being is what leads to our consideration and submission to other things which would normally be dismissed out of hand. A National ID Card? At one time, even the mention of it, with or without the fresh thought of what had happened in other countries would have been enough to scuttle the idea.

If it’s not clear how far we’ve moved from that line, see the Los Angeles Free Press Archive Piece for today. Did we actually think, back then, that the money-motivated merchants would do more than look over our shoulder for any other reason than to sell us stuff? And were we so wrong to wonder?

Hold the line, before it is so faint that it will be hard to grasp.

Here are the keywords to our thinking today: Credit Cards, LA Free Press, Los Angeles Free Press Archives, Privacy Issues, ACLU, Art Kunkin, Cato, Janet Napolitano, National ID, PASS ID, REAL ID ACT, FISA Amendments Act of 2008, National Security Letters, NSLs, Patriot Act, Political Humor, Big Brother, Surveillance Society, Changing Society, Self-Improvement, Social Change, Society & Culture

Here are links to today’s items:

[1] Patriot Act: to Peel or Re-Peel?

[2] Congress Should Re-Examine The Patriot Act: A Statement By The ACLU

[3] Will You And I Have To Carry A National Identity Card That Controls And Possibly Prevents Our Personal Travel?

[4] Credit Cards Threaten Privacy! (Says 1969 LAFree Press Article)

Wednesday, September 1, 2010 – Posted by One (PST)Series 3 / Day 2 of 3It’s all about who’s looking into our life and why, and how we, individually and collectively, have come to say no way, no more.

Editor — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 19:50:29 +0000

European police to spy on Britons: Now ministers hand over Big Brother powers to foreign officers

Editor — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:16:21 +0000

By James Slack
26th July 2010

New powers: Police officers from European countries could soon be able to spy on and arrest Britons in the UK

Ministers are ready to hand sweeping Big Brother powers to EU states so they can spy on British citizens.

Foreign police will be able to travel to the UK and take part in the arrest of Britons.

They will be able to place them under surveillance, bug telephone conversations, monitor bank accounts and demand fingerprints, DNA or blood samples.

Anyone who refuses to comply with a formal request for co-operation by a foreign-based force is likely to be arrested by UK officers.

The move will spark a damaging row with backbench Tory MPs opposed to giving such draconian powers to Brussels.

The Tories were opposed to the directive in opposition, saying it showed a ‘relish for surveillance and disdain for civil liberties’.

But ministers have made a dramatic U-turn since joining the pro-EU Lib Dems in government, and the wide-ranging powers are due to be approved later this week.

According to the campaign group Fair Trials International, under the new rules it would be possible, for example, for Spanish police investigating a murder in a nightclub to demand the ID of every British citizen who flew to the country in the month the offence took place.

They could also force the UK to search its DNA database – which contains nearly one million innocent people – and send samples belonging to anybody who was in Spain at the time.

This could leave an entirely innocent person facing an agonising battle to establish his or her innocence.

Tory MP Dominic Raab, who has campaigned against the power grab, said: ‘This sweeping directive would put serious operational strains on hard-pressed UK police forces.

‘There are scant safeguards to protect the personal information of law-abiding British citizens. These serious issues should be properly debated in Parliament before the UK decides to opt in.’

Patriot Act Stands Over Students

Editor — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:10:50 +0000

Following is a statement by young people associated with the American Civil Liberties Union of how the Patriot Act and other Post-911 government policies have adversely affected students.

Under the USA PATRIOT Act and Other Post-911 Policies the Government Can Now:

1. Label Students “Terrorists” if We Belong to a Student Activist Group

The USA PATRIOT Act broadly expands the official definition of terrorism, so that student groups that engage in certain types of civil disobedience could very well find themselves labeled as terrorists

(Sections 411, 802). The Sheriff of Hennepin county, Minnesota declared that the student groups “Anti-Racist Action”, “Students Against War”, and “Arise!” were potential terrorist threats.

2. Seize Our Student Records

The USA PATRIOT Act gives law enforcement access to student educational records without probable cause of crime. (507) The Government refuses to disclose how many times it has done this.

3. Collect information about what books we take out of our school library, what we study, and what we purchase from our school bookstore.

The USA PATRIOT Act gives law enforcement broad access to any types of records – sales, library, financial, medical, etc. – without probable cause of a crime. It also prohibits the holders of this information, like University librarians, from disclosing that they have produced such records, under the

threat of jail time (Section 215, 505). A University of Illinois survey of U.S. public libraries found that at least 545 libraries had been asked for records by law enforcement in the year after September 11, 2001.

4. Search Our College Dorm Rooms, Apartments or Homes and Not Even Tell Us.

The USA PATRIOT Act allows the law enforcement to conduct secret “sneak and peek” searches of a dorm, apartment or home. Investigators can enter a place of residence, take pictures and seize items without informing the occupant that a warrant was issued for an indefinite period of time. (Section 213)

The government refuses to disclose how many times it has used this power.

5. Monitor Student E-mail and Internet Activity

The USA PATRIOT Act permits the government to monitor Internet traffic and e-mail communications on any Internet service provider without probable cause of crime by obtaining detailed “routing” information like a web address. While this provision is supposedly aimed at lawbreakers, it sweeps broadly because e-mails and Internet traffic information of innocent students cannot be separated from the activity of targeted individuals (Section 216). The government refuses to disclose how many times it has

used this power.

6. Spy on Student Political Meetings or Religious Ceremonies

The USA PATRIOT Act permits a vast array of information gathering on student political meetings and religious ceremonies to be collected—often by campus cops on behalf of the FBI—and shared with the CIA (and other non-law enforcement officials) without proper judicial oversight or other safeguards. This law effectively puts the CIA back in the business of spying on students, including US citizens (Sections 203 and 901).

Please go to http://www.aclu.org/ for more information on civil liberties that the ACLU has a hand in protecting.

Librarians Push Against Patriot Act

Editor — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:02:21 +0000

By Lauren Barack — School Library Journal, 11/30/2009

When it comes to the Patriot Act, there’s little dissension among librarians.

As of late November, 32 state chapters of the American Library Association (ALA) passed resolutions that call for Congress to allow section 215 of the law to sunset, instead of Capitol Hill reauthorizing it before December 31, 2009.

ALA’s Lynne Bradley, director of the American Library Association’s Office of Government Relations.

Section 215 allows the federal government to demand tangible records from any business, organization, entity, person—and even the public library—and then places a gag order on them about speaking of the demand. Many believe this act violates the right to privacy, broadly alluded to in our nation’s Bill of Rights.

“It’s often called the library provision because the ALA made such a stink about this when no one else would,” says Lynne Bradley, director of the American Library Association’s Office of Government Relations in Washington, DC.

ALA passed the first resolution against the section at its national meeting in July. Vermont followed as the first state chapter in September, tweaking its resolution to include opposition to Section 505, which allows the FBI to use National Security Letters to demand similar information within a gag order as well.

Michigan, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Kentucky are the latest four states to pass resolutions, too, and ALA heads expect all 50 state chapters to pass similar acts before the end of the year.

While no one is allowed to speak about whether they’ve been served with a Section 215 order, Bradley says a handful of libraries have received them, and a few have even challenged them in court.

“But before the challenges were heard, the FBI withdrew the orders before the information was made public,” she says.

As to whether Congress will be swayed by the library resolutions, Bradley appears unmoved. She notes that the White House appears supportive of the Department of Justice recommendations, which would prefer to have all sections re-ratified.

Besides Section 215, these include Section 206, which deals with roving wire taps, and Section 6001 of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 called “Lone Wolf,” which isn’t part of the Patriot Act, but lets intelligence groups investigate single suspects—which many groups fear could be used against protesters.

“I’m normally a betting woman, but I’m not betting on this one,” says Bradley. “We are very disappointed that the White House appears to be have accepted the recommendations of the Department of Justice to move forward with very little changes. And that’s more than a disappointment.”