The United Police States of America: the Criminalization of Living in the United States

In their ongoing war against the Constitution and people of the United States, the Democratic and Republican parties have amply demonstrated their willingness to sacrifice fundamental rights and liberties for the empty promise of security over the last ten years.  As the Occupy movement spread across the country over the last three months, we have witnessed the violence and brutality of the militarized police state that these parties have helped to create everywhere from New York City to San Francisco.  Perhaps even more disconcerting, however, is the criminalization of life and living itself that has been promulgated by the professional hysterics in the Democratic and Republican parties over the last forty years.  Today, one third of all young adults have been arrested at some point.  From Reuters:

Close to one in three American teens and young adults get arrested by age 23, according to a new study that finds more of them are being booked now than in the 1960s.  Those arrests are for everything from underage drinking and petty theft to violent crime, researchers said. They added that the increase might not necessarily reflect more criminal behavior in youth, but rather a police force that's more apt to arrest young people than in the past . . . 

The researchers said it seems that the criminal justice system has taken to arresting both the young and old more than it did in the past, when fines and citations might have been given to some people who are now arrested.

"If (police) find kids that are intoxicated or they have pulled over someone intoxicated... now, nine times out of 10 they're going to make an arrest," Wright told Reuters Health.  "We do have to question if arrest is an appropriate intervention in all circumstances, or if we need to rethink some of the policies we have enacted."

Meanwhile, as police crack down on jaywalkers, pot smokers, underage drinkers, and petty thieves, the professional criminals in the ruling political class effectively get away with murder.  Consider this obscene disparity.  A homeless man steals $100 dollars and then returns the money out of remorse.  He is sentenced to 15 years in prison.  A mortgage company CEO aids in a $3 billion dollar scheme to defraud the Troubled Asset Relief Fund and gets forty months in prison.  This is the very opposite of justice.  This is criminal. 

Obama Fundraiser: NYPD Illegally Detain Around 100 Protesters in "Frozen Zone" for Three Hours

President Obama was in New York City yesterday to schmooze with the nation's upper upper class at three different fundraisers, including – I heard – a $35,000 per plate dinner earlier in the evening and a $1,000 per plate dinner at the Sheraton Hotel at around 9pm.  Occupy Wall Street protesters marched through midtown Manhattan on their way to demonstrate outside the Sheraton.  Shortly after the protesters arrived at the barricaded "free speech zone" set up by police across the street from the hotel, they were subjected to a new police tactic: freezing.  Simply put, the protesters were barricaded in on all sides by police and essentially held hostage for hours.

Having heard that the president would be in the city, I headed to midtown around 7pm, and happened to come out of the subway just as the Occupy Wall Street protesters were marching toward the hotel, where they arrived around 7:30.  Being wary of any pens or cages set up by agents of the government, I opted not to remain in the "free speech zone" and walked around for a bit.  When I returned to the site at around 8:30, the police had already barricaded the protesters into the frozen zone.  Two hours later, they were finally allowed to leave, following their illegal detention.  I asked one of the protesters who had been trapped in the "frozen zone" what happened.  Here's the video:




Police detained around 100 people in this so-called "frozen zone" for nearly three hours.  From Mother Jones:

Outside a Manhattan fundraiser attended by President Barack Obama last night, the New York City Police Department deployed a new and legally questionable tactic against Occupy Wall Street demonstrators and the press. . . . Protesters in the NYPD's free speech zone were trapped there. Not only could nobody enter after a certain point, but for about an hour and a half, nobody could leave. When I arrived outside the Obama event, a $1000-a-head fundraiser at the Sheraton New York, I found that the police had cordoned off the sidewalk a block in all directions and were not admitting the press.

As The Gothamist reports, members of the press were not allowed anywhere near the frozen area and were kept from reporting on the illegal detention:

Several reporters were kept away from the area by police, and MSNBC's Meg Robertson tells Capital New York, "I identified myself to a number of NYPD as a member of the press and they would not let me close to the penned in area."

Another journalist, Andrew Katz, says, "One officer actually said I could go into the kettle where the protesters were, but [another] officer grabbed my arm, and then [Harkinson], and said we had to leave the area. Three officers, including a female officer who gripped her arm around my hip, escorted us a block down to 52nd Street behind a set of barricades."

The complaints of press restrictions comes after NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly issued a carefully-worded memo instructing police not to interfere with working press.

From the New York Times:

More than 100 Occupy Wall Street protesters marched to a Midtown hotel on Wednesday night to protest a fund-raising event for President Obama.  Escorted by police vehicles as they helped snarl traffic across the Times Square area, beginning at Bryant Park, the group settled in front of barricades on the southwest corner of 53rd Street and Seventh Avenue, in view of the Sheraton hotel at which Mr. Obama was expected to appear by 9 p.m.

Demonstrators held signs that leveled some of the Occupy protest’s most pointed criticism to date of the president. “Obama is a corporate puppet,” one said. “War crimes must be stopped, no matter who does them,” read another, beside head shots of President George W. Bush and President Obama . . .

Many protesters chafed at the sight of barricaded pens near the hotel, but a majority decided to stay, given how close they were to their destination. Shortly before 9 p.m., as the police cut off traffic and began making final preparations for the president’s arrival, officers informed demonstrators that the area had been designated a “frozen zone” until the president’s departure: They were not allowed to leave their enclosure, bound by three lines of barricades and a Chase bank. Some protesters tried to break through, but were swiftly rebuffed by officers, who shoved them back to their initial perches.

Police Defecate on Constitution, Urinate on Rights and Liberties

As you've probably heard, the Occupy Wall Street encampment in downtown Manhattan was raided by  NYPD riot police wielding truncheons and armed with chemical agents at 1am the other night.  The police raid was apparently part of a coordinated attack against the protest movement in at least eighteen other cities, mediated with the help of the FBI and Department of Homeland Security.

Everyone and everything that had been set up in the space over the last two months was cleared out by police and sanitation workers.  By morning the park was completely empty, except for riot police and security officers who occupied the park for much of the day.  Hundreds of tents were destroyed and personal property was seized, but perhaps the greatest loss were those things that benefited the whole community.  There was a kitchen that had been serving three meals a day to hundreds of hungry protesters, homeless and even locals.  There were bicycle powered generators that provided electricity for the media center and anyone in the park who needed to charge a computer or phone.  There was a 5,000 volume lending library, amassed through donations, which was open to anyone who desired to borrow a book.  One woman broke down in tears as she described to me how the books were seized, loaded into dump trucks and carted away. 

When the riot police moved in, they set up a two block perimeter around the park in all directions, and arrested or ejected media and reporters from the area, effectively refusing to allow any objective reporting of the action.  By 8am, the park was completely cleared and remained occupied by riot police and security officers, who had surrounded the park with barricades and refused entrance to everyone but police for much of the day.  It was a surreal scene.  For the previous two months, protesters who occupied the park were surrounded by barricades and hundreds of police.  On Tuesday, police occupied the park, surrounded by barricades and hundreds of protesters. 

The occupation of the park by protesters led, of course, to scrutiny of the culture that had developed inside the encampment.  In New York City, the propaganda war against the protest was led by Rupert Murdoch's New York Post.  There were reports of sexual assault and rape, drug dealing and illegal drug use, racism, defecation and urination in public and so on.  Now that police have occupied the park, it is only fair to put the NYPD under the microscope.  So, what's been going on at the NYPD?  Here are just a few of the incidents that have made headlines in recent months:

• In May, two NYC police officers were convicted of official misconduct for entering a drunken woman's home in the middle of the night while on duty.  Though accused of rape, they were acquitted of that charge because it came down to their word against hers. 

• In August, an off-duty NYC police officer was arrested for raping a woman at gunpoint in upper Manhattan. 

• In October, NYC police murdered a woman outside a shelter for women suffering from mental illness or addictions.  The victim was allegedly holding two knives and refused to drop them when told to do so.

• In October, sixteen NYC police officers were arrested and charged with a long list of misdemeanors and felonies in a massive "ticket fixing" scheme, in which they helped make tickets issued to friends and family disappear.  Demonstrating the systemic character of this corruption, hundreds of off-duty police officers rallied outside the courthouse during the arraignment, holding signs supporting the institutional corruption of police!  "It's part of our culture!" cops could be heard saying in local news coverage at the time.

• In October, a former NYPD detective testified in the trial of eight police officer charged with official corruption.  He stated on the record that NYC police routinely plant drugs on innocent people to meet drug arrest quotas.

• In the same trial, another witness, a prostitute, testified that police officers routinely offered her crack cocaine in exchange for sex. 

• In the last two months, tens of thousands of innocent New Yorkers were stopped and frisked by NYC police, a routine violation of the Fourth Amendment.  The racist character of this practice is clearly apparent in the fact that nearly 90% of those who are stopped and frisked are black or Latino.

• In October, five NYC police officers were arrested for trafficking $1 million worth of illegal guns, cigarettes and slot machines into the city.

So what have NYC police officers been up to in recent months?  Murder, rape, theft, gun smuggling, trading drugs for sex, planting evidence, engaging in official corruption, violating rights and liberties . . . and these are just the most prominent cases that have made the news in the last two months.  They are shitting on the constitution and pissing on rights and liberties. 

Riot Policing or Police Rioting? It is Time to Downsize the Militarized Police State

Since the Occupy Wall Street protest began in downtown New York over a month ago, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the NYPD have received a fair amount of criticism for the use of heavy handed tactics in dealing with certain actions organized by the OWS demonstrators.  Police have pepper sprayed contained crowds, charged horses into crowds, wantonly swung batons, thrown punches, tackled protesters and so on, all of which can be seen in any of the hundreds of videos that have flooded Youtube over the last five weeks.  Arguably, however, none of that compares with the violence perpetrated by police in Oakland over the course of the day yesterday.  From today's column for CAVIN/AZIVN:

Hundreds of riot police raided Occupy Oakland's encampment yesterday, deploying tear gas, flash grenades, bean bag rounds and sound cannons as they attempted to clear protesters from the plaza in front of City Hall over the course of the day.

Riot police assembled from over a dozen law enforcement agencies began moving in on the tent city around 4am. Hundreds of demonstrators had evacuated the plaza as word of the police action spread, but around 170 protesters remained at the encampment in an act of civil disobedience.  City officials declared that the park had been "contained" by 5:30am. Dozens were arrested as police laid waste to the site over the course of the ninety minute raid.  "What was left at the plaza looked like a hurricane-struck refugee camp," reported The Oakland Tribune.

The two-week old encampment had been one of the largest in the country, with hundreds of people demonstrating in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street protest that began in New York City on September 17th.  Last week, the city began posting notices that those who continued to camp at the plaza would be subject to arrest, citing public health and safety concerns.

"The administration has determined that facilitating this expression of speech is no longer viable, nor in the interest of public health and safety," read one notice to vacate the plaza dated October 20th, which was posted at Mother Jones.

Following the early morning raid, demonstrators regrouped and hundreds gathered later in the day, marching through downtown Oakland with the aim of re-establishing their presence in front of City Hall.  They were met by riot police, leading to further clashes and scuffles, in which indiscriminate police violence led to numerous injuries.  Reports indicate that two police officers and many protesters were hurt in the process.  By late Tuesday evening, reports indicated that over 100 had been arrested throughout the course of the day.  On the other side of the country, the New York City General Assembly at Occupy Wall Street unanimously passed a statement of solidarity in support of Occupy Oakland and denounced the heavy handed police action. 

If it becomes common practice for peaceful assemblies protected by the First Amendment to be violently confronted by militarized riot police and dispersed by force, the people may well be left with no other option than to form armed militia units to confront the police in self-defense, as is our right under the Second Amendment.  As John F. Kennedy famously stated, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."  Fortunately, many localities recognize the importance of accommodating people intent on exercising their First Amendment rights.  In Eugene, Oregon, the city council has voted to allow demonstrators to camp at a local park, providing a waiver that exempts the demonstration from ordinances against camping. From Occupy Eugene:

The Eugene City Council on Monday evening voted 5-3 in favor of granting Occupy Eugene formal permission to camp at Alton Baker Park through December 15. In all, 22 different speakers stood before the council to present their opinions on exempting Occupy Eugene from the city ordinance that prohibits camping within the city limits. Though there were some in opposition, the majority who spoke voiced their support for the waiver.

In Albany, New York, local and state police have defied authoritarian directives from Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo and Albany Mayor Gerald Jennings demanding that protesters be forcibly removed from their encampment.  Police justified their action stating that such a move would escalate the situation and lead to unnecessary violence.  From the Albany Times Union:

In a tense battle of wills, state troopers and Albany police held off making arrests of dozens of protesters near the Capitol over the weekend even as Albany's mayor, under pressure from Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration, had urged his police chief to enforce a city curfew.

The situation intensified late Friday evening when Jennings, who has cultivated a strong relationship with Cuomo, directed his department to arrest protesters who refused to leave the city-owned portion of a large park that's across Washington Avenue from the Capitol and City Hall.

At the Capitol, in anticipation of possibly dozens of arrests, a State Police civil disturbance unit was quietly activated, according to officials briefed on the matter but not authorized to comment publicly. But as the curfew neared, the group of protesters estimated at several hundred moved across an invisible line in the park from state land onto city property.

"We were ready to make arrests if needed, but these people complied with our orders," a State Police official said. However, he added that State Police supported the defiant posture of Albany police leaders to hold off making arrests for the low-level offense of trespassing, in part because of concern it could incite a riot or draw thousands of protesters in a backlash that could endanger police and the public.

"We don't have those resources, and these people were not causing trouble," the official said. "The bottom line is the police know policing, not the governor and not the mayor."
A city police source said his department also was reluctant to damage what he considers to be good community relations that have taken years to rebuild. In addition, the crowd included elderly people and many others who brought their children with them.

"There was a lot of discussion about how it would look if we started pulling people away from their kids and arresting them ... and then what do we do with the children?" one officer said.

The people do not need "permission" from the government to exercise their constitutional rights and liberties.  It is the responsibility of the government to accommodate the people in their exercise of Constitutional rights and liberties.  It remains self-evident, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, that "to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Occupy Harlem: Protesters Demand an End to "Stop and Frisk"

Hundreds of protesters rallied at the Adam Clayton Powell State Office Building in Harlem New York yesterday before marching to the NYPD's 28th Precinct, where dozens were arrested after blocking the entrance to the building in an act of non-violent civil disobedience.  Among those arrested were Professor Cornel West, Carl Davis of the Revolutionary Communist Party, and Rev. Stephen Phelps from Riverside Church.  The protesters demonstrated in opposition to the "stop and frisk" practices of New York City police.  In their remarks at the rally, Davis described the scope of the campaign, indicating that this protest was "only the beginning," while West placed the protest in the context of historical struggles for civil rights, and the Rev. Phelps elaborated on its spiritual and religious dimensions.  However, perhaps the the most powerful speech was delivered by John Hector, who described his own experiences being stopped and frisked by the NYPD.  Here's Mr. Hector's speech (video from the Daily News), amplified by the "human mic":



The New York Civil Liberties Union has reported that "3 million innocent New Yorkers were subjected to police stops and street interrogations from 2004 through 2010, and that black and Latino communities continue to be the overwhelming target of these tactics. Nearly nine out of 10 stopped-and-frisked New Yorkers have been completely innocent, according to the NYPD’s own reports."

The use and abuse of "stop and frisk" – sometimes known as a Terry Stop after a landmark Supreme Court case – has skyrocketed in New York City over the last seven years.  According to the NYPD's reports, as relayed by the NYCLU, in 2004 just over 300,000 New Yorkers were stopped and/or frisked by police, 89% of whom were innocent, i.e. neither arrested nor issued a summons of any kind.  In 2006, just over 500,000 New Yorkers were stopped by police, 90% of whom were not arrested or given a ticket.  In 2010, over 600,000 New Yorkers were stopped by the police, 88% of whom were innocent. 

This year, the NYPD is on track to "stop and frisk" over 700,000 people in New York.  It should be added that many people are stopped and frisked multiple times over the course of a year, so these statistics may significantly underestimate the number of stops and frisks that are performed by police.  

The majority of those who are subject to routine abuse of stop and frisk authorities are black and latino (around 50% and 30%, respectively).  Only around 10% of those who are stopped and frisked in any given year are white.  The practice of stop and frisk by the NYPD is clearly biased and discriminatory. 

Moreover, it is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and its routine character makes it a grave threat to the rights and liberties of all Americans.

Under Terry Stop authorities, search and seizure are permissible on the basis of reasonable suspicion, which is a lower threshold than probable cause.  But what is the character of the "reasonable person" implied by the NYPD's practices?  The NYPD and Mayor Michael Bloomberg would have us believe that a reasonable person's suspicions would prove to be completely unfounded 90% of the time!  Moreover, they would also have us believe that a reasonable person's suspicions would be racially biased and discriminatory. 

This is not reasonable by any standard.  If anything, it is paranoid, hysterical and racist, and it is indicative of the systemic violation of fundamental rights and liberties in the United States today.  Apologists of these police state tactics say they are necessary to curb crime and maintain social order.  Critics within the city's political establishment, such as Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer say they are inexpedient.  Such crass utilitarian arguments against the practice should be considered an obscenity, perhaps even more so than those put forward by its supporters.  The routine and systematic abuse of constitutional rights and liberties has no place in a free society, expediency be damned.

Here are some video clips I shot over the course of the demonstration:




Update: Protests continued today.  From CBS:

Dozens of “Occupy Wall Street” protesters marched in support of an annual protest against police violence Saturday.  The 16th National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality was bigger than it has been in years past, according to its co-founder Carl Dix.

“Look, when we talk about the police brutality and repression, the people that comes down on primarily are part of the 99 percent, so we see it as a companion issue,” he told WCBS 880′s Monica Miller.

Abolish the Department of Homeland Security

The National Security Police State is a threat to constitutional government.  From the Los Angeles Times:

A decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, federal and state governments are spending about $75 billion a year on domestic security, setting up sophisticated radio networks, upgrading emergency medical response equipment, installing surveillance cameras and bombproof walls, and outfitting airport screeners to detect an ever-evolving list of mobile explosives.

But how effective has that 10-year spending spree been?

"The number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It's basically the same number of people who die drowning in the bathtub each year," said John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor who has written extensively about the balance between threat and expenditures in fighting terrorism. . . .

Like the military-industrial complex that became a permanent and powerful part of the American landscape during the Cold War, the vast network of Homeland Security spyware, concrete barricades and high-tech identity screening is here to stay. The Department of Homeland Security, a collection of agencies ranging from border control to airport security sewn quickly together after Sept. 11, is the third-largest Cabinet department and — with almost no lawmaker willing to render the U.S. less prepared for a terrorist attack — one of those least to fall victim to budget cuts.

The expensive and time-consuming screening now routine for passengers at airport boarding gates has detected plenty of knives, loaded guns and other contraband, but it has never identified a terrorist who was about to board a plane. 

The Criminalization of Internet Browsing

"Won't somebody please think of the children?!"  This is the rallying cry of hysterics and political zealots everywhere.  In the House of Representatives, it is now being spouted by supporters of a new bill that would require internet service providers to retain a database of our names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, dynamic IP addresses and browsing histories, in order, supposedly, to protect children from internet pornographers.  In other words, the goal is to create a massive police state surveillance network and spying database on every single American who uses the internet, and has nothing to do with "the children".  From ZDNet:

Last Thursday the U.S. House of Representatives’ judiciary committee passed a bill that makes the online activity of every American available to police and attorneys upon request under the guise of protecting children from pornography . . .

The Republican-majority sponsored bill is called the Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011.  It has nothing to do with pornography, and was opposed by over 30 civil liberties and consumer advocacy organizations, as well as one brave indie ISP that is urging its customers to do everything they can to protest the invasion of privacy.

“Protecting Children” forces ISPs to retain customer names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and dynamic IP addresses.  It’s like having your wallet plus the web sites you visit tracked and handed over on request. These logs are now going to be retained for the scope of one and a half years.  (I have to wonder if ISPs can sell this data, too.)  This has nothing to do with porn . . . 

CNET’s Declan McCullagh reminds us that “the mandatory logs would be accessible to police investigating any crime and perhaps attorneys litigating civil disputes in divorce, insurance fraud, and other cases as well.” CNET reported that mandatory data retention was being fast-tracked in January, 2011.

The fact that civil litigants could subpoena your internet activity and the contents of your wallet has nothing to do with the labeled and stated purpose of this bill.

Such subpoenas would not require approval by any court.  Rather we must simply trust the credibility and integrity of the Democrat-Republican police state itself.  From the National Journal:

The bill also gives the U.S. Marshals Service the authority to use administrative subpoenas to track down unregistered sex offenders.  A court does not need to approve administrative subpoenas, and this provision garnered heated opposition from members who said that it gives the marshals too much power. An amendment by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., that would have stripped that provision from the bill, failed.

The bill, which has both bipartisan support and bipartisan opposition from both major parties, provides us with a sickening example of the political tactics favored by police state and surveillance society advocates such as Lamar Smith (R) and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D), who co-sponsored the measure.  Do you oppose the violation of privacy rights, the further evisceration of the Fourth Amendment, the consolidation of the police state and the expansion of the surveillance society?  Well, then you must support child pornography.  However, as is demonstrated by ongoing investigations of websites devoted to child pornography, proposals like that supported by Smith and Wasserman-Schultz are completely unnecessary to "protect children from internet pornographers."  From Ars Technica:

They used proxy servers and encryption. They used anonymous screen names like "Beast," "Bones," "Jailbird," and "Johnny_5_is_@live" to post and share their child sex abuse films. Admins carefully segregated participants according to how much they were trusted.

But none of that stopped the Department of Justice from identifying and indicting 72 people accused of celebrating the sexual abuse of children age 12 years and younger through a members-only Web forum called "Dreamboard."

"Using sophisticated methods to evade detection by law enforcement, Dreamboard members allegedly used the power and anonymity of the Internet to motivate each other to commit their horrific acts of sexual abuse of minors and trading in child pornography," announced Attorney General Eric Holder in a speech today. "No matter how savvy online predators think they are, we will find them, dismantle their networks, and bring them to justice."

To sign a petition against the bill, head over to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The War on the Fourth Amendment and the War on Logic Cont'd.

An opinion piece last week in the New York Times took note of the ongoing war against the Fourth Amendment that is being waged by the Republican-Democrat ruling political class in the name of "security".  Excerpt:

THIS spring was a rough season for the Fourth Amendment. The Obama administration petitioned the Supreme Court to allow GPS tracking of vehicles without judicial permission. The Supreme Court ruled that the police could break into a house without a search warrant if, after knocking and announcing themselves, they heard what sounded like evidence being destroyed. Then it refused to see a Fourth Amendment violation where a citizen was jailed for 16 days on the false pretext that he was being held as a material witness to a crime.

In addition, Congress renewed Patriot Act provisions on enhanced surveillance powers until 2015, and the F.B.I. expanded agents’ authority to comb databases, follow people and rummage through their trash even if they are not suspected of a crime . . . 

The Senate Intelligence Committee met last week, in secret, to consider the Justice Department's extremely broad interpretation of the powers granted to investigators by the Patriot Act.  From Time Magazine:

Last Tuesday the committee met to consider the worries of some members, mostly Democrats, who say the Justice Department has drafted a breathtakingly broad interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act . . . That section allows the FBI to seize without a warrant "any tangible things," like documents . . . as long as the bureau can convince a special national-security court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, that the information is "relevant" to antiterrorism work . . .  Privacy advocates, however, consider it little more than a rubber stamp.

Senator Tom Udall, a New Mexico Democrat, went further, saying the government was using that opinion to conduct some sort of dragnet surveillance. "Innocent Americans are being swept up in this," was about all Udall could say to TIME.

That sounds a lot like something a certain junior Senator from Illinois might have said back in December 2005, when he joined eight other Senators in penning a dear-colleague letter that argued, among other things, that Section 215 was too broad. "We believe the government should be required to convince a judge that the records they are seeking have some connection to a suspected terrorist or spy," wrote Obama and the other Senators.

Of course, President Obama is now singing a different tune.  And it's one with which we're already familiar.  For example, the Obama administration claims that the war in Libya is neither illegal nor unconstitutional because it is not a war.  In the case of the Patriot Act, the administration's position is that illegal search and seizure is not illegal because it's not a search or seizure.  From Time again:

Acting Assistant Attorney General Todd Hinnen noted before a House subcommittee March 9: "Some have argued that Section 215 runs afoul of the Fourth Amendment [which governs police searches] because it allows the government to obtain records upon a showing of 'relevance' to an authorized investigation rather than probable cause." But, he added, "for constitutional purposes, a business-records order is not a 'search' within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment."

As one Yahoo News commentator recently wrote, the American police state is the new normal.  

The Bipartisan War on the Fourth Amendment, Cont'd

From Wired:

You think you understand how the Patriot Act allows the government to spy on its citizens. Sen. Ron Wyden says it’s worse than you know. Congress is set to reauthorize three controversial provisions of the surveillance law as early as Thursday. Wyden (D-Oregon) says that powers they grant the government on their face, the government applies a far broader legal interpretation — an interpretation that the government has conveniently classified, so it cannot be publicly assessed or challenged. But one prominent Patriot-watcher asserts that the secret interpretation empowers the government to deploy ”dragnets” for massive amounts of information on private citizens; the government portrays its data-collection efforts much differently. “We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says,” Wyden told Danger Room in an interview in his Senate office.

From Reason Hit and Run:

Last week the U.S. Supreme Court said the "exigent circumstances" that exist when someone might be flushing drugs down a toilet allow police to enter a home without a warrant, even if their own actions create those circumstances.

As the lone dissenting justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, noted, this decision "arms the police with a way routinely to dishonor the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement in drug cases." Instead of "presenting their evidence to a neutral magistrate," they can retroactively validate their decision to break into someone's home by claiming they smelled something funny and heard something suspicious.

While the U.S. Supreme Court said police may force their way into a home to prevent the destruction of evidence, the Indiana Supreme Court, in a less noticed decision issued the week before, said police may force their way into a home for any reason or no reason at all. Although the victim of an illegal search can challenge it in court after the fact, three of the five justices agreed, "there is no right to reasonably resist unlawful entry by police officers." They thereby nullified a principle of common law that is centuries old, arguably dating back to the Magna Carta.

From The Washington Times:

What most Americans don’t realize is that if the government wants to read your emails, look at your pictures or gain access to any data that you have stored online for more than 180 days on sites including Yahoo! Google Docs and online backup sites, it can do so without a search warrant. Data saved online is not protected by the Fourth Amendment in the same way that information is protected if it is stored on a home computer, CD or detachable hard drive.

From the Constitution:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The Bipartisan War on the Constitution Cont'd.

It is a long-standing cliche of American political commentary that Republicans and Democrats don't agree on anything.  Of course, this is an exaggeration.  When it comes to strengthening the corporate welfare state, expanding the global warfare state, eroding rights and liberties, gutting the Constitution and so on, they are remarkably amiable.  Indeed, such measures don't even require debate anymore.  From the Associated Press:

Top congressional leaders agreed Thursday to a four-year extension of the anti-terrorist Patriot Act, the controversial law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks that governs the search for terrorists on American soil.

The deal between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner calls for a vote before May 27, when parts of the current act expire. The idea is to pass the extension with as little debate as possible to avoid a protracted and familiar argument over the expanded power the law gives to the government.

Land of the Free, Home of the Incarcerated

From Daniel D'Amico at the Mises Institute:

It is time to take prisons seriously. The United States incarcerates more people than any country in the world today and throughout history. The financial costs are tremendous and rising. One in every one hundred Americans is jailed within this so-called land of the free. Many have committed no violent crimes. Not a few are in for supposed political crimes. Some are wholly innocent of both yet languish in captivity. What are the sociological, political, economic, cultural, and historical consequences of incarceration?

The prison is a unique technology of enforcement. One could say it is the ultimate embodiment of institutionalized coercion. Its essential architectural features — individualized cells and controlled living environments — minimize the opportunities for social interaction among inmates and maximize their perception of total observation and control by guards. Both features were designed and implemented to accomplish particular purposes.

Since the 1970s, the American system has been said to operate according to a retributive paradigm of criminal justice, wherein criminals are thought to deserve punishment. Prisons are believed to be an efficient retributive technique and deterrence is their convenient consequence.

Originally, penitentiaries were designed and built with grander intentions: to induce penitence at the individual level and to make for a better community at the societal level. Prisons were both a micro and macro tool of social engineering . . . 

This summer, D'Amico will be holding an online course at the Mises Academy on the prison state that has been constructed by the Democratic and Republican parties over the course of the last four decades:

In my upcoming Mises Academy course, The American Prison State, I will use readings and lectures to outline the long and varied history of incarceration and criminal law in the United States. All the readings for this course will be free and online. The online video lectures will use Webex, the industry standard for web conferencing. Lectures will be Tuesday evenings, 7:00–8:30 EDT, and they will be recorded and available for enrolled students to download. The first class will be on June 7.

Some basic facts and figures to consider:

The Bipartisan War on the Fourth Amendment, Cont'd

There seem to be few things for which Democrats and Republicans have more contempt than the Fourth Amendment.  The Obama administration is currently making the case to the Congress that the Fourth Amendment simply does not apply to digital and satellite communications.  And the Obama administration's lawyers are preaching to the choir.  Most people probably don't even know that the government claims it does not need a warrant to read their email, and that it acts accordingly.  From Wired:

The Obama administration is urging Congress not to adopt legislation that would impose constitutional safeguards on Americans’ e-mail stored in the cloud.  As the law stands now, the authorities may obtain cloud e-mail without a warrant if it is older than 180 days, thanks to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act adopted in 1986. At that time, e-mail left on a third-party server for six months was considered to be abandoned, and thus enjoyed less privacy protection. However, the law demands warrants for the authorities to seize e-mail from a person’s hard drive.

A coalition of internet service providers and other groups, known as Digital Due Process, has lobbied for an update to the law to treat both cloud- and home-stored e-mail the same, and thus require a probable-cause warrant for access. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on that topic Tuesday.  . . . James A. Baker, associate deputy attorney general, testified:

"in order to obtain a search warrant for a particular e-mail account, law enforcement has to establish probable cause to believe that evidence will be found in that particular account. In some cases, this link can be hard to establish."

In other words, the Obama administration thinks it is too much of a burden on the government to have to establish probable cause and obtain a warrant before they go snooping through someone's email.  "It's too damn hard!" they say, as if that isn't the whole point of the Fourth Amendment.  Consider the response of Republican Senator Chuck Grassley.  From CNET:

Baker told (PDF) a Senate committee that requiring a search warrant to obtain stored e-mail could have an "adverse impact" on criminal investigations. And making location information only available with a search warrant, he said, would hinder "the government's ability to obtain important information in investigations of serious crimes."

Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, seemed to agree. It's crucial, he said, "to ensure we don't limit (law enforcement's) ability to obtain information necessary to catch criminals and terrorists who use electronic communication." He also suggested that requiring warrants would lead to "increased burdens on the court system."  [Emphasis added.]

In other words, the Senator wants to ensure that the government's ability to obtain information is unlimited!  This is the exact opposite of limited, constitutional government, and it is diametrically opposed to the letter and spirit of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.  Democrat-Republican party government is an immediate and grave threat to rights, liberties and the rule of law in the United States.  

VIPR: TSA's Snakes in the Grass

Since the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration launched their "strip search or sexual assault" program late last year, small groups of local and state lawmakers around the country have begun to push back against the national security police state.  There appears to have been some non-trivial movement on this front in the Northeast, from both Republicans and Democrat.  From The New American, last November:

At the press conference, [New Jersey State Senator Michael] Doherty indicated:

We’re very concerned with what’s going on in America and we’re very concerned with what’s going on in New Jersey at our airports as far as the new TSA procedures used. We believe that there are constitutional violations taking place. We believe that there are violations of New Jersey law that are taking place…When you buy an airline ticket, you do not give up your constitutional rights.

Doherty declared, “American citizens should be able to travel freely without being harassed and intimidated by their government. There are other procedures that can be used, and there are other countries around the world serving as role models of how to do this.”

From Wired, also last November: 

A New York City lawmaker on Thursday introduced legislation to prohibit the TSA from using its advanced body scanners at New York airports, including JFK, the busiest international airport in the country. Democratic councilman David Greenfield says six fellow council members have signed onto the proposal, which comes amid growing unease over the so-called Advanced Imaging Technology scanners . . .

Now, a group of Republican lawmakers in New Hampshire have introduced a bill that would make "touching or viewing with a technological device of a person's breasts or genitals by a government security agent without probable cause a sexual assault."  Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the bill is the fact that it is even necessary.  Its explicit statement of "what shall not constitute probable cause" provides a short summary of those everyday activities which have been effectively criminalized, or rendered somehow suspicious, by the professional hysterics in the ruling political class.  Excerpt from the bill via the NH Liberty Alliance:

the following shall not constitute probable cause: discussing or possessing a copy of the Constitution, discussing the security apparatus of an airport, being on the premises of an airport, possessing an airplane ticket or any other type of ticket for access to mass transportation, driving a motor vehicle on a public way, or ownership of firearms.

These sorts of measures will quickly become ever more important, and ever more necessary, as the DHS and TSA expand their police state security apparatus over the whole of the country under the blanket of the so-called VIPR program, i.e. Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response.  As Verbellum reports:

VIPR is basically a roving search-and-seizure task force. . . . The authorities exceed every limit established by a citizen’s fundamental right to security of person and property. Generalized fear replaces probable cause; searches are conducted and property seized in broad strokes following no oath or affirmation. Practices and procedures are openly unreasonable.

The truth is that, as soon as this behavior was permitted in airports, it was just a matter of time before it started spreading. If fear of generalized threats is the key to a full override of the Fourth Amendment, then it doesn’t end at airports. It doesn’t end at train and bus stations either. It doesn’t end at all. VIPR will slither into every aspect of our lives that it can reach.

Consider this recent video of a VIPR security checkpoint in Savannah, Georgia, in which passengers were subject to random search and seizure in a train station after they had gotten off their train!

The Formula for the Consolidation of the Global Warfare and Corporate Welfare State, Wisconsin Edition

The ongoing showdown between public sector unions and the state government in Wisconsin provides us with a veritable template of party government in the United States.  The procedure is formulaic and has been employed to implement everything from the Patriot Act to the bailouts of the global banking mafia:  1) if there is no crisis at hand, manufacture one; 2) utilize this crisis to justify the implementation of emergency measures which would ostensibly address the crisis; 3) under the cover of those emergency measures, stage attacks on the fundamental rights and liberties of individuals while securing and consolidating the base of power for the global warfare and corporate welfare state. 

At issue in Wisconsin, of course, is the so-called "budget repair bill" proposed by the state's governor, Scott Walker.  In the press release announcing the bill's introduction, Walker states outright: "Emergency measure is needed to balance the state budget and give government the tools to manage during economic crisis." [Emphasis added.]  It continues:

“We must take immediate action to ensure fiscal stability in our state,” said Governor Walker.  “This budget repair bill will meet the immediate needs of our state and give government the tools to deal with this and future budget crises.”  The state of Wisconsin is facing an immediate deficit of $137 million for the current fiscal year which ends July 1.

So, the crisis facing the state is a deficit of $137 million, and this crisis is so dire it needs to be immediately addressed with emergency measures.  Interestingly, however, just last month the Wisconsin state legislature passed three bills providing $140 million in corporate and individual tax breaks.  From PolitiFact:

Economic development tax credit

Signed into law Jan. 31, 2011, this bill increases the state’s economic development tax credit fund to $98.1 million, up from $73.1 million. The fund provides a tax credit for job creation, capital investment or related activity. The additional $25 million in credits is not expected to be claimed during the 2011-2013 biennium.

So, if employers create new jobs and claim the credits, they would pay less in taxes to the state. No spending would be involved.

Health Savings Account deduction

Also signed into law, this measure allows people to deduct contributions they make to Health Savings Accounts from their state income taxes, as they can from their federal income taxes. Nearly every other state already allows this.

The deductions will reduce state revenue by an estimated $20.7 million in 2011-2012 and $27.3 million in 2012-2013.

Tax deduction for creating jobs

Under this bill, which is awaiting Walker’s signature, employers would receive a tax deduction for each job they create. They would pay an estimated $33.5 million less per year in income and franchise taxes.  

The reader can decide for him- or herself whether Wisconsin's crisis is manufactured or not.  In either case, the "emergency measures" proposed by the governor amount to an attack on long-recognized  rights of public sector workers and unions, with a number of notable exceptions.  From Walker's press release:

Collective bargaining – The bill would make various changes to limit collective bargaining for most public employees to wages.  Total wage increases could not exceed a cap based on the consumer price index (CPI) unless approved by referendum.  Contracts would be limited to one year and wages would be frozen until the new contract is settled.  Collective bargaining units are required to take annual votes to maintain certification as a union.  Employers would be prohibited from collecting union dues and members of collective bargaining units would not be required to pay dues.  These changes take effect upon the expiration of existing contracts.  Local law enforcement and fire employees, and state troopers and inspectors would be exempt from these changes.  [Emphasis added.]

It is worth noting in this context that these emergency measures to address the state's dire economic crisis also provide $22 million to the state's prison industry.  From the press release:

Corrections – The bill provides $22 million GPR to address shortfalls in the Department of Corrections adult institutions appropriation.  These shortfalls are due to health care costs, overtime, and reductions in salary and fringe benefit budgets under Act 28.

We are thus presented with a situation in which a celebrated series of corporate and individual tax breaks aimed at social and economic engineering amount to approximately $140 million.  The $137 million deficit, on the other hand, is framed as a dire emergency.  The response to that emergency requires the erosion of collective bargaining rights for public sector workers.  But the public sector unions of guard laborers, such as those in law enforcement, state troopers, inspectors and fire employees are exempted from the changes, and the prison industry receives a payoff.  The formula is clear as day.  If there is no crisis at hand, manufacture one.  Utilize this crisis to justify the implementation of emergency measures which would ostensibly address the crisis.  Under the cover of those emergency measures, stage attacks on fundamental rights and liberties while securing and consolidating the base of power for the global warfare and corporate welfare state.

Update:  As Solomon Kleinsmith points out at Rise of the Center, both sides in the Wisconsin showdown "are more than comfortable with lying to push their agenda."  This, of course, is standard practice for the partisans of the Democratic-Republican two-party state and duopoly system of government.  PolitiFact checks up on the relation between the state's $137 million deficit and its $140 million in business tax breaks, concluding: "The tax cuts will cost the state a projected $140 million in tax revenue -- but not until the next two-year budget, from July 2011 to June 2013 . . . Walker’s tax cuts will boost the size of the projected deficit in the next budget, but they’re not part of this problem and did not create it."  Apparently, they will only exacerbate it. 

The Patriot Act and the Bipartisan War on Civil Liberties

An attempt to fast-track the renewal of the most controversial portions of the Patriot Act failed in the House yesterday.  The measure failed to get the procedurally necessary two-third majority.  The same measure would easily pass on a simple majority vote.  In the People's House, there is a sizable bipartisan majority of Democrats and Republicans who are united in opposition to core constitutional principles such as the protection against unreasonable search and seizure, and the civil rights of American citizens.  Glenn Greenwald writes:

The establishments of both political parties -- whether because of actual conviction or political calculation -- are equally devoted to the National Security State, the Surveillance State, and the endless erosions of core liberties they entail.  Partisan devotees of each party generally pretend to care about such liberties only when the other party is in power -- because screaming about abuses of power confers political advantage and enables demonization of the President -- but they quickly ignore or even justify the destruction of those liberties when their own party wields power.  Hence, Democratic loyalists spent years screeching that Bush was "shredding the Constitution" for supporting policies which Barack Obama now enthusiastically supports, while right-wing stalwarts -- who spent years cheering on every Bush-led assault on basic Constitutional limits in the name of Terrorism -- flamboyantly read from the Constitution during the Obama era as though they venerate that document as sacred.  The war on civil liberties in the U.S. is a fully bipartisan endeavor, and no effective opposition is possible through fealty to either of the two parties.

At The Think 3 Institute, Sam Wilson argues that the vote provides us with "a new picture of the House":

Majority and minority alike are bipartisan in composition. Leaders can blame unreliable people in either party for what happened last night, and the vote may well have been taken in order to expose those people to various forms of pressure from both parties. Ordinary Americans who distrust the Patriot Act and the expanded national-security apparatus it sustains should learn from this episode that they shouldn't look to any one of the major parties for protection from potentially abusive surveillance. The only way that last night's victorious minority can become a majority is by drawing from both parties. More to the point, opponents of the Patriot Act need to find more congressmen for whom party dictates count less than civil liberty.  [Emphasis added.]

The Bipartisan War on the Fourth Amendment, Cont'd

The police state and surveillance society that is being constructed on the basis of Democratic-Republican bipartisan consensus is a grave threat to constitutional government in the United States.  From a new report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, entitled, "Patterns of Misconduct: FBI Intelligence Violations from 2001-2008":

In a review of nearly 2,500 pages of documents released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a result of litigation under the Freedom of Information Act, EFF uncovered alarming trends in the Bureau’s intelligence investigation practices. The documents consist of reports made by the FBI to the Intelligence Oversight Board of violations committed during intelligence investigations from 2001 to 2008. The documents suggest that FBI intelligence investigations have compromised the civil liberties of American citizens far more frequently, and to a greater extent, than was previously assumed. [Emphasis added.] In particular, EFF’s analysis provides new insight into:

Number of Violations Committed by the FBI

• From 2001 to 2008, the FBI reported to the IOB approximately 800 violations of laws, Executive Orders, or other regulations governing intelligence investigations, although this number likely significantly under-represents the number of violations that actually occurred.
• From 2001 to 2008, the FBI investigated, at minimum, 7000 potential violations of laws, Executive Orders, or other regulations governing intelligence investigations.
• Based on the proportion of violations reported to the IOB and the FBI’s own statements regarding the number of NSL violations that occurred, the actual number of violations that may have occurred from 2001 to 2008 could approach 40,000 possible violations of law, Executive Order, or other regulations governing intelligence investigations. [Emphasis added.]
  

Substantial Delays in the Intelligence Oversight Process

• From 2001 to 2008, both FBI and IOB oversight of intelligence activities was delayed and likely ineffectual; on average, 2.5 years elapsed between a violation’s occurrence and its eventual reporting to the IOB.

Type and Frequency of FBI Intelligence Violations

• From 2001 to 2008, of the nearly 800 violations reported to the IOB:
• over one-third involved FBI violation of rules governing internal oversight of intelligence investigations.
• nearly one-third involved FBI abuse, misuse, or careless use of the Bureau’s National Security Letter authority.
• almost one-fifth involved an FBI violation of the Constitution, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or other laws governing criminal investigations or intelligence gathering activities.
• From 2001 to 2008, in nearly half of all NSL violations, third-parties to whom NSLs were issued — phone companies, internet service providers, financial institutions, and credit agencies —contributed in some way to the FBI’s unauthorized receipt of personal information.  [Emphasis added.]
• From 2001 to 2008, the FBI engaged in a number of flagrant legal violations, including:
• submitting false or inaccurate declarations to courts.
• using improper evidence to obtain federal grand jury subpoenas.
• accessing password protected documents without a warrant.

The violation of protected constitutional rights and liberties on the part of the government, aided and abetted by corporate interests, has become routine under the conditions of the reigning two-party state.  There are few signs that the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties have any intention of reversing course on these matters.  Indeed, they are more likely than not to simply double down.  For instance, though it is scheduled to expire, the Patriot Act appears to be on track for its yearly renewal.  From TPM:

At the end of next month, two of the Patriot Act's controversial provisions -- one authorizing "roving" wiretapping and one allowing the government to pull all sorts of records and electronic communications from U.S. citizens -- will expire.   Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), the new chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has already introduced legislation that would simply extend the provisions for one more year. That would essentially be a repeat of what happened a year ago, after the provisions expired in December 2009.

Yesterday, at the Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf considered a Republican-led push to force Internet service providers to store records of their users’ activities for years to allow review of those activities by police, and asked whether "spying on us is in the pledge."  His reflection on the matter underscores the hopelessness of those who remain imprisoned by the ideology of the two-party state.  He writes:

With President Obama continuing his awful record on civil liberties – without much objection from elected Democratic officials – and the GOP reminding us why liberty-minded people loathed their prior stint running Congress, there's basically nowhere left for libertarians to turn. I don't begrudge anyone for thinking they're better off aligning with the Republicans or the Democrats. But I can't stand folks who pretend that advocates of overweening government are all on one side, or that the right thing to do at the ballot box is obvious.  [Emphasis added.]

Perhaps Friedersdorf has never heard of the Libertarian Party.  Or maybe he's just willfully obtuse.

Facebook Takes on the State of Homeland Security: "Booooooo!!!!!!"

This past week, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano delivered the first annual State of America's Homeland Security Address at George Washington University.  To a great extent, the address was overshadowed by the president's State of the Union speech as well as the ongoing protest movement  unfolding in Egypt.  Media reports on Napolitano's speech focused, for the most part, on her announcement that the department will soon abandon the color-coded security threat alert system adopted under the Bush administration in favor of a "two-tiered system" based on states of imminent and/or elevated threat.  But the speech was noteworthy for other reasons as well, including Secretary Napolitano's unwitting confession that the DHS is an abject failure, and her successful attempt to troll for new Facebook friends (scroll down for caps and pics).

One of the enduring criticisms of the DHS is that its sprawling bureaucracy effectively thwarts its stated objectives, namely, protecting US territory from terrorist attacks and responding to natural disasters.  Napolitano unwittingly admitted as much in her address.  For instance, she named two specific individuals arrested for terrorist activity over the last two years: Najibullah Zazi, arrested in 2009 for plotting to attack the New York City subway system and Faisal Shahzad, who attempted to explode a car bomb in Times Square last year.  In neither of these cases was the DHS responsible for thwarting the attack.  Zazi was thwarted by the FBI and the NYPD.  Shahzad, on the other hand, was able to actually park his faulty car bomb in Times Square, which was noticed by a local vendor when it malfunctioned.  Napolitano described the DHS as follows:

At the Department of Homeland Security over the last two years, we've seen some extraordinary progress and hard work pay off. But that could not have happened without the dedicated, professional men and women of this great Department, like the nearly 50,000 Transportation Security Officers who work tirelessly, and often thanklessly, to deter and prevent terrorist attacks on passenger planes; the more than 20,000 Border Patrol agents who put their lives on the line to protect our borders; the more than 10,000 officers and investigators who enforce our immigration laws, and bring to justice those who seek to traffic drugs, arms and people; the more than 40,000 men and women who serve in the United States Coast Guard protecting our maritime borders; or the thousands of scientists and engineers working on the next generation of security technology; the security guards at government buildings; the trainers of our law enforcement professionals; or the intelligence analysts working around the clock to stay ahead of emerging threats.

Apparently unaware of the irony, she then goes on to state that DHS has failed to detect nearly 80% of terrorist plots in the United States over the last decade.  She continues:

But the homeland security enterprise extends far beyond DHS and the federal government. As I said, it requires not just a "whole of government," but a "whole of nation" approach. In some respects, local law enforcement, community groups, citizens, and the private sector play as much of a role in homeland security as the federal government. That is why I like to say that "homeland security starts with hometown security." . . . A study just last year study found that, between 1999 and 2009, more than 80 percent of foiled terrorist plots in the United States were thwarted because of observations from law enforcement or the general public.

So, according to Napolitano, local law enforcement, community groups, citizens, and the private sector play as much of a role in homeland security as the federal government, but more than 80% of foiled terrorist plots in the United States were thwarted because of observations from law enforcement or the general public rather than the DHS.  The secretary then states that this is the reason why DHS has nationalized the "If you see something, say something" campaign, and begun to recruit a nationwide network of citizen spies.  The success of that program was made abundantly clear just the other day outside a Wal-Mart in Kirksville, Missouri.  From the Kirksville Daily Express:

A report of an armed man acting erratically in the Wal-Mart parking lot Wednesday led to the store being temporarily locked down before Kirksville Police responded to and defused the situation with no injuries.  KPD responded to control the scene and ordered a lockdown of the store both to keep shoppers in and prevent the individual from entering the store.

After identifying the vehicle and person in question, Hughes said a decision was made on the scene for police to attempt contact . . . No weapon was found and the individual was taken into custody without incident less than 20 minutes after police arrived on scene.  The individual was talking on a cell phone at the time of the incident. It's likely that is the object the passerby identified as a gun.  [Emphasis added.]

Given the predictability of such incidents, it may be the case that Napolitano's suspicious activity reporting initiative is actually little more than a ploy to attract Facebook friends.  She continued in the speech:

Both the "If You See Something, Say Something" and SAR initiatives have been designed, and tested, with civil liberties and privacy in mind. Both are aimed at identifying suspicious behaviors and increasing our shared ability to protect the country.

Today, we’re also premiering several additional resources to better connect citizens and communities with the kinds of information and tools that DHS offers. I urge you to visit our new "Hometown Security" resource page on DHS.gov, and to stay connected via the Department’s new Facebook page as well.

How many taxpayer dollars have thus far been wasted in the DHS Facebook-friend campaign?  We might never know, but at least it provides a forum for the public to confront the abuses of the DHS.  Here is a short selection of the top comments responding to Napolitano's address on Facebook:

As one later commenter noted, gotta love the freedom of speech.  The hubris of the Department of Homeland Security ensures both that it will fail in its mission and that its policies will result in a dangerous erosion of civil liberties and individual privacy.  The reason for this is quite simple: the DHS has set for itself an impossible goal inconsistent with its original mission, and far exceeding any organization's actual capacity.  Napolitano: "Our goal, quite simply, is to ensure the safety of all travelers and cargo as they travel across the globe."

Made in the USA

From Democracy Now:

AMY GOODMAN: We are also joined in our New York studio by Mostafa Omar, an Egyptian American activist and writer who lives in New York City. Mostafa, I wanted to ask you about the U.S. response. Clearly, the U.S. weighs in big-time here, makes an enormous difference. The second-largest recipient of U.S. aid, well over $2 billion the Egyptian government receives. What about what Hillary Clinton has said? Has President Obama weighed in?

MOSTAFA OMAR: It’s really interesting that Hillary Clinton said that she supports the universal rights of the Egyptian people, after the fact that the Egyptian people have begun to exercise those rights. The Secretary of State had no such words for the Egyptian regime over the last number of years.

In fact, what she also forgot to mention is that the tear gas and the tanks that are driving into protesters, the concussion grenades, are all made in the United States. That is the meaning of $2 billion in military aid, military and economic aid.

Pictures of the teargas canisters and concussion grenades being launched by Egyptian security forces against protesters have already begun circulating online:

Coming soon to a street near you?

Update:  Live stream of Al Jazeera's English-language coverage of ongoing protests.  Reportedly, police stations and the headquarters of the National Democratic Party have been set on fire.  Wikileaks has released a large number of Egypt-related State Department cables today.  Among them: a cable on Egypt's Emergency Law and Its Broad Uses, as well as another on "routine and pervasive" police brutality in the country.

Ventura vs. the TSA

From this week's column at CAIVN:

On Monday, Jesse Ventura filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for violating the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.  Under the new TSA security protocols, prospective airline passengers who are designated for “enhanced” screening, for instance, after setting off walk-through metal detectors, must submit to a whole body imaging scan or a full-body pat-down search.  Because Ventura has a titanium hip implant which sets off metal detectors, he is forced to undergo the enhanced security procedure every time he boards an airplane, which is frequently required for his work as a “television performer,” as stated in the lawsuit.

Ventura’s lawsuit amounts to a full frontal assault on the DHS/TSA’s “enhanced security protocols.”  Essentially, the suit argues, since passengers are not free to leave the airport security area or decline to take their scheduled flights to avoid any additional screening, the enhanced protocols amount to an unconstitutional search and seizure.  “Absent reasonable grounds for suspicion,” the suit states, “[whole body imaging] scans and pat-down body searches are unwarranted and unreasonable intrusions on Governor Ventura’s personal privacy and dignity and his right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.”

It goes on to argue that whole body imaging scans are tantamount to a “warrantless, non-suspicion-based” strip search, which is “demeaning and degrading” and meets the definition of “unlawful video voyeurism.”  The lawsuit objects to full-body pat-downs on similar grounds, stating that they “include warrantless, non-suspicion-based offensive touching, gripping and rubbing of the genital and other sensitive areas of the body,” which meets the definition of “unlawful sexual assault.”

Were it not for the fact that so many Democratic and Republican lawmakers have shown so little interest in addressing these ritual humiliations of American citizens by agents of the state, such a lawsuit would not be necessary.  As the suit states, “Governor Ventura has no other adequate and speedy remedy at law.”  See this article for the full text of the lawsuit.

Though Ventura was elected governor of Minnesota under the banner of the Reform Party, in recent years he has become an outspoken advocate of independent politics and an opponent of party politics as such.  In October of last year, Ventura told USA Today, “I do not support the third party movement anymore,” adding, “I now advocate the abolishment of all political parties. We've allowed the parties to take over the government.”  Ironically, however, third party advocates are among Ventura’s staunchest allies in opposing the TSA’s invasive security procedures . . .

Authorization to Execute a Search Warrant is Not an Authorization to Execute People

As the deranged and deluded partisans of the Republican and Democratic parties continue their absurd debate on the magical powers and effects of martial imagery and metaphor in our nation's political discourse, it is highly revealing that few if any have taken even a moment to reflect on the deleterious effects of actual martial policy.  Democrats and Republicans are only metaphorically at war with one another, but they have literally declared war on the people of the United States.  And the bodies keep piling up.  The Salt Lake Tribune recently made public a SWAT team video of a police home invasion from late last year in which officers executed a man in his home before executing the search warrant for that home:



Notice how police command the golf club wielding man to "get on the ground" only after he has collapsed onto the floor, having been shot three times in the chest and head by the lead officer in the assault squad.  Upon searching the home after the killing, police supposedly recovered a small amount of marijuana and an empty vial of methamphetamine.  The man who was killed, Todd Blair, was apparently not even the primary suspect in the investigation, as there was no evidence that he was a drug dealer.  That was his roommate, who had moved out of the house some time before the raid, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.  Police did not even bother to bring the warrant with them on the night of the home invasion.   Officials later deemed the cold-blooded killing "legally justified."  Ryan Grimm summarizes further details of the incident.  The dangers inherent in the militarization of police and are not difficult to discern.  From Spring Valley, NY, late last week:

A village resident said that police conducting drug raids early this morning targeted the wrong house where they roused his family out bed, pointed a machine gun at his 13-year-old daughter and threatened to shoot their poodle. . . .

David McKay said he, his wife, 13-year-old daughter and his brother-in-law were sleeping at 5:30 a.m. when they heard banging on the door of their townhouse at 36 Sharon Drive. When they went to open the door, at least 10 police officers forced their way into the home, he said.

"Their guns were drawn, they were screaming 'Where's Michael, Where's Michael,' " McKay recounted hours later in a telephone interview from Nyack Hospital, where he took his terrified daughter for treatment after she had an asthma attack and fainted following the ordeal.

McKay said he was still groggy from sleep but tried to explain that there was no one named Michael in the house. "They pulled me outside in the freezing cold in my underwear, manhandle my wife, point a gun at my daughter and they won't even tell me what they are doing in my house," said McKay. "It was terrifying and humiliating beyond belief."

Not everyone is so lucky.  From earlier this month in Framington Massachusetts:

The fatal shooting of an innocent 68-year-old man by Framingham police reignited debate among law enforcement experts yesterday over the role of heavily armed, specialized units for routine drug busts. . . . Eurie Stamps was shot to death [by police] inside a home in Framingham on Tuesday after police arrested two 20-year-old unarmed men on drug charges. A Framingham SWAT team member yesterday was placed on administrative leave in connection with the shooting, the department said.

Police conduct over 50,000 such raids every year in the United States.  Radley Balko has compiled an extensive, though not comprehensive, archive of botched paramilitary police raids in conjunction with a policy paper for the Cato Institute entitled "Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America."  Let there be no doubt: the war on drugs, which has the full support of the Republican and Democratic parties, is a war on the people and the Constitution of the United States.  It should go without saying, but apparently it needs to be said: authorization to execute a search warrant is not an authorization to execute any person who may be present during that search.