Now everyone knows that it is not polite to intrude on people in their private moments. The problem is that big brother doesn’t seem to know that peeking into people’s private communication is wrong and it should be illegal. Unfortunately President Bush wants to continue to grant immunity to telecommunications companies in the name of the so called ‘war on terror’ which in actuality is a war on the American people and the telecommunications infrastructure is the front line in the gradual diminishment of civil rights that Congress has permitted in recent years.

We need representatives in Washington DC who support protecting Americans instead of distrusting us. As a candidate for federal office I support legislation to abolish the Department of Homeland Security, that Orwellian agency constructed in the days after 9-11, which has crafted the war on the American people and their rights since. I support the elimination of FISA loopholes and the closing of Guantanamo Bay and the return of all detainees to their countries of origin. I believe that the American people deserve full and open disclosure on all activities related to government spying conducted against her citizens. Finally, I support the elimination of discreet, undocumented funding of the Central Intelligence agency.

Our rights are not negotiable. Telecommunication companies have violated those rights and have broken the law in order to appease a corrupt and power hungry administration that is willing to throw out Habeus Corpus, the right to privacy and international law in a reckless drive down the road to never-never land. Corporations must be held accountable and the President and his cronies must be called to account for violating our basic constitutional rights. Unfortunately, Senator Obama has been a disappointment on this issue and has refused to honor his commitment to filibuster this legislation. As a result, we are once again adrift without a rudder, a captain, a ship or an engine, being dragged along by the tides of fear.

It is time to reject the efforts of George Bush and anyone else who wants to grant retroactive immunity to corporations that spy on Americans. Congress has proven itself to be too weak-kneed to stand up to the fear mongers, but there is a new line of candidates running for office who are not so willing to roll over and play dumb. Treason is not patriotic. We all know that the government spying on us is wrong, and that any agency or corporation that assists in breaking into our most intimate communications is not behaving in a democratic fashion. The new reality is that our privacy is being compromised until we roll back FISA protections and strip immunity for corporations that spy on Americans.

For more information on this issue please visit: http://www.usalone.com/no_following_orders.php

Pentagon Tracked at Least 186 Anti-Military Protests

“It cannot be an accident or coincidence that nearly 200 anti-war protests ended up in a Pentagon threat database,” said Ann Beeson, Associate Legal Director of the ACLU. “This unchecked surveillance is part of a broad pattern of the Bush administration using ‘national security’ as an excuse to run roughshod over the privacy and free speech rights of Americans.”

The ACLU report reviews hundreds of pages of Defense Department documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed last year. The documents revealed that the surveillance of peace groups and anti-war activists was more widespread than previously known.

The latest document obtained by the ACLU, and released today, is an undated 2006 memo reviewing the Defense Department’s Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON) database, which was found to list several peaceful protesters as potential threats to the military. According to the memo, as of February 10, 2006, the Defense Department had deleted 186 TALON reports that involved “anti-military protests or demonstrations in the U.S.” In addition, the Defense Department identified 2,821 TALON reports remaining in the database that contain what the Department describes as “U.S. person information,” but it is unclear whether those reports pertain to protest activities.

The memo also states that “personnel from 28 organizations were authorized to use TALON” and 3,589 users have been authorized to submit TALON reports or access the database. Because of such wide access to the database, even deleted reports may still appear in the files of other government agencies, the ACLU said.

The ACLU said the Pentagon’s misuse of the TALON database is just one example of increased government surveillance of innocent Americans. With the help of phone companies, the National Security Agency has been conducting warrantless wiretapping of U.S. phones and reading the e-mails of countless Americans, all without a warrant. The FBI has gathered information about peace activists and recruited confidential informants inside lawful advocacy organizations like Greenpeace and PETA. Less than a month ago, President Bush signed a statement declaring that he is authorized to open the domestic mail of American citizens without a warrant. This weekend, The New York Times revealed that the Pentagon has been using “National Security Letters” to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans.

“Congress should not let this president off the hook for inappropriate surveillance by the Pentagon,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “Americans must once again be confident we can exercise our constitutionally protected right to protest without becoming the subject of a secret government file.”

In response to the ACLU’s FOIA requests filed on February 1, 2006, the Defense Department has released dozens of TALON reports that were compiled on Americans. Many of the reports focus on anti-military recruitment events and protests, including activities organized by the Quaker organization American Friends Service Committee, United for Peace and Justice, Veterans for Peace, and Catholic Worker. The TALON reports tracked events in 13 states and the District of Columbia: Alabama, California, Georgia, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Texas.

The ACLU said that, even though the Defense Department has conceded that much of this information should not have been retained in its TALON database, there are still many unanswered questions.

“We do not know whether the Department of Defense maintains other threat databases that include similar information, nor whether Department of Defense personnel are engaged in other information-gathering about United States citizens,” said the ACLU in its report. “We do not know the extent to which other federal agencies might have been involved in collecting this information. We do not know whether the information improperly included in the TALON database was distributed to other government agencies.”

The report added, “we have only the Pentagon’s word that the errors and misjudgments that led to widespread surveillance of U.S. citizens have been corrected.”

The ACLU report, No Real Threat: The Pentagon’s Secret Database on Peaceful Protest, is available online at: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/spyfiles/27988pub20070117.html

The Pentagon document released today as a result of the ACLU lawsuit is online at: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/spyfiles/28021lgl20070117.html

More information on government surveillance is online at: http://www.aclu.org/spyfiles

Join the Tennessee Chapter of the ACLU today to help protect your freedoms!

* This report is a press release from the American Civil Liberities Union.

Judge orders program to be halted!

It’s just coming out, MSNBC and the AP are reporting that U.S. District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor has ruled that the President’s warrantless domestic spying program is unconstitutional, and that she has ordered an immediate halt to it.

This is a serious rebuke to the Bush Administrations, and their attempt to use the State secret privilege to block an independent judicial review of the legality of this program. This is something that other judges need to take note of as well.

“Plaintiffs have prevailed, and the public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution,” Taylor wrote in her 43-page opinion.

Of course the Bush administration argued that they have the right to do this under both the 2001 Authorization for the use of military force, and Article 2 of the Constitution. Their so called unitary executive theory of executive powers (The president as king).

The government argued that the program is well within the president’s authority, but said proving that would require revealing state secrets.

The ACLU basically argued that Bush administration already had publicly revealed enough information about the program to allow a ruling, and that their claims of state-secrets privilege was thus irrelevant.

I will try to track down more information on this and get it posted later!

This Minority Report has been produced at the direction of Representative John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee.The Report is divided into two principal parts – Part I, released in draft form in December, 2005, concerns “The Downing Street Minutes and Deception Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Cover-ups in the Iraq War;” and Part II, released in June 2006, concerns “Unlawful Domestic Surveillance and Related Civil Liberties Abuses under the Administration of George W. Bush.” (At the conclusion, They include an Addendum including additional matters which have come to light since Part I of the Report was issued in December, 2005 and Part II was written in May, 2006).

In preparing this Report They reviewed tens of thousands of documents and materials, including testimony submitted at two hearings held by Rep. Conyers concerning the Downing Street Minutes and warrantless domestic surveillance; hundreds of media reports, articles, and books, including interviews with past and present Administration employees and other confidential sources; scores of government and non-profit reports, hearings, and analyses; numerous letters and materials submitted to Rep. Conyers; staff interviews; relevant laws, cases, regulations, and administrative guidelines; and the Administration’s own words and statements.

In brief, They have found that there is substantial evidence the President, the Vice-President and other high ranking members of the Bush Administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war in Iraq; misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for such war; countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in Iraq; permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of their Administration; and approved domestic surveillance that is both illegal and unconstitutional.As further detailed in the Report, there is evidence that these actions violate a number of federal laws, including:

• Making False Statements to Congress, for example, saying you have learned Iraq is attempting to buy uranium from Niger, when you have been warned by the CIA that this is not the case.
• The War Powers Resolution and Misuse of Government Funds, for example, redeploying troops and initiating bombing raids before receiving congressional authorization.
• Federal laws and international treaties prohibiting torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, for example, ordering detainees to be ghosted and removed, and tolerating and laying the legal ground work for their torture and mistreatment.
• Federal laws concerning retaliating against witnesses and other individuals, for example, demoting Bunnatine Greenhouse, the chief contracting officer at the Army Corps of Engineers, because she exposed contracting abuses involving Halliburton.
• Federal requirements concerning leaking and other misuse of intelligence, for example, failing to enforce the executive order requiring disciplining those who leak classified information, whether intentional or not.
• Federal regulations and ethical requirements governing conflicts of interest, for example, then Attorney General John Aschcroft’s being personally briefed on FBI interviews concerning possible misconduct by Karl Rove even though Mr. Rove had previously received nearly $750,000 in fees for political work on Mr. Ashcroft’s campaigns.
• Violating FISA and the Fourth Amendment, for example intercepting thousands of communications “to or from any person within the United States,” without obtaining a warrant.
• The Stored Communications Act of 1986 and the Communications Act of 1934, for example, obtaining millions of U.S. customer telephone records without obtaining a subpoena or warrant, without customer consent, and outside of any applicable “emergency exceptions.”
• The National Security Act, for example, failing to keep all Members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees “fully and currently informed” of intelligence activities, such as the warrantless surveillance programs.

With regard to the NSA’s domestic surveillance programs, They have also found that members of the Bush Administration made a number of misleading statements regarding its operation and scope; the legal justifications proffered by the Bush Administration are constitutionally destabilizing; there is little evidence the programs have been beneficial in combating terrorism and may have affirmatively placed terrorism prosecutions at risk; and the programs appear to have designed and implemented in a manner designed to stifle legitimate concerns.

The Report rejects the frequent contention by the Bush Administration that their pre-war conduct has been reviewed and they have been exonerated.No entity has ever considered whether the Administration misled Americans about the decision to go to war. The Senate Intelligence Committee has not yet conducted a review of pre-war intelligence distortion and manipulation, while the presidentially appointed Silberman-Robb Commission Report specifically cautioned that intelligence manipulation “was not part of our inquiry.”There has also not been any independent inquiry concerning torture and other legal violations in Iraq; nor has there been an independent review of the pattern of cover-ups and political retribution by the Bush Administration against its critics, other than the very narrow and still ongoing inquiry of Special Counsel Fitzgerald into the outing of Valerie Plame.

There also has been no independent review of the circumstances surrounding the Bush Administration’s domestic spying scandals.The Administration summarily rejected all requests for special counsels, as well as reviews by the Department of Justice and Department of Defense Inspector Generals.When the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility opened an investigation, the Bush Administration effectively squashed it by denying the investigators security clearances.Neither the House nor Senate Intelligence Committee have undertaken any sort of comprehensive investigation, and the Bush Administration has sought to cut off any court review of the NSA programs by repeatedly invoking the state secrets doctrine.

As a result of our findings, They have made a number of recommendations to help prevent the recurrence of these events in the future, including:

• obtaining enhanced investigatory authority to access documentary information and testimony regarding the various allegations set forth in this Report.
• reaffirming that FISA and the criminal code contain the exclusive means for conducting domestic warrantless surveillance and, to the extent that more personnel are needed to process FISA requests, increasing available resources.
• requiring the President to report on the pardon of any former or current officials who could implicate the President or other Administration officials implicated by pending investigations.
• requiring the President to notify Congress upon the declassification of intelligence information.
• providing for enhanced protection for national security whistle-blowers.
• strengthening the authority of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

They also make a number of additional recommendations within the jurisdiction of the House Judiciary Committee to help respond to the ongoing threat of terrorism, including:

• increasing funding and resources for local law enforcement and first responders and insuring that anti-terrorism funds are distributed based on risk, not politics.
• implementing the 9-11 Commission Recommendations, including providing for enhanced port, infrastructure, and chemical plant security and ensuring that all loose nuclear materials are secured.
• banning corporate trade with state sponsors of terrorism and eliminating sovereign immunity protections for state sponsors of terrorism.
• enhancing laws against wartime fraud.

If you wish to read the full report and I highly recommend it, visit the following url:

http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/iraqrept2.html

Perhaps we should consider enacting a constitutional amendment that would prevent one party from controlling all the three of the elected branches of our government (The President of the United States, the Senate, and the House of Representatives). The amendment would require at least one to be controlled  by the minority. So if the President is Republican and the House of Representatives and the Senate are both Republican controlled, they would have to turn the leadership of at least one branch of Congress over to the other party. They would still have the most members, just not the automatic leadership and control over the agenda, that we have with our current system.

San Francisco

EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston, EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn, and Robert Fram of Heller Ehrman LLP will analyze the ruling and answer questions in a conference call at 1:30pm.

EFF filed the class-action suit against AT&T in January, alleging that the telecommunications company has given the National Security Agency (NSA) secret, direct access to the phone calls and emails going over its network and has been handing over communications logs detailing the activities of millions of ordinary Americans.

For the judge’s decision:
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/308_order_on_mtns_to_dismiss.pdf

For more on the AT&T lawsuit:
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/

Contacts:

Rebecca Jeschke
Media Coordinator
Electronic Frontier Foundation

John J. Buchanan
Director of Communications
Heller Ehrman LLP
john.

It makes a mockery of every American soldier that has given their life so that we may be free.

Did you know that the Bush administration is now claiming a new right to spy on your financial transactions. They decided that once again, contrary to the law, they are not required to get a search warrant.

Data from the Brussels-based banking consortium, formally known as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, has allowed officials from the C.I.A., the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies to examine “tens of thousands” of financial transactions, Mr. Levey said. Swift routes more than 11 million transactions each day, most of them across borders.

While many of those transactions have occurred entirely on foreign soil, officials have also been keenly interested in international transfers of money by individuals, businesses, charities and other groups under suspicion inside the United States, officials said. A small fraction of Swift’s records involve transactions entirely within this country, but Treasury officials said they were uncertain whether any had been examined.

Bill Clinton had nothing on this administration, when it comes to redefining the meanings of words or laws.

In response to a Supreme court ruling that Americans had no constitutional right to privacy for records which are held by banks or other financial institutions Congress passed the Right to Financial Privacy Act, which restricted governmental access to our banking records.

In considering the Swift program, some government lawyers were particularly concerned about whether the law prohibited officials from gaining access to records without a warrant or subpoena based on some level of suspicion about each target.

So how did they do it? They redefined the clear intent of the law.

After an initial debate, Treasury Department lawyers, consulting with the Justice Department, concluded that the privacy laws applied to banks, not to a banking cooperative like Swift. They also said the law protected individual customers and small companies, not the major institutions that route money through Swift on behalf of their customers.

Using this twisted rational as justification, the F.B.I. has turned to national security letters (NSL), to demand such records.

Before the Patriot Act, the FBI could use NSLs to obtain records concerning suspected terrorists and spies. The Patriot Act amended the law to allow the use of NSLs to obtain information about anyone at all.

I have personal experience with this but due to the never ending gag order, that these letters place on you, I can not discuss it even today, years later.

We have seen the list of groups under suspicion in the United States the military talon database listed many civil liberty, peace groups, and any group which opposed military recruitment on college campuses.

A sample of about 1,500 “suspicious incidents” out of 13,000 listed in the database included four dozen anti-war meetings or protests, some aimed at military recruiting.

The fact that the TALON database included information on American citizens engaged in peaceful protest activities was first disclosed several months ago by NBC News and researcher Bill Arkin.

Why is this important? Because they admit that anyone in this database is a terrorist suspect, and would be subject to the full weight of American military and justice system.

The TALON system “should be used only to report information regarding international terrorist activity,” said Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England in a March 30 memo

The government can turn their many powers intended for use against terrorists, against any citizen, who dares to speak out against the government’s aims. Even when such opposition is perfectly legal and protected by their constitutional rights.

When the government wants to target a group or individual they can. Due to the complexity of our legal system, you have intentionally or not, violated a myriad of local, state, and federal laws. Any of these can be used to target you, if the government so desires. Remember they got Al Capone for income tax evasion, and not his many criminal misdeeds.

I will end this with a simple quote attributed by some to one of our founding fathers.

They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.

Something we should all heed.