Below is today’s column in the Sunday Washington Post. The column addresses how the continued rollbacks on civil liberties in the United States conflicts with the view of the country as the land of the free. If we are going to adopt Chinese legal principles, we should at least have the integrity to adopt one Chinese proverb: “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.” We seem as a country to be in denial as to the implications of these laws and policies. Whether we are viewed as a free country with authoritarian inclinations or an authoritarian nation with free aspirations (or some other hybrid definition), we are clearly not what we once were. [Update: in addition to the column below, a later column in the Washington Post explores more closely the loss of free speech rights in the West].
Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world. Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for undermining due process. Other countries have been condemned for the use of secret evidence and torture.
Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own — the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves?
While each new national security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet, objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit.
These countries also have constitutions that purport to guarantee freedoms and rights. But their governments have broad discretion in denying those rights and few real avenues for challenges by citizens — precisely the problem with the new laws in this country.
The list of powers acquired by the U.S. government since 9/11 puts us in rather troubling company.
Assassination of U.S. citizens
President Obama has claimed, as President George W. Bush did before him, the right to order the killing of any citizen considered a terrorist or an abettor of terrorism. Last year, he approved the killing of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaqi and another citizen under this claimed inherent authority. Last month, administration officials affirmed that power, stating that the president can order the assassination of any citizen whom he considers allied with terrorists. (Nations such as Nigeria, Iran and Syria have been routinely criticized for extrajudicial killings of enemies of the state.)
Indefinite detention
Under the law signed last month, terrorism suspects are to be held by the military; the president also has the authority to indefinitely detain citizens accused of terrorism. While Sen. Carl Levin insisted the bill followed existing law “whatever the law is,” the Senate specifically rejected an amendment that would exempt citizens and the Administration has opposed efforts to challenge such authority in federal court. The Administration continues to claim the right to strip citizens of legal protections based on its sole discretion. (China recently codified a more limited detention law for its citizens, while countries such as Cambodia have been singled out by the United States for “prolonged detention.”)
Arbitrary justice
The president now decides whether a person will receive a trial in the federal courts or in a military tribunal, a system that has been ridiculed around the world for lacking basic due process protections. Bush claimed this authority in 2001, and Obama has continued the practice. (Egypt and China have been denounced for maintaining separate military justice systems for selected defendants, including civilians.)
Warrantless searches
The president may now order warrantless surveillance, including a new capability to force companies and organizations to turn over information on citizens’ finances, communications and associations. Bush acquired this sweeping power under the Patriot Act in 2001, and in 2011, Obama extended the power, including searches of everything from business documents to library records. The government can use “national security letters” to demand, without probable cause, that organizations turn over information on citizens — and order them not to reveal the disclosure to the affected party. (Saudi Arabia and Pakistan operate under laws that allow the government to engage in widespread discretionary surveillance.)
Secret evidence
The government now routinely uses secret evidence to detain individuals and employs secret evidence in federal and military courts. It also forces the dismissal of cases against the United States by simply filing declarations that the cases would make the government reveal classified information that would harm national security — a claim made in a variety of privacy lawsuits and largely accepted by federal judges without question. Even legal opinions, cited as the basis for the government’s actions under the Bush and Obama administrations, have been classified. This allows the government to claim secret legal arguments to support secret proceedings using secret evidence. In addition, some cases never make it to court at all. The federal courts routinely deny constitutional challenges to policies and programs under a narrow definition of standing to bring a case.
War crimes
The world clamored for prosecutions of those responsible for waterboarding terrorism suspects during the Bush administration, but the Obama administration said in 2009 that it would not allow CIA employees to be investigated or prosecuted for such actions. This gutted not just treaty obligations but the Nuremberg principles of international law. When courts in countries such as Spain moved to investigate Bush officials for war crimes, the Obama administration reportedly urged foreign officials not to allow such cases to proceed, despite the fact that the United States has long claimed the same authority with regard to alleged war criminals in other countries. (Various nations have resisted investigations of officials accused of war crimes and torture. Some, such as Serbia and Chile, eventually relented to comply with international law; countries that have denied independent investigations include Iran, Syria and China.)
Secret court
The government has increased its use of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has expanded its secret warrants to include individuals deemed to be aiding or abetting hostile foreign governments or organizations. In 2011, Obama renewed these powers, including allowing secret searches of individuals who are not part of an identifiable terrorist group. The administration has asserted the right to ignore congressional limits on such surveillance. (Pakistan places national security surveillance under the unchecked powers of the military or intelligence services.)
Immunity from judicial review
Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration has successfully pushed for immunity for companies that assist in warrantless surveillance of citizens, blocking the ability of citizens to challenge the violation of privacy. (Similarly, China has maintained sweeping immunity claims both inside and outside the country and routinely blocks lawsuits against private companies.)
Continual monitoring of citizens
The Obama administration has successfully defended its claim that it can use GPS devices to monitor every move of targeted citizens without securing any court order or review. It is not defending the power before the Supreme Court — a power described by Justice Anthony Kennedy as “Orwellian.” (Saudi Arabia has installed massive public surveillance systems, while Cuba is notorious for active monitoring of selected citizens.)
Extraordinary renditions
The government now has the ability to transfer both citizens and noncitizens to another country under a system known as extraordinary rendition, which has been denounced as using other countries, such as Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan, to torture suspects. The Obama administration says it is not continuing the abuses of this practice under Bush, but it insists on the unfettered right to order such transfers — including the possible transfer of U.S. citizens.
These new laws have come with an infusion of money into an expanded security system on the state and federal levels, including more public surveillance cameras, tens of thousands of security personnel and a massive expansion of a terrorist-chasing bureaucracy.
Some politicians shrug and say these increased powers are merely a response to the times we live in. Thus, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) could declare in an interview last spring without objection that “free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war.” Of course, terrorism will never “surrender” and end this particular “war.”
Other politicians rationalize that, while such powers may exist, it really comes down to how they are used. This is a common response by liberals who cannot bring themselves to denounce Obama as they did Bush. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), for instance, has insisted that Congress is not making any decision on indefinite detention: “That is a decision which we leave where it belongs — in the executive branch.”
And in a signing statement with the defense authorization bill, Obama said he does not intend to use the latest power to indefinitely imprison citizens. Yet, he still accepted the power as a sort of regretful autocrat.
An authoritarian nation is defined not just by the use of authoritarian powers, but by the ability to use them. If a president can take away your freedom or your life on his own authority, all rights become little more than a discretionary grant subject to executive will.
The framers lived under autocratic rule and understood this danger better than we do. James Madison famously warned that we needed a system that did not depend on the good intentions or motivations of our rulers: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
Benjamin Franklin was more direct. In 1787, a Mrs. Powel confronted Franklin after the signing of the Constitution and asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got — a republic or a monarchy?” His response was a bit chilling: “A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.”
Since 9/11, we have created the very government the framers feared: a government with sweeping and largely unchecked powers resting on the hope that they will be used wisely.
The indefinite-detention provision in the defense authorization bill seemed to many civil libertarians like a betrayal by Obama. While the president had promised to veto the law over that provision, Levin, a sponsor of the bill, disclosed on the Senate floor that it was in fact the White House that approved the removal of any exception for citizens from indefinite detention.
Dishonesty from politicians is nothing new for Americans. The real question is whether we are lying to ourselves when we call this country the land of the free.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University.
Washington Post (Sunday) January 15, 2012
More to Fear Than Fear Itself: The War on Terror’s War on Human Rights
Wednesday, 06 March 2013 10:35 By Stephen Rohde, Truthout | Op-Ed
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/14955-more-to-fear-than-fear-itself-the-war-on-terrors-war-on-human-rights
In his first inaugural address on March 4, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said: “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
Eighty years later to the day, Ben Emmerson, UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, in a report to the UN Human Rights Council, called on the United States to publish its findings on the CIA’s Bush-era program of rendition and secret detention of terrorism suspects. Emmerson could well expand his demand to a far wider array of human rights violations that span far more that what the United States has done under the Bush and Obama administrations.
America’s nameless, unreasoning, unjustified fear of terror has caused us to launch immoral wars, slaughter innocent civilians with bombs and drones, impose an undeclared military draft on the poor and people of color, violate civil liberties and human rights, demonize Muslims and Islam, divert precious resources from desperate human needs into weapons of mass destruction, delay for generations the prospects of peace, and, most recently, shamefully refuse to investigate and prosecute any of these crimes against humanity.
Emmerson expressed grave concern that while Obama’s administration has rejected CIA practices conducted under his predecessor, there have been no prosecutions. “Despite this clear repudiation of the unlawful actions carried out by the Bush-era CIA, many of the facts remain classified, and no public official has so far been brought to justice in the United States,” Emmerson said in a report to the UN Human Rights Council, which he will address on March 5. The war on terror led to “gross or systematic” violations involving secret prisons for Islamic militant suspects, clandestine transfers and torture, Emmerson said.
In response to Attorney General Eric Holder’s position that the Department of Justice would not prosecute any official who acted in good faith and within the scope of legal guidance given by its Office of Legal Counsel on interrogation, Emmerson pointed out that using a “superior orders defense” and invoking secrecy on national security grounds was “perpetuating impunity for the public officials implicated in these crimes.”
Emmerson said he believed that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California), which has investigated the CIA’s secret detention and interrogation practices, including waterboarding, has had unrestricted access to classified information. He urged the US government “to publish without delay, and to the fullest extent possible” the Senate report, except for any information strictly necessary to protect legitimate national security interests or the safety of people identified in it.
“There is now credible evidence to show that CIA black sites were located on the territory of Lithuania, Morocco, Poland, Romania and Thailand, and that the officials of at least 49 other states allowed their airspace or airports to be used for rendition flights,” Emmerson said. He urged those five countries to conduct “effective independent judicial or quasi-judicial inquiries” into the allegations. Any public officials who may have authorized or helped in setting up such facilities should be held accountable, he added.
In January, Emmerson announced he would investigate the use of unmanned drones in counterterrorism operations, given the number of innocent civilians killed. Emmerson’s nonbinding report has only moral authority, but it will add pressure on the Obama administration not to allow what he called a “blanket of official impunity” to descend.
Fear – that “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified fear” FDR spoke of (and which even he could not resist, as he would later send 120,000 innocent Japanese Americans into internment camps), fomented every day by politicians and warmongers – has blinded the American people to accept the new normal as all around us, cherished human rights are sacrificed on the altar of national security. Benjamin Franklin’s dire warning cannot be repeated often enough. “Any Society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”
Stephen Rohde, a constitutional lawyer and Chair of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, is author of American Words of Freedom and Freedom of Assembly.
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Say “thanks” you for your mothers and fathers which they gave you the world
The Militarization of Policing in America
http://www.aclu.org/militarization
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/06/aclu-police-militarization-swat_n_2813334.html -posted by Dredd to another thread) )
Religion is like a penis.
It is fine that you have one and you should be proud.
But don’t go whipping it out in public and waving it around.
And please don’t try and shove it down my throat.
For several decades, at least since Nixon, the right has persuaded middle- and lower-income Americans to vote against their own economic self-interest, by diverting their attention to “values” issues such as affirmative action, the sanctity of the flag, illegal aliens or abortion. Upending the old rule that people vote with their wallets, Republicans understood that cultural anxieties and emotional wedge issues – artfully stoked –
could shift voters’ allegiances, even if that came at those voters own expense.
So in 2004, it was clearly in the interest of a coal miner in West Virginia or a manual laborer in Ohio to vote Democratic. John Kerry’s plans on pensions, safety at work, healthcare and tax would have helped them. But those states backed George W Bush, partly through appeals to patriotism and, especially in Ohio, fear of gay marriage.
It argues then, that the Tea Party right has sought to channel Americans’ fury at the post-2008 economic crisis not at its rightful target – Wall Street bankster greed – but at Washington, casting “big government” as the villain. If only Washington were less intrusive and cut red tape, if only it spent less, then all would be well. So it is that the man in the unemployment line ends up demanding action that helps not himself, but the CEO on his yacht.
So here we have Romney, the master of the financial universe, cult member according to the Southern Baptist Convention and the Catholic Church. He tells the little people he has their back. What a degenerate and perverse shame that he and the other choice will spend probably 2 billion dollars on a meaningless election as far as the minions are concerned.
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In the land of the no-longer-free, “the brave” are taking their own lives at an alarming rate. Shame on “US.”
22 veterans commit suicide each day: VA report
By Bill Briggs, NBC News contributor
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/01/16811249-22-veterans-commit-suicide-each-day-va-report?lite
Can anyone say “PROGRESSIVE”
We Are Bradley Manning
Posted on Mar 3, 2013
By Chris Hedges
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/we_are_bradley_manning_20130303/
Excerpts:
Manning’s leaks, the government insists, are tantamount to support for al-Qaida and international terrorism. The government will attempt to prove this point by bringing into court an anonymous witness who most likely took part in the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan. This witness will reportedly tell the court that copies of the leaked documents were found on bin Laden’s computer and assisted al-Qaida. This is an utterly spurious form of prosecution—as if any of us have control over the information we provide to the public and how it is used. Manning, for substantial amounts of money, could have sold the documents to governments or groups that are defined as the enemy. Instead he approached The Washington Post and The New York Times. When these newspapers rejected him, he sent the material anonymously to WikiLeaks.
…
When he was secretary of defense, Robert Gates said a Defense Department review determined that the publication of the Iraq War Logs and the Afghan War Diary had “not revealed any sensitive intelligence sources and methods.” In the trial, however, the government must prove only that the “disclosure could be potentially damaging to the United States” and need only provide “independent proof of at least potential harm to the national security” beyond mere security classification, writes law professor Geoffrey Stone.
The government reviews determined that the release of Department of State “diplomatic cables caused only limited damage to U.S. interests abroad despite the Obama administration’s public statements to the contrary,” according to Reuters. “We were told the impact [of WikiLeaks revelations] was embarrassing but not damaging,” a congressional official, briefed by the State Department, told Reuters. The “Obama administration felt compelled to say publicly that the revelations had seriously damaged American interests in order to bolster legal efforts to shut down the WikiLeaks website and bring charges against the leakers,” the official told the news outlet. Government prosecutors, strengthening their case further, have succeeded in blocking Manning’s lawyers from presenting evidence about the lack of real damage caused to U.S. interests by the leaks.
Manning has done what anyone with a conscience should have done. In the courtroom he exhibited—especially given the prolonged abuse he suffered during his thousand days inside the military prison system—poise, intelligence and dignity. He appealed to the best within us. And this is why the government fears him. America still produces heroes, some in uniform. But now we lock them up.
CISPA 2.0: Say Goodbye to Our Constitutional Rights
Sunday, 03 March 2013 09:51 By Chris Paulus,
http://truth-out.org/news/item/14895-cispa-20-say-goodbye-to-our-constitutional-rights
Excerpt:
The unrelenting attack on our civil liberties and our privacy continues. Last year we managed to survive an onslaught of legislation that would have destroyed entrepreneurship and free enterprise on the Internet, and our ability to define how we share music, art and information in general.
First there was the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, or SOPA and PIPA, respectively: two pieces of legislation geared at protecting the copyrights of monopolistic media companies and taking drastic measures to enforce them, like shutting down websites that allow the sharing of this copyrighted material for free. The New Zealand police raid of the house of Kim Dotcom, founder of Megaupload, and the site’s subsequent shutdown by the FBI provided a glimpse of what lies ahead if laws like these are passed.
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, took measures a step further by allowing governments to monitor the Internet to enforce copyright law and supposed intellectual property rights. Tens of thousands of Europeans mobilized in response, telling businesses and politicians that companies could not intrude on fundamental human rights, or morph and twist the law to enforce their hand-picked business model.
But despite resounding political opposition in the U.S. and worldwide to Internet censorship and infringements on freedom of speech and privacy, our callous and out-of-touch politicians managed to craft an even scarier piece of legislation: CISPA.
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act passed in April of 2012 in the House by a vote of 248 to 168, but stalled in the Senate because of a disagreement over privacy concerns. At the time, the White House threatened to veto the law because Obama’s advisers raised additional privacy concerns, chief among them Howard Schmidt, who resigned suddenly last May after the bill’s introduction. Schmidt also helped author statements against SOPA and PIPA.
But lo and behold, the two principal authors of the CISPA bill, Sen. Dutch Ruppersberger (R-Maryland), re-introduced the same exact bill several weeks ago on February 12 – presumably in response to recent so-called cyber-attacks from China and security breaches by the hacktivist group Anonymous, whose non-violent actions are a direct response to government’s malfeasance and abuse of online authority.
The provisions stipulated in the CISPA legislation are intimidating and far-reaching. Although CISPA does not require private companies to share information with the government, it opens the floodgates for an unprecedented and endless funneling of private communication information to federal military intelligence agencies such as the NSA and the FBI. The only justification for a company to share information with the government is broadly and vaguely defined by a single term: “cybersecurity.”
Additionally, CISPA would override current privacy law such as the Wiretap Act and the Stored Communications Act; in fact, it grants companies complete immunity from judicial oversight and prosecution for the violation of privacy. Under CISPA, information provided to the government would be exempt from FOIA requests.
Furthermore, CISPA does not require companies to notify the individuals from whom they’re collecting data or information – which makes its section about the ability to form a lawsuit against the government little more than a formality.
“If [this bill is] passed,” claims Namecheap, a domain service opposing CISPA, “the U.S. government gains the power to ask your ISP about any/all of your online activities and personal information. Advocated under the premise of anti-terrorism legislation, this legislation is so broad that it threatens to endanger the privacy of every individual and ordinary and law abiding citizens.
“This act makes your private online activity now public, giving ISPs the right to share your personal information completely without your knowledge, due process, or authorization.”
(article continues)
The drafting and introduction of SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and CISPA are all examples of our elected leaders’ growing disregard for citizens’ fundamental privacy rights, Constitutional rights and free speech rights as manifested in the digital world. Essentially, this legislation provides the formality our government needs to legitimize and legalize what it is either currently doing or what it wants to do. Just look at the NSA, which is already performing extensive and unprecedented data-mining on U.S. citizens in flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment – but using only vague legislation to justify it.
Passing CISPA will be a significant step in America’s already far-progressed trudge towards a police state — and will, more specifically, encourage already-compliant businesses to provide our personal information to our government as if those two enshrined words did not exist: Constitutional rights.
More people get killed in abortion clinics daily than died in 9-11. America has got to get it’s act together. Quit spending billions on the War on Terror when what goes on in abortion clinics es even more vile and evil.
http://www.pogo.org/blog/2013/02/new-movie-investigates-the-war-on-whistleblowers.html
February 25, 2013
“Brave New Films has released a trailer for their latest movie “War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security State.” The movie interviews numerous journalists and public advocates, including the Project On Government Oversight’s executive director Danielle Brian, about the importance of whistleblowers and the dangers they face when coming forward with the truth.
The movie does not have an official release date yet, but you can sign up to watch it online or host a house screening at the official website. POGO will also be hosting a screening in Washington, D.C. when the film is released. Stay tuned for additional information.”
By: Andre Francisco
Online Producer, POGO
andre francisco Andre Francisco is the Online Producer for the Project On Government Oversight.
Okay, Mostly Anonymous, you are definitely excused if you fit into any such category & its your choice anyway. As far as the post is concerned, I have sometimes come across blogs that would make it hard to use your name or handle but one got on with Anon.much more easily. There is a difference in posting a name or handle or not. I think its fairly obvious that a source trusted many times can be more easily trusted again without much testing. Actually, some people call me ‘paranoid’ for my ‘radical ideas’, but we live in radical times when one’s president can strip away everyone’s rights to before the Magna Carta with one evil edict (the NDA Act 01.01.2012). The media is being radical by brushing heinous things like this under the rug while making a big deal about small potatoes. For over a decade I have had California plates NO NWO (No New World Order). If thats the reason for more IRS audits recently, thats hard to say. But I’ll go on speaking up while I still can.
travelinglimey: What in the world is your crazy malfunction? What difference does it make where information (or opinion) comes from? The source is immaterial, the ideas are in the post.
Posting anonymously gives people GREATER freedom to say things they want said without having to worry about building a ‘track record’ or being attacked or reviled or despised because of what they PREVIOUSLY said.
In particular, unless you have been asleep for the last twenty years, you should by now understand that our corporations and our government have no compunctions about retaliation against those that exercise their “free speech” rights; firing teachers, professors and other career workers, ruining their livelihood over things they have said or posted online. I put that in quotes because speech is no longer free, you can be denied promotions, demoted, fired, or even arrested and jailed as a “terrorist sympathizer” for doing nothing but saying what you believe. Your life can be left in ruins.
When the price of ‘responsibility’ is your job, life, or everything you own, it isn’t worth posting anything of substance at all. I hope J.T. does precisely nothing about anonymity; in fact I hope that, as a lawyer civil libertarian, he would refuse to divulge the required “email address” to anybody short of a court order.
Anonymity is power. We are probably not anonymous posters to our corrupt government, they have thoroughly stripped us of that right of privacy, but at least we can be anonymous to our employers, lenders, and the Internet crazies.