Read this and cry for our Country
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fossten
Dedicated LVC Member
Ah, a troofer. Have you taken the time to properly look at 'both sides?'
ripped camel
Dedicated LVC Member
No :q:q:q:q the patriot act isn't the same as the reichstag fire. The fact that a freedom robbing act that was initiated BECAUSE OF A"terrorist attack" happened in both cases is what the similarity is. That wasn't a baseless assertion, I just didn't know I needed to hold peoples hand into every explanation. I assumed those that would try and debate would have take the time to research something before they tried to rebut the "assertion".
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ripped camel
Dedicated LVC Member
Ah, a troofer. Have you taken the time to properly look at 'both sides?'
Being that before 9/11 I was torn between Bush and Gore because I was uneducated about politics and wasn't informed, yes I have taken the time to look at "both sides". It took a lot of research to make me open my eyes, and it was a very disconserting road to travel to swallow the pill that basically everything I've learned in school and through the media was a giant lump of dung. I'm not a liberal, nor a conservative, nor an independent. I vote for the best candidate plain and simple.
I'll return your $100 because you're going to be inserting foot into mouth. You'll need it for some good mouthwash to get the taste out.
1. Bill of Rights Defense Committee
241 King Street, Suite 216, Northampton, MA 01060
E-mail: info@bordc.org; Web site: www.bordc.org
A Guide to Provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act and Federal Executive Orders that threaten civil liberties
by Nancy Talanian
On October 26, 2001, President Bush signed into law the USA PATRIOT Act
(acronym for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate
Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism"). Passed hurriedly (many
Congressmen stated later they had not even had time to read the law) it creates
a new crime, "domestic terrorism," so broadly defined that it could
conceivably apply to acts of civil disobedience.
The USA PATRIOT Act gives the FBI and the CIA greater rights to wiretap
phones, monitor e-mail, survey medical, financial and student records, and
break into homes and offices without prior notification. It creates a new crime
of domestic terrorism that is so broadly defined that it may be applied to
citizens acting legally to express their dissent. Under this Act and other
legislation, noncitizens are being deported or detained indefinitely without
judicial appeal.
The dangers of the USA PATRIOT Act are augmented by a Bureau of Prisons
order allowing federal agents to abridge the attorney-client privilege by
eavesdropping on conversations between lawyers and their clients held in
federal custody. The Justice Department has also dismantled regulations
against COINTELPRO operations that were enacted following abuses of the
civil rights and peace movements of the 50's, 60's and 70's. The
Administration has ordered secret military tribunals for suspected terrorists.
In addition to being unfair and unnecessary, the U.S. threat of using military
tribunals increases the likelihood that U.S. citizens will be treated accordingly
overseas, and decreases the likelihood that other governments will be willing
to extradite suspected terrorists or other parties wanted by the U.S.
The web sites of the following organizations contain excellent analyses of the
provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act and various Federal Executive Orders
passed since September 11, 2001, that threaten civil liberties:
· American Civil Liberties Union
· Electronic Frontier Foundation
· National Lawyers Guild
· People for the American Way
For ease of reference, this article summarizes how the USA PATRIOT Act
and certain Federal Executive Orders threaten and diminish the civil liberties
of U.S. citizens and noncitizens guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. The Bill of
Rights Defense Committee advocates the repeal of several sections of the Act
and Orders. For example, Congress showed its concern about certain sections
of the Act relating to enhanced surveillance by including in the Act Section
224, a "sunset" provision. We are also concerned about the powers for
enhanced surveillance, and so we call upon Congress to accelerate the sunset
provision so that the sections expire immediately rather than on December 31,
2005.
We are concerned not only that the government is using its new powers but is
refusing to provide unclassified information on how it is using them under the
Freedom of Information Act, such as who is being detained. The refusal
prevents anyone, including citizens, the media, federal judges and members of
Congress, from knowing whether the powers have been or are being abused.
We believe the enhanced secrecy imposed by the administration makes it all
the more imperative that Congress repeal unwarranted and unnecessary
powers that provide little or no security but that clearly threaten our civil
liberties.
What follows is a brief summary of some of the provisions of the USA
PATRIOT Act (USAPA) and Federal Executive orders that threaten our rights
as guaranteed by
2. Mom says Patriot Act stripped son of due process
Ashton Lundeby
Posted: Apr. 29, 2009
Oxford, N.C. — Sixteen-year-old Ashton Lundeby's bedroom in his mother's Granville County home is nothing, if not patriotic. Images of American flags are everywhere – on the bed, on the floor, on the wall.
But according to the United States government, the tenth-grade home-schooler is being held on a criminal complaint that he made a bomb threat from his home on the night of Feb. 15.
The family was at a church function that night, his mother, Annette Lundeby, said.
"Undoubtedly, they were given false information, or they would not have had 12 agents in my house with a widow and two children and three cats," Lundeby said.
Around 10 p.m. on March 5, Lundeby said, armed FBI agents along with three local law enforcement officers stormed her home looking for her son. They handcuffed him and presented her with a search warrant.
"I was terrified," Lundeby's mother said. "There were guns, and I don't allow guns around my children. I don't believe in guns."
Lundeby told the officers that someone had hacked into her son's IP address and was using it to make crank calls connected through the Internet, making it look like the calls had originated from her home when they did not.
Her argument was ignored, she said. Agents seized a computer, a cell phone, gaming console, routers, bank statements and school records, according to federal search warrants.
"There were no bomb-making materials, not even a blasting cap, not even a wire," Lundeby said.
Ashton now sits in a juvenile facility in South Bend, Ind. His mother has had little access to him since his arrest. She has gone to her state representatives as well as attorneys, seeking assistance, but, she said, there is nothing she can do.
Lundeby said the USA Patriot Act stripped her son of his due process rights.
"We have no rights under the Patriot Act to even defend them, because the Patriot Act basically supersedes the Constitution," she said. "It wasn't intended to drag your barely 16-year-old, 120-pound son out in the middle of the night on a charge that we can't even defend."
Passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S., the Patriot Act allows federal agents to investigate suspected cases of terrorism swiftly to better protect the country. In part, it gives the federal government more latitude to search telephone records, e-mails and other records.
"They're saying that 'We feel this individual is a terrorist or an enemy combatant against the United States, and we're going to suspend all of those due process rights because this person is an enemy of the United States," said Dan Boyce, a defense attorney and former U.S. attorney not connected to the Lundeby case.
Critics of the statute say it threatens the most basic of liberties.
"There's nothing a matter of public record," Boyce said "All those normal rights are just suspended in the air."
In a bi-partisan effort, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., and Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., last month introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives a bill that would narrow subpoena power in a provision of the Patriot Act, called the National Security Letters, to curb what some consider to be abuse of power by federal law enforcement officers.
Boyce said the Patriot Act was written with good intentions, but he said he believes it has gone too far in some cases. Lundeby's might be one of them, he said.
"It very well could be a case of overreaction, where an agent leaped to certain conclusions or has made certain assumptions about this individual and about how serious the threat really is," Boyce said.
Because a federal judge issued a gag order in the case, the U.S. attorney in Indiana cannot comment on the case, nor can the FBI. The North Carolina Highway Patrol did confirm that officers assisted with the FBI operation at the Lundeby home on March 5.
"Never in my worst nightmare did I ever think that it would be my own government that I would have to protect my children from," Lundeby said. "This is the United States, and I feel like I live in a third world country now."
Lundeby said she does not think this type of case is what the Patriot Act was intended for. Boyce agrees.
"It was to protect the public, but what we need to do is to make sure there are checks and balances to make sure those new laws are not abused," he said.
Btw, there is a program on the internet where you can put anyones phone number in you want. Telemarketers use it, and I've tried it before to call friends and input numbers like "666" as the calling number and use a dark voice and say it was the devil calling them and wanted to eat their brain. Later when I revealed to them it was me, they told me the number came up as 666 as I mentioned. So that is accurate and extremely possible
3. The Patriot Act: Targeting American Citizens
The party line often heard from Neo-Cons in their attempts to defend the Patriot Act either circulate around the contention that the use of the Patriot Act has never been abused or that it isn't being used against American citizens.
Here is an archive of articles that disproves both of these fallacies.
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Homeland Security Agents Visit Toy Store
So far as she knows, Pufferbelly Toys owner Stephanie Cox hasn't been passing any state secrets to sinister foreign governments, or violating obscure clauses in the Patriot Act.
So she was taken aback by a mysterious phone call from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to her small store in this quiet Columbia River town just north of Portland.
"I was shaking in my shoes," Cox said of the September phone call. "My first thought was the government can shut your business down on a whim, in my opinion. If I'm closed even for a day that would cause undue stress."
When the two agents arrived at the store, the lead agent asked Cox whether she carried a toy called the Magic Cube, which he said was an illegal copy of the Rubik's Cube, one of the most popular toys of all time.
He told her to remove the Magic Cube from her shelves, and he watched to make sure she complied.
After the agents left, Cox called the manufacturer of the Magic Cube, the Toysmith Group, which is based in Auburn, Wash. A representative told her that Rubik's Cube patent had expired, and the Magic Cube did not infringe on the rival toy's trademark.
Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said agents went to Pufferbelly based on a trademark infringement complaint filed in the agency's intellectual property rights center in Washington, D.C.
"One of the things that our agency's responsible for doing is protecting the integrity of the economy and our nation's financial systems and obviously trademark infringement does have significant economic implications," she said.
Six weeks after her brush with Homeland Security, Cox told The Oregonian she is still bewildered by the experience.
"Aren't there any terrorists out there?" she said.
In Terror War, 2nd Track for Suspects
The Bush administration is developing a parallel legal system in which terrorism suspects -- U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike -- may be investigated, jailed, interrogated, tried and punished without legal protections guaranteed by the ordinary system, lawyers inside and outside the government say.
The elements of this new system are already familiar from President Bush's orders and his aides' policy statements and legal briefs: indefinite military detention for those designated "enemy combatants," liberal use of "material witness" warrants, counterintelligence-style wiretaps and searches led by law enforcement officials and, for noncitizens, trial by military commissions or deportation after strictly closed hearings.
Only now, however, is it becoming clear how these elements could ultimately interact.
For example, under authority it already has or is asserting in court cases, the administration, with approval of the special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, could order a clandestine search of a U.S. citizen's home and, based on the information gathered, secretly declare the citizen an enemy combatant, to be held indefinitely at a U.S. military base. Courts would have very limited authority to second-guess the detention, to the extent that they were aware of it.
Administration officials, noting that they have chosen to prosecute suspected Taliban member John Walker Lindh, "shoe bomber" Richard Reid and alleged Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui in ordinary federal courts, say the parallel system is meant to be used selectively, as a complement to conventional processes, not as a substitute. But, they say, the parallel system is necessary because terrorism is a form of war as well as a form of crime, and it must not only be punished after incidents occur, but also prevented and disrupted through the gathering of timely intelligence.
"I wouldn't call it an alternative system," said an administration official who has helped devise the legal response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "But it is different than the criminal procedure system we all know and love. It's a separate track for people we catch in the war."
At least one American has been shifted from the ordinary legal system into the parallel one: alleged al Qaeda "dirty bomb" plotter Jose Padilla, who is being held at a Navy brig, without the right to communicate with a lawyer or anyone else. U.S. officials have told the courts that they can detain and interrogate him until the executive branch declares an end to the war against terrorism.
The final outlines of this parallel system will be known only after the courts, including probably the Supreme Court, have settled a variety of issues being litigated. But the prospect of such a system has triggered a fierce debate.
Civil libertarians accuse the Bush administration of an executive-branch power grab that will erode the rights and freedoms that terrorists are trying to destroy -- and that were enhanced only recently in response to abuses during the civil rights era, Vietnam and Watergate.
"They are trying to embed in law a vast expansion of executive authority with no judicial oversight in the name of national security," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, a Washington-based nonprofit group that has challenged the administration approach in court. "This is more tied to statutory legal authority than J. Edgar Hoover's political spying, but that may make it more dangerous. You could have the law serving as a vehicle for all kinds of abuses."
Administration officials say that they are acting under ample legal authority derived from statutes, court decisions and wartime powers that the president possesses as commander in chief under the Constitution.
"When you have a long period of time when you're not engaged in a war, people tend to forget, or put in backs of their minds, the necessity for certain types of government action used when we are in danger, when we are facing eyeball to eyeball a serious threat," Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, who leads the administration's anti-terrorism legal team in the federal courts, said in an interview.
Broadly speaking, the debate between the administration and its critics is not so much about the methods the government seeks to employ as it is about who should act as a check against potential abuses.
Executive Decisions
Civil libertarians insist that the courts should searchingly review Bush's actions, so that he is always held accountable to an independent branch of government. Administration officials, however, imply that the main check on the president's performance in wartime is political -- that if the public perceives his approach to terrorism is excessive or ineffective, it will vote him out of office.
"At the end of the day in our constitutional system, someone will have to decide whether that [decision to designate someone an enemy combatant] is a right or just decision," Olson said. "Who will finally decide that? Will it be a judge, or will it be the president of the United States, elected by the people, specifically to perform that function, with the capacity to have the information at his disposal with the assistance of those who work for him?"
Probably the most hotly disputed element of the administration's approach is its contention that the president alone can designate individuals, including U.S. citizens, as enemy combatants, who can be detained with no access to lawyers or family members unless and until the president determines, in effect, that hostilities between the United States and that individual have ended.
Padilla was held as a material witness for a month after his May 8 arrest in Chicago before he was designated an enemy combatant. He is one of two U.S. citizens being held as enemy combatants at the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. The other is Yaser Esam Hamdi, a Saudi Taliban fighter who was captured by American troops in Afghanistan and sent to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, until it was discovered that he was born in Louisiana.
Attorneys are challenging their detentions in federal court. While civil libertarians concede that the executive branch has well-established authority to name and confine members of enemy forces during wartime, they maintain that it is unconstitutional to subject U.S. citizens to indefinite confinement on little more than the president's declaration, especially given the inherently open-ended nature of an unconventional war against terrorism.
"The notion that the executive branch can decide by itself that an American citizen can be put in a military camp, incommunicado, is frightening," said Morton H. Halperin, director of the Washington office of the Open Society Institute. "They're entitled to hold him on the grounds that he is in fact at war with the U.S., but there has to be an opportunity for him to contest those facts."
However, the Bush administration, citing two World War II-era cases -- the Supreme Court's ruling upholding a military commission trial for a captured American-citizen Nazi saboteur, and a later federal appeals court decision upholding the imprisonment of an Italian American caught as a member of Italian forces in Europe -- says there is ample precedent for what it is doing.
Courts traditionally understand that they must defer to the executive's greater expertise and capability when it comes to looking at such facts and making such judgments in time of war, Bush officials said. At most, courts have only the power to review legal claims brought on behalf of detainees, such as whether there is indeed a state of conflict between the United States and the detainee.
In a recent legal brief, Olson argued that the detention of people such as Hamdi or Padilla as enemy combatants is "critical to gathering intelligence in connection with the overall war effort."
Nor is there any requirement that the executive branch spell out its criteria for determining who qualifies as an enemy combatant, Olson argues.
"There won't be 10 rules that trigger this or 10 rules that end this," Olson said in the interview. "There will be judgments and instincts and evaluations and implementations that have to be made by the executive that are probably going to be different from day to day, depending on the circumstances."
The federal courts have yet to deliver a definitive judgment on the question. A federal district judge in Virginia, Robert G. Doumar, was sharply critical of the administration, insisting that Hamdi be permitted to consult an attorney. But he was partially overruled by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, based in Richmond.
The 4th Circuit, however, said the administration's assertion that courts should have absolutely no role in examining the facts leading to an enemy combatant designation was "sweeping." A decision from that court is pending as to how much of a role a court could claim, if any. The matter could well have to be settled in the Supreme Court.
Secret Surveillance
The administration scored a victory recently when the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review ruled 3 to 0 that the USA Patriot Act, passed by Congress shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, gives the Justice Department authority to break down what had come to be known as "the wall" separating criminal investigations from investigations of foreign agents.
The ruling endorsed the administration's view that law enforcement goals should be allowed to drive Justice Department requests for special eavesdropping and search warrants that had been thought to be reserved for counterintelligence operations. But the court went further, agreeing with the administration that "the wall" itself had no real basis in pre-Patriot Act law. Instead, the court ruled, "the wall" was a product of internal Justice Department guidelines that were, in turn, based partly on erroneous interpretations of the law by some courts.
There is no clear line between intelligence and crime in any case, the court said, because any investigation of a spy ring could ultimately lead to charging U.S. citizens with crimes such as espionage.
The decision overruled an earlier one by the lower-level Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, in which seven judges sharply criticized past Justice Department misstatements in applications for permission to do secret surveillance.
Administration officials say that the ruling permits what is only sensible -- greater sharing of information between federal prosecutors and federal counterintelligence officials.
Thanks to enforcement of "the wall" by FBI lawyers, they note, pre-Sept. 11 permission to search Moussaoui's computer was not sought, a crucial missed opportunity to prevent the attacks.
In practical terms, the ruling means that the attorney general would still have to convince the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that he has probable cause to believe that a given subject of a wiretap or search is an agent of a foreign terrorist group, a standard that is not dissimilar to the one required for warrants in ordinary criminal cases.
Yet civil libertarians say that targets of such investigations who end up being ordered out of the country or prosecuted would lose a crucial right that they would have in the ordinary criminal justice system -- the right to examine the government's evidence justifying the initial warrant.
"So the government starts off using secret surveillance information not to gather information upon which to make policy, but to imprison or deport an individual, and then it never gives the individual a fair chance to see if the surveillance was lawful," Martin said.
Court: U.S. Can Hold Citizens as Enemy Combatants
A federal appeals court today ruled that the government has properly detained an American-born man captured with Taliban forces in Afghanistan without an attorney and has legally declared him an enemy combatant.
Patriot Act Being Used to Harrass BlackBoxVoting.org website
It appears that they may be using the Patriot Act to circumvent some of the civil rights protections laid down in the 60s. You see, it is illegal for a government agency to go in and demand the list of all the members of a group. And you can't investigate leaks to journalists by going in and grabbing the reporter's computer.
After the Diebold memos were leaked, and my web site was shut down, around the time of the California recall election, I started getting solicited to accept VoteHere software. I didn't bite, because it was obvious that this was an entrapment attempt.
Okay, a word about VoteHere: This is the company that has no visible means of support. It doesn't seem to sell anything. Its board is heavily infested with defense industry types -- a former CIA director (Robert Gates, now heads George Bush School of Government); it had Admiral Bill Owens, also Vice-Chairman of SAIC and a member of the Defense Policy Board with Perle and Wolfowitz, a very close friend of Cheney; currently headed by former Washington Secretary of State Ralph Munro.
VoteHere announced that it would be releasing its software for review, back in July 2003. It was planning to release it in September, and was supposed to do so to Dr. David Dill's web site. It never released the code, just a bunch of literature about its product. (It did release some, but not all, of its code this month, making a big splash about it). About a week into October, I got solicited with an email "click this link" for VoteHere software.
Now who would fall for that? Why would anyone in their right mind grab the stuff in some clandestine manner when it was being released into the open momentarily? And this is a company that never sells anything. Who gives a :q:q:q:q anyway, what its software does? It now is trying to peddle yet another alternative to a voter verified paper ballot, an idiotic solution where we turn over auditing of the vote to a handful of cryptographers who work for a private company with defense industry ties. No one I know thinks that is even a viable concept, so why would we care to examine the software these cryptographers make up?
I was in the ending stages of writing my book, putting new chapters online every few days, at that time. Like I'm going to hack into VoteHere (those who know me realize that I couldn't hack my way out of a paper bag) -- this was just dumb.
I turned down the software. In early January this year, VoteHere does a press release that it was "hacked" in October and tries to blame it on the activism community. I published an article expressing doubt that we'd gotten the whole story.
Now, I have been interviewed by the Secret Service on this VoteHere "hack" story about five times. They never spend much time on the hack. Most of the time is spent on the Diebold memos, which they claim they are not investigating.
Here's the deal: The leaking of memos to journalists is not something the government can come in and demand to investigate very easily.
Under the Patriot Act, "hacking" crimes were turned over to a new division, called the CyberCrimes division, and placed under the auspices of the Secret Service. And let me tell you what they want from me now: They want the logs of my web site with all the forum messages, and the IP addresses. That's right. All of them. A giant fishing expedition for every communication of everyone interested in the voting issue. This has nothing to do with a VoteHere "hack" investigation, and I have refused to turn it over.
So, yesterday, they call me up and tell me they are going to subpeona me and put me in front of a grand jury. Well, let 'em. They still aren't getting the list of members of BlackBoxVoting.org unless they seize my computer -- which my attorney tells me might be what they have in mind.
Also, Agent Mike told me he just "happened" to be on the plane with me a couple weeks ago. What's that supposed to do? Scare me? "You were going to Oakland," he said. Yeah, and Diebold lawyer's memos appeared in the Oakland Tribune, but guess what, Mike: That was the first hop of three on my way to Dallas. I left that morning for a speech at the Dallas Democratic Forum that evening. Never even got off the plane. Better luck next time.
And if they were really investigating what they said -- a VoteHere "hack" can someone explain why they want the logs from the web site BlackBoxVoting.org -- it was SHUT DOWN due to Diebold cease & desists during the period of the supposed "hack."
And (you know who you are) -- consider this a heads up: If you start bumbling around in my house with U.S. marshalls, the very first thing that will happen is mainstream news coverage that you are misusing the Patriot Act to get at membership lists and private correspondence for a fishing expedition on stuff that isn't even the subject of a legitimate investigation.
Yeah, I'm not a happy camper. Taking the pulse of our democracy nowadays, it doesn't feel very healthy, does it?
Terrorism panic goes too far at Area 51
Chuck Clark wasn't even home when law enforcement personnel assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force roared up to his rented trailer in tiny Rachel, Nev., the other day. He didn't know about the still-sealed search warrant until he returned from a road trip and found that his files, photos and computer had been seized.
Secret Service Questions Students
Some teachers in Oakland are rallying behind two students who were interrogated by the Secret Service. That followed remarks the teenagers made about the President during a class discussion. The incident has many people angry. It's good to see the real terrorists are being hunted down.
For years the classroom has been the setting for the free expression of ideas, but two weeks ago certain ideas led to two students being taken out of class and grilled by the United States Secret Service.
It happened at Oakland High. The discussion was about the war in Iraq. That's when two students made comments about the President of the United States. While the exact wording is up for debate, the teacher didn't consider it mere criticism, but a direct threat and she called the Secret Service.
Teacher Cassie Lopez says, "They were so shaken up and afraid."
Now, other teachers are coming to the aid of the two students and crying foul.
"I would start with the teacher, she made a poor judgement," Lopez says.
Teacher Larry Felson says, "What we're concerned about is academic freedom and that students have the right to free expression in the classroom."
Even worse, they say, is the fact that the students were grilled by federal agents without legal counsel or their parents present, just the principal.
"When one of the students asked, 'do we have to talk now? Can we be silent? Can we get legal council?' they were told, 'we own you, you don't have any legal rights,'" Felson says.
"We don't want federal agents or police coming in our schools and interrogating our children at the whim of someone who has a hunch something might be wrong," Lopez says.
The union representing Oakland teachers requires that students be afforded legal counsel and parental guidance before they're interrogated by authorities. It's too late for the two involved in this incident, and teachers say it's something they'll carry with them for years.
"I tell you the looks on those childrens faces. I don't know if they'll say anything about anything ever again. Is that what we want? I don't think we want that," says Lopez.
(Copyright 2003, KRON 4. All rights reserved.)
Boy investigated by FBI for researching paper on Chesapeake Bay Bridge
A 12-year-old kid at Boys' Latin researches a paper on the Bay Bridge, and suddenly the Joint Terrorist Task Force shows up in the headmaster's office.
Photographer Arrested "Under Patriot Act"
A Denver photographer was arrested while taking pictures in Denver, during Vice President Dick Cheney's visit to the city. Denver resident Mike Maginnis reports being physically assaulted by Denver police.
FBI says Patriot Act used in Vegas strip club corruption probe
The FBI used the USA Patriot Act to obtain financial information about key figures in a political corruption probe centered on striptease club owner Michael Galardi, an agent said.
Webmaster Sherman Austin, Jailed under PATRIOT Act
Political prisoner Sherman Austin, who made headlines last year after being targeted as one of the first casualties of the infamous USA PATRIOT Act, was released from the Federal Corrections Institute in Tucson and left Arizona July 12 to return to Los Angeles.
Patriot Act increasingly used against common criminals
In the two years since law enforcement agencies gained fresh powers to help them track down and punish terrorists, police and prosecutors have increasingly turned the force of the new laws not on al-Qaida cells but on people charged with common crimes.
Patriot Act available against many types of criminals
Virtually unmentioned, however, is the fact that the Patriot Act extended the government's powers well beyond the terrorism arena.
Patriot Act of 2001 casts wide net
Overall, the policy now allows evidence to be used for prosecuting common criminals even when obtained under extraordinary anti-terrorism powers and information-sharing between intelligence agencies and the FBI.
Patriot Act's reach has gone beyond terrorism
The Bush administration, which calls the USA Patriot Act perhaps its most essential tool in fighting terrorists, has begun using the law with increasing frequency in many criminal investigations that have little or no connection to terrorism.
Using The Patriot Act To Target Patriots
The Patriot Act has been used to obtain search warrants against doctors and scientists who had been warning about the threat of bioterrorism in the U.S.
Shopkeeper deported from South Carolina under PATRIOT Act killed in Pakistan
After marrying a naturalized U.S. citizen, having two U.S.-born children and running a Rock Hill convenience store for years, Khan was rounded up in post-Sept. 11, 2001, sweeps that targeted Muslim immigrants.
Art becomes the next suspect in America's 9/11 paranoia
On May 10 Steven Kurtz went to bed a married art professor. On May 11 he woke up a widower. By the afternoon he was under federal investigation for bioterrorism.
ARTISTS SUBPOENAED IN USA PATRIOT ACT CASE
Three Four artists have been served subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury that will consider bioterrorism charges against a university professor whose art involves the use of simple biology equipment.
Patriot Act used to prosecute U.S. civilian
The CIA contract employee accused of abusing a prisoner in Afghanistan is being prosecuted under the Patriot Act in what legal experts are calling a surprising and to some, troubling application of the new anti-terrorism law.
Patriot Act abuses plain
Where were you these past three years while, amid considerable publicity, our government was imprisoning people without making charges against them, holding them without trials, and not allowing them to talk to attorneys?
British Journalist Detained, Harrassed On Trip To LA
When writer Elena Lappin flew to LA, she dreamed of a sunkissed, laid-back city. But that was before airport officials decided to detain her as a threat to security.
ripped camel
Dedicated LVC Member
Btw, many of the headlines above were just a brief explanation of the story, I can post anyone of those full stories if questioned. I didn't want to make my post any longer than it already was.
Now's your turn to disprove my posts. Show me that those things I posted did not happen.
Now's your turn to disprove my posts. Show me that those things I posted did not happen.
StankinLincoln
Active LVC Member
more like hITLER because of the patriot act? c'mon the government has been monitoring communication long before the act went into effect. my step dad retired from the Air Force in telecommunications and my friends dad is still active duty Air Force in telecommunications. both didnt really agree alot with Bush but they defended him about the patriot act by saying he was honest with the people. he was the only one who came out and said yes we are monitoring suspicious activity over the phone and internet. no they are not interested in you selling dime bags.
Actually you are the one who is displaying a huge amount of ignorance here. The patriot act has been debated ad nausseum throughout this forum with much more credible and reasonable arguments from both sides then the mindless fear mongering you are doing here.
The patriot act was not initiated to do a terrorist act; it was initiated to prevent terrorist acts. So, it is not in any way similar to a terrorist act.
PetesSweets86
Dedicated LVC Member
I have yet to vote EVER, so guess I'm not considered the "american public"
ripped camel
Dedicated LVC Member
This is the usual response. You're response catered to about 1% of my rebuttal which means you did the usual bush supporter move of making a rebuttal without even reading my post.
Try reading my whole post and actually quoting stuff I said, not just one point out of many that you could find fault with!
Edit: I wanted to add that monitoring calls is only a very small part of it. Monitoring has been going on since way before bush. Clinton did it, and it went on well before him. If I didn't know that fact, I shouldn't EVER post in a political forum. So with that point cleared up, my gripe goes MUCH farther than phone taps. It's the depth of rights the government has and we as citizens don't. Its the ability to deem just about anyone a "terrorist" and hold them without their constitutional rights. It's the fact that they don't have to answer for what they are doing, and can use the same nazi regime tactics that were used. If you don't see those parallels, or the many others I didn't touch base on, you shouldn't be posting on this topic. My mention of Reichstag was to point people in the right direction to do some research. I'm not going to spoonfeed every single point.
And by nazi regime tactics I'm not talking about the torture. I figured I'd make sure I mention that because I can already feel bush supporters trying to bring up that point.
Same goes for you. I'd love for you to point out which parts of my posts are not credible. Where's my ignorance? Because I've done years of research and finally realized the truth that makes me ignorant? Because I'm not herded like the rest of the sheeple I'm ignorant? Because like the patriots that founded this country, I question my government and it's intentions.... so that makes me ignorant or less patriotic?
I think you need to try and shoot down each one of my points with something other than your baseless, unverifiable opinion. Give me some facts to back up your superior viewpoint!
I never said the patriot act was initiated to do a terrorist act! READ AND COMPREHEND BEFORE YOU RESPOND! DAMN!!!!
fossten
Dedicated LVC Member
Actually you did.
If you're going to object to people picking you apart, you'd have more credibility doing so if you didn't come off like an arrogant jerkoff.
And if you want people to read your posts here, you will avoid large walls of text.
ripped camel
Dedicated LVC Member
My mistake. I meant "Because of" not " to do a ". You've got me there and I'll admit I'm wrong on my mistake.
As for my wall of text, if you don't want to be inundated with facts, then don't try to insinuate my point or views are inferior to yours. Even with my wall of text you apparently have nothing else on me, so you simply found the one typing error I presented, and use that as your rebuttal! SAD!
How about discrediting things I've said? I've yet to see you pick into the points I've made. Or are you going to continue to try and act like captain vernacular?
MonsterMark
Dedicated LVC Member
You're pissing and moaning about the Patriot Act when this is the kind of crap you should be up and arms about and protesting with your fellow ACLU brethren.
By AMANDA RICKER Chronicle Staff Writer
If you’re planning to apply for a job with the city of Bozeman, prepare to clean up your Facebook page.
As part of routine background checks, the city asks job applicants to provide their usernames and passwords for their social-networking sites. And it has been doing it for years, city officials said.
“Please list any and all, current personal or business Web sites, Web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.,” states a city waiver form applicants are asked to sign. Three lines are provided for applicants to list log-in information for each site.
City officials maintain the policy is necessary to ensure employees’ integrity and protect the public’s trust, but the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana says they may be crossing the line.
[snip]
City Manager Chris Kukulski said the city checks the sites in order to ensure that employees who might be handling taxpayer money, working with children in recreation programs or entering residents’ homes as an emergency services worker are reputable and honest.
“It’s just one of the tools, like all the other tools, that we’ve used to do a thorough background check,” Kukulski said.
The city also checks credit reports, criminal history, references and past employment, among other things.
“We have to do some due diligence,” Kukulski said.
[snip]
Maybe you should lose the arrogance, shut up, stop acting like a petulant 5-year old and actually read a little on this forum before you start preaching to us about how ignorant we are.
Most of your points have been rebutted already on this forum. Your trying to force us to rehash old ground simply because of your arrogance and intellectual laziness is exceedingly rude. Jerk.
ripped camel
Dedicated LVC Member
I agree with you on this! That's why I'm attaining a corporate law degree (to fight corporations and corruption, not work for them). Unlike most that whine, and moan and do nothing, I'm actually taking TRUE steps to do something. How much I'll accomplish I don't know, but at least I can say I tried! That type of tactic is "Big Brother" type crap that is allowing for a surveillance society. People don't get that every little freedom they willingly give up, is giving the government the motivation to push for even more.
They use fear mongering to scare people into obedience! Governments have always done that. Look throughout history and you'll see that's not a new tactic. People think I fear monger, but they don't realize the trap they fall into is the same trap the bulk of the population has always fell into for centuries under their governments.
Maybe you should lose the arrogance, shut up, stop acting like a petulant 5-year old and actually read a little on this forum before you start preaching to us about how ignorant we are.
Most of your points have been rebutted already on this forum. Your trying to force us to rehash old ground simply because of your arrogance and intellectual laziness is exceedingly rude. Jerk.
Wow aren't you cool? You can jump in here and bash me with nothing to add to the thread but your sad attempts at insulting me. Petulant 5 year old? Wow you really are lame. The usual internet tough guy. Bad ass with his keyboard that thinks he's cool. At least I can say I'm actively taking steps to try and change things. What are you doing with your life? Bashing people on the internet to make up for your short-comings in the real world? Poser!
I highly doubt my posts were already covered in this forum as many of those points are recent situations that have taken place. Something tells me again like most that try and debate with me, you simply read two lines, realized you don't have the mental capacity to comprehend what I posted, then decided to insult me because you were angry at your lack of comprehension skills. Oh well, better luck next time.
Please continue to eat your processed foods, vaccinate yourself, and fall in line with the rest of the sheeple! You're just making it that much easier to put a rift between the upper and lower class!
ripped camel
Dedicated LVC Member
No, what did he say? I don't listen to his show because....well I don't know where I can get it. I like him, he's very patriotic and not afraid to voice his opinions.
fossten
Dedicated LVC Member
Actually, it wasn't a typo error that I was pointing out. It was the complete meaning of what you said. The fact that you made a typo isn't my fault. Words mean things. You're in law school; you should know that.
Be careful not to overuse caps and exclamation points in your legal writing class. It won't go over well.
As to debunking your assertions about 9/11, I haven't seen that you've made any, other than posting a c/p wall of text. Do you think it's productive to post warring walls of text? Because I can post the entire Popular Mechanics article for you to peruse, despite the fact that it's already been linked before. Since it's longer than yours, do I win the argument?