Bill would allow dissenters to be detained as “enemy belligerents”

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, March 8, 2010

Since the establishment media is convinced that tea party members, 9/11 truthers, libertarians, Ron Paul supporters, and basically anyone with a dissenting political opinion is a likely domestic terrorist, they should be celebrating the fact that a new bill would allow the government to detain such people as “enemy belligerents” indefinitely and without trial based on their “suspected activity”.

The “Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010,” introduced by Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman on Thursday with little fanfare, “sets out a comprehensive policy for the detention, interrogation and trial of suspected enemy belligerents who are believed to have engaged in hostilities against the United States by requiring these individuals to be held in military custody, interrogated for their intelligence value and not provided with a Miranda warning,” writes the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder.

The full bill can be read here (PDF).

The bill does not distinguish between U.S. citizens and non-citizens, and states that “suspected belligerents” who are “considered a “high-value detainee” shall not be provided with a Miranda warning.”

A person is considered a “high value detainee” if they fulfil one of the following criteria.

(1) poses a threat of an attack on civilians or civilian facilities within the U.S. or U.S. facilities abroad; (2) poses a threat to U.S. military personnel or U.S. military facilities; (3) potential intelligence value; (4) is a member of al Qaeda or a terrorist group affiliated with al Qaeda or (5) such other matters as the President considers appropriate.

Now that the Southern Poverty Law Center and the federal government, via the MIAC report and innumerable other leaked documents, now consider virtually anyone with a dissenting opinion against the state as “posing a threat,” millions of peaceful American citizens could be swept up by this frightening dragnet of tyranny.

However, according to the bill, an individual doesn’t even have to pose a threat to be snatched, detained and interrogated – they can merely be deemed to be of “potential intelligence value” or come under the vague and sweeping mandate of “such other matters as the President considers appropriate”.

This last designation hands Obama dictator powers to have any American citizen kidnapped, detained, and interrogated on a whim.

The only proviso that even hints at some form of check or balance is the measure that states, “The High-Value Detainee Interrogation Team must make a preliminary determination whether the detainee is an unprivileged enemy belligerent within 48 hours of taking detainee into custody.”

“The High-Value Detainee Interrogation Team must submit its determination to the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General after consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General make a final determination and report the determination to the President and the appropriate committees of Congress. In the case of any disagreement between the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General, the President will make the determination,” states the bill.

The ACLU has expressed its vigorous opposition to the legislation, labeling it nothing less than a “direct attack on the Constitution”.

“Indefinite detention flies in the face of American values and violates this country’s commitment to the rule of law,” states Laura W. Murphy, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.

Of course, such positions from the ACLU as well as Amnesty International will only be used as grist for the neo-con propaganda mill about how the bill ought to be passed in order to avoid being “soft on terrorists,” a piece of spin still being swallowed whole by millions of conservatives who are blissfully unaware of the fact that the apparatus of the war on terror is now being aimed squarely at politically active American citizens.

“Torture, indefinite imprisonment, secret trials and limited staged hearings are the stuff of cheap dictatorships,” writes Ian McColgin. “They are the sort of idiocy we scorned in the Soviets, the Koreans and the Vietnamese. It is astonishing that we have senators and citizens even discussing this bill which is not a capitulation to terrorism – it’s the triumph of terrorism.”

Homeland Security is already implementing technology to be enforced at “security events” which purportedly reads “malintent” on behalf of an individual who passes through a checkpoint. Perhaps the video below explains just how “enemy belligerents” will be identified on American soil.

Qwest CEO imprisoned in retaliation for failure to cut surveillance deal with NSA

(WMR) — WMR has learned from sources who worked in senior positions for the telecommunications company Qwest that its former chairman and CEO, Joseph Nacchio, was threatened with retaliation after he refused to participate in an unconstitutional and illegal National Security Agency (NSA) wiretapping program after he met with NSA officials on February 27, 2001, some six months before the 9/11 attacks. Nacchio refused to turn over customer records without a court order — something NSA did not possess at the time it made its request.

After Nacchio refused NSA’s request on the grounds that it was illegal, sources close to Nacchio reported his legal problems with the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission began in earnest. First, Qwest lost out on several lucrative federal government contracts and second, Nacchio was indicted and convicted in 2007 of 19 counts of insider stock trading. Nacchio was sentenced to six years in the Schuykill federal prison camp in Minersville, Pennsylvania, where he is now assigned prisoner number 33973-013.

In January, US District Judge Marcia Krieger of the 10th Circuit Court in Denver denied Nacchio’s motion for a new trial. Krieger was nominated for the federal bench by President George W. Bush on September 10, 2001. The September 10 date is significant – it was then clear that Nacchio was not going to be a player in the NSA and FBI illegal surveillance programs and it was the day before the Bush administration would sweep aside the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Qwest is headquartered in Denver.

The illegal NSA surveillance program, once known by its highly-classified code-name STELLAR WIND, was revealed by AT&T employee Mark Klein, who divulged NSA’s “secret room” on the 6th floor at AT&T’s central office on Folsom Street in San Francisco. The “secret room” was next door to the 4ESS phone switch. According to AT&T documents, NSA had direct wiretaps on key Internet circuits on the floor above. NSA’s operation conducted vacuum-cleaner copying of the data stream of the Internet, which included e-mail, web browsing, VOIP phone calls (e.g., Skype) and all the other common Internet services. There is informed speculation that because of an aggressive AT&T internal campaign to transfer all its old long-distance traffic to fiber lines, traditional phone calls that passed through the 4ESS switch were likely transferred to the Internet circuits, making phone calls also very likely subject to NSA eavesdropping.

AT&T and Verizon agreed to participate in the STELLAR WIND program.

Even though there is ample evidence that the federal government engaged in massive prosecutorial misconduct in retaliation for Nacchio’s refusal to participate in STELLAR WIND and associated FBI surveillance programs, the Supreme Court refused to review the case against the former Qwest chief. The Supreme Court also denied Nacchio bail pending his appeal, a clear attempt by the most corrupt Supreme Court in American history to prevent Nacchio from airing the NSA’s dirty laundry about domestic wiretapping and pressure on telecommunication firms’ senior corporate officials.

Qwest shareholders and retirees blamed Nacchio for their financial losses, however, it is now clear that the NSA and the Bush administration targeted Qwest for retribution after its top boss refused to cooperate in the illegal domestic wiretap programs of the NSA and FBI.

Qwest founder, railroad and oil magnate Philip Anschutz, a conservative Christian who owns The Examiner chain of metro region newspapers and several entertainment firms and professional sports teams, testified on Nacchio’s behalf.

The news of NSA’s threats of retaliation against Nacchio will come as little comfort to those NSA employees, including the jailed ex-NSA analyst Ken Ford, Jr., on similar trumped up charges. If someone as wealthy and powerful as Nacchio could be brought down by the illegal domestic joint targeting operations carried out by the NSA, FBI, and corrupt Justice Department prosecutors, those rank-and-file NSA employees who have blown the whistle on NSA’s illegal operations stand little chance of having their “day in court.”

WMR has been told by NSA insiders that if the full extent of NSA’s illegal operations became public, the American people would go into a “state of shock.”

Whistleblower site Cryptome.org shut down by Microsoft over leaked surveillance doc

boingboing

By Xeni Jardin at 5:15 PM February 24, 2010

John Young and Deborah Natsios’ whistleblower archive Cryptome has long been a thorn in the flesh of US government agencies. But if my memory serves correctly, none of them ever managed to do what Microsoft did today: shut the site down.

Network Solutions shut off the lights in response to a DMCA notice, after Cryptome published a 22-page Microsoft document outlining how the company stores private user data in its web-connected servers. The document also explains how government agencies can access that personal data.

More at Wired News, and you can download the disputed PDF here. More at ReadWriteWeb, with comments from the EFF.

[ Photo: John Young of Cryptome, shot by Declan McCullagh, NYC, 2001.]

Texas Supplied Newborn Blood Samples to Forensic Database

School allegedly used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home

BoingBoing

By Cory Doctorow at 11:49 PM February 17, 2010

According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools’ administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The issue came to light when the Robbins’s child was disciplined for “improper behavior in his home” and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence. The suit is a class action, brought on behalf of all students issued with these machines.

If true, these allegations are about as creepy as they come. I don’t know about you, but I often have the laptop in the room while I’m getting dressed, having private discussions with my family, and so on. The idea that a school district would not only spy on its students’ clickstreams and emails (bad enough), but also use these machines as AV bugs is purely horrifying.

Schools are in an absolute panic about kids divulging too much online, worried about pedos and marketers and embarrassing photos that will haunt you when you run for office or apply for a job in 10 years. They tell kids to treat their personal details as though they were precious.

But when schools take that personal information, indiscriminately invading privacy (and, of course, punishing students who use proxies and other privacy tools to avoid official surveillance), they send a much more powerful message: your privacy is worthless and you shouldn’t try to protect it.

Robbins v. Lower Merion School District (PDF) (Thanks, Roland!)

The robot arms race continues…

Boeing airborne laser destroys missile

Robot UT-mu2 tech demo

RT piece

Patriot Act reauthorized under cover of jobs bill

SEC. 645. EXTENSION OF INTELLIGENCE AUTHORITY SUNSETS. (a) USA PATRIOT IMPROVEMENT AND REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2005.—Section 102(b)(1) of the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005

(Public Law 109–177; 50 U.S.C. 1805 note, 50 U.S.C. 1861 note, and 50 U.S.C. 1862 note) is amended by striking ‘‘February 28, 2010’’ and inserting ‘‘December 31, 2010’’.

(b) INTELLIGENCE REFORM AND TERRORISM PREVENTION ACT OF 2004.—Section 6001(b)(1) of the Intel ligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 (Public Law 108–458; 118 Stat. 3742; 50 U.S.C. 1801 note) is amended by striking ‘‘February 28, 2010’’ and inserting ‘‘December 31, 2010’’.

From Politico:

A draft of the roughly $80 billion bill, obtained by POLITICO, has a wide range of tax credits and job creation ideas, but it also includes provisions unrelated to jobs, including a reauthorization of the Patriot Act, infusion of new money to the Highway Trust Fund and extension of the so-called doc fix.

Terrorists Must Register With SC Secretary Of State

By FITSNews || Over the years, we’ve had plenty of fun at the expense of South Carolina’s bass-ackwards state government.

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We may have finally found the legal statute that takes the cake for sheer stupidity

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It’s called the “Subversive Activities Registration Act,” and it requires terrorists in South Carolina to … register with the S.C. Secretary of State’s office before they start plotting to violently overthrow the government.

From the law:

Every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States, of this State or of any political subdivision thereof by force or violence or other unlawful means, who resides, transacts any business or attempts to influence political action in this State, shall register with the Secretary of State on the forms and at the times prescribed by him

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God forbid you fail to register before you start planning your jihad, because that’s punishable by a $25,000 fine and/ or up to ten years imprisonment.

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The law from http://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t23c029.htm

Code of Laws Title/Chapter List > Title 23