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Paul Merrell

Secretive California Gang Database Included 42 Babies - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...219479

surveillance state law-enforcement intelligence CalGang no-fly-list

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • n explosive state audit of a secretive California gang database used by law enforcement showed 42 profiles were for 1-year-old children, half of whom apparently confessed to being in gangs. The database, paid for by taxpayers, is rife with other errors. Of those profiles for 1-year-old children, 28 were entered for “admitting to being gang members,” according to State Auditor Elaine Howle in a statement issued with the report The CalGang Criminal Intelligence System on Friday. CalGang is a shared criminal intelligence system that law enforcement agencies throughout the state used voluntarily. It is where they entered the names of suspected gang members, associated gangs, and any information that led law enforcement to suspect they were gang members.
  • Paul Merrell on 15 Aug 16
     
    Now compare the CalGang audit results with the nation's No-Fly-List, which has never had an audit but gets its info from the same source, law enforcement, and the oxymoronic government intelligence. There is no legal procedure to have your name removed from the No-Fly-List and only in one case has a judge ordered removal nonetheless. Legislation is currently pending to bar sale of guns to people who are on the No-Fly List.
Gary Edwards

Accidentally Released - and Incredibly Embarrassing - Documents Show How Goldman et al ... - 0 views

www.rollingstone.com/...n-naked-short-selling-20120515

Banksters Naked-Short-Selling Overstock.com

shared by Gary Edwards on 17 May 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 17 May 12
     
    Incredible.  Take your time reading this because we now have legal evidence of outrageous Bankster criminality.  Read carefully. excerpt: The lawsuit between Overstock and the banks concerned a phenomenon called naked short-selling, a kind of high-finance counterfeiting that, especially prior to the introduction of new regulations in 2008, short-sellers could use to artificially depress the value of the stocks they've bet against. The subject of naked short-selling is a) highly technical, and b) very controversial on Wall Street, with many pundits in the financial press for years treating the phenomenon as the stuff of myths and conspiracy theories. Now, however, through the magic of this unredacted document, the public will be able to see for itself what the banks' attitudes are not just toward the "mythical" practice of naked short selling (hint: they volubly confess to the activity, in writing), but toward regulations and laws in general. "Fuck the compliance area - procedures, schmecedures," chirps Peter Melz, former president of Merrill Lynch Professional Clearing Corp. (a.k.a. Merrill Pro), when a subordinate worries about the company failing to comply with the rules governing short sales. ...................... If this sounds complicated, just focus on this: naked short selling, in essence, is selling stock you do not have. If you don't have to actually locate and borrow stock before you short it, you're creating an artificial supply of stock shares. ................ The process of how banks circumvented federal clearing regulations is highly technical and incredibly difficult to follow. These companies were using obscure loopholes in regulations that allowed them to short companies by trading in shadows, or echoes, of real shares in their stock. They manipulated rules to avoid having to disclose these "failed" trades to regulators. The import of this is that it made it cheaper and easier to bet down the value of a stock
Gary Edwards

Articles of Impeachment Against Obama - 0 views

blackrepublican.blogspot.com/...an-citizens-file-articles.html

Impeachment articles-of-impeachment

shared by Gary Edwards on 16 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 16 Aug 13
     
    Sarasota, FL ( August 12, 2013) - The National Black Republican Association (NBRA) based in Sarasota, FL, headed by Chairman Frances Rice, filed Articles of Impeachment against President Barack Obama with the following language.   We, black American citizens, in order to free ourselves and our fellow citizens from governmental tyranny, do herewith submit these Articles of Impeachment to Congress for the removal of President Barack H. Obama, aka, Barry Soetoro, from office for his attack on liberty and commission of egregious acts of despotism that constitute high crimes and misdemeanors.   On July 4, 1776, the founders of our nation declared their independence from governmental tyranny and reaffirmed their faith in independence with the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791.   Asserting their right to break free from the tyranny of a nation that denied them the civil liberties that are our birthright, the founders declared:   "When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."  -  Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.   THE IMPEACHMENT POWER   Article II, Section IV of the United States Constitution provides: "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."   THE ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT   In his conduct of the office of President of the United States, Barack H. Obama, aka Barry Soetoro, personally and through his subordinates and agents, in violation or disregard of the constitutional rights of citizens and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice, in that:   ARTICL
Paul Merrell

Has the NSA Wiretapping Violated Attorney-Client Privilege? | The Nation - 0 views

www.thenation.com/...ated-attorney-client-privilege

surveillance state NSA-targets attorney-client-privilege must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • The first time Adis Medunjanin tried to call Robert C. Gottlieb in mid-2009, Gottlieb was out of the office. Medunjanin was agitated. He had to speak to an attorney. Gottlieb’s assistant told him Gottlieb would be back soon. When Medunjanin spoke to the lawyer a little later, he was told he might need legal representation. He thought he might be under investigation. Over the next six months and in forty-two phone calls, Medunjanin sought legal advice from Gottlieb. When he was arrested in January 2010 on charges that he tried to bomb the New York subway, it was Gottlieb who defended him, receiving security clearance to review government documents pertinent to the case in the process. Gottlieb was preparing Medunjanin’s defense when a federal officer in charge of information distribution e-mailed him that there was new classified information he needed to review at the US Eastern District Court in Brooklyn. “I went over to the Brooklyn Federal courthouse, went up to the secured room, gained entry with the secret security codes, opened the file cabinet that is also secure and in the second drawer was a CD,” Gottlieb told me. On that CD were recordings of every single one of his forty-two phone calls with Medunjanin before he was taken into custody and indicted on January 7, 2010.
  • Such calls are normally sacrosanct under the principle of attorney-client privilege, the ability to speak confidentially with your lawyer. But a leak to The Guardian last summer of National Security Agency (NSA) procedures that are supposed to protect privileged calls showed that some attorney-client privileged calls are not subject to internal rules that detail the instances when a wiretap should be turned off. A later version of the procedures declassified by the NSA last August contains the same language. These “minimization” procedures, as they are known, are the rules and regulations for wiretaps under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). They tell NSA agents when they can listen, and when they have to turn the tap off, when they can record and when they should not be recording. There are rules for which kinds of communications can be monitored—for example, domestic communications are off limits, although communications from agents of foreign powers and suspected terrorists don’t count as domestic—and there is a section that provides for the protection of attorney-client calls.
  • Section four of the declassified 2011 guidelines is the part of that document that governs wiretapping attorney-client calls. At first glance, it seems quite clear: when the agent realizes that he or she is monitoring an attorney-client communication, “monitoring of that communication will cease and the communication will be identified as an attorney-client communication in a log maintained for that purpose.” But given a second reading, section four doesn’t apply to all attorney-client calls. It provides only for the minimization (and protection) of the calls of “a person who is known to be under criminal indictment in the United States”—someone who has already been charged under US law. This is because indicted persons have a Sixth Amendment right to counsel. People who aren’t indicted don’t have this right, and so their calls are not minimized. When I asked an NSA press officer, Vanee’ M. Vines, how attorney-client privilege was protected, she referred me to the Department of Justice. I left several messages, but the DOJ never contacted me back.
Paul Merrell

NSA 'secret backdoor' paved way to U.S. phone, e-mail snooping | Politics and Law - CNE... - 0 views

news.cnet.com/...y-to-u.s-phone-e-mail-snooping

surveillance state NSA Obama lies must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • The National Security Agency created a "secret backdoor" so its massive databases could be searched for the contents of U.S. citizens' confidential phone calls and e-mail messages without a warrant, according to the latest classified documents leaked by Edward Snowden. A report in the Guardian on Friday quoted Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, as saying the secret rule offers a loophole allowing "warrantless searches for the phone calls or emails of law-abiding Americans." That appears to confirm what Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, said in June after receiving a classified briefing from administration officials a few days earlier on the extent of the NSA's domestic surveillance operations. If the NSA wants "to listen to the phone," an analyst's decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he had been told during the briefing. "I was rather startled," said Nadler, an attorney who serves on the House Judiciary Committee.
  • FBI Director Robert Mueller responded by assuring Nadler, according to a transcript of the hearing, that to "listen to the phone," the government would need "a particularized order" from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court -- a claim that is contradicted by today's Guardian report and other documents. Mueller has been succeeded by James Comey, who was confirmed last month by the Senate. In response to a CNET article at the time, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper released a statement saying: "The statement that a single analyst can eavesdrop on domestic communications without proper legal authorization is incorrect and was not briefed to Congress." Clapper never elaborated, however, on what "proper" authorization would be. Today's top-secret document leaked by Snowden reveals that "procedures approved on 3 October 2011 now allow for use of certain United States person names and identifiers as query terms when reviewing collected FAA 702 data."
  • FAA 702 is a reference to section 702 of a 2008 law that amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Those amendments created a warrantless surveillance process that could be employed by NSA analysts, but Congress never intended it to be used domestically against American citizens: A congressional report accompanying the law claimed it allows electronic surveillance only of "persons located outside the United States in order to acquire foreign intelligence information." In reality, though, the Obama Justice Department has devised secret interpretations of FAA 702 carving out loopholes in what were intended to be strict privacy safeguards. One loophole revealed in June shows that NSA, CIA, and FBI analysts are granted broad access to data vacuumed up by the world's most powerful intelligence agency -- but are supposed to follow certain "targeting" and "minimization" procedures to limit the number of Americans who become individual targets of warrantless surveillance.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Today's disclosures appear to be at odds with what President Obama has said over the last two months in defense of NSA surveillance. "What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a U.S. person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls and the NSA cannot target your e-mails," Obama has said. Earlier reports have indicated that the NSA has the ability to record nearly all domestic and international phone calls -- in case an analyst needed to access the recordings in the future. A Wired magazine article last year disclosed that the NSA has established "listening posts" that allow the agency to collect and sift through billions of phone calls through a massive new data center in Utah, "whether they originate within the country or overseas." That includes not just metadata, but also the contents of the communications.
  • AT&T and other telecommunications companies that allow the NSA to tap into their fiber links receive absolute immunity from civil liability or criminal prosecution, thanks to Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, which Congress renewed in 2012. It says that any civil lawsuit "against any person for providing assistance to an element of the intelligence community...shall be promptly dismissed." Section 702 of the law says surveillance may be authorized by the attorney general and director of national intelligence without prior approval by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court -- in practice, this means analysts at the NSA and other agencies with intelligence functions -- as long as minimization requirements and general procedures blessed by the court are followed. It's unclear whether the court has approved the "secret backdoor" allowing Americans' e-mail and phone messages to be targeted for domestic surveillance.
Paul Merrell

After Brit spies 'snoop' on families' lawyers, UK govt admits: We flouted human rights ... - 0 views

www.theregister.co.uk/...uk_spies_on_lawyers

surveillance state GCHQ MI5 lawyer-client-communications

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The British government has admitted that its practice of spying on confidential communications between lawyers and their clients was a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Details of the controversial snooping emerged in November: lawyers suing Blighty over its rendition of two Libyan families to be tortured by the late and unlamented Gaddafi regime claimed Her Majesty's own lawyers seemed to have access to the defense team's emails. The families' briefs asked for a probe by the secretive Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), a move that led to Wednesday's admission. "The concession the government has made today relates to the agencies' policies and procedures governing the handling of legally privileged communications and whether they are compatible with the ECHR," a government spokesman said in a statement to the media, via the Press Association. "In view of recent IPT judgments, we acknowledge that the policies applied since 2010 have not fully met the requirements of the ECHR, specifically Article 8. This includes a requirement that safeguards are made sufficiently public."
  • The guidelines revealed by the investigation showed that MI5 – which handles the UK's domestic security – had free reign to spy on highly private and sensitive lawyer-client conversations between April 2011 and January 2014. MI6, which handles foreign intelligence, had no rules on the matter either until 2011, and even those were considered void if "extremists" were involved. Britain's answer to the NSA, GCHQ, had rules against such spying, but they too were relaxed in 2011. "By allowing the intelligence agencies free rein to spy on communications between lawyers and their clients, the Government has endangered the fundamental British right to a fair trial," said Cori Crider, a director at the non-profit Reprieve and one of the lawyers for the Libyan families. "For too long, the security services have been allowed to snoop on those bringing cases against them when they speak to their lawyers. In doing so, they have violated a right that is centuries old in British common law. Today they have finally admitted they have been acting unlawfully for years."
  • Crider said it now seemed probable that UK snoopers had been listening in on the communications over the Libyan case. The British government hasn't admitted guilt, but it has at least acknowledged that it was doing something wrong – sort of. "It does not mean that there was any deliberate wrongdoing on the part of the security and intelligence agencies, which have always taken their obligation to protect legally privileged material extremely seriously," the government spokesman said. "Nor does it mean that any of the agencies' activities have prejudiced or in any way resulted in an abuse of process in any civil or criminal proceedings. The agencies will now work with the independent Interception of Communications Commissioner to ensure their policies satisfy all of the UK's human rights obligations." So that's all right, then.
  • Paul Merrell on 15 Mar 15
     
    If you follow the "November" link you'[l learn that yes, indeed, the UK government lawyers were happily getting the content of their adversaries privileged attorney-client communications. Conspicuously, the promises of reform make no mention of what is surely a disbarment offense in the U.S. I doubt that it's different in the UK. Discovery rules of procedure strictly limit how parties may obtain information from the other side. Wiretapping the other side's lawyers is not a permitted from of discovery. Hopefully, at least the government lawyers in the case in which the misbehavior was discovered have been referred for disciplinary action.  
Paul Merrell

Bush Administration Convicted of War Crimes - Dr. Francis Boyle #N3 | Next News Network... - 0 views

nextnewsnetwork.com/...war-crimes-dr-francis-boyle-n3

war & peace war crimes Bush Admjnistration international law

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Former U.S. President George W. Bush recently dedicated his Presidential Library in Dallas. The ceremony included speeches by President Obama, ex-President Bush, and every other living ex-president. But none of the speeches so much as mentioned to Iraq war — the undertaking that dominated George W. Bush’s presidency, and will define his historic legacy. This omission might be due, at least in part, to the fact that Mr. Bush is now a convicted war criminal who dares not travel abroad out of fear of being arrested. In February 2011, Bush was forced to cancel a scheduled appearance in Geneva, Switzerland after human rights groups filed a criminal complaint charging him with violating international treaties against torture. His trouble increased dramatically a year ago when Bush — along with former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and several other top Bush administration officials — were convicted of war crimes in absentia by a special war crimes tribunal in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
  • The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission was convened and conducted according to internationally recognized procedures and rules of evidence, and the week-long hearing ended with the five-member panel unanimously delivering guilty verdicts. What is the significance of that tribunal? Is its verdict legally binding? Are there troublesome aspects to the idea that a foreign tribunal can sit in judgment of a U.S. President — whatever we may think of his actions? We will discuss these vitally important questions with Dr. Francis Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. He served as a prosecutor at the tribunal.
  • Paul Merrell on 05 Jun 13
     
    I did not bookmark the news about this tribunal's decision last year because I mistakenly assumed that it was a mock trial, that it had no legal force.  But in this interview with renowned international law professor Francis Boyle, who served as co-prosecutor, I learned that the trial was legally constituted, and that international law requires other nations to either extradite Bush and his top officials or independently try them for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Note that Boyle gives Obama no points either, calling for his impeachment and prosecution. So we might look forward to a similar prosecution of Obama and his top officials after he leaves office. 
Paul Merrell

Shaking My Head - Medium - 0 views

medium.com/...shaking-my-head-5c1b60db9086

surveillance state NSA 702 FISA legislation backdoor-serches stats

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 May 16 - No Cached
  • Last month, at the request of the Department of Justice, the Courts approved changes to the obscure Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which governs search and seizure. By the nature of this obscure bureaucratic process, these rules become law unless Congress rejects the changes before December 1, 2016.Today I, along with my colleagues Senators Paul from Kentucky, Baldwin from Wisconsin, and Daines and Tester from Montana, am introducing the Stopping Mass Hacking (SMH) Act (bill, summary), a bill to protect millions of law-abiding Americans from a massive expansion of government hacking and surveillance. Join the conversation with #SMHact.
  • For law enforcement to conduct a remote electronic search, they generally need to plant malware in — i.e. hack — a device. These rule changes will allow the government to search millions of computers with the warrant of a single judge. To me, that’s clearly a policy change that’s outside the scope of an “administrative change,” and it is something that Congress should consider. An agency with the record of the Justice Department shouldn’t be able to wave its arms and grant itself entirely new powers.
  • These changes say that if law enforcement doesn’t know where an electronic device is located, a magistrate judge will now have the the authority to issue a warrant to remotely search the device, anywhere in the world. While it may be appropriate to address the issue of allowing a remote electronic search for a device at an unknown location, Congress needs to consider what protections must be in place to protect Americans’ digital security and privacy. This is a new and uncertain area of law, so there needs to be full and careful debate. The ACLU has a thorough discussion of the Fourth Amendment ramifications and the technological questions at issue with these kinds of searches.The second part of the change to Rule 41 would give a magistrate judge the authority to issue a single warrant that would authorize the search of an unlimited number — potentially thousands or millions — of devices, located anywhere in the world. These changes would dramatically expand the government’s hacking and surveillance authority. The American public should understand that these changes won’t just affect criminals: computer security experts and civil liberties advocates say the amendments would also dramatically expand the government’s ability to hack the electronic devices of law-abiding Americans if their devices were affected by a computer attack. Devices will be subject to search if their owners were victims of a botnet attack — so the government will be treating victims of hacking the same way they treat the perpetrators.
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  • As the Center on Democracy and Technology has noted, there are approximately 500 million computers that fall under this rule. The public doesn’t know nearly enough about how law enforcement executes these hacks, and what risks these types of searches will pose. By compromising the computer’s system, the search might leave it open to other attackers or damage the computer they are searching.Don’t take it from me that this will impact your security, read more from security researchers Steven Bellovin, Matt Blaze and Susan Landau.Finally, these changes to Rule 41 would also give some types of electronic searches different, weaker notification requirements than physical searches. Under this new Rule, they are only required to make “reasonable efforts” to notify people that their computers were searched. This raises the possibility of the FBI hacking into a cyber attack victim’s computer and not telling them about it until afterward, if at all.
Paul Merrell

United States v. United States Dist. Court for Eastern Dist. of Mich., 407 US 297 - Sup... - 0 views

scholar.google.com/scholar_case

surveillance state 4th Amendment constitutional law

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • But a recognition of these elementary truths does not make the employment by Government of electronic surveillance a welcome development—even when employed with restraint and under judicial supervision. There is, understandably, a deep-seated uneasiness and apprehension that this capability will be used to intrude upon cherished privacy of law-abiding citizens.[13] We 313*313 look to the Bill of Rights to safeguard this privacy. Though physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed, its broader spirit now shields private speech from unreasonable surveillance. Katz v. United States, supra; Berger v. New York, supra; Silverman v. United States, 365 U. S. 505 (1961). Our decision in Katz refused to lock the Fourth Amendment into instances of actual physical trespass. Rather, the Amendment governs "not only the seizure of tangible items, but extends as well to the recording of oral statements . . . without any `technical trespass under . . . local property law.'" Katz, supra, at 353. That decision implicitly recognized that the broad and unsuspected governmental incursions into conversational privacy which electronic surveillance entails[14] necessitate the application of Fourth Amendment safeguards.
  • National security cases, moreover, often reflect a convergence of First and Fourth Amendment values not present in cases of "ordinary" crime. Though the investigative duty of the executive may be stronger in such cases, so also is there greater jeopardy to constitutionally protected speech. "Historically the struggle for freedom of speech and press in England was bound up with the issue of the scope of the search and seizure 314*314 power," Marcus v. Search Warrant, 367 U. S. 717, 724 (1961). History abundantly documents the tendency of Government—however benevolent and benign its motives —to view with suspicion those who most fervently dispute its policies. Fourth Amendment protections become the more necessary when the targets of official surveillance may be those suspected of unorthodoxy in their political beliefs. The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect "domestic security." Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent. Senator Hart addressed this dilemma in the floor debate on § 2511 (3):
  • "As I read it—and this is my fear—we are saying that the President, on his motion, could declare— name your favorite poison—draft dodgers, Black Muslims, the Ku Klux Klan, or civil rights activists to be a clear and present danger to the structure or existence of the Government."[15] The price of lawful public dissent must not be a dread of subjection to an unchecked surveillance power. Nor must the fear of unauthorized official eavesdropping deter vigorous citizen dissent and discussion of Government action in private conversation. For private dissent, no less than open public discourse, is essential to our free society.
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  • As the Fourth Amendment is not absolute in its terms, our task is to examine and balance the basic values at stake in this case: the duty of Government 315*315 to protect the domestic security, and the potential danger posed by unreasonable surveillance to individual privacy and free expression. If the legitimate need of Government to safeguard domestic security requires the use of electronic surveillance, the question is whether the needs of citizens for privacy and free expression may not be better protected by requiring a warrant before such surveillance is undertaken. We must also ask whether a warrant requirement would unduly frustrate the efforts of Government to protect itself from acts of subversion and overthrow directed against it. Though the Fourth Amendment speaks broadly of "unreasonable searches and seizures," the definition of "reasonableness" turns, at least in part, on the more specific commands of the warrant clause. Some have argued that "[t]he relevant test is not whether it is reasonable to procure a search warrant, but whether the search was reasonable," United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U. S. 56, 66 (1950).[16] This view, however, overlooks the second clause of the Amendment. The warrant clause of the Fourth Amendment is not dead language. Rather, it has been
  • "a valued part of our constitutional law for decades, and it has determined the result in scores and scores of cases in courts all over this country. It is not an inconvenience to be somehow `weighed' against the claims of police efficiency. It is, or should 316*316 be, an important working part of our machinery of government, operating as a matter of course to check the `well-intentioned but mistakenly overzealous executive officers' who are a part of any system of law enforcement." Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S., at 481. See also United States v. Rabinowitz, supra, at 68 (Frankfurter, J., dissenting); Davis v. United States, 328 U. S. 582, 604 (1946) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting). Over two centuries ago, Lord Mansfield held that common-law principles prohibited warrants that ordered the arrest of unnamed individuals who the officer might conclude were guilty of seditious libel. "It is not fit," said Mansfield, "that the receiving or judging of the information should be left to the discretion of the officer. The magistrate ought to judge; and should give certain directions to the officer." Leach v. Three of the King's Messengers, 19 How. St. Tr. 1001, 1027 (1765).
  • Lord Mansfield's formulation touches the very heart of the Fourth Amendment directive: that, where practical, a governmental search and seizure should represent both the efforts of the officer to gather evidence of wrongful acts and the judgment of the magistrate that the collected evidence is sufficient to justify invasion of a citizen's private premises or conversation. Inherent in the concept of a warrant is its issuance by a "neutral and detached magistrate." Coolidge v. New Hampshire, supra, at 453; Katz v. United States, supra, at 356. The further requirement of "probable cause" instructs the magistrate that baseless searches shall not proceed. These Fourth Amendment freedoms cannot properly be guaranteed if domestic security surveillances may be conducted solely within the discretion of the Executive 317*317 Branch. The Fourth Amendment does not contemplate the executive officers of Government as neutral and disinterested magistrates. Their duty and responsibility are to enforce the laws, to investigate, and to prosecute. Katz v. United States, supra, at 359-360 (DOUGLAS, J., concurring). But those charged with this investigative and prosecutorial duty should not be the sole judges of when to utilize constitutionally sensitive means in pursuing their tasks. The historical judgment, which the Fourth Amendment accepts, is that unreviewed executive discretion may yield too readily to pressures to obtain incriminating evidence and overlook potential invasions of privacy and protected speech.[17]
  • It may well be that, in the instant case, the Government's surveillance of Plamondon's conversations was a reasonable one which readily would have gained prior judicial approval. But this Court "has never sustained a search upon the sole ground that officers reasonably expected to find evidence of a particular crime and voluntarily confined their activities to the least intrusive means consistent with that end." Katz, supra, at 356-357. The Fourth Amendment contemplates a prior judicial judgment,[18] not the risk that executive discretion may be reasonably exercised. This judicial role accords with our basic constitutional doctrine that individual freedoms will best be preserved through a separation of powers and division of functions among the different branches and levels of Government. Harlan, Thoughts at a Dedication: Keeping the Judicial Function in Balance, 49 A. B. A. J. 943-944 (1963). The independent check upon executive discretion is not 318*318 satisfied, as the Government argues, by "extremely limited" post-surveillance judicial review.[19] Indeed, post-surveillance review would never reach the surveillances which failed to result in prosecutions. Prior review by a neutral and detached magistrate is the time-tested means of effectuating Fourth Amendment rights. Beck v. Ohio, 379 U. S. 89, 96 (1964).
  • But we do not think a case has been made for the requested departure from Fourth Amendment standards. The circumstances described do not justify complete exemption of domestic security surveillance from prior judicial scrutiny. Official surveillance, whether its purpose be criminal investigation or ongoing intelligence gathering, risks infringement of constitutionally protected privacy of speech. Security surveillances are especially sensitive because of the inherent vagueness of the domestic security concept, the necessarily broad and continuing nature of intelligence gathering, and the temptation to utilize such surveillances to oversee political dissent. We recognize, as we have before, the constitutional basis of the President's domestic security role, but we think it must be exercised in a manner compatible with the Fourth Amendment. In this case we hold that this requires an appropriate prior warrant procedure. We cannot accept the Government's argument that internal security matters are too subtle and complex for judicial evaluation. Courts regularly deal with the most difficult issues of our society. There is no reason to believe that federal judges will be insensitive to or uncomprehending of the issues involved in domestic security cases. Certainly courts can recognize that domestic security surveillance involves different considerations from the surveillance of "ordinary crime." If the threat is too subtle or complex for our senior law enforcement officers to convey its significance to a court, one may question whether there is probable cause for surveillance.
  • Nor do we believe prior judicial approval will fracture the secrecy essential to official intelligence gathering. The investigation of criminal activity has long 321*321 involved imparting sensitive information to judicial officers who have respected the confidentialities involved. Judges may be counted upon to be especially conscious of security requirements in national security cases. Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act already has imposed this responsibility on the judiciary in connection with such crimes as espionage, sabotage, and treason, §§ 2516 (1) (a) and (c), each of which may involve domestic as well as foreign security threats. Moreover, a warrant application involves no public or adversary proceedings: it is an ex parte request before a magistrate or judge. Whatever security dangers clerical and secretarial personnel may pose can be minimized by proper administrative measures, possibly to the point of allowing the Government itself to provide the necessary clerical assistance.
  • Thus, we conclude that the Government's concerns do not justify departure in this case from the customary Fourth Amendment requirement of judicial approval prior to initiation of a search or surveillance. Although some added burden will be imposed upon the Attorney General, this inconvenience is justified in a free society to protect constitutional values. Nor do we think the Government's domestic surveillance powers will be impaired to any significant degree. A prior warrant establishes presumptive validity of the surveillance and will minimize the burden of justification in post-surveillance judicial review. By no means of least importance will be the reassurance of the public generally that indiscriminate wiretapping and bugging of law-abiding citizens cannot occur.
  • As the surveillance of Plamondon's conversations was unlawful, because conducted without prior judicial approval, the courts below correctly held that Alderman v. United States, 394 U. S. 165 (1969), is controlling and that it requires disclosure to the accused of his own impermissibly intercepted conversations. As stated in Alderman, "the trial court can and should, where appropriate, place a defendant and his counsel under enforceable orders against unwarranted disclosure of the materials which they may be entitled to inspect." 394 U. S., at 185.[21]
Paul Merrell

CSIS asked foreign agencies to spy on Canadians, kept court in dark, judge says - 0 views

www.ottawacitizen.com/...story.html

surveillance state Canada CSIS courts blowback

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • OTTAWA — Canada’s foremost jurist on national security law has slammed CSIS for deliberately keeping the Federal Court of Canada “in the dark” about outsourcing its spying on Canadians abroad to foreign agencies, according to a redacted version of a classified court decision made public Friday.In a thundering rebuke, Federal Court Judge Richard Mosley said the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) purposely misled him when he granted it numerous warrants beginning in 2009 to intercept the electronic communications of unidentified Canadians abroad suspected as domestic security threats.“This was a breach of the duty of candour owed by the service and their legal advisers to the court,” Mosley said in his Further Reasons for Order.CSIS also mistakenly assigned powers to the warrants that the court never authorized and which do not exist in law, he said.“It is clear that the exercise of the court’s warrant issuing authority has been used as protective cover for activities that it has not authorized,” Mosley wrote.Furthermore, tasking foreign security intelligence services to spy on Canadians overseas “carries the risk of the detention of or other harm to a Canadian person based on that information.“Given the unfortunate history of information sharing with foreign agencies over the past decade and the reviews conducted by several royal commissions, there can be no question that the Canadian agencies are aware of those hazards. It appears to me that they are using the warrants as authorization to assume those risks.”
  • Legal observers say this case and Mosley’s scolding will harm CSIS’s credibility and raise questions about whether the service has broken Criminal Code provisions dealing with the invasion of privacy.“When a judge says the government breached its duty of candour that is a very big ‘ouch’ moment,” Craig Forcese, a national security law scholar at the University of Ottawa, wrote in a recent blog posting.At the time the first warrants were issued, CSIS told the court “on clearly stated grounds” that the electronic intercepts would be carried out from within Canada by the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), the country’s foreign signals intelligence spy service.CSIS is largely restricted to domestic spying operations. If an investigation involves the use of intrusive techniques, such as electronic intercepts, Section 21 of the CSIS Act requires it to obtain a warrant approved by a Federal Court judge to guard the Charter right to a reasonable expectation of privacy.CSEC, meanwhile, is not allowed to spy on Canadians anywhere unless it is to provide technical and operational assistance to federal law enforcement and security agencies such as CSIS.And the federal court only has jurisdiction to authorize warrants under the CSIS Act as long as the communications in question are intercepted within Canada.
  • Yet once the so-called 30-08 warrants were approved by the court, CSEC, on behalf of CSIS, turned around and handed the jobs to one or more of its partners in the “Five Eyes” intelligence-gathering alliance between Canada, the United States, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand.Mosley found out about the situation late this summer and summoned CSIS, CSEC and government officials and lawyers to court to explain themselves. The public version of his reasons for order was released Friday.
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  • Some excerpts:• “I am satisfied that a decision was made by CSIS officials in consultation with their legal advisers to strategically omit information in applications for 30-08 warrants about their intention to seek the assistance of the foreign partners. As a result, the court was led to believe that all of the interception activity would take place in or under the control of Canada.”• “The principle of comity between nations that implies the acceptance of foreign laws and procedures when Canadian officials are operating abroad ends where clear violations of international law and human rights begin. In tasking the other members of the Five Eyes to intercept the communications of the Canadian targets, CSIS and CSEC officials knew ... this would involve the breach of international law by the requested second parties.”• “There is nothing in any of the material that I have read ... that persuades me that it was the intent of Parliament to give the service authority to engage the collection resources of the second party allies to intercept the private communications of Canadians.”• “It must be made clear, in any grant of a 30-08 warrant, that the warrant does not authorize the interception of the communications of a Canadian person by any foreign service on behalf of the service either directly or through the assistance of CSEC.”• “There must be no further suggestion in any reference to the use of second party assets by CSIS and CSEC, or their legal advisers, that it is being done under the authority of a (section) 21 warrant issued by this court.”
  • Forcese, meanwhile, raises some intriguing questions:• If Five Eyes assistance was not authorized, and CSEC and CSIS nevertheless sought it, are they still protected from Criminal Code, Part VI (invasion of privacy) culpability? Culpability, he writes, is only avoided where the intercept is lawfully authorized. If the parameters of the warrant were disregarded, does that vitiate the lawful access?• If CSEC and CSIS called on Five Eyes agencies to intercept communications, was the intercept still territorial, thus satisfying the international law concerns raised in the two warrant applications?“Outsourcing an international violation does not diminish state responsibility for that international violation. In a different context, that would be like asking bounty hunters to do your kidnapping of fugitives on the territory of a foreign state. Still a violation of international law.”CSIS has a choice, Forcese concludes: “Conduct extraterritorial spying without recourse to the courts, at risk of ultimately being called to account under domestic law, or honour the federal court’s construal of international law — and CSIS’s jurisdiction — and pull in its truly international surveillance operations, potentially blinding the country’s chief security intelligence agency.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Dec 13
     
    Canadian Security Intelligence Service is in politically explosive deep doo-doo. 
Paul Merrell

Bulk Collection Under Section 215 Has Ended… What's Next? | Just Security - 0 views

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surveillance state NSA-reform 215 bulk-collection EO-12333

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • The first (and thus far only) roll-back of post-9/11 surveillance authorities was implemented over the weekend: The National Security Agency shuttered its program for collecting and holding the metadata of Americans’ phone calls under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. While bulk collection under Section 215 has ended, the government can obtain access to this information under the procedures specified in the USA Freedom Act. Indeed, some experts have argued that the Agency likely has access to more metadata because its earlier dragnet didn’t cover cell phones or Internet calling. In addition, the metadata of calls made by an individual in the United States to someone overseas and vice versa can still be collected in bulk — this takes place abroad under Executive Order 12333. No doubt the NSA wishes that this was the end of the surveillance reform story and the Paris attacks initially gave them an opening. John Brennan, the Director of the CIA, implied that the attacks were somehow related to “hand wringing” about spying and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) introduced a bill to delay the shut down of the 215 program. Opponents of encryption were quick to say: “I told you so.”
  • But the facts that have emerged thus far tell a different story. It appears that much of the planning took place IRL (that’s “in real life” for those of you who don’t have teenagers). The attackers, several of whom were on law enforcement’s radar, communicated openly over the Internet. If France ever has a 9/11 Commission-type inquiry, it could well conclude that the Paris attacks were a failure of the intelligence agencies rather than a failure of intelligence authorities. Despite the passage of the USA Freedom Act, US surveillance authorities have remained largely intact. Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act — which is the basis of programs like PRISM and the NSA’s Upstream collection of information from Internet cables — sunsets in the summer of 2017. While it’s difficult to predict the political environment that far out, meaningful reform of Section 702 faces significant obstacles. Unlike the Section 215 program, which was clearly aimed at Americans, Section 702 is supposedly targeted at foreigners and only picks up information about Americans “incidentally.” The NSA has refused to provide an estimate of how many Americans’ information it collects under Section 702, despite repeated requests from lawmakers and most recently a large cohort of advocates. The Section 215 program was held illegal by two federal courts (here and here), but civil attempts to challenge Section 702 have run into standing barriers. Finally, while two review panels concluded that the Section 215 program provided little counterterrorism benefit (here and here), they found that the Section 702 program had been useful.
  • There is, nonetheless, some pressure to narrow the reach of Section 702. The recent decision by the European Court of Justice in the safe harbor case suggests that data flows between Europe and the US may be restricted unless the PRISM program is modified to protect the information of Europeans (see here, here, and here for discussion of the decision and reform options). Pressure from Internet companies whose business is suffering — estimates run to the tune of $35 to 180 billion — as a result of disclosures about NSA spying may also nudge lawmakers towards reform. One of the courts currently considering criminal cases which rely on evidence derived from Section 702 surveillance may hold the program unconstitutional either on the basis of the Fourth Amendment or Article III for the reasons set out in this Brennan Center report. A federal district court in Colorado recently rejected such a challenge, although as explained in Steve’s post, the decision did not seriously explore the issues. Further litigation in the European courts too could have an impact on the debate.
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  • The US intelligence community’s broadest surveillance authorities are enshrined in Executive Order 12333, which primarily covers the interception of electronic communications overseas. The Order authorizes the collection, retention, and dissemination of “foreign intelligence” information, which includes information “relating to the capabilities, intentions or activities of foreign powers, organizations or persons.” In other words, so long as they are operating outside the US, intelligence agencies are authorized to collect information about any foreign person — and, of course, any Americans with whom they communicate. The NSA has conceded that EO 12333 is the basis of most of its surveillance. While public information about these programs is limited, a few highlights give a sense of the breadth of EO 12333 operations: The NSA gathers information about every cell phone call made to, from, and within the Bahamas, Mexico, Kenya, the Philippines, and Afghanistan, and possibly other countries. A joint US-UK program tapped into the cables connecting internal Yahoo and Google networks to gather e-mail address books and contact lists from their customers. Another US-UK collaboration collected images from video chats among Yahoo users and possibly other webcam services. The NSA collects both the content and metadata of hundreds of millions of text messages from around the world. By tapping into the cables that connect global networks, the NSA has created a database of the location of hundreds of millions of mobile phones outside the US.
  • Given its scope, EO 12333 is clearly critical to those seeking serious surveillance reform. The path to reform is, however, less clear. There is no sunset provision that requires action by Congress and creates an opportunity for exposing privacy risks. Even in the unlikely event that Congress was inclined to intervene, it would have to address questions about the extent of its constitutional authority to regulate overseas surveillance. To the best of my knowledge, there is no litigation challenging EO 12333 and the government doesn’t give notice to criminal defendants when it uses evidence derived from surveillance under the order, so the likelihood of a court ruling is slim. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board is currently reviewing two programs under EO 12333, but it is anticipated that much of its report will be classified (although it has promised a less detailed unclassified version as well). While the short-term outlook for additional surveillance reform is challenging, from a longer-term perspective, the distinctions that our law makes between Americans and non-Americans and between domestic and foreign collection cannot stand indefinitely. If the Fourth Amendment is to meaningfully protect Americans’ privacy, the courts and Congress must come to grips with this reality.
Paul Merrell

U.S. gives big, secret push to Internet surveillance - CNET - 0 views

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surveillance state ISP-wiretap-immunity DHS NSA DoJ

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Senior Obama administration officials have secretly authorized the interception of communications carried on portions of networks operated by AT&T and other Internet service providers, a practice that might otherwise be illegal under federal wiretapping laws. The secret legal authorization from the Justice Department originally applied to a cybersecurity pilot project in which the military monitored defense contractors' Internet links. Since then, however, the program has been expanded by President Obama to cover all critical infrastructure sectors including energy, healthcare, and finance starting June 12. "The Justice Department is helping private companies evade federal wiretap laws," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which obtained over 1,000 pages of internal government documents and provided them to CNET this week. "Alarm bells should be going off." Those documents show the National Security Agency and the Defense Department were deeply involved in pressing for the secret legal authorization, with NSA director Keith Alexander participating in some of the discussions personally. Despite initial reservations, including from industry participants, Justice Department attorneys eventually signed off on the project.
  • The Justice Department agreed to grant legal immunity to the participating network providers in the form of what participants in the confidential discussions refer to as "2511 letters," a reference to the Wiretap Act codified at 18 USC 2511 in the federal statute books. The Wiretap Act limits the ability of Internet providers to eavesdrop on network traffic except when monitoring is a "necessary incident" to providing the service or it takes place with a user's "lawful consent." An industry representative told CNET the 2511 letters provided legal immunity to the providers by agreeing not to prosecute for criminal violations of the Wiretap Act. It's not clear how many 2511 letters were issued by the Justice Department. In 2011, Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn publicly disclosed the existence of the original project, called the DIB Cyber Pilot, which used login banners to inform network users that monitoring was taking place. In May 2012, the pilot was turned into an ongoing program -- broader but still voluntary -- by the name of Joint Cybersecurity Services Pilot, with the Department of Homeland Security becoming involved for the first time. It was renamed again to Enhanced Cybersecurity Services program in January, and is currently being expanded to all types of companies operating critical infrastructure.
  • Another e-mail message from a Justice Department attorney wondered: "Will the program cover all parts of the company network -- including say day care centers (as mentioned as a question in a [deputies committee meeting]) and what are the policy implications of this?" The deputies committee includes the deputy secretary of defense, the deputy director of national intelligence, the deputy attorney general, and the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "These agencies are clearly seeking authority to receive a large amount of information, including personal information, from private Internet networks," says EPIC staff attorney Amie Stepanovich, who filed a lawsuit against Homeland Security in March 2012 seeking documents relating to the program under the Freedom of Information Act. "If this program was broadly deployed, it would raise serious questions about government cybersecurity practices." In January, the Department of Homeland Security's privacy office published a privacy analysis (PDF) of the program saying that users of the networks of companies participating in the program will see "an electronic login banner [saying] information and data on the network may be monitored or disclosed to third parties, and/or that the network users' communications on the network are not private."
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  • Paul Rosenzweig, a former Homeland Security official and founder of Red Branch Consulting, compared the NSA and DOD asking the Justice Department for 2511 letters to the CIA asking the Justice Department for the so-called torture memos a decade ago. (They were written by Justice Department official John Yoo, who reached the controversial conclusion that waterboarding was not torture.) "If you think of it poorly, it's a CYA function," Rosenzweig says. "If you think well of it, it's an effort to secure advance authorization for an action that may not be clearly legal." A report (PDF) published last month by the Congressional Research Service, a non-partisan arm of Congress, says the executive branch likely does not have the legal authority to authorize more widespread monitoring of communications unless Congress rewrites the law. "Such an executive action would contravene current federal laws protecting electronic communications," the report says.
  • An internal Defense Department presentation cites as possible legal authority a classified presidential directive called NSPD 54 that President Bush signed in January 2008. Obama's own executive order , signed in February 2013, says Homeland Security must establish procedures to expand the data-sharing program "to all critical infrastructure sectors" by mid-June. Those are defined as any companies providing services that, if disrupted, would harm national economic security or "national public health or safety."
  • Paul Merrell on 03 Apr 14
     
    Article is from April 2013, before the Snowden disclosures. 
Gary Edwards

The 6 Grand Illusions That Keep Us Enslaved to the Matrix - 0 views

www.blacklistednews.com/...M.html

blacklistednews Grand-Illusions Banksters The-New-Feudalism New-World-Order

shared by Gary Edwards on 07 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Bansky, the revered and elusive revolutionary street artist, once commented: “People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.” – Banksy  Advertising is just the tip of the iceberg. When we look further we see that the overall organization of life is centered around the pursuit of illusions and automatic obedience to institutions and ideas which are not at all what they seem. We are in a very real sense enslaved. Many call this somewhat intangible feeling of oppression ‘the matrix,’ a system of total control that invades the mind, programming individuals to pattern themselves in accordance with a mainstream conformist version of reality, no matter how wicked it gets. The grandest of the illusions which keep us enslaved to the matrix, the ones that have so many of us still entranced, are outlined below for your consideration.
  • 1. The Illusion of Law, Order and Authority For so many of us, following the law is considered a moral obligation, and many of us gladly do so even though corruption, scandal, and wickedness repeatedly demonstrate that the law is plenty flexible for those who have the muscle to bend it. Police brutality and police criminality is rampant in the US, the courts favor the wealthy, and we can longer even lead our lives privately thanks to the intrusion of state surveillance. And all the while the illegal and immoral Orwellian permanent war rages on in the background of life, murdering and destroying whole nations and cultures. The social order is not what it seems, for it is entirely predicated on conformity, obedience and acquiescence which are enforced by fear of violence. History teaches us again and again that the law is just as often as not used as an instrument of oppression, social control and plunder, and any so-called authority in this regard is false, hypocritical, and unjust. When the law itself does not follow the law, there is no law, there is no order, and there is no justice. The pomp and trappings of authority are merely a concealment of the truth that the current world order is predicated on control, not consent.
  • 2. The Illusion of Prosperity and Happiness Adorning oneself in expensive clothes and trinkets, and amassing collections of material possessions that would be the envy of any 19th century monarch has become a substitute for genuine prosperity. Maintaining the illusion of prosperity, though, is critical to our economy as it is, because its foundation is built on consumption, fraud, credit and debt. The banking system itself has been engineered from the top down to create unlimited wealth for some while taxing the eternity out of the rest of us. True prosperity is a vibrant environment and an abundance of health, happiness, love, and relationships. As more people come to perceive material goods as the form of self-identification in this culture, we slip farther and farther away from the experience of true prosperity.
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  • 3. The Illusion of Choice and Freedom Read between the lines and look at the fine print, we are not free, not by any intelligent standard. Freedom is about having choice, yet in today’s world, choice has come to mean a selection between available options, always from within the confines of a corrupt legal and taxation system and within the boundaries of culturally accepted and enforced norms. Just look no further than the phony institution of modern democracy to find a shining example of false choices appearing real. Two entrenched, corrupt, archaic political parties are paraded as the pride and hope of the nation, yet third party and independent voices are intentionally blocked, ridiculed and plowed under. The illusion of choice and freedom is a powerful oppressor because it fools us into accepting chains and short leashes as though they were the hallmarks of liberty. Multiple choice is different than freedom, it is easy servitude.
  • 4. The Illusion of Truth Truth has become a touchy subject in our culture, and we’ve been programmed to believe that ‘the‘ truth comes from the demigods of media, celebrity, and government. If the TV declares something to be true, then we are heretics to believe otherwise. In order to maintain order, the powers that be depend our acquiescence to their version of the truth. While independent thinkers and journalists continually blow holes in the official versions of reality, the illusion of truth is so very powerful that it takes a serious personal upheaval to shun the cognitive dissonance needed to function in a society that openly chases false realities.
  • 5. The Illusion of Time They say that time is money, but this is a lie. Time is your life. Your life is an ever-evolving manifestation of the now. Looking beyond the five sense world, where we have been trained to move in accordance with the clock and the calendar, we find that the spirit is eternal, and that the each individual soul is part of this eternity. The big deception here is the reinforcement of the idea that the present moment is of little to no value, that the past is something we cannot undo or ever forget, and that the future is intrinsically more important than both the past and the present. This carries our attention away from what is actually happening right now and directs it toward the future. Once completely focused on what is to come rather than what is, we are easy prey to advertisers and fear-pimps who muddy our vision of the future with every possible worry and concern imaginable. We are happiest when life doesn’t box us in, when spontaneity and randomness gives us the chance to find out more about ourselves. Forfeiting the present moment in order to fantasize about the future is a trap. The immense, timeless moments of spiritual joy that are found in quiet meditation are proof that time is a construct of the mind of humankind, and not necessarily mandatory for the human experience. If time is money, then life can be measured in dollars. When dollars are worth less, so is life. This is total deception, because life is, in truth, absolutely priceless.
  • 6. The Illusion of Separateness On a strategic level, the tactic of divide and conquer is standard operating procedure for authoritarians and invading armies, but the illusion of separateness runs even deeper than this. We are programmed to believe that as individuals we are in competition with everyone and everything around us, including our neighbors and even mother nature. Us vs. them to the extreme. This flatly denies the truth that life on this planet is infinitely inter-connected. Without clean air, clean water, healthy soil, and a vibrant global sense of community we cannot survive here. While the illusion of separateness comforts us by gratifying the ego and and offering a sense of control, in reality it only serves to enslave and isolate us.
  • Conclusion The grand illusions mentioned here have been staged before us as a campaign to encourage blind acquiescence to the machinations of the matrix. In an attempt to dis-empower us, they demand our conformity and obedience, but we must not forget that all of this is merely an elaborate sales pitch. They can’t sell what we don’t care to buy.
  • Gary Edwards on 07 Jun 15
     
    "SOURCE: SIGMUND FRAUD, WAKING TIMES "In prison, illusions can offer comfort." - Nelson Mandela For a magician to fool his audience his deceit must go unseen, and to this end he crafts an illusion to avert attention from reality. While the audience is entranced, the deceptive act is committed, and for the fool, reality then becomes inexplicably built upon on a lie. That is, until the fool wakes up and recognizes the truth in the fact that he has been duped. Maintaining the suspension of disbelief in the illusion, however, is often more comforting than acknowledging the magician's secrets. We live in a world of illusion. So many of the concerns that occupy the mind and the tasks that fill the calendar arise from planted impulses to become someone or something that we are not. This is no accident. As we are indoctrinated into this authoritarian-corporate-consumer culture that now dominates the human race, we are trained that certain aspects of our society are untouchable truths, and that particular ways of being and behaving are preferred.  Psychopaths disempower people in this way. They blind us with never ceasing barrages of suggestions and absolutes that are aimed at shattering self-confidence and confidence in the future.  "
Paul Merrell

Where global solutions are shaped for you | News & Media | HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL OPENS S... - 0 views

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war & peace Palestine Israel Gaza UN-Human-Rights-Council

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Kyung-wha Kang, Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, stated that at least 18 medical facilities, including five UNRWA health clinics, had been hit by airstrikes and shelling since the beginning of the fighting.  The seven-year blockade had destroyed Gaza’s economy, with high unemployment rates and growing dependence on international assistance.  The United Nations was feeding 67 per cent of the population.  The international community and the parties to the conflict had to live up to their obligations.  Lance Bartholomeusz, Director of Legal Affairs of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, said that by yesterday evening, 22 July, approximately 118,000 Palestinians had sought refuge in 77 UNRWA schools.  That was about 6 per cent of the population of Gaza and double the peak in UNRWA shelters during the 2008 to 2009 conflict.  The conflict had not spared UNRWA premises.  Makarim Wibisono, Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, speaking on behalf of the Coordination Committee of the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council, said in addition to at least 599 Palestinians killed, the destruction of numerous houses had left several thousand families homeless.  At the same time, the right of the Palestinian people to resist occupation could not justify the launching of thousands of rockets and mortars directed against Israeli civilians. 
  • NAVI PILLAY, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said since Israel announced its military operation “Protective Edge” on 7 July, Gaza had been subjected to daily intensive bombardment from the air, land and sea, employing well over 2,100 air strikes alone.  The hostilities had resulted in the deaths of more than 600 Palestinians, including at least 147 children and 74 women.  As in the two previous crises in 2009 and 2012, it was innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip, including children, women, the elderly and persons with disabilities, who suffered the most.  According to preliminary United Nations figures, around 74 per cent of those killed so far were civilians, and thousands more had been injured.  Hundreds of homes and other civilian buildings, such as schools, had been destroyed or severely damaged in Gaza, and more than 140,000 Palestinians had been displaced.  Two Israeli civilians had also lost their lives and between 17 and 32 others had been reported injured as a result of rockets and other projectiles fired from Gaza, and 27 Israeli soldiers had been killed during military operations in Gaza.  The indiscriminate firing by Hamas and other armed groups of more than 2,900 rockets and mortars from Gaza continued to endanger the lives of civilians in Israel, and Ms. Pillay once again condemned such indiscriminate attacks.  It was unacceptable to locate military assets in densely populated areas or to launch attacks from such areas.  However, international law was clear - the actions of one party did not absolve the other party of the need to respect its obligations under international law.
  • he also warned that the current situation in Gaza overshadowed the backdrop of heightened tensions in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem and expressed concern about a significant rise in incitement to violence against Palestinians, including through social media.  Only those responsible for criminal acts could legitimately be punished, she said, individuals should not be subject to collective penalties. 
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  • LANCE BARTHOLOMEUSZ, Acting Director of Legal Affairs, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA), said UNRWA was deeply alarmed and affected by the escalation of violence in the Gaza Strip and the devastating human and physical toll it was taking on civilians, including Palestine refugees.  Far too many lives were being lost and the traumas resulting from the military operations would mark the population for years to come.  Among ordinary Palestinians there was a profound crisis of confidence in the ability of international law and international mechanisms to protect civilians, and to prevent and address violations of international law.  Because of military operations, and because over 40 per cent of Gaza’s territory was affected by Israel evacuation warnings or declarations of “no-go zones”, thousands of people continued to flee to shelters run by UNRWA and by partners.  By yesterday evening, 22 July, approximately 118,000 Palestinians had sought refuge in 77 UNRWA schools.  That was about 6 per cent of the population of Gaza and double the peak in UNRWA shelters during the 2008 to 2009 conflict.
  • The conflict had not spared UNRWA premises, 77 of which had been damaged by air raids and other fire, which was totally unacceptable.  All parties to the conflict must respect at all times the neutrality and inviolability of UNRWA’s premises.  The situation of the population of Gaza and of Palestine Refugees in Gaza had become completely unsustainable.  Israel’s illegal blockade had deepened poverty levels and Gaza's aquifer would be entirely contaminated in the next three to four years making the Strip essentially unliveable.  Today, these indicators paled in comparison to the intensity of the bombardments, fighting and the immediate fears for security and survival. 
Paul Merrell

The Latest European Court of Human Rights Ruling on Accountability for Torture | Just S... - 0 views

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war & peace CIA rendition torture ECHR Nasr

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • In another important decision on European participation in the US war on terrorism, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) issued a judgment late last month against Italy for its role in the extraordinary rendition of Egyptian cleric Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr, better known as Abu Omar. (An English-language summary of ruling is here; the full decision, presently available only in French, is here.) The ruling not only represents a further contribution to the Strasbourg Court’s growing accountability jurisprudence, but also highlights the United States’ own failure to provide any redress to victims of the torture program that it primarily created and operated. The ECtHR’s decision in Nasr v. Italy concerns one of the most notorious instances of extraordinary rendition (i.e., the extrajudicial transfer of an individual to another country for purposes of abusive interrogation). In 2003, Nasr, who had been granted political asylum in Italy, was abducted in broad daylight from a street in Milan and taken to Aviano air base, which is operated by the US Air Force. Nasr was subsequently taken, by way of the US’s Ramstein air base in Germany, to Cairo where he was interrogated by Egyptian intelligence services. Egyptian authorities held Nasr in secret for more than a year and subjected him to repeated torture before releasing him in April 2004. Approximately 20 days after his release — and after submitting a statement to Milan’s public prosecutor describing his abuse — Nasr was rearrested and detained without charges. He was released in 2007, but prohibited from leaving Egypt.
  • The ECtHR ruling centers on Italy’s role in Nasr’s abduction in Milan, his rendition to Egypt where he faced a real risk of abuse, and its subsequent failure to conduct an effective domestic investigation or to provide any redress. The ECtHR found Italy liable for multiple violations of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), including article 3 (the prohibition on inhuman or degrading treatment), article 5 (the right to liberty and security), and article 13 (the right to an adequate remedy). It ordered Italy to pay €70,000 to Nasr and €15,000 to his wife, Nabila Ghali, for the suffering and anguish caused by her husband’s enforced disappearance. The Milan public prosecutor had previously investigated and prosecuted 25 CIA officers, including the agency’s Milan station chief, Robert Seldon Lady, and seven Italian military intelligence officers, for aiding and abetting in Nasr’s abduction and rendition. The United States strenuously opposed the prosecution, warning that it would harm US-Italian relations, and the Italian government successfully challenged much of the evidence on the grounds it could jeopardize national security. The trial court convicted 22 CIA agents in absentia and gave them prison sentences of between six to nine years; a Milan appeals court upheld the convictions and overturned the acquittals of the other three US defendants. Italy’s highest court, however, overturned the conviction of five of the Italian military intelligence agents based on state secrecy grounds. The Italian government has refused to seek the extradition of the convicted US nationals. (For more details, Human Rights Watch has an excellent summary of the proceedings in Italy here.)
  • The ECtHR’s ruling in Nasr strengthens accountability by reinforcing state responsibility for participation in abuses committed during the war on terrorism. It builds on the Strasbourg Court’s prior decisions in El-Masri v. Macedonia and Al-Nashiri v. Poland/Husayn (Abu Zubaydah) v. Poland, which held Macedonia and Poland, respectively, liable for their role in CIA torture and rendition, including (in the case of Poland) for hosting a CIA black site. Nasr, together with El-Masri and al-Nashiri/Husayn, should help discourage a state’s future participation in cross-border counterterrorism operations conducted in flagrant violation of human rights guarantees. While the deterrent value of legal judgments may be uncertain, the recent line of Strasbourg Court decisions raises the costs of aiding and abetting illegal operations, even in the national security context.
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  • Nasr also advances the jurisprudence surrounding a state’s duty to conduct an effective domestic investigation into torture. The Strasbourg Court noted that Italian courts had conducted a detailed investigation and that the evidence disregarded by Italy’s highest court on grounds of state secrecy had been sufficient to convict the five Italian military intelligence defendants. It further observed that because the evidence inculpating those defendants had been widely available in the press and on the Internet, the court’s invocation of state secrecy doctrine was not only unpersuasive, but designed to grant impunity to the defendants. Further, the Strasbourg Court noted that the Italian government had never sought the extradition of the convicted CIA agents. As result, the court ruled that despite the efforts of Italian investigators and judges, which had identified the responsible individuals and secured their convictions, the domestic proceedings failed to satisfy the procedural requirements of article 3 of the European Convention (prohibiting torture and other ill-treatment), due to the actions of the executive. This ruling is important because it imposes liability not only where a state takes no steps towards a genuine domestic investigation and prosecution (as in El-Masri and Al-Nashiri/Husayn), but also where efforts by a state’s judges and prosecutors are thwarted in the name of state secrecy.
  • The ECtHR’s rulings on the CIA torture program also highlight the continued absence of accountability in the United States. The US has failed both to conduct an effective criminal investigation of those most responsible for CIA torture and to provide any remedies to victims. In fact, the Obama administration has vigorously opposed the latter at every turn, invoking the same sweeping state secrecy doctrines the ECtHR rejected in El-Masri and Nasr. These rulings will likely catalyze future litigation before the Strasbourg Court and in European domestic courts as well. (Recent actions filed against Germany for its participation in US targeted killings through use of the Ramstein Air Base provide one example of such litigation.) While the ECtHR’s rulings may not spur further efforts in the United States, they reinforce the perception of the United States as an outlier on the important question of accountability for human rights violations.
Paul Merrell

Homan Square revealed: how Chicago police 'disappeared' 7,000 people | US news | The Gu... - 0 views

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police Chicago-PD Homan stats

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  • Police “disappeared” more than 7,000 people at an off-the-books interrogation warehouse in Chicago, nearly twice as many detentions as previously disclosed, the Guardian can now reveal.
  • From August 2004 to June 2015, nearly 6,000 of those held at the facility were black, which represents more than twice the proportion of the city’s population. But only 68 of those held were allowed access to attorneys or a public notice of their whereabouts, internal police records show. The new disclosures, the result of an ongoing Guardian transparency lawsuit and investigation, provide the most detailed, full-scale portrait yet of the truth about Homan Square, a secretive facility that Chicago police have described as little more than a low-level narcotics crime outpost where the mayor has said police “follow all the rules”. The police portrayals contrast sharply with those of Homan Square detainees and their lawyers, who insist that “if this could happen to someone, it could happen to anyone”. A 30-year-old man named Jose, for example, was one of the few detainees with an attorney present when he surrendered to police. He said officers at the warehouse questioned him even after his lawyer specifically told them he would not speak.
  • “The Fillmore and Homan boys,” Jose said, referring to police and the facility’s cross streets, “don’t play by the rules.” According to an analysis of data disclosed to the Guardian in late September, police allowed lawyers access to Homan Square for only 0.94% of the 7,185 arrests logged over nearly 11 years. That percentage aligns with Chicago police’s broader practice of providing minimal access to attorneys during the crucial early interrogation stage, when an arrestee’s constitutional rights against self-incrimination are most vulnerable. But Homan Square is unlike Chicago police precinct houses, according to lawyers who described a “find-your-client game” and experts who reviewed data from the latest tranche of arrestee records obtained by the Guardian.
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  • The narcotics, vice and anti-gang units operating out of Homan Square, on Chicago’s west side, take arrestees to the nondescript warehouse from all over the city: police data obtained by the Guardian and mapped against the city grid show that 53% of disclosed arrestees come from more than 2.5 miles away from the warehouse. No contemporaneous public record of someone’s presence at Homan Square is known to exist. Nor are any booking records generated at Homan Square, as confirmed by a sworn deposition of a police researcher in late September, further preventing relatives or attorneys from finding someone taken there.
  • But those documents do not tell the entire story of Homan Square. Chicago police have not disclosed any figures at all on people who were detained at Homan Square but never ultimately charged. Nor has it released any information about detentions or arrests before September 2004, claiming that information is burdensome to produce because it is not digital. (Chicago purchased the warehouse in 1995.) “It’s hard to believe that 7,185 arrests is an accurate number of arrestees at Homan Square,” said the University of Chicago’s Futterman. “Even if it were true that less than 1% of Homan arrestees were given access to counsel, that would be abhorrent in and of itself.”
  • 11.8% of detainees in the Homan Square logs were Hispanic, compared with 28.9% of the population. 5.5% of the detainees were white, compared with 31.7% of the population. Of the 68 people who Chicago police claim had access to counsel at Homan Square, however, 45% were black, 26% were Hispanic and another 26% were white.
  • Despite the lack of booking and minimal attorney access at Homan Square, it is not a facility for detaining and interrogating the most violent of Chicago’s criminals. Drug possession charges were eventually levied in 5,386 of the disclosed Homan Square arrests, or 74.9%; heroin accounted for 35.4% of those, with marijuana next at 22.3%. The facility’s use by police has intensified in recent years. Nearly 65% of documented Homan Square arrests since August 2004 took place in the five years since Rahm Emanuel, formerly Barack Obama’s top aide, became mayor. (The Guardian has filed a Foia request with Emanuel’s office to disclose the extent of its involvement in Homan Square.) The 68 documented attorney visits are actually slightly higher, statistically speaking, than the extremely minimal legal access Chicago police provide suspects in custody during the initial stages of their arrest. The 2014 citywide total at declared police stations, according to First Defense Legal Aid, was 0.3%. On face value, the lawyer visit rate at Homan Square, according to the newly disclosed documents, was 0.9% over nearly 11 years.
  • Twenty-two people have told the Guardian that Chicago police kept them at Homan Square for hours and even days. They describe pressure from officers to become informants, and all but two – both white – have said the police denied them phone calls to alert relatives or attorneys of their whereabouts. Their accounts point to violations of police directives, which say police must “complete the booking process” regardless of their interest in interrogating a suspect and must also “allow the arrestee to make a reasonable number of telephone calls to an attorney, family member or friend”, usually within “the first hour” of detention. The most recent disclosure of Homan Square data provides the scale behind those accounts: the demographic trends within the 7,185 disclosed arrests at the warehouse are now far more vast than what the Guardian reported in August after launching the transparency lawsuit – but are consistently disproportionate in terms of race and constitutional access to legal counsel. 82.2% of people detained at Homan Square were black, compared with 32.9% of the Chicago population.
  • Chicago attorneys say they are not routinely turned away from police precinct houses, as they are at Homan Square. The warehouse is also unique in not generating public records of someone’s detention there, permitting police to effectively hide detainees from their attorneys. “Try finding a phone number for Homan to see if anyone’s there. You can’t, ever,” said Gaeger. “If you’re laboring under the assumption that your client’s at Homan, there really isn’t much you can do as a lawyer. You’re shut out. It’s guarded like a military installation.”
  • “Often,” Futterman continued, “prisoners aren’t entered into the central booking system until they’re being processed – which doesn’t occur at Homan Square. They’re supposed to begin that processing right away, under CPD procedures, and at Homan Square the reality is, that isn’t happening or is happening sporadically and inconsistently, which leads to the whole find-your-client game.”
  • According to police, when they took a woman the Guardian will identify as Chevoughn to Homan Square in May 2007 regarding a theft, they allowed her attorney to see her. Chevoughn says that never happened. “I was there a very long time, maybe eight to 10 hours,” said Chevoughn, who remembered being “petrified”, particularly as police questioned her in what she calls a “cage”. “I went to Harrison and Kedzie,” Chevoughn said, referring to the cross streets of central booking. “That’s where I slept. It’s where they did fingerprinting, all that crap. That’s when my attorney came.”
  • Police arrested another man, whom the Guardian will call Anthony, in 2006 on charges of starting a garbage fire, and moved him to Homan Square. Police identified him as receiving an attorney there. But Anthony told the Guardian: “That’s not true.”
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Oct 15
     
    It's good to see The Guardian following through on this story.
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