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President George Bush is presiding over the most secretive administration in 'living memory', according to American civil rights groups and congressmen. Critics accuse him of orchestrating an unprecedented clampdown on freedom of information and the press. This has resulted in a dramatic increase in documents and proceedings being classified secret and an overall shutdown of the free flow of information over the government's political and legal conduct. They are also concerned over what they see as alarming restrictions on the Freedom of Information Act.The article recounts a multitude of specifics to support the charge.
The Better Rhetor has begun a campaign to dump Attorney General John Ashcroft. He's not coming from a vindicative point of view, but from a policy stance.
We have written post after post about how John Ashcroft is eviscerating our constitutional rights and civil liberties--with the support of Bush. For a list of over 40 of our posts critical of Ashcroft, go here.
This came in on the AP Wire this afternoon:
"The government wants detailed information about every person who comes to or leaves the country by plane or boat, and for the first time will require U.S. citizens to fill out forms detailing their comings and goings. Under rules proposed Friday, the information would be sent electronically to the government for matching against security databases."
See. first they go after the "other people," then they come for us.
Maybe we are hypersensitive, since the article reports that the ACLU is not concerned about the new rules. "The American Civil Liberties Union, which has criticized many of the administration's anti-terrorism information-gathering efforts, said these rules should not impinge on people's privacy. "We don't see a huge downside," said spokeswoman Emily Whitfield."
But we don't see why the Government should be able to enter where we've been and where we are going into a database. What's next? Will they check it against your income tax returns to see if you reported enough income to justify the travel? Will they use the data to begin an investigation of who you met with overseas?
* Holding citizens indefinitely without access to the courts or counsel.
- Monitoring library withdrawals and Internet communications.
- Taping attorney-client communications.
- Attempting to create a national reporting system for citizens to monitor one another in their day-to-day activities.
- Developing a massive computer system to monitor every purchase by every citizen, from hospital bills to gasoline.
- Establishing a huge surveillance system, including the expansion of searches ordered by a secret court without satisfying the probable cause standards of the Constitution.
- Claiming the right to create a military tribunal system to try and execute suspects without applying the Constitution or federal laws.
- Assisting private organizations in creating the foundation for a national identification card that could easily become a type of internal passport for citizens.
- Recommending state laws (already adopted in many states) that give governors virtual dictatorial control after they unilaterally declare emergencies because of "potential" health threats.
- Expanding the use of the military in domestic law enforcement.
- Endorsing the broad use of assassination as an alternative to capture, including the possible assassination of citizens.
- Refusing to apply the Geneva Convention and then later agreeing to apply only part of it. Most recently, it was disclosed that the U.S. created a facility in Afghanistan where suspects reportedly had been tortured by U.S. officials or sent to surrogate nations for more aggressive torture.
Don't miss A Look Back at 2003--a Tom Meyer cartoon too large to reprint here, sent to us by Pete Karas of the Progressive Racine Blog.
"As we reach the end of 2002, the state of important liberties around the world appears to be degenerating rapidly, particularly in the area of privacy concerns."Link via Buzzflash"If one of Osama bin Laden's goals, as has been reported, was to trigger crackdowns against freedoms by Western governments, he got the ball rolling quite effectively on Sept. 11, 2001."
"The United States now imprisons its own citizens incommunicado, indefinitely and without lawyers or trials, for the duration of what we're told is an essentially permanent state of war."
"In the good old days of the iron curtain, we condemned other countries for such actions, calling them human rights violations. Now some of those same nations are our partners of convenience in the war on terror, and our own government has enthusiastically embraced our former adversaries' old tactics."
Virginia is to begin collecting DNA samples today from anyone charged with a violent felony, launching the most aggressive effort in the country to catalogue genetic samples of people not yet convicted of crimes.
Under a law passed last year, a saliva or tissue sample is to be taken from anyone arrested and charged with such crimes as murder, rape, assault and burglary. The DNA profiles of those arrested will be entered into the state's DNA database -- along with the profiles of convicted felons -- for comparison with evidence gathered at crime scenes. If the person is acquitted or the charge is dismissed by a judge, the data will be expunged.
This is wrong and should be opposed before it spreads to other states. People who merely have been arrested and charged are not guilty in the eyes of the law. It is a violation of their civil liberties to require them to submit to DNA testing for inclusion in a databank before they have been convicted.
The Virginia law says they can petition the court to delete their DNA sample from the database if they are acquitted or the charge is dismissed. Why should the onus be on them to move for the deletion? How many can afford lawyers to figure out who to petition and how? And what about the cases that don't end with conviction, acquittal or dismissal on the charged count?
"James Connell, a Fairfax defense lawyer, said yesterday that he is concerned that the DNA profiles could remain in the system despite the lack of a conviction.
"There are several ways that a person can go to court and not be convicted but not have a dismissal or an acquittal," Connell said. For example, he said, prosecutors can choose to not pursue a charge. That would not be entered into the computers as a dismissal by a judge."
"Ira Robbins, a criminal law professor at American University, said he predicts a flood of legal challenges to the law. "To collect DNA too early in the process runs afoul of civil liberties in ways that I think are fundamentally unfair," Robbins said. "It makes a lot of sense to expand DNA databanks, but not in this way. We're talking about people who are arrested and not convicted."
A balloon performer with two misdemeanor convictions for sexually abusing children over 20 years ago cannot be refused a permit to perform for donations at Playland, an amusement park in Rye, New York, according to an order issued on December 23 by a federal judge in Westchester County. The full opinion, dated December 23, 2002 is on Lexis (fee based) at 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24569.
We'll be debating the decision on the O'Reilly Factor on Fox News tonight with Cal Thomas, who is guest-hosting for Bill O'Reilly. Cal doesn't like the decision which is based on First Amendment considerations, whereas we think the decision is appropriate and correct.
"Three Silicon Valley professionals, among hundreds of men arrested statewide last week when they showed up at immigration offices to be fingerprinted and photographed as part of a new homeland security program, were released from a San Diego jail for a Christmas Eve family reunion. "
"They were shackled with 10 other Bay Area men and detained in San Diego in what they described as a packed immigration detention center, about 12 men to a cell. The men said that they had slept little during two days at the center, where they were processed and interviewed, but that conditions had improved when they were transferred to a roomier jail."
"It was horrifying," Ziazadeh said Tuesday after he and the other two men landed at Mineta San Jose International Airport. "
They also said the INS officials and prison guards were both rough and rude. Here are some of the details and our thoughts on the class action lawsuit filed against the INS and Justice by groups reresenting the arrestees.
A class action has been filed in federal court in Los Angeles by Arab and Muslim groups against Ashcroft and the INS over last week's arrest and detention of over 1,000 Middle-Eastern men who went to register in accordance with a new government regulation.
"Local immigration lawyers estimated last week that 1,000 men and boys were detained in standing-room-only centers and forced to sleep on concrete floors, under a system designed to track potential terrorists but that instead locked up many caught in the lengthy process for obtaining permanent residence.
The lead attorney for the detainees is Peter Schey, president of the Los Angeles-based Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law. Schey said mass registration was irrational because "no undocumented terrorist will come forward."
Schey said the lawsuit was not about resisting registration but about the way it was being implemented. "The program is being used as a scam to lure people into INS offices supposedly to register, when what they really face is arrest, detention and even deportation despite their pending petitions to legalize their status which the INS refuses to process," he said."
Since the new registration requirement applies to males age 16 and older, several teens were among those locked up on visa issues. We wrote about them here, and our problems with the registration program and the mass arrests here.
What's next? Rounding non-Americans up and putting them into camps? Remember all those new beds the Government is building at Guantamo? Who's going to fill them? The Government's answer is "enemy-combatants." But remember, under Bush, Ashcroft and Rumsfeld's plan, they get to choose who the enemy combatents are, they get to hold them in secret without access to lawyers and they claim their decisions are not reviewable by our courts.
At what point will people join to speak out against this unprecedented executive power grab? The class action suit by Muslim and Arab Americans is a good first step, but we need the American public to join behind them and offer support. Today it's their liberty rights being impinged upon. Next year it could be your's or your child's. Then what?
Update: Matt Yglesias on this topic today:
"Everyone ought to consider the fact that there's a quite real chance that in the not-too-distant future we'll see another terrorist attack with thousands of casualties. Maybe next time around the killers will know not to blow up an office building until late enough in the day that it's full. Or maybe there'll be a WMD attack killing not thousands, but tens or even hundreds of thousands."
"I bring this up both to remind people that the government is getting paranoid about security with good reason, but also to remind you that the level of terrorism-related panic could get much higher in the future and with it could come popular support for really and truly repressive measures. A person's going to have no standing whatsoever to make the case against something like, say, the wholesale internment of America's Arab population if he's been spending the past two years running around screaming "the sky is falling" every time the government says Arab immigrants are worthy of more scrutiny than other immigrants."
Sixteen-year-old Hossein Ahmadi is an Iranian-born British citizen who lives with his mother in Encino, Calif. Ahmadi said he was working on his literature homework while waiting to speak to an immigration official but 30 minutes later he was led away in handcuffs as his 7-month pregnant mother watched."They sat me in a tank with three other boys and I was the only INS case," said Ahmadi. "I asked them what they were doing in there. One of them had done a burglary and one of them had stabbed someone. Just being among them, I felt like a criminal."
"I thought this was the place of freedom — a place where I could come and become someone. But the last couple of days, my mind has really changed about the United States," said [Shawn] Eliaspoor, who was 6 when his family moved to Southern California from Iran.
Eliaspoor's changed outlook follows his detention by Immigration and Naturalization Service officials in Los Angeles last week. It's an attitude that surprises those who view Eliaspoor as a typical 18-year-old American.
Hal Kay, 22, was born in Iran, but is a Canadian citizen who has lived in the United States since age 16. Also held last week by the INS, he also feels betrayed by the government of the country he considers home. "I really didn't know the INS was this backward. It felt like in America there are situations where it's practically like it is in Iran," Kay said.
Like hundreds of other Middle Eastern males, Eliaspoor, Kay and Ahmadi lined up at a federal building in Los Angeles to register voluntarily for a new INS database to track foreigners who enter and leave the country on tourist, business and student visas. Dec. 16 was the deadline for male visa holders ages 16 and older from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria.
Those who showed up to register on the deadline day expected to be released within a few hours. Instead, according to INS figures, they were among 400 men arrested. Most of them were born in Iran.
"I thought I was doing something good for myself," said Eliaspoor. "Something for the country. But they tricked me."
Bob at Politics in the Zeros reports that the mass INS arrests are not just happening in LA, but in Houston and Cleveland as well. He's got the whole story.
The ACLU says that Ashcroft's immigrant registration program is merely a pretext for mass detentions. Many of the arrested are not being allowed calls to lawyers and lawyers are being refused information on their client's whereabouts."Given the evidence, there is no alarmism in saying this is a round-up," said Lucas Guttentag, Director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. "Attorney General Ashcroft is using the immigrant registration program to lock up people who already have provided extensive information as part of their green card applications," he said. "Therefore the purpose is clearly not to get information but rather to selectively arrest, detain and deport Middle Eastern and Muslim men in the United States."
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