"A massive database that the government will use to monitor every purchase made by every American citizen is a necessary tool in the war on terror, the Pentagon said Wednesday."

The database, which is viewed by the Pentagon as another "tool" in the war on terror, will look for "telltale signs of suspicious consumer behavior."

Examples cited were: "sudden and large cash withdrawals, one-way air or rail travel, rental car transactions and purchases of firearms, chemicals or agents that could be used to produce biological or chemical weapons."

The program will also "combine consumer information with visa records, passports, arrest records or reports of suspicious activity given to law enforcement or intelligence services."

We just came across this very descriptive Associated Press article on how the FBI has been conducting secret FISA searches up until now.

Ashcroft has promised, and we believe him, that far more of these clandestine searches will be coming in the future, now the Government doesn't need to show probable cause that we've committed a crime or even allege that we are involved in terrorist activity to bypass the federal courts and get a FISA court order to spy on us.

Some things the FBI has done in the past:

"Broken into homes, offices, hotel rooms and automobiles. Copied private computer files. Installed hidden cameras. Listened with microphones in one couple's bedroom for more than a year. Rummaged through luggage. Eavesdropped on telephone conversations.... pried into safe deposit boxes, watched from afar with video cameras and binoculars and intercepted e-mails. They have planted microphones, computer bugs and other high-tech tracking devices."

We can only wonder what new techniques the clever feds will come up with now that they know they have practically unbridled power to snoop on all of us.

Earlier this month we complained about the raid on a fundraising benefit in Racine, Wisconsin where scores of people were arrested and fined outrageous amounts because techno music was played at the event. More details of the Racine case are at Haunted House Party.

Today, via Instapundit , we learn a grand jury is contemplating false arrest charges against police for their conduct in what has become known as the "K-Mart Sweep" in Houston.

The mass arrests in the K-Mart sweep resulted in lawsuits filed against the city of Houston and the suspension of 13 police supervisors . More than 270 people were arrested in the parking lot on trespass and curfew charges that have since been dismissed. The Houston Police Chief was indicted for aggravated perjury and has resigned pending the outcome of his case.

Here's an interesting twist:

"The police union expressed concern that the grand jury reviewing the case was impaneled only two weeks ago. "We wanted a very seasoned grand jury to hear this," [Union president] Marticiuc said."

Maybe we should start filing motions to dismiss on behalf of our clients on the grounds that an "unseasoned grand jury" returned the Indictment, and that had an experienced grand jury deliberated on the case, our clients wouldn't have been charged.

Right.

In the meantime, we hope the grand jury takes a hard look at whoever authorized the mass arrests and takes appropriate action--and that the authorities in Racine do the same there.

A New York Times editorial today entitled A Green Light to Spy nicely makes the case against the FISA Appeals Court ruling allowing expanded wiretapping powers:

"The court's sessions are held in secret, and the government is the only party allowed to appear before it. The members of the court are hand-picked by Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Ignoring the diversity of views on the federal bench, he selected three judges appointed by President Ronald Reagan. The combination of one-sided arguments and one-sided judges hardly instills confidence in the court's decisions."

"More disturbing, though, is the court's substantive decision and the way the Justice Department is interpreting it. The decision gives the government a green light to remove the separation that has long existed between officials conducting surveillance on suspected foreign agents and criminal prosecutors investigating crimes. Attorney General John Ashcroft has announced that he intends to use it to sharply increase the number of domestic wiretaps, and that he will add lawyers at the F.B.I. and at federal prosecutors' offices around the country to hurry the process along."

"The Supreme Court should step in to restore the lower court's ruling, and Congress should redraft its statutes to clear up any confusion about what the law requires. One of the biggest challenges the nation faces is fighting foreign enemies without sacrificing civil liberties at home. Yesterday's ruling failed to rise to that challenge."

We also recommend The United States of Surveillance by the ACLU: "As of today the Attorney General can suspend the ordinary requirements of the Fourth Amendment in order to listen in on phone calls, read e-mails, and conduct secret searches of Americans' homes and offices."

The opinion, available here , is 54 pages long. Excerpts can be read here.

Thirty civil rights groups today wrote an open letter to the Senate urging Senators Thomas Daschle (D-SD) and Trent Lott (R-MS) to amend the Homeland Security Act to stop further development of the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program.

The letter says, in part:

"According to DARPA's own documents, TIA will collect and mine vast amounts of information on the American public, including telephone records, bank records, medical records, and educational and travel data. TIA also proposes to connect with a massive system of biometric identification."

"There are no systems of oversight or accountability contemplated in the TIA project. DARPA itself has resisted lawful requests for information about the program pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act."

"Newspapers across the country have blasted the Department of Defense surveillance system. The New York Times said today that "Congress should shut down the program pending a thorough investigation." Earlier the Washington Post wrote, "the defense secretary should appoint an outside committee to oversee it before it proceeds."

For more, check out EPIC's Total Information Awareness Page.

Cambridge, MA…….The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University (CRP) is launching its new website today. We just perused it--it has a great look and some valuable resources. We'll be adding it to the crime policy page of TalkLeft.

"CRP will utilize this new website to help strengthen our network of researchers, lawyers, advocates, educators, and journalists who share our commitment to social justice. The new site improves our ability to disseminate research, alerts, event information, and civil rights news and updates quickly and more broadly to our partners, journalists, and the general public."

The New York Times rips Admiral John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness program in an editorial Monday titled A Snooper's Dream.

The program, invented by John Poindexter, a rear admiral with a less than sterling record, would create a huge national database of all our personal records, from banking to credit card purchases and more. Poindexter justifies the program as a national security enhancement. The Times nails it for what is is: an assault on civil liberties.

"Total Information Awareness (T.I.A.) aims to use the vast networking powers of the computer to "mine" huge amounts of information about people and thus help investigative agencies identify potential terrorists and anticipate terrorist activities. All the transactions of everyday life -- credit card purchases, travel and telephone records, even Internet traffic like e-mail -- would be grist for the electronic mill."

"To civil libertarians, T.I.A., with its Orwellian dossiers on each and every American, would constitute a huge invasion of privacy. Mr. Poindexter says he has no wish to trample on the Fourth Amendment, and that the technology can be designed so as to "preserve rights and protect people's privacy while helping to make us all safer." His associates say that his main role is to develop the technology, not the policy that governs its use."

"This strikes us as disingenuous. Mr. Poindexter is a policy man to the core. Besides, there are enough federal agencies already engaged in the "mining" of information about all of us. The last thing we need is a vast new system of domestic surveillance engineered by John Poindexter."

"Congress should shut down the program pending a thorough investigation. It could do this with an amendment denying further financing that could be attached to an appropriations bill or the homeland security bill now under discussion in the Senate. Either way, T.I.A. needs immediate oversight."

You can read what the military says about T.I.A. on its website here.

More to the point and far less obtuse is the ACLU's statement here.

We received this letter today in an email. The letter is written by concerned individuals in the legal community. If you agree with the letter and want to sign on as a signatory, e-mail Susan Serrano, at sserrano@lccr.com:

November 12, 2002

Dear Friend,

We are members of the legal teams that helped overturn the convictions of Fred Korematsu, Gordon Hirabayashi and Minoru Yasui in the mid-1980s for their refusal to obey the military orders aimed at Japanese Americans during World War II. Like all Americans, we mourn the loss of lives on 9/11 and remain concerned about the nation's security. But through the lens of the unique Japanese American historical perspective, we have become extremely alarmed at the Bush Administration's attempts, primarily through Attorney General John Ashcroft, to steamroll our civil rights and squelch any criticism or dissent.

We are concerned that the ugly precedent set by the Supreme Court's infamous decision in 1943 and 1944, which upheld Korematsu's, Hirabayashi's and Yasui's wartime convictions, are being revived by the Bush Administration to justify the mass internment of "suspected terrorists". By exploiting the tragedy of 9/11, Ashcroft, on behalf of this Administration, has pushed through legislation and issued orders that are seriously compromising our civil rights.

Here are some examples of Ashcroft's war on civil rights:

1. * He has secretly arrested and detained over 1000 people "suspected" of terrorism and has withheld their names from the public;

2. * He has proposed the creation of detention camps for U.S. citizens whom this Administration, without judicial review, secretly deems to be "enemy combatants";

3. * He has imprisoned U.S. citizens indefinitely in military brigs without bail, criminal charges, or access to attorneys, and has ordered people to be held in jail without charges, in violation of the Administration's own USA PATRIOT Act, which requires charges within 7 days of their arrest;

4. * He has breached the protective wall between criminal prosecutions and national security investigations, which was erected toprevent wiretap and surveillance abuse;

5. * He has authorized the monitoring of privileged communications between attorneys and federal
prisoners/detainees;

6. * He has ordered the continued detention of people in custody even after an immigration judge has found them eligible for release.

There are more examples, but it is clear to us that Ashcroft presents a clear and present danger to the Constitution, to civil rights and to anyone who chooses to dissent against the Administration's policies. We believe John Ashcroft is simply not fit for the position of Attorney General of the United States - he is a right wing extremist.

We believe it is now time to call for his removal as Attorney General.

Americans have been reluctant to stand up to Bush and Ashcroft because of the political authority conferred on them by the tragic events of 9/11. But silence now is the same silence which allowed Japanese Americans to go to prison with only a few isolated dissents. Ashcroft's policies and actions demonstrate that he is incapable of understanding or learning this lesson.

We would like to reach out to the larger American public with our concerns through the mass mailing of a letter similar to the above. If you agree with us, please signify your agreement via email response to this email so that we can use your name to support another letter to be sent to as many like-minded friends demanding Ashcroft's removal and offering specific ideas for breaking the silence and taking action. We will send you the final letter for your approval before we disseminate it.

If we receive an enthusiastic response we will coordinate an even larger public action calling for his removal. If we don't get such a response, we will try to publish that letter as an op-ed or open letter.

Signed: Fred Korematsu
Gordon Hirabayashi
Lorraine Bannai
Karen Kai
Dale Minami
Peggy Nagae
obert Rusky
Donald K. Tamaki
Eric Yamamoto
Gary Iwamoto
Rod Kawakami

Susan Kiyomi Serrano
Project Director
Equal Justice Society
131 Steuart Street, Suite 400
San Francisco, CA 94105
(415) 543-9444 ×233
(415) 543-0296 fax
sserrano@lccr.com

[Ms. Serrano asks us to note that this letter is not a project of the Equal Justice Society, but of an informal group of individuals very concerned about civil liberties under the Bush Administration.]

Let it Begin Here's Toby Sackton has a terrific post on The New McCarthyism: Secret Arrest and Detention instead of Blacklisting.

"We are entering a new dark age under the guise of fighting terrorism. Several people have commented to me in the week after the election that this feels to them like 1948, after Henry Wallace lost his battle with Truman, and the cold war was being consolidated in Washington. The next few years brought a communist witch hunt, the blacklisting of numerous artists, writers, and educators, and the firing of many government employees, plus consideration of nuclear war in Korea."

"What is scary today is how much radical improvements in technology and the embrace of totalitarian secrecy by the Bush administration has changed the balance of power- giving the government secret tools that are devastating to liberty and the rights of free speech and association. The new Homeland security bill will create a vast government department whose primary mission will be to closely monitor the actions of all individuals in the U.S. for signs that may point to terrorism. The powers are sweeping enough to allow even local governments the power to secretly read emails, to arrest people based on their unpopular thoughts as expressed in emails or telephone conversations."

Go read the whole thing. After that, check out Toby's son's Blog, M's Daily Ramblings, which we have added to our list of blogs. We love that he is young and so strong on constitutional rights and injustice--like in this line he wrote about the Government's treatment of Moussaoui: "The way Ascroft and the Justice Department seem to be seeking revenge and convictions over justice is terrifying."

Via Atrios, Federal agents will begin randomly stopping traffic today, looking for illegal immigrants, terrorists and drug or weapon smugglers.

"Cars will be stopped at unannounced, rotating checkpoints within Michigan, including metro Detroit. U.S. Border Patrol agents at the checkpoints will ask passengers their citizenship and will have leeway to ask a host of follow-up questions."

"The effort is part of President George W. Bush's attempt to increase security along the northern border, said Immigration and Naturalization spokeswoman Karen Kraushaar."

Michigan is the first northern state to be subject to the program that is already in force in Texas and California. The authority is an old law that allows searches within 25 miles of the U.S. border.

Civil liberties groups rightfully are concerned:

"We believe it's going to be very hard for them to do this without violating people's civil rights, or profiling people based on their ethnicity or accent," said Kary Moss, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Michigan. "

From the Drug Policy Alliance News section:

"Racine police raided a non-profit fundraising event that featured electronic music last Saturday where they arrested three people on drug charges and wrote $430,760 worth of questionable citations. A prepared police statement said: "Based on information from the U.S. Customs Service, undercover officers went through the Haunted Theater (Uptown Theater) at 1430 Washington Ave. After the very brief tour, officers were directed to the basement of Tradewinds Village, 1518 Washington Ave., for the party. There they bought Ecstasy and Ketamine." Although only three arrests were made, police issued citations to 445 attendees with a penalty of $968 each for being "patrons of a disorderly house."

"The crowd was young, between about 17 and 25, said Sgt. William Macemon, public information officer for the Racine Police Department. According to witnesses, police cars and wagons came from every direction to surround the front and back entrances of the Tradewinds Banquet Hall. People outside were forcibly thrown to the ground, hand cuffed, and detained. The front and back entrances were sealed off. Meanwhile, inside, a representative from Dancesafe was forcibly thrown down on a pool table. One of the DJ's was using the bathroom when the police came in with guns drawn. A gun was pointed at the head of the DJ for almost a half hour. The group that organized the fundraiser is encouraging the hundreds of partygoers who were ticketed to contact the American Civil Liberties Union."

More information is available here.

To take action against attacks on raves, go here.

"The Justice Department announced Wednesday that it will require thousands of students, workers and other men from five Muslim countries who are temporarily residing in the United States to be fingerprinted and photographed, the latest step in its program to register visitors from countries linked to terrorism."

The program applies to all male citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria, "and other people suspected of links to terror."

Muslim and Arab-American groups argue the plan amounts to ethnic profiling. They point out that none of the Sept. 11 terrorists came from those countries, and only Sudan has ties to Al Qaeda.

The American Immigration Lawyers Association also criticized the plan, saying "They're telling us this will make us safe from terrorists. But the terrorists aren't the ones who are going to come forward and register."

An unnamed Justice Department official said the list of originating countries whose male citizens would be subject to the program "would probably grow."

"Under the new measure, which takes effect Nov. 15, men ages 16 and older from the five nations must register with a U.S. immigration officer by Dec. 16. They must present travel documents and proof of residence, such as school registrations, and be interviewed, fingerprinted and photographed. They must check in with authorities once a year. The measure applies only to visitors, not political asylum applicants or immigrants who have "green cards" that grant them permanent legal residence."