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Pre-Crime Division: Danish Police Preemptively Arrest 1,000 Protesters

Using Controversial Law, Danish Police Preemptively Arrest Over 1,000 Protesters

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Saturday’s protest in Copenhagen was overwhelmingly peaceful, but there were isolated incidents of targeted property d estruction. To the shock of many, Danish police made nearly 1,000 protests. Hundreds of handcuffed protesters were held for hours lined up on the cold street. Under a newly passed law, Danish police can preemptively arrest and detain anyone for up to twelve hours who they believe is likely to break the law in the near future. Democracy Now!’s Hany Massoud produced this report. Special thanks to Spike Appel, Sky and Indymedia Denmark.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/14/using_controversial_law_danish_police_preemptively

Related Archive:

History Channel Episode on Mind Control featuring Cheryl Welsh (ce399 notes)

MHCHAOS: How the CIA Got Away with Domestic Spying (SF Chronicle 1997)

How the CIA Got Away With Domestic Spying

The late Angus Mackenzie, a longtime affiliate of San Francisco's Center for Investigative Journalism (he died of brain cancer in 1994), spent more than 15 years researching "Secrets: The CIA's War at Home.'' It represents the best account yet of the CIA's continuing attempts to manipulate and suppress information on the basis of its own narrow definitions of national security.

Forbidden by the National Security Act of 1947 from operating within the United States, the CIA nevertheless launched a domestic spying program dubbed MHCHAOS aimed at the U.S. anti- war underground press of the 1960s and  1970s. The operation was international in scope and supposedly focused on whether anti-war publications were financed by foreign, communist sources. In fact, points out Mackenzie, MHCHAOS, like the FBI's COINTELPRO, was designed to gather information on American citizens deemed by these federal agencies to be potentially subversive.

Because MHCHAOS was patently illegal, CIA officers participating in it were required to sign secrecy agreements swearing never to divulge any information about the operation. To violate a secrecy agreement was to risk federal prosecution. Mackenzie argues that such secrecy contracts became a favorite government tool, used to muzzle disclosures by ex-Agency personnel about questionable or illegal CIA activities.

One of the several secrecy agreements that the Agency eventually required its personnel to sign stipulated that any articles, books or speeches they might write that deal with intelligence activities must be preapproved by the CIA. When challenged in court that this type of contract constituted censorship and violates First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and press, the CIA, says Mackenzie, argued that this was not  a censorship issue: "The United States was seeking neither to stop publication nor to censor. Rather, the United States was seeking 'specific performance' of a contract. This rather clever attempt to sidestep the obvious conflict between censorship and the First Amendment was persuasive to the judge.''

Another key ruling favoring the government arose out of  the publication in 1977 of former CIA officer Frank Snepp's "Decent Interval," criticizing Agency activities relating to the American withdrawal from Vietnam. Snepp refused to submit the manuscript to the CIA censors prior to publication. The Agency took Snepp to court and obtained a ruling requiring Snepp to pay all profits from the book to the government and submit future writings on intelligence for CIA prepublication review. Says Mackenzie: "This decision gave the CIA the authority to institutionalize its censorship program. It would provide the precedent for censorship to be extended to more than fifty other federal agencies.''

The chief remaining barrier to keeping details of CIA domestic espionage from the public was the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). So, in 1982, the Agency moved to create an exemption from the FOIA for counter-intelligence files, such as the records of MHCHAOS. Mackenzie details how this was accomplished with the surprising cooperation of American Civil Liberties Union executives Mark Lynch and Morton Halperin. The new FOIA exemption coincided with the issuance by the Rion Directive (NSDD 84), which was designed to prohibit federal employees from leaking classified information to the press. Mackenzie maintains that the chief result of NSDD 84 has been to discourage potential government whistle blowers.

In the end, Mackenzie suggests, the pattern of censorship that began with the CIA frantically trying to keep secret its illegal domestic spying operations has  spread to agencies of the federal government, creating a culture of bureaucratic secrecy that resembles the one generated by Great Britain's Official Secrets Act, but previously unknown in the United States, with its strong tradition of constitutionally protected free speech.

In Mackenzie, the United States lost prematurely one of its fiercest First Amendment defenders: "Almost a decade after the end of the Cold War,'' he writes in his conclusion, "espionage is not the issue, if it ever  really was. The issue is freedom .... The issue is  principle .... Until the citizens of this land aggressively defend their First Amendment rights of free speech, there is little hope that the march to censorship will be reversed. The survival of that cornerstone of the Bill of Rights is at stake.''

The San Francisco Chronicle
12 October 1997

Court rulings backing the agency set the stage for censorship, writes reporter

REVIEWED BY DANIEL L. WICK
SECRETS  The CIA's War at Home By Angus Mackenzie
University of California Press; 241 pages; $27.50

http://www.whale.to/b/cia99.html

W.S. Burroughs Warned of Elitist Nazi World State using Psychic, Electronic Mind Control

And what would the future look like if such groups actually exist and if they do combine and take over? An elitist World State very much along the lines laid down by the Nazis. At the top would be a theocracy trained in psychic control techniques implemented by computerized electronic devices that would render opposition psychologically impossible. Entry to this privileged class would be permitted only to those whose dedication to the world state was absolute and unquestioning. In short, you don't get in by merit or ability but by being an all around one hundred percent shit. - The Adding Machine: Selected Essays. "Mind War" - William S. Burroughs (1985)

Mind War: Text Files

Related Archives:

From PSYOP to Mind War: Aquino and Vallely (pdf file)

Not a Ghost of a Chance

RE/Search Interview with William S. Burroughs (1982)

"Vice President Burroughs" Confirms Remote Electronic Mind Control Program

Related Articles:

From MindWar to FoxNews

Homeland Security Includes "Alternative Media" in "Domestic Extremism Lexicon" (pdf file)

(U//FOUO) Domestic Extremism Lexicon
26 March 2009
(U) Prepared by the Strategic Analysis Group and the Extremism and Radicalization Branch, Homeland Environment Threat Analysis Division.

(U//FOUO) Homeland Security Reference Aids—prepared by the DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A)—provide baseline information on a variety of homeland security issues. This product is one in a series of reference aids designed to provide operational and intelligence advice and assistance to other elements of DHS, as well as state, local, and regional fusions centers. DHS/I&A intends this background information to assist federal, state, local, and tribal homeland security and law enforcement officials in conducting analytic activities. This product provides definitions for key terms and phrases that often appear in DHS analysis that addresses the nature and scope of the threat that domestic, non-Islamic extremism poses to the United States. Definitions were derived from a variety of open source materials and unclassified information, then further developed during facilitated workshops with DHS intelligence analysts knowledgeable about domestic, non-Islamic extremism in the United States.

UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

Page 2 of 11

(U) Definitions

(U) aboveground (U//FOUO) A term used to describe extremist groups or individuals who operate overtly and portray themselves as law-abiding.

(U) alternative media (U//FOUO) A term used to describe various information sources that provide a forum for interpretations of events and issues that differ radically from those presented in mass media products and outlets.

(U) anarchist extremism (U//FOUO) A movement of groups or individuals who advocate a society devoid of government structure or ownership of individual property. Many embrace some of the radical philosophical components of anticapitalist, antiglobalization, communist, socialist, and other movements. Anarchist extremists advocate changing government and society through revolutionary violence. (also: revolutionary anarchists)

(U) animal rights extremism (U//FOUO) A movement of groups or individuals who ascribe equal value to all living organisms and seek to end the perceived abuse and suffering of animals. They believe animals are sentient creatures that experience emotional, physical, and mental awareness and deserve many of the same rights as human beings; for example, the right to life and freedom to engage in normal, instinctive animal behavior. These groups have been known to advocate or engage in criminal activity and plot acts of violence and terrorism in an attempt to advance their extremist goals. They have targeted industries, businesses, and government entities that they perceive abuse or exploit animals, including those that use animals for testing, human services, food production, or consumption. (also: animal liberation)

(U) antiabortion extremism (U//FOUO) A movement of groups or individuals who are virulently antiabortion and advocate violence against providers of abortion-related services, their employees, and their facilities. Some cite various racist and anti-Semitic beliefs to justify their criminal activities.

Download Lexicon (pdf file)

Related Archive:

Homeland Security Moving to Abandoned Insane Asylum

Zine: COINTELPRO - The Danger We Face (pdf file) (in progess)

Port Militarization Resistance - Tacoma, WA 2007

Brendan Maslauskas Dunn said he met Mr. Towery in spring 2007, when Mr. Maslauskas Dunn became involved with Port Militarization Resistance, a group that has frequently tried to disrupt military shipments in Olympia, Tacoma and other ports nearby. Mr. Maslauskas Dunn, who was also active in at least one other group, Students for a Democratic Society, said Mr. Towery had identified himself as John Jacob, using his middle name as his last. He said he worked as a civilian at Fort Lewis doing computer support, Mr. Maslauskas Dunn said.

Mr. Towery, he said, frequently attended protests but had not been among those who agreed in advance that they would be willing to be arrested. He said Mr. Towery had often worked as a “watcher” who tracked law enforcement at the protests.

...

Yet he and Mr. Maslauskas Dunn, who said he worked as a janitor at a lumber mill in Shelton, Wash., said Mr. Towery’s identity was inadvertently discovered after a public records request made with the City of Olympia. The request yielded an e-mail message Mr. Towery had sent to another person with a military address relating to the protesters’ activities.

That led Mr. Hendricks and other group members to try to determine who Mr. Towery was. After they learned it was the man they had known as Mr. Jacob, they discussed it at City Council meeting in Olympia last week and posted the information on a Web site.

Army Looking Into Monitoring of Protest Groups

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Anti-war activists in Olympia, Wash., have exposed Army spying and infiltration of their groups, as well as intelligence gathering by the Air Force, the federal Capitol Police and the Coast Guard. The infiltration appears to be in direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act preventing U.S. military deployment for domestic law enforcement and may strengthen congressional demands for a full-scale investigation of U.S. intelligence activities, like the Church Committee hearings of the 1970s.

Obama's Military is Spying on U.S. Peace Groups

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Download COINTELPRO The Danger We Face (pdf file)

via:

ZineLibrary.info

...post(s) in progress...

Homeland Security Moving to Abandoned Insane Asylum

The Homeland Security Department is moving to an abandoned insane asylum.

The department outlined its $4.1 billion plan to consolidate most of its more than 60 Washington-area offices into a massive headquarters complex to be built at St. Elizabeths Hospital compound in Southeast Washington.

Department officials say the move will bring convenience savings and more camaraderie and cooperation among employees.

But employees shouldn’t start packing just yet. Most won’t begin moving to the St. Elizabeth’s Hospital compound in Southeast Washington until 2012 at the earliest, and the entire move won’t be done until 2015.

Homeland Security’s offices are scattered throughout Washington and Northern Virginia, an area that has some of the worst traffic in the nation. Homeland Security decided to start looking for a main headquarters site after a 2005 review ordered by Secretary Michael Chertoff showed people were spending too much time in traffic trying to get to meetings, spokesman Larry Orluskie said.

A headquarters complex “will ensure a unity of effort and command for the secretary, as well as build a culture and a spirit which are essential to having a happy and productive work force,” Undersecretary for Management Paul Schneider told the House Homeland Security subcommittee on management, investigations and oversight at a March 1 hearing.

Senior officials are concerned that a single Homeland Security culture — one that encourages cooperation among components such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Coast Guard — has not yet gelled. Schneider told the committee that grouping most component headquarters together will help foster a “one DHS” culture.

After consulting with the General Services Administration, Homeland Security settled on St. Elizabeths, which at 4.5 million square feet had the most available space in Washington. The District of Columbia will continue to operate the mental health institution on St. Elizabeths east campus. Homeland Security will take over the now-vacant west campus.

Homeland Security considered moving to Walter Reed Hospital, also in Washington, but decided against it because the Pentagon’s planned base closures would not shut it down in time. Homeland Security also rejected other Washington-area locations such as the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium site, which is expected to be demolished, and one of its current headquarters near the Naval Observatory because they either were not under federal control or were not big enough.

But even St. Elizabeths isn’t big enough to house all of Homeland Security’s 22,000 Washington-area employees, who are now housed in 7.1 million square feet.

The Secret Service, US-VISIT, Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, Office of the Inspector General, Citizenship and Immigration Services and science and technology directorate likely will remain off campus, according to an October plan prepared by the department.

Orluskie said that since most component headquarters will move nearly intact to the new compound, little will change about how agency managers work with their employees.

Similar moves have worked in the past. The Federal Emergency Management Agency was scattered among several Washington offices after it was created out of various disaster-related agencies in 1979. Until FEMA’s offices were combined into a single headquarters about 18 months later, the agency was disjointed and employees lacked a strong sense of identity, said Leo Bosner, the American Federation of Government Employees local president for FEMA.

“When they created the C Street headquarters, it did a lot of good,” Bosner said. “People were able to work face-to-face and meld together. . . . You theoretically could do things online [or with teleconferencing], but that doesn’t work all the time. People have got to work together and talk to each other.”

Former Homeland Security inspector general Clark Kent Ervin also applauded the move.“A big problem from Day One has been a lack of cohesion and esprit de corps,” Ervin said. “It’s belated, but it’s better late than never.”

The department estimates it will cost $4.1 billion to develop St. Elizabeths and relocate the department’s offices there. But Schneider said the move will save the department $64 million a year in leasing costs. Homeland Security now rents 70 percent of its office space.

The Coast Guard will be the first to move in 2010, Orluskie said. Homeland Security’s headquarters functions will follow in 2012, and all remaining components will move between 2012 and 2015.

Mental health activist Dorothea Dix founded St. Elizabeths in 1855, and many Civil War veterans received treatment there. John Hinckley has been at St. Elizabeths since he shot President Reagan in 1981. Charles Guiteau, who killed President Garfield in 1881, and poet Ezra Pound also were committed to the hospital. The facility grounds include a cemetery of about 300 Union and Confederate soldiers who died while at the facility.

Orluskie said GSA insists on preserving the site’s historic value and will either leave historic buildings intact or renovate them from within, he said.

http://www.federaltimes.com/index.php?S=2626923

ECHELON Outed by Head of Australia's Defence Signals Directorate (1999)

Australia, one of five countries running the controversial Echelon global surveillance network, has become the first to admit it. The Australian government has confirmed that the system spies on the international communications of it own and other countries' citizens. As part of their disclosures, Australian intelligence officials have also published details of secret government orders which restrict spying on Australian citizens.

Besides requiring European countries to start dealing seriously with the threat of economic espionage through the Echelon system, the Australian disclosures should force other nations to review whether the protections for their citizens' privacy matches up to the Australian standards - if they exist at all.

In a series of letters to Australia's Channel Nine "Sunday" programme, revealed this week, the head of Australia's Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), Martin Brady, states that DSD "does co-operate with counterpart signals intelligence organisations overseas under the UKUSA relationship". The contents of the letters were disclosed after the Nine Network transmitted a one hour documentary on Echelon, last Sunday.

The UKUSA agreement binds together the giant US National Security Agency with the signals intelligence organisations of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Although its precise terms have never been revealed, the UKUSA agreement provides for sharing facilities, staff, methods, tasks and product between participating governments.

...

Under the Echelon system, millions of messages are automatically intercepted every hour, and checked according to criteria supplied by intelligence agencies and governments in all five UKUSA countries. The intercepted signals are passed through a computer system called the Dictionary, which checks each new message or call against thousands of "collection" requirements. The Dictionaries then send the messages into the spy agencies' equivalent of the Internet, making them accessible all over the world.

Satellite control centre in the desert

DSD runs some of the world's most famous spying bases, including Pine Gap, an isolated satellite control centre near Alice Springs in the middle of the hot central Australian desert "outback". For more than 30 years, Pine Gap has controlled the CIA's electronic listening satellites, called Rhyolite, Aquacade and Magnum.

Australians have long suspected that the CIA-run station spied on their communications. The use and control of Pine Gap by the CIA was a central issue in the overthrow of radical labour Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1975. The Australian government now claims that after years of controversy, Australians are in charge. They also say that a former "American-only" communications centre on the base has been closed down, and that Australian staff now see everything the CIA satellites do.

...

Director Brady's decision to break ranks with the US and officially admit the existence of the hitherto officially unacknowledged spying organisation called UKUSA is likely to irritate his British and American counterparts, who have spent the last 50 years trying to prevent their own citizens from learning anything about them or their business of "signals intelligence" - "sigint" for short.

International and governmental concern about the UKUSA Echelon system has grown dramatically since 1996, when New Zealand writer Nicky Hager revealed intimate details of how it operated.

New Zealand runs an Echelon satellite interception site at Waihopai. A year after publishing his book, Hager and New Zealand TV reporter John Campbell mounted a daring raid on Waihopai, and sneaked inside the base, complete with a TV camera and a stepladder. From open, high windows, they then filmed into and inside its operations centre.

They were astonished to see that it operated completely automatically. Lights flashed on long racks of electronic equipment as messages were analysed and sent on. Rows of computer monitors sat unattended, as the codeword "Envoy" rotated round the screens.

(excerpt)

Full Article:

http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/2/2889/1.html

Related Archives:

The NSA and Domestic Espionage (Part Four)

The NSA and Domestic Espionage (Part One)

The NSA and Domestic Espionage (Part Three)

The NSA and Domestic Espionage (Part Two)

The NSA and Domestic Espionage Revisited

Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (Swine Flu Vaccination Alert)

An unprecedented assault on the constitutional rights of the American people - Phyllis Schlafly

The MSEHPA (Model State Emergency Health Powers Act) which was passed by many states in 2002, included provisions that would allow state health officials to use the state militia to:

Take control of all roads leading into and out of cities and states;

Seize homes, cars, telephones, computers, food, fuel, clothing, firearms and alcoholic beverages for their own use (and not be held liable if these actions result in the destruction of  personal property);

Arrest, imprison and forcibly examine, vaccinate and medicate citizens without consent (and not be held liable if these actions result in your death or injury).

http://www.nvic.org/Vaccine-Laws/model-state-emergency-health-powers-act.aspx

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What is wrong with MSEHPA?

Although extraordinary measures may be required during an emergency, the Model Act is replete with civil liberties problems.  Its three top flaws are that:

It fails to include basic checks and balances.  The Act would grant extraordinary emergency powers, but that kind of authority should never go unchecked.  Public health authorities make mistakes, and politicians abuse their powers; there is a history of discriminatory use of the quarantine power against particular groups of people based on race and national origin, for example. The lack of checks and balances could have serious consequences for individuals' freedom, privacy, and equality.  The Act lets a governor declare a state of emergency unilaterally and without judicial oversight, fails to provide modern due process procedures for quarantine and other emergency powers, it lacks adequate compensation for seizure of assets, and contains no checks on the power to order forced treatment and vaccination.

It goes well beyond bioterrorism.  The act includes an overbroad definition of "public health emergency" that sweeps in HIV, AIDS, and other diseases that clearly do not justify quarantine, forced treatment, or any of the other broad emergency authorities that would be granted under the Act.

It lacks privacy protections.  The Act requires the disclosure of massive amounts of personally identifiable health information to public health authorities, without requiring basic privacy protections and fair information practices that could easily be added to the bill without detracting from its effectiveness in quelling an outbreak.  And the Model Act would undercut existing protections for sensitive medical information.  That not only threatens to violate individuals' medical privacy but undermines public trust in government activities. 

http://www.aclu.org/privacy/medical/14857res20020101.html

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http://www.rwjf.org/files/publications/annual/2006/images/chart-publichealth.gif

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On July 13, a World Health Organization (WHO) Global Alert headlined, "WHO recommendations on pandemic (H1N1) 2009 vaccinations" suggest that universally mandated ones are coming. It stated that on July 7, the pharmaceutical industry-dominated Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunization held an "extraordinary meeting in Geneva to discuss issues and make recommendations related to vaccine for the pandemic (H1N1) 2009."

Mandatory Swine Flu Vaccination Alert

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Quarantine Laws being Updated

In 1900, San Francisco officials randomly quarantined 15,000 people in Chinatown, saying they suspected an outbreak of bubonic plague. A California court ended the quarantine, saying it was discriminatory and based on false information.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2003-04-22-quarantine_x.htm

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Homeless people die after bird flu vaccine trial in Poland

Bioweapons Lawsuit: "In criminal charges filed against Baxter on April 8th, 2009 at the Vienna City Prosecutor’s office, Landesgerichtstr 11, 1080 Vienna, Austria by Jane Burgermeister, a resident of Vienna, Austria, it was alleged that Baxter unlawfully, wilfully and knowingly, in the period between December 2008 and February 2009, employed manipulative and deceptive devices and contrivances in violation of national and international laws on the manufacturing, possession, release and dissemination of biological weapons of mass destruction and on organised crime, to manufacture and distribute a biological agent that is classified as a bioweapon among the population in order to profit from the pandemic."

Baxter's Many Lethal "Accidents"

Related Archives:

The Return of IG Farben: Bayer Knowingly Sold AIDS Tainted Products

Homeland Security: "Suspicious People Who Don't Belong"

(image in progress)

Possible Types of Suspicious Activity

Suspicious People Who Don't Belong

Another pre-incident indicator of terrorism is the presence of suspicious people who just "don't belong." This does not mean we should profile individuals, but does mean we should recognize and report suspicious behaviors that do not comport to the setting. This includes suspicious border crossings, stowaways aboard a ship or people jumping ship in a port. It may mean having someone in a workplace, building, neighborhood or business establishment that does not fit in because of their demeanor or unusual questions being asked.

http://www.homeland.ca.gov/suspicious_activities.html

Amy Goodman and James Bamford Omit ECHELON, UKUSA Agreement from NSA Discussion

 

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/
...

The way they’ve sort of contorted the new amendments to the act, it’s hard to tell what’s legal and what isn’t, because they’ve taken the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court largely out of the mix. And so, much of what is being done is governed by secret rules known as USSID 18, United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18, which is above top-secret. It’s top-secret code words. So what is legal, what isn’t legal, it’s very hard to tell.

And I think that’s why you really need a congressional committee to really take a look at this. What really needs to happen is a very in-depth examination of NSA post/11—actually, pre-9/11 and post-9/11, the kind that was done in the mid-1970s by Senator Frank Church, the Church Committee. I think that’s really the only way to get to the bottom of whether NSA messed up before the attacks on 9/11 and whether they’re doing things that are illegal or improper after 9/11.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/14/james_bamford_the_shadow_factory_the

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Immediately following the Second World War, in 1947, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand signed a National Security pact known as the ‘Quadripartite’ or ‘United Kingdom-United States’ (UKUSA) Agreement. Its intention was to seal an intelligence bond in which a common national security objective was created. Under the terms of the agreement, the five nations carved up the earth into five spheres of influence, and each country was assigned particular signals intelligence (SIGINT) targets.

The UKUSA Agreement standardised terminology, code words, intercept handling procedures, arrangements for co-operation, sharing of information, Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) clearances and access to facilities. One important component of the agreement was the exchange of data and personnel.

The strongest alliance within the UKUSA relationship is the one between the US National Security Agency (NSA), and Britain’s Government Communi-cations Headquarters (GCHQ). The NSA operates under a 1952 presidential mandate, National Security Council Intelligence Directive (NSCID) Number 6, to eavesdrop on the world’s communications networks for intelligence and military purposes. In doing so, it has built a vast spying operation that can reach into the telecommunications systems of every country on earth. Its operations are so secret that this activity, outside the US, occurs without any legislative or judicial oversight. The most important facility in the alliance is Menwith Hill, an Air Force base in the north of England. With over two dozen radomes and a vast computer operations facility, the base has the capacity to eavesdrop on vast chunks of the communications spectrum. With the creation of Intelsat and digital telecommunications, Menwith Hill and other stations developed the capability to eavesdrop on an extensive scale on fax, telex and voice messages.

...

In June 1999, the US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence ordered the NSA to hand over documents relating to Echelon. The NSA, for the first time in the Committee’s history, refused to do so, claiming attorney/client privilege.[6] In May 1999, Representative Bob Barr, worried by the potential breach of constitutional privacy rights, introduced an amendment to the Fiscal 2000 Intelligence Authorization Act requiring the Director of Central Intelligence, the director of NSA and the Attorney General to submit a report outlining the legal standards being employed within project Echelon to safeguard the privacy of American citizens.

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/PLPR/2000/41.html

United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18:

http://cryptome.org/nsa-ussid18-80.htm#SECTION%202

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FISA is restricted only to targeting by American agencies, leaving the British liaison officer with a major loophole. The restrictive language added to FISA left unchanged the arrangement under which the British wiretapped American suspects and then passed on the information to the NSA.

...

To this day Congress does not realize that the British liaison officers at the NSA are still free to use American equipment to spy on American citizens. And, in fact, they are doing just that. Congress has been kept in the dark deliberately. This is a fact, not a matter of conjecture or a conclusion based on anonymous sources.

John Loftus, Secret War Against The Jews, Pg 192. Loftus' source is Bamford, Puzzle Palace, Pg 372.

Related Archives:

The NSA and Domestic Espionage (Part One), (Part Two), (Part Three), (Part Four).

Amy Goodman Omits and Dave Neiwert Whitewashes History of Margaret Sanger, Eugenics

Expanded FBI Surveillance Powers "Without Factual Evidence"

Justice Department officials released new guidelines yesterday that empower FBI agents to use intrusive techniques to gather intelligence within the United States, alarming civil liberties groups and Democratic lawmakers who worry that they invite privacy violations and other abuses.

The new road map allows investigators to recruit informants, employ physical surveillance and conduct interviews in which agents disguise their identities in an effort to assess national security threats. FBI agents could pursue each of those steps without any single fact indicating a person has ties to a terrorist organization.

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said the guidelines are necessary to fulfill the FBI's core mission to predict threats and respond even before an attack takes place. The ground rules will help the bureau become "a more flexible and adept collector of intelligence," as independent commissions urged after the strikes of Sept. 11, 2001, Mukasey said in a statement yesterday.

The guidelines, which harmonize five different road maps dating back more than a generation, take effect Dec. 1. That is two months later than initially planned, and authorities said the delay was a concession to privacy advocates and Arab American groups who expressed concern that their members could be subject to racial or ethnic profiling.

Justice Department leaders rewrote a key section of the guidelines concerning agents' infiltration of groups and attendance at demonstrations. Under the new language, agents would be able to investigate the likelihood of violence stemming from a planned demonstration for as many as 30 days, with renewals subject to supervisory approval.

Congressional staff members said the revisions were superficial, and the American Civil Liberties Union immediately condemned the road map. Critics had asked Justice Department leaders to wait until a new president takes office, an approach that administration officials rejected.

Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU's Washington legislative office, said: "Since, under these guidelines, a generalized 'threat' is enough to begin an investigation, the FBI will be given carte blanche to begin surveillance without factual evidence. . . . These guidelines will lead to political witch hunts and more unwarranted investigations of political enemies and peace groups."

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said the grant of new authority to FBI agents flies in the face of recent history, including overreaching and sloppy record-keeping by agents who demanded too much secret information from telephone companies and Internet service providers as part of national security investigations.

Bush administration officials assert that the overhaul is merely a common-sense change that would give FBI agents who pursue national security leads the same power as agents who investigate criminal offenses.

Civil liberties activists yesterday raised anew questions about the expanded role of the FBI in collecting an array of foreign intelligence within U.S. borders, absent evidence of a crime. For instance, the guidelines allow FBI agents to conduct interviews and monitor the movement of people who may possess useful information on subjects of general interest to American policymakers, such as a foreign government's oil exports.

Guidelines Expand FBI's Surveillance Powers
Techniques May Be Used in U.S. Without Any Fact Linking Subject to Terrorism

Carrie Johnson
Washington Post
4 October 2008

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/03/AR2008100303501_pf.html

Homeland Security Satellite Surveillance Program

The Department of Homeland Security will proceed with the first phase of a controversial satellite-surveillance program, even though an independent review found the department hasn't yet ensured the program will comply with privacy laws.

Congress provided partial funding for the program in a little-debated $634 billion spending measure that will fund the government until early March. For the past year, the Bush administration had been fighting Democratic lawmakers over the spy program, known as the National Applications Office.

The program is designed to provide federal, state and local officials with extensive access to spy-satellite imagery -- but no eavesdropping -- to assist with emergency response and other domestic-security needs, such as identifying where ports or border areas are vulnerable to terrorism.

Since the department proposed the program a year ago, several Democratic lawmakers have said that turning the spy lens on America could violate Americans' privacy and civil liberties unless adequate safeguards were required.

A new 60-page Government Accountability Office report said the department "lacks assurance that NAO operations will comply with applicable laws and privacy and civil liberties standards," according to a person familiar with the document. The report, which is unclassified but considered sensitive, hasn't been publicly released, but was described and quoted by several people who have read it.

The report cites gaps in privacy safeguards. The department, it found, lacks controls to prevent improper use of domestic-intelligence data by other agencies and provided insufficient assurance that requests for classified information will be fully reviewed to ensure it can be legally provided.

A senior homeland-security official took issue with the GAO's broad conclusion, saying the department has worked hard to include many layers of privacy protection. Program activities have "an unprecedented amount of legal review," he said, adding that the GAO is seeking a level of proof that can't be demonstrated until the program is launched.

Homeland Security spokeswoman Laura Keehner said department officials concluded that the program "complies with all existing laws" because the GAO report didn't say the program doesn't.

Addressing the gaps the agency cited, Ms. Keehner said current laws already govern the use of intelligence data and the department has an additional procedure to monitor its use. The department will also work with other intelligence agencies to "ensure that legal reviews and protection of classified information will be effective," she said.

In response to the GAO report, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson of Mississippi and other Democrats asked Congress to freeze the money for the program until after the November election so the next administration could examine it.

But the bill Congress approved, which President George W. Bush signed into law Tuesday, allows the department to launch a limited version, focused only on emergency response and scientific needs. The department must meet additional requirements before it can expand operations to include homeland-security and law-enforcement surveillance.

The restrictions were "the most we could have required without a complete prohibition," said Darek Newby, an aide to Democratic Rep. David Price of North Carolina, who heads the House homeland-security spending panel.

But California Rep. Jane Harman, who heads a homeland-security subcommittee on intelligence, said that even limited funding allows the department to launch the program, providing a platform to expand its surveillance whether or not privacy requirements are met.

"Having learned my lesson" with the National Security Agency's warrantless-surveillance program, she said, "I don't want to go there again unless and until the legal framework for the entire program is entirely spelled out."

Rep. Thompson vowed to fight expansion of the program until privacy issues are further addressed.

Siobhan Gorman
The Wall Street Journal
1 October 2008

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122282336428992785.html

US Agents can Seize Traveler's Digital, Analog and Written Materials

U.S. federal agents have been given new powers to seize travelers' laptops and other electronic devices at the border and hold them for unspecified periods the Washington Post reported on Friday.

Under recently disclosed Department of Homeland Security policies, such seizures may be carried out without suspicion of wrongdoing, the newspaper said, quoting policies issued on July 16 by two DHS agencies.

Agents are empowered to share the contents of seized computers with other agencies and private entities for data decryption and other reasons, the newspaper said.

DHS officials said the policies applied to anyone entering the country, including U.S. citizens, and were needed to prevent terrorism.

The measures have long been in place but were only disclosed in July, under pressure from civil liberties and business travel groups acting on reports that increasing numbers of international travelers had had their laptops, cellphones and other digital devices removed and examined.

The policies cover hard drives, flash drives, cell phones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes -- as well as books, pamphlets and other written materials, the report said.

The policies require federal agents to take measures to protect business information and attorney-client privileged material. They stipulate that any copies of the data must be destroyed when a review is completed and no probable cause exists to keep the information.

Reuters
1 August 2008

http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USN0126069520080801

Immigration Agency Plans New Family Detention Centers

The federal ICE, which already runs two such facilities, is taking bids for as many as three more. Critics say detaining families is punitive and unnecessary.

The federal government is accepting bids for up to three new family detention centers that would house as many as 600 men, women and children fighting deportation cases.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a call for proposals last month and set June 16 as the deadline. New facilities are being considered on both coasts and on the Southwestern border. The agency calls for minimum-security residential facilities that would provide a "least restrictive, nonsecure setting" and provide schooling for children, recreational activities and access to religious services.

Family detention has been condemned by human rights groups and immigrant rights organizations as punitive and unnecessary. But immigration authorities said it ensures that immigrants show up for their court hearings and leave the country when ordered deported.

"Family detention has had the desired impact," ICE spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said. "We don't see as many families coming across the border. That automatic pass is no longer there."

There are currently two family facilities -- a former nursing home in Pennsylvania and a former prison in Texas. The T. Don Hutto detention center in Taylor, Texas, opened in 2006 and faced protests and lawsuits within the year charging that the children were living in substandard conditions. A settlement resulted in changes in how the children are treated.

New facilities would allow the government more flexibility and enable the agency to keep families together, Nantel said. In Los Angeles this week, three illegal immigrant mothers and their toddlers, including one American child, were among about 60 people discovered at a drop house used by smugglers. Because there is no family facility nearby, the women and children are being housed in a private shelter.

The American Civil Liberties Union criticized the proposed plan to open new family detention centers.

"After the horrible conditions that were revealed at the Hutto facility, it is very disappointing that the government appears to want to produce more immigration prisons for families and children," said Ahilan Arulanantham, a staff attorney at the Southern California office.

Arulanantham said most families do not pose a safety or flight risk and should not be detained. Instead, he said, they should post bonds, wear electronic monitors or be part of an intensive supervision program.

"There are other ways to deter illegal immigration without imprisoning children," he said. "This shows that we have become addicted to incarceration as a method to solving our problems, which it is obviously not."

In extreme cases, Arulanantham said, he could see families being housed in some sort of halfway house, but not a former prison run by a private prison company.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to review the proposals and make a decision within several months, Nantel said. The bids could come from county governments or private companies. The facilities would house up to 200 people each, about 150 juveniles and 50 adults. Authorities estimate detainees would be kept at the center for between 20 and 30 days.

The proposal calls for minimal security facilities and refers to the centers as residential family shelters, but says the contractor should structure programs "designed to prevent escapes" and should provide a plan that "monitors resident movement and physically counts residents." Nobody with a criminal record would be admitted.

Corrections Corp. of America senior vice president Damon Hininger said he was aware of the request for proposals and that the company was "taking a look at it." The company already runs several immigration detention centers, including Hutto.

Hutto has 450 beds, and as of last week there were about 150 people being held in family detention there. If new facilities are built, Nantel said the agency would consider transferring the families out of Hutto and using it as an adult immigration detention center.

"Running a residential facility in what was a former prison, that was a challenge," she said. "There have been lessons learned out of Hutto."

When the center opened, children were given hospital scrubs to wear, forbidden to have toys and allowed only one hour of recreation per day, attorneys said. As a result of the settlement, children are allowed to wear pajamas, move freely around the center and bring toys into their rooms. There also have been changes made to the facility, including adding individual bathrooms, adding murals and replacing metal doors.

Given the national security goals of the Department of Homeland Security, advocates said they are skeptical about future family centers.

"They really do have this penal system model in their heads," said Andrea Black, coordinator of Detention Watch Network, a coalition advocating reform of immigration detention and deportation. "I think it's going to be challenging for them to actually be able to run a family facility that is nonpunitive given their current philosophy and practices."

The need to imprison families stems from the presence of so many illegal families sneaking across the border or hiding in the United States, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonprofit group that advocates a reduction in the number of immigrants.

"This is really recognizing the realities of the illegal alien population," he said. "They used to let everybody out and trust them to come back. That hasn't worked out, to say the least. This is simply the pendulum moving back the other way."

Anna Gorman
Los Angeles Times
May18.2008
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-detention18-2008may18,0,6204367,print.story

Readiness Solutions: Martial Law 2010

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