Politics

Overview of Changes to Legal Rights

By The Associated Press | September 5, 2002, 11:44 AM EDT

Some of the fundamental changes to Americans’ legal rights by the Bush administration and the USA Patriot Act following the terror attacks:

• FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION: Government may monitor religious and political institutions without suspecting criminal activity to assist terror investigation.
• FREEDOM OF INFORMATION: Government has closed once-public immigration hearings, has secretly detained hundreds of people without charges, and has encouraged bureaucrats to resist public records requests.
• FREEDOM OF SPEECH: Government may prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone that the government subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation.
• RIGHT TO LEGAL REPRESENTATION: Government may monitor federal prison jailhouse conversations between attorneys and clients, and deny lawyers to Americans accused of crimes.
• FREEDOM FROM UNREASONABLE SEARCHES: Government may search and seize Americans’ papers and effects without probable cause to assist terror investigation.
• RIGHT TO A SPEEDY AND PUBLIC TRIAL: Government may jail Americans indefinitely without a trial.
• RIGHT TO LIBERTY: Americans may be jailed without being charged or being able to confront witnesses against them.

Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press

— Newsday, via Wil

It looks like sense has prevailed — a rare but wonderful thing in governmental circles.

House Majority Leader Dick Armey, in his markup of legislation to create a Homeland Security Department, yesterday rejected a national identification card and scrapped a program that would use volunteers in domestic surveillance.

(via Boing Boing)

Y’know, sometimes — in my more cynical moments — I wonder if this whole argument over seperation of Church and State isn’t a waste of time…flawed in some deeply fundamental way.

I mean, come on — is the belief in politicians who actually work and act to do their best for the people they represent and the country they live in really that much different from the belief in an all-knowing, all-seeing entity who created us and oversees our lives?

Personally, I find it easier to believe in God than to believe that George W. Bush has the best interests of anyone other than himself in mind.

Anyway. Just a random thought.

Here’s a good one — let’s make the logo of the Information Awareness Office the beloved all-seeing eye of the Illuminati overseeing the entire globe.

Then, just to make things creepier, we’ll toss out two pieces of information. First off, the IAO Mission Statement:

The DARPA Information Awareness Office (IAO) will imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate and transition information technologies, components and prototype, closed-loop, information systems that will counter asymmetric threats by achieving total information awareness useful for preemption; national security warning; and national security decision making.

Secondly, information about John Poindexter, the man in charge of the IAO:

A retired Navy Admiral, John Poindexter lost his job as National Security Adviser under Ronald Reagan, and was convicted of conspiracy, lying to Congress, defrauding the government, and destroying evidence in the Iran Contra scandal.

Eeek.

(via Boing Boing)

(On a random side note, why does IOCOM come up first on a Google search for ‘illuminati’? I’m guessing they got Googlebombed.)

A good article from the Washington Post asking questions about TIPS:

Public vigilance is a good thing, and so is encouraging citizens to alert authorities to terrorist activity. It makes sense to educate people who work at potential targets or at places where lethal cargo may be smuggled. But having the government recruit informants among letter carriers and utility workers — people who enter the homes of Americans for reasons unrelated to law enforcement — is an entirely different matter. Americans should not be subjecting themselves to law enforcement scrutiny merely by having cable lines installed, mail delivered or meters read. Police cannot routinely enter people’s houses without either permission or a warrant. They should not be using utility workers to conduct surveillance they could not lawfully conduct themselves.

(via MeFi)

Is it just me, or does the fact that this image comes directly from a US government website looking at patents and trademarks related to ‘Homeland Security’ not make me feel comfortable?

The more I read about this, the more paranoid I get — and now we’ve got a gov’t webpage coming up with logos featuring eyes peeking through keyholes against a Stars-and-Stripes background?!? Eeeek.

(via Boing Boing)

One of my favorite political cartoonists, Tom Tomorrow, has some wonderfully incisive commentary on TIPS.

Facism is a term thrown about too freely, and I don’t believe we’re at a point that its use is justified — but an oppressive and intrusive government, however you want to label it, does not ride into town wearing the uniforms and waving the flags of recognizable evil. It creeps in slowly, waving the flag of your own country, and speaking the language of patriotism and duty, and at each step along the way, its actions seem plausible and defensible — until one morning you wake up and realize the gulf between the way things were and the way things are has grown so wide that there is no going back. Sinclair Lewis tried to point this out more than a half century ago, and given the current climate, It Can’t Happen Here is well worth re-reading (or reading for the first time, if you’ve never come across it before).

Another book for my reading list….

(via Wil)

Whee — just in case we weren’t paranoid enough, now our oh-so-friendly government is going to start encouraging us to report on each other. According to this report from an Austrailian news site (no big surprise that it wasn’t a US-based news site that broke the article), “…the Terrorism Information and Prevention System, or TIPS, means the US will have a higher percentage of citizen informants than the former East Germany through the infamous Stasi secret police.” Now there’s a happy thought.

(via Daypop)