[CTRL] Policing the State
-Caveat Lector- From http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/ }}}Begin Terror Law: A win for fear, a loss for freedom October 26 @ 12:54am Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny, British parliamentarian Edmund Burke explained in 1800. Two centuries have passed, but legislatures continue to reinforce the link between bad law and tyranny. The U.S. Congress did so this week, with the passage of the ambitiously named Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act. Rare are the moments in American history when a Congress has surrendered so many cherished freedoms in a single trip to the altar of immediate fear. Crafted in Attorney General John Ashcrofts little shop of legal horrors from the remnants of past assaults on the Constitution, the USA PATRIOT ACT is a legislative Frankensteins monster. This bill goes light years beyond what is necessary to combat terrorism, argues Laura Murphy, Director of the ACLU Washington National Office. Included in the bill are provisions that would allow for the mistreatment of immigrants, the suppression of dissent and the investigation and surveillance of wholly innocent Americans. And the bad legislation is now the law of the land. Signed Friday by President Bush, it was opposed in the Senate only by Russ Feingold, D-Wi. In the House is drew broader opposition from 62 Democrats -- including the ran king Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Michigans John Conyers, and Congressional civil liberties watchdogs such as Massachusetts Barney Frank and Georgias John Lewis -- as well as three Republicans and Vermon t Independent Bernie Sanders. What freedoms have Americans lost? Civil libertarians worry most that the new legislation: -- Permits the Attorney General to incarcerate or detain non-citizens based on mere suspicion, and to deny re-admission to the U.S. of non-citizens (including lawful permanent residents) for engaging in speech protected b y the First Amendment. -- Minimizes judicial supervision of telephone and Internet surveillance by law enforcement authorities in anti-terrorism investigations AND in routine criminal investigations unrelated to terrorism. -- Expands the ability of the government to conduct secret searches, again in anti-terrorism investigations AND in routine criminal investigations unrelated to terrorism. This means that law enforcement authorities can en ter and search an individuals home without presenting a warrant or in any way informing the subject of the search. -- Gives the Attorney General and the Secretary of State the power to designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations and to block any non-citizen who belongs to them from entering the country. -- Makes the payment of membership dues to political organizations a deportable offense. -- Grants the FBI broad access to sensitive medical, financial, mental health, and educational records about individuals without having to show evidence of a crime and without a court order. -- Will lead to large-scale investigations of American citizens for intelligence purposes and use of intelligence authorities to by-pass probable cause requirements in criminal cases. -- Puts the CIA and other intelligence agencies back in the business of spying on Americans by giving the Director of Central Intelligence the authority to identify priority targets for intelligence surveillance in the Un ited States. -- Allows searches of highly personal financial records without notice and without judicial review based on a very low standard that does not require probable cause of a crime or even relevancy to an ongoing terrorism inv estigation. -- Allows student records to be searched based on a very low standard of relevancy to an investigation. -- Creates a broad new definition of domestic terrorism that could target people who engage in acts of political protest and subject them to wiretapping and enhanced penalties. Standing alone in the Senate to oppose the legislation, Feingold recalled past assaults on basic liberties: The Alien and Sedition Acts, the suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, the internment of Japanese-Am ericans, German-Americans, and Italian-Americans during World War II, the blacklisting of supposed communist sympathizers during the McCarthy era, and the surveillance and harassment of antiwar protesters, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., during the Vietnam War. He then explained to his fellow senators: Now some may say, indeed we may hope, that we have come a long way since the those days of infringements on civil liberties. But there is ample reason for concern. And I have been troubled in the past six weeks by the potential loss of commitment in the Congress and the country to traditional civil liberties. In the contemporary legislature where he sits, the Senate of the United States of America, no member would stand with Russ Feingold. But he did not stand
[CTRL] Policing the State
-Caveat Lector- From wsws.org WSWS : News Analysis : North America $10 billion for "anti-terrorism" plan Clinton proposes huge police buildup By Martin McLaughlin 26 January 1999 In a speech January 22 to the National Academy of Sciences, President Clinton announced a $10 billion plan to strengthen the repressive powers of the federal government, in the name of waging war against "terrorism." Combined with $6.6 billion in new spending on anti-missile systems and a $110 billion increase in the Pentagon budget over the next six years, the Clinton administration will launch the biggest military-police buildup since the heyday of Ronald Reagan. In both the speech, and an interview given the previous day to the New York Times, Clinton gave a picture of America in the twenty-first century beleaguered by terrorists threatening to kill millions with biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, or to disrupt the US economy through attacks on its computer-based infrastructure. "We must be ready," Clinton declared, "ready if our adversaries try to use computers to disable power grids, banking, communications and transportation networks, police, fire and health services--or military assets ... "We have to be ready for adversaries to launch attacks that could paralyze utilities and services across entire regions. We must be ready if adversaries seek to attack with weapons of mass destruction, as well. Armed with these weapons, which can be compact and inexpensive, a small band of terrorists could inflict tremendous harm." Clinton boasted that he had tripled FBI anti-terrorist efforts since 1993, and that last year the administration obtained from Congress a 39 percent increase in spending for preparedness against chemical and biological weapons. The new budget will more than double this effort to nearly $1.4 billion, including $683 million to train and equip emergency personnel in major cities, $206 million to protect federal facilities and $381 million for dealing with "nuclear emergencies." Another $1.46 billion will be expended on measures to protect US computer systems from external or internal attack, including the formation of a "CyberCorps" of computer specialists working as an arm of the police and military. While Clinton cited the threat of hackers invading Pentagon and other critical computer systems, the creation of a specialized detachment of military and police officers with computer expertise raises an obvious threat to the present relatively unrestricted access to information on the Internet. The bulk of the anti-terrorism funds will be expended on a massive effort to fortify American embassies around the world, in the wake of last year's bombing of the Kenyan and Tanzanian embassies. The effect will be to transform these facilities from diplomatic missions into essentially military bunkers, outposts of the American military-intelligence complex in every country of the world. Clinton defended his decision to order missile strikes against the Sudan and Afghanistan in the wake of the African embassy bombings, although the Sudanese target was a pharmaceutical plant which produced the bulk of that country's medicine and no connection has been demonstrated between either target and the bombings. Future preemptive actions would be taken, he said: "We are doing everything we can, in ways I can and in ways that I cannot discuss We must be deliberate, and we must be aggressive." Clinton told the Times that he was considering a proposal from the Pentagon to restructure the military command through the appointment of a commander in chief for the defense of the continental United States--a measure never undertaken even in World War II or at any time during the Cold War. Such an action would be the precursor to ending 130-year-old policy, under the posse comitatus law, which bars the use of American military forces for internal police purposes. Just as significant as the measures themselves was the nearly hysterical language in which Clinton presented the danger of terrorism. He claimed that the threat of biological and chemical attack "keeps me awake at night and bothers me." He described the prospect of such attacks as the greatest threat to US national security in the twenty-first century, justifying a vast mobilization of federal resources. Introducing Clinton to his audience at the NAS, National Security Advisor Sandy Berger noted the unprecedented scale of the administration's proposed deployment against the supposed terrorist threat, including not only the Pentagon, Justice Department and CIA, but the Department of Energy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Transportation (aviation security) and even the Department of Health and Human Services, which will oversee some of the preparations against biological warfare. Richard A. Clarke, recently appointed by Clinton to the new post of national coordinator of counterterrorism and computer security programs, warned of
