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Latest Articles: Dead Constitution
Judge: Man can't be forced to divulge encryption passphrase
Post Date: 2007-12-21 17:19:23 by aristeides
4 Comments
Judge: Man can't be forced to divulge encryption passphrase Posted by Declan McCullagh A federal judge in Vermont has ruled that prosecutors can't force a criminal defendant accused of having illegal images on his hard drive to divulge his PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) passphrase. U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerome Niedermeier ruled that a man charged with transporting child pornography on his laptop across the Canadian border has a Fifth Amendment right not to turn over the passphrase to prosecutors. The Fifth Amendment protects the right to avoid self-incrimination. Niedermeier tossed out a grand jury's subpoena that directed Sebastien Boucher to provide "any passwords" ...
CIA issues 'criminal referral' on waterboarding whistleblower
Post Date: 2007-12-21 11:57:44 by robin
1 Comments
CIA issues 'criminal referral' on waterboarding whistleblower12/21/2007 @ 7:42 am Filed by David Edwards and Muriel Kane Last week, a former CIA officer publicly described the waterboarding of suspected al-Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah to ABC News. As reported by RAW STORY (with video), John Kiriakou, who led the squad which captured the suspected terrorist, told ABC's Brian Ross that although he did not witness the waterboarding himself, fellow agents told him about it and said it broke Abu Zubaydah's resistance in less than a minute. CNN's John Roberts noted that "there were a lot of people wondering ... whether or not he was actually disclosing state ...
Bush Demands Action on Surveillance, Pledges Tough Line on Spending in 2008
Post Date: 2007-12-21 11:54:22 by aristeides
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Bush Demands Action on Surveillance, Pledges Tough Line on Spending in 2008 By Alan K. Ota and David Clarke, CQ Staff President Bush got in the first word Thursday on priorities for 2008, telling Congress to make an overhaul the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act its first order of business. He also warned Democrats that he will continue to oppose spending and tax increases, as well as any weakening of his signature education overhaul. Bush voiced concern at a news conference that Congress failed to complete work on a permanent overhaul of the 1978 surveillance law (FISA — PL 95-511) before adjourning. He urged it to do so before a temporary expansion of domestic surveillance ...
White House faces hearing on CIA tapes
Post Date: 2007-12-21 11:01:54 by richard9151
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2 hours, 53 minutes ago WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has made its position clear in legal filings and now gets a chance to say it to a judge in open court: Hold off on inquiring about the destruction of CIA videotapes that showed suspected terrorists being interrogated. U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy ordered the hearing Friday over the objection of the Justice Department after lawyers raised questions about the possibility that other evidence also might have been destroyed. Kennedy, appointed to the trial court by President Clinton, is considering whether to delve into the matter and, if so, how deeply. The hearing marked the first time that administration lawyers were ...
MPAA censors torture documentary, gleefully approves of fake torture
Post Date: 2007-12-21 08:34:43 by Zipporah
1 Comments
ThinkFilm is releasing Alex Gibney's documentary "Taxi To The Dark Side" and submitted a poster for MPAA approval which featured a photo of two soldiers leading away a handcuffed and hooded man. The MPAA rejected it as being "not suitable for audiences of all ages". The hypocrisy of this, in the face of posters for horror/slasher flicks like "Saw" and "Hostel", is astounding. Censorship pure and simple. The photo used in the proposed poster is derived from an actual photograph which the army also tried to censor. The MPAA has also rejected a one-sheet for Roadside Attractions "The Road To Guantanamo" which featured a hooded man ...
Former CIA Lawyer: ‘If A Tape Is Not Safe In The CIA, We’re In Trouble’
Post Date: 2007-12-20 20:35:40 by Zipporah
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Former CIA Lawyer: ‘If A Tape Is Not Safe In The CIA, We’re In Trouble’ « After he was informed that the New York Times was about to publish an article on torture tape destruction, CIA Director Michael Hayden told his employees that the CIA destroyed the tapes in part to protect the identities of CIA interrogators: [T]he tapes posed a serious security risk. Were they ever to leak, they would permit identification of your CIA colleagues who had served in the program, exposing them and their families to retaliation from al-Qa’ida and its sympathizers. The White House reiterated this line in defense of the tape destruction, claming, “The President doesn’t ...
Cocaine Jet That Crashed in Mexico Part of Cowboy Government (DHS) Operation, DEA Sources Claim
Post Date: 2007-12-20 16:51:22 by aristeides
4 Comments
Cocaine Jet That Crashed in Mexico Part of Cowboy Government Operation, DEA Sources Claim Mexican Officials Fear the Case, if Exposed, Could Jeopardize US Funding for “Plan Mexico” By Bill Conroy Special to The Narco News Bulletin December 19, 2007 The Gulfstream II jet that crash landed in the Mexican Yucatan in late September carrying close to four tons of cocaine was part of an operation being carried out by a Department of Homeland Security agency, DEA sources have revealed to Narco News. The operation, codenamed “Mayan Express,” is an ongoing effort spearheaded by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the sources claim. The information surfaced during ...
Woman abandons home to escape public schools
Post Date: 2007-12-20 13:36:42 by robin
3 Comments
POLICE STATE, USA
Woman abandons home to escape public schools
Judge ordered homeschooler to enroll kids or lose custody
Posted: December 20, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Bob Unruh
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
A Utah woman who was ordered by a juvenile court judge to enroll her children in public school or lose custody of them has abandoned her home, furniture and other possessions to escape the order.
Denise Mafi, a nine-year veteran of homeschooling, has confirmed to WND she and her children packed up their essentials – clothes and homeschool materials – and fled Utah over the weekend, spending more than ...
(Comrade Chertoff) DHS finalizing plans for domestic spy satellite program
Post Date: 2007-12-20 13:16:20 by robin
3 Comments
Congress has not been updated since civil liberties concerns delayed satellite spying A plan to dramatically widen US law enforcement agencies' access to data from powerful spy satellites is moving toward implementation, as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff expects to finalize a charter for the program this week, according to a new report. Chertoff insists the scheme to turn spy satellites -- that were originally designed for foreign surveillance -- on Americans is legal, although a House committee that would approve the program has not been updated on the program for three months. "We still haven't seen the legal framework we requested or the ...
NSA Gets Real Time Access to Read Your Email
Post Date: 2007-12-20 12:19:22 by Brian S
2 Comments
It was inevitable: the Advanced Research Projects Agency, later to become DARPA, right out of the Pentagon, created the internet. The RAND Corporation invented modern packet switching. DARPA and ARPANET recruited Vint Cerf of Stanford University to work on TCP/IP. Cerf is regarded as “the father of the Internet,” or maybe that should be the military-NSA snoop network. Now, we learn NSA increasingly controls SSL, now called Transport Layer Security, the cryptographic protocol that provide secure communications on the internet for web browsing, e-mail, instant messaging, and other data transfers. In other words, increasingly, the NSA is reading your email and everything you type in ...
Is the North American Union Conspiracy Theory Really Real? (Take The Evidence Straight from the Horse's Mouth)
Post Date: 2007-12-20 01:38:31 by _______
13 Comments
JonesReport.com | December 6, 2007 RELATED: Dear Deluded Mass Media, North American Union Agenda ExistsAlthough the 'quixotic candidate' Ron Paul has been attacked for believing in a North American Union conspiracy theory, this belief in "fiction" is posted as policy on official government websites and its related issues have been continuously covered by MSM news anchors that include at least CNN's Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck and Larry King. vguard says: The only ones claiming this is a conspiracy are the ones saying that it doesn't exist. Transnational integration and standardization will create a de facto union. Once this process is complete, changing the names will ...
Chertoff Concealed Role in Tape Destruction
Post Date: 2007-12-19 20:32:32 by robin
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Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff advised the CIA between 2002 and 2003 that its agents had the legal authority to use techniques that included waterboarding on one of the agency's so-called "high level detainees," according to a little-known report published in January 2005. That interrogation was videotaped and the tape later was destroyed Chertoff was head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division when CIA officials inquired whether its agents could be charged with violating the federal anti-torture statute for employing interrogation methods such as waterboarding. The tactic causes detainees to slowly drown, and is generally terminated before the ...
US Congress Passes Gun Bill In Response To VTECH Rampage
Post Date: 2007-12-19 19:15:33 by Brian S
7 Comments
WASHINGTON, Dec 19 (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress, prodded by the deadliest shooting rampage in modern American history, passed legislation on Wednesday designed to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. Without objection, the Senate and House of Representatives approved the measure, which would bolster background checks for gun buyers, and sent it to President George W. Bush to sign. The measure would be the first major new gun-control law in more than a decade. It was drafted after a deranged gunman killed himself and 32 others in April at Virginia Tech university. The product of months of talks, the bill was finally agreed to as lawmakers prepared to wrap up their work for the ...
All Perfectly Predictable (MOON OF ALABAMA: THE BIRTH OF THE AMERICAN REICH)
Post Date: 2007-12-19 17:14:33 by aristeides
3 Comments
All Perfectly Predictable Commentator UESLA adds points on a creepy process that deserve a lift to the front page. As preface some observations by me, Bernhard. From today's NYT we learn that at least four White House lawyers pondered the question of burning evidence of their crimes by deleting video tapes (I believe there are copies) of the CIA torture on Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri: One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes. The former official did not specify which White House officials took this position, but he said that ...
White House assails NYTimes over CIA video report
Post Date: 2007-12-19 14:48:19 by robin
4 Comments
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The White House on Wednesday made a rare public demand for a formal correction from the New York Times for implying that it had misled the US public over the destruction of CIA interrogation videos.
The US Justice Department, the White House, and US lawmakers have all launched probes after CIA chief Michael Hayden revealed earlier this month that the agency in 2005 destroyed tapes of interrogations of two Al-Qaeda suspects.
Hayden said the recordings, made in 2002, were destroyed to protect the identities of CIA agents, but the news outraged lawmakers and human rights groups who charges the agency may be covering up possible torture.
Late Tuesday, the Times ...
Constitutional scholar: 'At least six identifiable crimes' possible in CIA tape affair
Post Date: 2007-12-19 12:21:16 by robin
4 Comments
White House involvement in the CIA's decision to destroy videotapes documenting severe interrogation techniques of suspected terrorists could constitute as many as six crimes, according to constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley. Turley appeared on CNN to discuss a new report from the New York Times, which indicates that four White House attorneys, including then-White House counsels Alberto Gonzales and Harriet Miers, participated in discussions with the CIA about whether or not the tapes should be destroyed. The talks also reportedly included David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's former counsel and current chief of staff; and former senior National Security Council ...
Fire erupts at one of Cheney's offices (SECRET SERVICE WON'T LET FIREMEN IN)
Post Date: 2007-12-19 12:00:54 by aristeides
4 Comments
Fire erupts at one of Cheney's offices By James Gerstenzang, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer 7:30 AM PST, December 19, 2007 WASHINGTON -- A fire erupted this morning in the vicinity of Vice President Dick Cheney's ceremonial office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door to the White House. The vice president was not in the office at the time, a White House spokesman said. Thick, black smoke billowed out of the windows and balcony doorway of an adjacent office. The century-old stone building on Pennsylvania Avenue was evacuated. Deputy White House Press Secretary Scott Stanzel said many of the 1,700 employees of the Executive Office of the President work in the ...
White House, Bond Dismiss Reid’s Proposed One-Month FISA Extension
Post Date: 2007-12-19 11:55:58 by aristeides
2 Comments
White House, Bond Dismiss Reid’s Proposed One-Month FISA Extension By Tim Starks and Keith Perine, CQ Staff A top Senate Republican and the White House rejected a proposed one-month extension of an electronic surveillance law, which Majority Leader Harry Reid offered as a way to give Congress more time to complete a long-term overhaul. Faced with such opposition, the proposal appeared to be heading nowhere late Tuesday evening. That means Democrats would have just seven legislative days when they return from the holiday break to enact anything before the temporary law (PL 110-55) expires Feb. 1. Reid’s idea came one day after he pulled from the Senate floor legislation (S ...
Fire hits building next door to White House
Post Date: 2007-12-19 10:52:51 by gengis gandhi
3 Comments
Fire hits building next door to White House * Story Highlights * NEW: Smoke stops pouring from building; firefighters in control * Building housing vice president's ceremonial office evacuated due to fire * Fire started in electrical closet or telephone bank area, fire spokesman says * Fire spokesman: No injuries reported, but a lot of smoke * Next Article in Politics » * Read * VIDEO * MAP Decrease font Decrease font Enlarge font Enlarge font WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Firefighters battled thick smoke and flames Wednesday inside the historic Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next door to the White House, which houses the vice president's ceremonial offices. ...
The US Middle Class Meets The Bloods And The Crips
Post Date: 2007-12-18 20:25:07 by richard9151
6 Comments
12/18/07 "ICH" -- - -Given the U.S. media induced obsession with convicts, criminals, and fugitives; one can clearly see how this coincides with the loss of civil rights, omnipresent video survellience, electronic data intrusions, privatized penal institutions, and the build-up of war-hardened national guard assets - all taxpayer funded to guard the wealth of the elites. The once demure security guard with the blue sports jacket at the local shopping mall, has been replaced with the gun totting, equipment laden sentinel in the black commando uniform, bloused fatigues and combat boots. Suspicious glances have replaced courteous smiles. Basically, we are creating our own prison ...
Another Milestone on the Road to Serfdom
Post Date: 2007-12-18 20:07:51 by richard9151
1 Comments
12/17/07 " Harper's" -- - Very rarely, I read a press account and see the footprint of a new world—there it is, lurking amidst the smudged black ink in the thin column. Sometimes it is a technological breakthrough that promises to make life easier, safer, or longer. But sometimes it is a redefinition of the parameters of human society. And sometimes it’s downright frightening. Time to pull it out of the banality of that newsprint and think. And it happened on Sunday morning. The article is by Eric Lichtblau, James Risen and Scott Shane, and it’s called “Wider Spying Fuels Aid Plan for Telecom Industry.” Take the time to read this article carefully. ...
Senate to Return Jan. 22, After Series of Pro Forma Sessions
Post Date: 2007-12-18 11:14:38 by aristeides
6 Comments
Senate to Return Jan. 22, After Series of Pro Forma Sessions By Bart Jansen and Edward Epstein, CQ Staff The House and Senate will start the second session of the 110th Congress slightly out of sync. The Senate will return Jan. 22, a week after the House, according to two aides. Previously, the Senate had tentatively set Jan. 15 for its return, but leaders decided to push that back a week that after the White House shifted the date for the State of the Union address to Jan. 28. The House still plans to return Jan. 15 as previously announced, according to Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md. “We have a lot of work to do that’s left undone,” Hoyer said. “I don’t ...
Surveillance Bill Stalls in Senate
Post Date: 2007-12-18 11:08:01 by aristeides
1 Comments
Surveillance Bill Stalls in Senate By Tim Starks, CQ Staff Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pulled legislation from the floor that would overhaul electronic surveillance rules, leaving Congress little time to act early next year before provisions in the current law expire. Reid, D-Nev., faced with a backed-up agenda and numerous procedural obstacles on legislation (S 2248) that would rewrite the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA (PL 95-511), decided late Monday to delay consideration of the bill until January. Reid’s move dimmed prospects that Democrats would be able to pass new FISA legislation before Feb. 1, the expiration date for a temporary law (PL 110-55) that ...
New Supreme Court Outrage
Post Date: 2007-12-18 06:11:29 by Ada
2 Comments
In a pair of decisions this week, the Supreme Court undertook a breathtaking invasion of Congress’s legislative authority. Despite Congress’s stated intention, federal courts will henceforth assume far greater discretion to sentence convicted criminals to whatever prison terms they like, regardless of Congress’s legislation. Congress in 1984 adopted legislation pointing toward the establishment of federal criminal-sentencing guidelines. Those guidelines finally appeared in 1987. Their function was to ensure that people convicted of similar crimes received similar sentences, regardless of the part of the country in which they lived and the judge before whom they happened to ...
Torturing the Language of Torture
Post Date: 2007-12-18 05:59:08 by Ada
2 Comments
Torturing the Language of Torture by Sheldon Richman, December 17, 2007 Is waterboarding, known during the Spanish Inquisition as tortura del agua, really torture or not? The question seems to answer itself, but the Bush administration says No. Its critics disagree, noting that the “interrogation technique,” which makes a subject physically and mentally react as though he is drowning, has long been regarded as torture by international agreements and outlawed in the United States. The Washington Post reports that the Army investigated U.S. forces for using the method on a North Vietnamese in 1968. Moreover, “Twenty-one years earlier, in 1947, the United States charged a ...
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