More on the U.S. law enforcement warrantless seizures of private data of Americans

I've posted on this topic before, based on one of Glenn Greenwald's articles. I am at a loss for any legitimate reason for the U.S. to seize, without a search warrant, private information of Americans who are in the process of re-entering the United States. This includes seizure of cell phones and laptops and demands for the passwords. Greenwald's newest report gives the shocking statistics:

A 2011 FOIA request from the ACLU revealed that just in the 18-month period beginning October 1, 2008, more than 6,600 people — roughly half of whom were American citizens — were subjected to electronic device searches at the border by DHS, all without a search warrant. Typifying the target of these invasive searches is Pascal Abidor, a 26-year-old dual French-American citizen and an Islamic Studies Ph.D. student who was traveling from Montreal to New York on an Amtrak train in 2011 when he was stopped at the border, questioned by DHS agents, handcuffed, taken off the train and kept in a holding cell for several hours before being released without charges; those DHS agents seized his laptop and returned it 11 days later when, the ACLU explains, “there was evidence that many of his personal files, including research, photos and chats with his girlfriend, had been searched.” That’s just one case of thousands, all without any oversight, transparency, legal checks, or any demonstration of wrongdoing.
Greenwald's report also gives us details regarding a recent detention of award-winning film-maker Laura Poitras, who has been detained and questioned 40 times by U.S. Border Authority:
Each time this has happened in the past, Poitras has taken notes during the entire process: in order to chronicle what is being done to her, document the journalistic privileges she asserts and her express lack of consent, obtain the names of the agents involved, and just generally to cling to some level of agency. This time, however, she was told by multiple CBP agents that she was prohibited from taking notes on the ground that her pen could be used as a weapon. After she advised them that she was a journalist and that her lawyer had advised her to keep notes of her interrogations, one of them, CBP agent Wassum, threatened to handcuff her if she did not immediately stop taking notes.
Greenwald then details yet another incident, this one involving David House, an activist who helped found the Bradley Manning Support Network. The details are equally disturbing. There is some consolation, in that U.S. District Judge Denise Casper, an Obama-appointed judge in the District of Massachusetts, has reviewed allegations from a case brought by House and so far refused to dismiss House' case against the United States. Other aspects of that case are less than satisfying, though, for those of us who still think that the First and Fourth Amendments are good ideas.

Continue ReadingMore on the U.S. law enforcement warrantless seizures of private data of Americans

I’m still struggling to understand the alleged logic of the Easter sacrifice

Tonight, more than 35 years after completing 12 years of Catholic education, I find myself re-visiting the claim that it was God's gift to humankind to allow Jesus to die. Specifically, I'm re-reading my earlier posts on the "illogic of atonement" and the application of the "moral accounting metaphor."   I believe the latter theory would actually shed light on why an omnipotent God couldn't simply snap his fingers and forgive humans, instead of sacrificing his son.  Then again, none of this would explain why a God would blame all of humankind for the allegedly bad act of Adam and Eve, especially when their alleged transgression was trying to partake of knowledge of good and evil.  That doesn't sound like a crime to me. In fact it befuddles me.  Hence, I'm not a Christian. Rather, as usual, I'm looking at Easter from the outside in.

Continue ReadingI’m still struggling to understand the alleged logic of the Easter sacrifice

The government keeping an eye on us

In the process of describing his lawsuit regarding the NDAA, Chris Hedges writes:

There are now 1,271 government agencies and 1,931 private companies that work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States, The Washington Post reported in a 2010 series by Dana Priest and William M. Arken. There are 854,000 people with top-secret security clearances, the reporters wrote, and in Washington, D.C., and the surrounding area 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2011. Investigative reporter James Bamford wrote in the latest issue of Wired magazine that the National Security Agency is building the largest spy center in the country in Bluffdale, Utah, as part of a secret NSA surveillance program code-named “Stellar Wind.” Bamford noted that the NSA has established listening posts throughout the country to collect, store and examine billions of email messages and phone calls.

Continue ReadingThe government keeping an eye on us

Eleven years prior to Rosa Parks refusing to move, Jackie Robinson refused to move

Today I learned from Wikipedia that Jackie Robinson refused to go to the back of a bus 11 years prior to Rosa Parks' refusal, suffering racist mistreatment by the military as a result:

An event on July 6, 1944 derailed Robinson's military career. While awaiting results of hospital tests on the ankle he had injured in junior college, Robinson boarded an Army bus with a fellow officer's wife; although the Army had commissioned its own unsegregated bus line, the bus driver ordered Robinson to move to the back of the bus. Robinson refused. The driver backed down, but after reaching the end of the line, summoned the military police, who took Robinson into custody. When Robinson later confronted the investigating duty officer about racist questioning by the officer and his assistant, the officer recommended Robinson be court-martialed. After Robinson's commander in the 761st, Paul L. Bates, refused to authorize the legal action, Robinson was summarily transferred to the 758th Battalion—where the commander quickly consented to charge Robinson with multiple offenses, including, among other charges, public drunkenness—even though Robinson did not drink.

Continue ReadingEleven years prior to Rosa Parks refusing to move, Jackie Robinson refused to move

Words about War

A DI reader named Mike Baker provided me with his collection of quotes on quite a few topics, including a section he titled "War and Peace." It is largely from Mike's collection that I selected the following quotes: War is not the continuation of politics with different means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community of man. ~Alfred Adler It is always easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them. ~Alfred Adler "In war, truth is the first casualty." ~ Aeschylus A great war leaves a country with three armies: an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves. ~Anonymous (German) The terrorist is the one with the small bomb. ~Brendan Behan "War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle." - Thomas Carlyle If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies. --Moshe Dayan (1915 - 1981) History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. ~Abba Eban It'll be a great day when education gets all the money it wants and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy bombers. ~Author unknown, quoted in You Said a Mouthful edited by Ronald D. Fuchs Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding. ~Albert Einstein The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing. ~Albert Einstein Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. --Dwight D. Eisenhower, From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953 [More . . . ]

Continue ReadingWords about War