Our secret court system

I'm a lawyer and I'd like to study U.S. surveillance court rulings, but I can't, and you can't either, because court rulings are secret. Our massively opaque government (all three branches) has truly become Kafkaesque. So much for the People running this country. The NYT reports:

In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation’s surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects, but also people possibly involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage and cyberattacks, officials say. The rulings, some nearly 100 pages long, reveal that the court has taken on a much more expansive role by regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny, according to current and former officials familiar with the court’s classified decisions.

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Alan Grayson proposes new law to curtail out of control U.S. spying on its own citizens

This is an excerpt from a mass emailing I received from Rep. Alan Grayson:

Host John Fugelsang: So with Edward Snowden's travels much in the news, you've offered an amendment that I wish were getting as much attention as what country he's landing in. An amendment to end NSA spying on Americans, called the 'Mind Your Own Business Act.' Sir, what's in it? Congressman Alan Grayson: What's in it is a prohibition against the Department of Defense collecting information about Americans on American soil, unless they can show that you're involved in a terrorist conspiracy, or unless they're investigating a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That draws the line where the line has been since the 1870s, and the passage of the Posse Comitatus Act. Now the Department of Defense has obliterated that line, by collecting information on every single telephone call that every American makes, forever. John: This seems to me [to be] the kind of act that would get support from true liberals and true conservatives alike. What kind of support is your act getting now? Alan: Well it's too early to say, but there's been tremendous support from the public. Over 20,000 people have already come to our website, MindYourOwnBusinessAct.com, and signed our citizen petition to pass the act. I think over time that will snowball. I think we'll see hundreds of thousands of people eventually, and I think we'll see more and more Members of Congress understand the simple principle that's involved here: That [this] kind of spying does not make us safer, and it is beneath our dignity as Americans. John: And last week the President rejected comparisons between his administration and Bush-Cheney, or I guess I should say Cheney-Bush, on domestic spying. Do you agree with Barack Obama that there's nothing in common? Alan: Uh, no, I don't agree with that. Actually there's been a continuous spying on the American citizens through these programs, the two programs that Snowden disclosed, apparently going back at least [since] 2007. One of the documents that he disclosed indicates that Microsoft, which operates the Hotmail e-mail program, joined this NSA program in 2007. John: And do you think he gets that, sir? Do you think he's aware of how unpopular these programs are? Alan: No, I don't. And I think that that itself is a disturbing element to this. I think that the so-called 'intelligence community' has the President's ear, and no one else does. Virtually everybody that I know immediately recognizes how silly and pointless it is to spy on every person's conversation, to get information on who is talking to whom, when, and for how long. And ultimately, most people begin to understand the threat involved. The fact is that there is now a [government] record of every telephone call made in America, going back to Alexander Graham Bell, apparently. And the threat involved is what Snowden has called 'turnkey tyranny.' The fact is that someone else after Barack Obama, let's say President Louie Gohmert, can come along and use all that information to make life in America miserable for all Americans.

Continue ReadingAlan Grayson proposes new law to curtail out of control U.S. spying on its own citizens

St. Louis Restore the Fourth protesters speak out against NSA spying

Today I had the opportunity to interview some of the spirited demonstrators from Restore the Fourth. They spent more than six hours standing in the hot sun in front of the Old Courthouse (where Dred Scott was granted his freedom prior to the U.S. Supreme Court reversal). Their object was to educate the general public as to Fourth Amendment rights and the various ways that the federal government (including the NSA) is violating those rights. I sympathize greatly with this cause. There is a reason why all of us invest in locks for our doors and passwords for our computers. We DO have an expectation of privacy when we call a friend to discuss wrenching life decision-making. We expect that NSA employees don't have access to our bank account information, our emails, our Facebook messaging to individuals (or even to our posts when we've limited access to our Friends). How much trouble with our "computers" has been caused by the NSA invading our networks without warrants? Since when is it not search or seizure for a government employee to copy our personal communications? Many people react by thinking that there ought to be a law to prevent this, but there already is a law--the Fourth Amendment. This law should be observed or repealed after the People of the United States are fully informed about the extent that the government wants access to our personal communications and meta-data revealing our social networks. Since when is invading our privacy not a big deal, such that the government simply does it without probable cause? How much identity theft has been caused by a NSA employee or contractor swiping our personal identifiers or our financial information? restore the fourth - St. Louis In addition to invading our privacy, the NSA has destroyed the ability to do investigative journalism. The government has declared war on the right of American citizens to know what their own government is doing. Because investigative journalism is severely chilled, the only way for people to learn of government misconduct is when an extraordinarily courage individual such as Bradley Manning or Edward Snowden risks his life by leaking or blowing the whistle. And based on the way our own government treated Bradley Manning, future whistle blowers know that they will likely be tortured by the U.S. government, even prior to be charged with any crime or convicted of any crime. Obviously, this is a fast moving story, and we will learn a lot about whether our elected representatives have the courage or the intelligence to go after the surveillance-industrial complex. I'm not optimistic, because our politicians cling to the strategy of selling us terrorism nightmares and pretending that they can protect us from those "terrorists" or "insurgents" who supposedly hate us for our freedom The bottom line is that we all need to get involved with our representatives. There is much to be lost by a government policy that destroys the ability of citizens to keep their private things private.

Continue ReadingSt. Louis Restore the Fourth protesters speak out against NSA spying

U.S. authorities tracking snail mail too.

If you thought you were left alone with regard to your snail mail, this article from the NYT tells us to think again:

Leslie James Pickering noticed something odd in his mail last September: A handwritten card, apparently delivered by mistake, with instructions for postal workers to pay special attention to the letters and packages sent to his home.

“Show all mail to supv” — supervisor — “for copying prior to going out on the street,” read the card. It included Mr. Pickering’s name, address and the type of mail that needed to be monitored. The word “confidential” was highlighted in green.

“It was a bit of a shock to see it,” said Mr. Pickering, who owns a small bookstore in Buffalo. More than a decade ago, he was a spokesman for the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group labeled eco-terrorists by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Postal officials subsequently confirmed they were indeed tracking Mr. Pickering’s mail but told him nothing else.

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Unequal access to secret information shows us who is doing real journalism

Chris Hayes nails it on MSNBC. The U.S. government and its many cronies in the mass media love to disburse secret information when it bolsters the position of the government. They take the opposite position when information embarrasses the U.S. government.

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Love his conclusion: The conduct of the vast and growing surveillance web is "on all of us what the government does in our name."

Continue ReadingUnequal access to secret information shows us who is doing real journalism