Est. Oct. 3, 2010
In this issue: Scot Horton: Is Obama worse than Bush on civil liberties? – The Feds are watching the Muslims…badly – Why is the Government Collecting your Biometric Data? – Resisting the Police State – The New National Security Canon – FBI’s Secret Surveillance Letters to Tech Companies
Source: Wired. here is a competing school of thought, one with more purchase in official Washington. It holds that the problem of terrorism is actually the problem of Islam. As a Danger Room series has explored, adherents of that viewpoint have instructed counterterrorism professionals within the FBI, the Justice Departmentand the military. Last week, a military college run by the Joint Chiefs of Staff removed an Army lieutenant colonel who taught senior officers that the United States ought to attack Muslim civilians. That approach is the polar opposite of the perspective taken by this rising crowd of scholars.
Source: Wired. The outcome of the Supreme Court’s 2011-2012 term, which ended Thursday, was largely favorable when it came to the justices’ Wired-worthy opinions surrounding surveillance, the First Amendment, intellectual property and even profanity. But the term’s overall outcome was mixed at best. That’s because the court, without comment, let stand rulings upholding torture, a $675,000 verdict for file-sharing 30 music tracks, and, among other things, skirted educators’ demands that it clarify on what grounds public schools may punish students for their off-campus, online speech.
Source: ArsTechnica. As the result of a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Department of Justice has revealed, for the first time, the types of secret letters that the government can send out to ISPs and other tech companies being asked to reveal personal data about their users and customers who are being investigated for national security reasons. In 2009, over 6,000 Americans received such National Security Letters (NSLs).
Source: Reuters. Outspoken New York criminal defense attorney Lynne Stewart, now disbarred and incarcerated, lost a bid to reverse her 10-year prison sentence for helping a terrorism suspect smuggle messages to his followers from prison. In a written opinion on Thursday, three judges at the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York expressed little sympathy for 72-year-old Stewart, who has struggled with breast cancer and whose supporters had argued the prison term amounted to a death sentence.
Source: Lawfare. In a new essay in the American University Law Review, I test this thesis as applied to four different doctrines: (1) the availability of Bivens remedies; (2) federal common law defenses to state-law suits against government contractors; (3) qualified immunity; and (4) the political question doctrine. I contrast the state of these doctrines in non-national security cases with how the same law has been applied in suits with national security over- or under-tones. As I conclude, closer inspection reveals fairly compelling evidence for the emergence of a new “national security canon,” by which I mean a body of rules unique to national security cases that, at least thus far, all cut against allowing relief in suits that might otherwise be able to proceed to judgment.
Source: Syracuse.com. Fifteen people, including a woman in a wheelchair, were arrested for trespassing today during a protest at the New York Air National Guard base at Hancock Field. The members of the Upstate Coalition To Ground the Drones and End the Wars staged their protest for almost two and a half hours this afternoon, from 11 a.m. to about 1:40 p.m., as New York State Troopers and DeWitt Police stood by appearing to confer with members of the military.
Source: Daily Beast.
Source: AP. A federal magistrate says the United States falsely imprisoned a former Idaho man under a law designed to ensure that key witnesses show up for trial, and a jury should decide if the government has misused that law in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The Wichita, Kansas resident and former University of Idaho football star sued the government in 2003 after he was arrested and held as a material witness in a terrorism-related criminal case against another man.
Source: San Francisco Bay Guardian. In the last year, San Francisco, Portland, Ore., and other cities have set limits on the participation by local officers in FBI’s surveillance operations of law-abiding citizens. San Jose has refused to honor federal immigration holds, creating a model for other sanctuary cities. And in Berkeley, citizens and politicians have taken a deliberate approach to limit their police department’s cooperation with the feds on several fronts.
