I was once told by someone involved in a federal investigation not to let any identified federal law enforcement officer into your house without: a) a warrant and b) your lawyer present. At the time, this notion seemed a bit less than cooperative. Shouldn’t law-abiding citizens be able to live their lives free from the fear that our own government would underhandedly manipulate our rights in their pursuit of an investigation? After all, the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution enumerates a limitation on the federal government, one that prevents “unreasonable search and seizure.” Today, this enumerated protection is being ignored by – of all institutions – the U.S. Justice Department, under the darkened shadow of Attorney General Eric Holder.
A recent column by The Atlantic’s Emily Berman, a Furman Fellow and Brennan Center Fellow at NYU School of Law, informs the citizenry:
It just got easier for the federal government to collect information about innocent Americans — and those Americans have had surprisingly little say in the matter.
On October 15, the FBI reportedly implemented new rules that relax restrictions on, and oversight of, the FBI’s intelligence collection activities. Although they are not available to the public, reports indicate the changes permit FBI agents to search an individual’s trash with the goal of finding material that might pressure him into becoming a government informant, grant agents the authority to search commercial or law enforcement databases without first opening an investigation, and reduce the type of investigations subjected to heightened oversight because of their relationship to protected First Amendment expression, association, or religious practice.
This is the third modification of the FBI’s intelligence collection authorities since September 11, 2001. First in 2002, again in 2008, and finally, just last week, amendments were adopted with scant public attention and with minimal — if any — congressional involvement. Groups and communities concerned about the new rules’ impact on civil liberties, particularly the risk of religious or ethnic profiling, also had no constructive input.
Granted, heated debate continues over the PATRIOT Act, signed into law after the jihadist attacks of September 11, 2001. Debate is good. It helps all involved – citizenry, government and advocacy groups — to present cogent arguments in pursuit of protections for the US Constitution and the whole of the Charters of Freedom. But the PATRIOT Act, whether you agree with it or not, was the result of a direct enemy attack on our country and was drafted in pursuit of protection for our citizenry. While it may need to be refined, it is a completely different matter from the federal government usurping enumerated limitations on federal authority and protected rights to extract information from an American citizen who is not officially under investigation or to coerce an American citizen in matters not related to national security, and even then without due process.
The Fourth Amendment states quite clearing:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
It’s pretty straightforward; there is a procedure in place (due process) that the federal government must adhere to when engaging an American citizen in matters of law enforcement. To ignore – or usurp – this due process is to ignore the rule of law, which is the bedrock of our Constitutional Republic. To ignore due process, where an American citizen is concerned, is unconstitutional and criminal in nature.
If that weren’t enough, Eric Holder’s Justice Department is also acting to codify a longstanding policy that effectively validates lying to not only the American people but the judicial branch as well:
A longtime internal policy that allowed Justice Department officials to deny the existence of sensitive information could become the law of the land — in effect a license to lie — if a newly proposed rule becomes federal regulation in the coming weeks.
The proposed rule directs federal law enforcement agencies, after personnel have determined that documents are too delicate to be released, to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests ‘as if the excluded records did not exist.’
Justice Department officials say the practice has been in effect for decades, dating back to a 1987 memo from then-Attorney General Edwin Meese.
In that memo, and subsequent similar internal documents, Justice Department staffers were advised that they could reply to certain FOIA requests as if the documents had never been created. That policy never became part of the law — or even codified as a federal regulation — and it was recently challenged in court.
A final version of the proposal could be issued by the end of 2011. If approved, the new rule would officially become a federal regulation with the force of law.
All of this presents the question: Who does one call when the chief law enforcement officer when the federal department responsible for upholding justice ignores our rights and begins acting like Third World or Soviet-era intelligentsia?
From his refusal to protect the voting rights of every citizen, to the blatant, politically based, “social justice” racism executed by his department, along with his pursuit of the deliberate usurpation of the enumerated limitations placed on the federal government to protect the rights of the citizenry in both personal security and our right to know, Mr. Holder has not only been a disgrace to the American system of justice; he has effectively become an enemy to the US Constitution, the whole of the Charters of Freedom and the very ideas of blind justice and liberty.
If, for no other reason, Holder’s exit from the federal government will be one of the major benefits of the Obama Administration coming to an end. But for now, as I asked before, who do you call when 9-1-1 is the criminal?
http://biggovernment.com/fsalvato/2011/10/29/when-government-knows-no-limitation/
How the Patriot Act stripped me of my free-speech rights
Sometime in 2012, I will begin the ninth year of my life under an FBI gag order, which began when I received what is known as a national security letter at the small Internet service provider I owned. On that day in 2004 (the exact date is redacted from court papers, so I can’t reveal it), an FBI agent came to my office and handed me a letter. It demanded that I turn over information about one of my clients and forbade me from telling “any person” that the government had approached me.
National security letters are issued by the FBI, not a judge, to obtain phone, computer, and banking information. Instead of complying, I spoke with a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union and filed a constitutional challenge against the NSL provision of the Patriot Act, which was signed into law 10 years ago Wednesday.
A decade later, much of the government’s surveillance policy remains shrouded in secrecy, making it impossible for the American public to engage in a meaningful debate on the effectiveness or wisdom of various practices. The government has used NSLs to collect private information on hundreds of thousands of people. I am the only person from the telecommunications industry who received one to ever challenge in court the legality of the warrantless NSL searches and the associated gag order and to be subsequently (partially) un-gagged.
In 2004, it wasn’t at all clear whether the FBI would charge me with a crime for telling the ACLU about the letter, or for telling the court clerk about it when I filed my lawsuit as “John Doe.” I was unable to tell my family, friends, colleagues or my company’s clients, and I had to lie about where I was going when I visited my attorneys. During that time my father was battling cancer and, in 2008, he succumbed to his illness. I was never able to tell him what I was going through.
For years, the government implausibly claimed that if I were able to identify myself as the plaintiff in the case, irreparable damage to national security would result. But I did not believe then, nor do I believe now, that the FBI’s gag order was motivated by legitimate national security concerns. It was motivated by a desire to insulate the FBI from public criticism and oversight.
In 2007, this newspaper made an exception to its policy against anonymous op-eds and published a piece I wrote about my predicament. In August 2010, the government agreed to a settlement, and I was finally allowed to reveal my name to the public in connection with my case, but I am still prevented — under the threat of imprisonment — from discussing any fact that was redacted in the thousands of pages of court documents, including the target of the investigation or what information was sought.
I don’t believe that it’s right for Americans’ free speech rights to be bound by perpetual gag orders that can’t be meaningfully challenged in a court of law. The courts agreed, but the NSLs and the gag orders live on. Now the FBI is supposed to notify NSL recipients that they can challenge a gag order — but the government refuses to say how the court’s ruling has been put into practice, or how many gag orders have been issued, challenged or reversed. This information is especially important since internal Justice Department investigations have found widespread violations of NSL rules by the FBI.
During the recent debate to reauthorize sections of the Patriot Act, two members of the Senate Intelligence Committee — Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) — warned that the government is interpreting the law to conduct surveillance that does not follow from a plain reading of the text. “When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry,” Wyden said. As someone who had to keep silent and live a lie for the better part of a decade, in the false name of “national security,” I know he’s right.
The writer is executive director of the Calyx Institute, a nonprofit organization that promotes “best practices” with regard to privacy and freedom of expression in the telecommunications industry.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-the-patriot-act-stripped-me-of-my-free-speech-rights/2011/10/20/gIQAXB53GM_story.html
Epic Geomagnetic Storm Erupts
Right this moment, there's an epic magnetic battle raging above our heads.
On Monday, at around 2 p.m. ET, a coronal mass ejection (CME) slammed into the Earth's magnetosphere. According to NASA's Space Weather Laboratory, the conditions were just right for the CME's magnetic field to compress the Earth's magnetosphere so much that, for a short time (between 3:06 p.m and 3:11 p.m. ET), energetic solar wind particles penetrated as deep as geosynchronous orbit -- home to hundreds of communication satellites.
Although the interactions between solar plasma and Earth's magnetic field are often invisible, tonight is an exception. Vast aurorae are rippling through the atmosphere at very low latitudes.
At time of writing, the US was being given a dazzling show as Spaceweather.com reports:
Northern Lights have spilled across the Canadian border into the contiguous USA. Sighting reports have come from as far south as Arkansas, Wisconsin, Michigan, Tennessee, Missouri, Illinois, Nebraska, Kentucky, Indiana, Oklahoma, Kansas, Maryland, New York, Ohio and central California.
Yes, central California! To see some of the auroral displays, the Universe Today has a few reader's photos featured. My personal favorite is an earlier photograph taken in Norway.
Why is this happening? And why now?
It is well known that the sun is building in activity toward "solar maximum" -- the peak is predicted to occur by around 2013 -- and we have witnessed some huge solar flares recently.
Flaring activity and the eruption of CMEs are both symptomatic of the extreme magnetic stresses torturing the sun's interior.
So, we've just experienced a CME punch -- solar plasma contained within the CME and solar wind have streamed into the magnetosphere. Usually these energetic particles would follow the magnetic field lines and be confined to the North and South Polar Regions, creating the familiar Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis, respectively -- as the solar particles rain down through the atmosphere, impacts with atmospheric gases cause the atmosphere to glow. But this time the conditions were just right that the powerful CME impact caused a geomagnetic storm to ripple across the globe, extending the aurorae.
ANALYSIS: How Does the Sun Affect the Earth?
Scientists are able to measure when a geomagnetic storm is underway by using the "Kp index." This measurement is derived by measuring how much the horizontal component of the Earth's magnetic field varies over a 3-hour period. Depending on the intensity of fluctuations, the Kp index is assigned values between 0 to 9. If the value hits 5, this means a geomagnetic storm is occurring and auroral displays can be expected.
At its peak, the Kp index hit a "7" -- a strong geomagnetic storm!
Apart from generating beautiful auroral displays at lower latitudes than would be expected, strong geomagnetic storms can have a sinister side. As energetic particles wash through our orbital neighborhood, vulnerable satellites can be damaged and huge electrical currents can be induced through the upper atmosphere, potentially overloading entire power grids.
Last year, the much-publicized "zombiesat" was caused by a solar storm knocking out a satellite's ability to communicate with Earth. Its brains were, quite literally, "fried."
And if you think it's not possible for the sun to damage a power grid, think again. In 1989, Hydro-Québec power grid was knocked out by a geomagnetic storm caused by a CME hitting the Earth. Just before the grid was knocked out -- leaving millions of customers without power for several hours -- aurorae were spotted as far south as Texas.
It is unlikely that the current geomagnetic storm will cause satellite harm or power grid mayhem, but as society becomes ever more dependent on delicate electronics and constant mains electricity, we become increasingly vulnerable to the awesome violence of solar eruptions.
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/1287/327/Epic_Geomagnetic_Storm_Erupts.html
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