So I just finished reading this op ed piece by one Sarah Conly who decided to step up to the plate and defend busybody mayor Bloomberg and his attempt to ban the sale of large size soft drinks in New York City. She is obviously a well educated person and makes a fairly well thought out argument over why certain freedoms should be curtailed. Well educated, however, does not necessarily mean free thinking, nor does it necessarily translate into wisdom. In fact, after reading Ms. Conly’s op/ed piece I would say that she was decidedly against free thought, unless of course that free thought leads one into the arms of the ever coddling state. READ MORE »
Posts in category Police State/Big Brother
“TSA has a de facto program of violating the rights of disabled travelers” – harassed and detained, man with neurological disorder issues FOIA request for TSA policies and procedures
I have a neurological disorder that causes episodic muteness and muscle spasms. I always require medical liquids (namely, juice) at hand, and sometimes I require paper to communicate.
The TSA has a de facto program of violating the rights of disabled travelers like me, and I’m fed up with it. They’re routinely violating not just clearly established law, but their own policy. I want this to stop.
I’m currently pursuing administrative & civil action against the TSA for these incidents below. If you know any good lawyers admitted to California, Massachusetts, or Federal practice, who are knowledgable in the ADA / Rehabilitation Act, §1983 or Bivens actions under the 1st and 4th amendment, and/or FOIA litigation, please email me.
I believe that the public has a right to know what the TSA’s rules are. Therefore, I’ve submitted a FOIA for essentially all of the TSA’s policy & procedures documents on public interest grounds. If these are of interest to you, please fill in my simple 3 question survey; it’ll help me a lot in pursuing this.
Right now, the TSA’s “recommended but not required” stance encourages agents to violate travelers’ rights by forcing them to disclose their disability and encouraging someone with no medical training decide whether something is “medically necessary” or not.
Confessions of a Serial Conspiracy Theorist
I think that perhaps I’ve always been a conspiracy theorist. Now, that statement needs a little clarification. Always is a long time, so perhaps it would be better to say I’ve been a conspiracy theorist in this lifetime. Ah, but even that is a long time and can be a little unclear, so perhaps it is a little more accurate to say I’ve been a conspiracy theorist for as long as I can remember. Hmm, even that’s a little incorrect because I can remember pretty far back to times when I didn’t have a realistic idea of how the world works. Perhaps if I claim I’ve been a conspiracy theorist for as long as I’ve been able to think about such things and use reason to come to logical conclusions. Yeah, that’s the ticket. READ MORE »
ACLU Launches Nationwide Police Militarization Investigation
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has launched a nationwide campaign to assess police militarization in the United States. Starting Wednesday, ACLU affiliates in 23 states are sending open records requests to hundreds of state and local police agencies requesting information about their SWAT teams, such as how often and for what reasons they’re deployed, what types of weapons they use, how often citizens are injured during SWAT raids, and how they’re funded. More affiliates may join the effort in the coming weeks.
Additionally, the affiliates will ask for information about drones, GPS tracking devices, how much military equipment the police agencies have obtained through programs run through the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, and how often and for what purpose state National Guards are participating in enforcement of drug laws.
“We’ve known for a while now that American neighborhoods are increasingly being policed by cops armed with the weapons and tactics of war,” said Kara Dansky, senior counsel at the ACLU’s Center for Justice, which is coordinating the investigation. “The aim of this investigation is to find out just how pervasive this is, and to what extent federal funding is incentivizing this trend.”
2 out of every 3 Americans lost Fourth Amendment protections to DHS
Two out of every three people reading this could have your electronic devices searched, without there being any reasonable suspicion, because the Department of Homeland Security has decided that such search and seizures do not violate your Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure. Border agents don’t need probable cause and they don’t need a stinking warrant since they don’t need to prove any reasonable suspicion first. Nor, sadly, do two out of three people have First Amendment protection; it is as if DHS has voided those Constitutional amendments and protections they provide to nearly 200 million Americans.
Those numbers come from the ACLU’s estimates of how many people live within 100 miles of the United States border, since Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CLCR) concluded that border searches of electronic devices do not violate the Fourth Amendment. Previously, the ACLU called this area the Constitution-Free Zone and provided a map showing how many people within states along the all our borders are affected without constitutional rights. The estimate is that nearly two out of three Americans live in the Constitution-Free Zone.
CTC says opposition to a New World Order is terrorist activity
According to a report from the “Combatting Terrorism Center” at West Point, ‘Anti-Federalists’ who oppose a New World Order as well as members of several other far right wing activist groups are potential terrorist threats.
West Point is the U.S. Military Academy that trains, educates, and prepares Cadets for their service in the U.S. Army. The CTC (Combatting Terrorism Center) at West Point was established following the events on September 11, 2001 because of the belief that strong initiative was needed to prepare Cadets for the new environments they would be headed into upon graduating in the post-9/11 era. The CTC provides a unique terrorism-based education and since its creation, the program has received international recognition for its studies, reports, and teachings on terrorism and terrorist threats. A new report from the CTC, however, suggests that far right wing political activists, not radical Islamic groups, are the new terrorist threat in America and even goes so far as to say that those who oppose a ‘New World Order’ are potentially violent terrorists.
Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/342686#ixzz2JzHE8uZQ
Big brother to log your drinking habits and waist size as GPs are forced to hand over confidential records
GPs are to be forced to hand over confidential records on all their patients’ drinking habits, waist sizes and illnesses.
The files will be stored in a giant information bank that privacy campaigners say represents the ‘biggest data grab in NHS history’.
They warned the move would end patient confidentiality and hand personal information to third parties.
The data includes weight, cholesterol levels, body mass index, pulse rate, family health history, alcohol consumption and smoking status.
Diagnosis of everything from cancer to heart disease to mental illness would be covered. Family doctors will have to pass on dates of birth, postcodes and NHS numbers.
Officials insisted the personal information would be made anonymous and deleted after analysis.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2272166/Big-brother-log-drinking-habits-waist-size.html#ixzz2JlSGvuMw
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Cops watching Geneva school after Pledge flap
A Kane County Sheriff’s deputy was stationed for the second day Friday at Mill Creek Elementary School near Geneva, in reaction to a parent’s protest of how children were saying the Pledge of Allegiance.
But the parent being investigated maintains he is not a threat to children’s safety: “America, God and children are what is important to me,” said Colin McGroarty of Rockford.
School officials called the sheriff’s office twice Wednesday: once after McGroarty spoke in front of children, and later that day after the school district received an email from him that it deemed threatening.
There was a disturbance in the school library “involving a parent and the use of language that is not typically heard in a school setting. A kindergarten class was present at the time,” school officials wrote.
Wednesday evening, they said, the parent emailed the school board, administrators and some Mill Creek school parents, and posted a message on social media, charging that the school did not recite the Pledge of Allegiance correctly, leaving out the word “liberty.”
“The emails this parent sent, accompanied by the social media post prompted district officials to involve the Kane County Sheriff’s Department once again. The safety of all our students is of highest priority, and there will be an increased police presence at all of our elementary schools today and in the future,” the school statement said.
Eastern Kentucky sheriff says he will not enforce gun laws he considers unconstitutional
FRANKFORT — An Eastern Kentucky sheriff said Saturday that he will not enforce any new gun control laws that he considers unconstitutional.
Asked whether such a stance makes him more a judge than a law-enforcement official, Jackson County Sheriff Denny Peyman said he has “a team of attorneys to step up with me if necessary to be sure the Second Amendment is upheld.”
“I consider this a moral obligation,” he said.
Peyman, who has been sheriff of Jackson County for two years and is a member of the National Rifle Association, is garnering national attention and support from gun rights advocates for saying Saturday, “My office will not comply with any federal actions which violate the United States Constitution or the Kentucky Constitution which I swore to uphold.”
The controversial issue of gun control has intensified across the nation since last month’s massacre in Newtown, Conn., in which 27 people were killed. Twenty of them were elementary school children.
Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/01/12/2473855/eastern-kentucky-sheriff-says.html#storylink=cpy
NYPD’s controversial ‘Stop and Frisk’ policy ruled unconstitutional
A key part of the NYPD’s controversial “stop and frisk” tactic has been ruled unconstitutional.
Manhattan Federal Court Judge Shira Scheindlin ordered police to refrain from making trespass stops outside private residential buildings — even though the landlord has given officers permission to do so as part of the NYPD’s “Clean Halls” program.
“While it may be difficult to say when precisely to draw the line between constitutional and unconstitutional police encounters such a line exists, and the NYPD has systematically crossed it when making trespass stops outside buildings,” Scheindlin wrote in a 157-page ruling.
The New York Civil Liberties Union argued in an eight-day hearing in October that “Clean Halls,” which exists only in the Bronx, leads to people being hassled by cops and sometimes cuffed near their own abode for no legitimate reason.
Battling the NWO, One Pizza at a Time
What could be more innocuous than the pizza delivery guy? What could be more welcoming than the man or woman showing up at your door bringing sustenance from one of your favorite restaurants you just called? You didn’t even have to go out into the cold night on your own and freeze your little toes off to get your favorite food. They brought it to you. All for a small convenience fee and whatever voluntary tip you might like to give the person who provided this little service. Ah, but don’t be fooled. These people who provide this service are very dangerous. They must be stopped. You see, these types of people are a perfect example of how a free market system works. If you begin to learn from their example, why you just might learn too much about how the elite who would like to rule the world work, and we just can’t have that now, can we? Besides, you little common folk don’t need such convenient services. Such services should be exclusive to the wealthy elite. READ MORE »
New Jersey teen locked in police van for 15 hours files suit
Fort Lee – Adam Kim, who was 17 when he was locked in a police van for 15 hours, has filed a lawsuit claiming the experience left him traumatised.
Adam Kim’s clash with police officers followed his presence at a party. NBC reported that around midnight on March 25, 2011 police officers responded to calls that a house party was overly noisy. Adam claims that he and others were racially abused by the officers who responded to the call. 14 teenagers, including Mr Kim were then placed in a police van. At no time during all of this were any of the teens told why they were being arrested, nor were they read their rights. Ten of them were put in two separate cages in the van. The remaining four were seated. Taken to police headquarters on arrival all but five of the teens were led into the building. The others, mostly of Asian ethnic origin, remained in the locked van.
Here they stayed for 15 hours, with no food, water nor bathroom access, until a passer-by raised the alarm. Kim alleges they were ignored by officers who returned to the van to respond to calls. The five teenagers were provided with food and water, plus medics were called after the passer-by had raised the alarm. The night temperature was cold and the five teens hardly dressed for the weather. According to NBC Kim was only wearing a T Shirt.
Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/340328#ixzz2GsKTBtUE
Handcuffed California teen shot while in police custody
Southern California teenager who was fatally shot while handcuffed by police last Wednesday was armed during the incident, a police spokesperson said Monday.
The suspect, later identified as Lamon Khiry Haslip, 18, died Friday night.
Haslip’s friends and neighbors, including Pastor Caleb Henderson, have admitted that Haslip was a gang member, but contest the way in which he was killed.
“No one should be shot, handcuffed with hands behind their back,” Henderson said.
FBI Investigated ‘Occupy’ As Possible ‘Terrorism’ Threat, Internal Documents Show
According to internal documents newly released by the FBI, the agency spearheaded a nationwide law enforcement effort to investigate and monitor the Occupy Wall Street movement. In certain documents, divisions of the FBI refer to the Occupy Wall Street protests as a “criminal activity” or even “domestic terrorism.”
The internal papers were obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice fund via a Freedom of Information Act Request. The fund, a legal nonprofit that focuses on civil rights, says it believes the 112 pages of documents, available for public viewing on its website, are only “the tip of the iceberg.”
“This production … is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement,” wrote Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, the fund’s executive director, in a press release Saturday.
According to the documents, the FBI coordinated extensively with private companies, including banks, that feared they could be affected by Occupy protests. Occupy, which took root in New York City’s Zuccotti Park in September 2011 and spread to cities across the country, targeted corporations and other forces it believed to perpetuate social inequality. The FBI’s investigation included the movement’s manifestations in New York; Milwaukee; Indianapolis; Anchorage, Alaska; Jacksonville, Fla.; Richmond, Va.; and Memphis, Tenn., among others.
Court rules peace activists can sue the U.S. military for infiltration
December 18, 2012
Nathan Tempey
Communications Coordinator
(212) 679-5100, ext. 15
New York
Guild lawyer hails historic decision
In a potentially precedent-setting decision, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that a Guild lawyer’s challenge to military spying on peace activists can proceed. The ruling marks the first time a court has affirmed people’s ability to sue the military for violating their First and Fourth Amendment rights.
“This has never been done before,” said NLG member attorney Larry Hildes, who is handling the case. “The U.S. government has spied on political dissidents throughout history and this particular plot lasted through two presidencies, but never before has a court said that we can challenge it the way we have.”
The ruling is the latest development in the lawsuit, Panagacos v. Towery, first brought by Hildes in 2009 on behalf of a group of Washington state antiwar activists who found themselves infiltrated by John Towery, an employee at a fusion center inside a local Army base. Fusion centers are multi-jurisdictional intelligence facilities which house federal and local law enforcement agencies alongside military units and private security companies. Their operations are largely secret and unregulated. There are currently 77 fusion centers in the United States.