So let me get this straight, we fast track renditions but hunt down whistleblowers on presidential planes! “The CIA was granted permission to use rendition (to the USA of indicted terrorists) in a presidential directive signed by US President Bill Clinton in 1995, following a procedure established by US President George H. W. Bush in January 1993”. This program kicked into high-gear under Bush junior after 911 and continues to this day under the Obama administration. “According to a US Congress report [2008], up to 14,000 people may have been victims of rendition and secret detention since 2001. Some reports estimate there have been twice as many. The map below shows the countries involved in fast tracking rendition flights, helping to transport U.S. captives to secret prisons – black sites - across the globe, condemning innocent men, women, and children to confinement, torture, and death. click to enlarge - source Bolivians Indignant at European Treatment of President Morales Further coverage: U.S. As Malcolm X warned us in his Audubon Ballroom speech in Harlem in 13 December 1964:
One Era's Traitor Is Another Era's Whistle-Blower - By J. Dana Stuster When the Guardian named Edward Snowden as the source behind a series of leaks last week on National Security Agency surveillance programs, the backlash was swift. In a rare show of bipartisanship, several members of Congress -- including House Speaker John Boehner, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton -- labeled the 29-year-old contractor a traitor. The Guardian's profile, meanwhile, characterized Snowden as "one of America's most consequential whistleblowers" and compared him to Daniel Ellsberg. The Guardian isn't alone in comparing Snowden to Ellsberg, who leaked a secret Pentagon-authored history of the Vietnam War, known as the Pentagon Papers, to reporters at the New York Times and Washington Post in 1971. But the reaction to Snowden's leaks is in many ways different than the response Ellsberg received when the Pentagon Papers were published four decades ago. When Ellsberg did face harsh criticism, it was often personal in nature.
Gun-death tally: Every American gun death since Newtown Sandy Hook shooting (INTERACTIVE) The answer to the simple question in that headline is surprisingly hard to come by. So Slate is collecting data for our crowdsourced interactive. This data is necessarily incomplete (click here to see why, and to learn more about @GunDeaths, the Twitter user who helped us create this interactive). But the more people who are paying attention, the better the data will be. You can help us draw a more complete picture of gun violence in America. Update, Dec. 31, 2013: After a year of gun deaths, Slate is retiring this project. Click a marker below to filter incidents by that location. © OpenStreetMap contributors Any Age Group Adult Teen Child Matched Deaths: 12,042 or more between Newtown and Dec. 31, 2013 Fetching latest data Show Methodology Each person under 13 years of age is designated "child"; from 13 to 17: "teen"; 18 and older: "adult." The same icons used to represent males is also used to represent individuals of unknown gender. —Dan Kois, senior editor, Slate
Hacker Who Exposed Steubenville Rapists Raided By FBI, Faces Ten-Year Prison Sentence In April, the FBI quietly raided the home of the hacker known as KYAnonymous (whose real name is Deric Lostutter) in connection with his role in the Steubenville rape case. Today he spoke out for the first time about the raid and his motivations for pursuing the Steubenville rapists.Lostutter may deserve more credit than anyone for turning Steubenville into a national outrage. After a 16-year-old girl was raped by two members of the Steubenville High football team last year, he obtained and published tweets and Instagram photos in which other team members had joked about the incident and belittled the victim.Lostutter says he played no role in the hacking the Steubenville team’s fan page; he points out that another hacker, Batcat, has publicly taken the credit.
Ashley Jessica, Student Activist, Says She Was Violated During TSA Pat-Down A 27-year-old Ph.D. student says a TSA agent touched her vaginal area during a pat-down at a California airport; however, a representative told The Huffington Post the agents followed procedure. Ashley Jessica , a psychology student from Toronto who has recently campaigned to raise awareness about invasive TSA practices , told HuffPost that she and her mother chose to opt out of a full-body scan at San Diego International Airport on May 23. Because they opted out, TSA agents said they had to give her an "extensive pat-down." About halfway into the procedure (at the 4:35 minute mark in the video above), a TSA agent feels the area between Jessica's breasts, and Jessica puts up her hands as if to protect herself from further touching. Less than two minutes later, the agent appears to run her hands all the way up the inside of Jessica's leg. "OK, you need to hold still for this process," says another TSA agent, who is off-screen. "She just touched my vagina!" (h/t LA Weekly ) Also on HuffPost:
Eric Holder Signed Off On Search Warrant For James Rosen Emails: NBC News Attorney General Eric Holder personally signed off on the warrant that allowed the Justice Department to search Fox News reporter James Rosen's personal email, NBC News' Michael Isikoff reported Thursday. The report places Holder at the center one of the most controversial clashes between the press and the government in recent memory. The warrant he approved named Rosen as a "co-conspirator" in a leak investigation, causing many to warn that the Justice Department was potentially criminalizing journalism. The Justice Department later said that it did not intend to press any charges against Rosen. The attorney general is usually required to approve requests to search journalists' materials, but that rule does not extend to email records . The revelation came hours after President Obama said in a speech that he was concerned about the potential implications of the Fox News and AP investigations. Also on HuffPost:
James Rosen named a co-conspirator: Why is Barack Obama’s Justice Department going after a national security reporter? Fox News' James Rosen Screenshot via C-SPAN The Obama Justice Department’s crusade against leakers just took a quantum leap—and it’s extremely worrisome. It’s one thing to go after officials who leak classified information to the press. The Obama administration has gone after more of them than all previous administrations combined. However, it’s something else entirely to go after a reporter who receives the leak. This has never happened in this country. A similar case occurred in 2006, during George W. The section of the indictment titled “Ways and Means of the Conspiracy” found that Rosen and Weissman: “… would cultivate relations with Franklin and others and would use their contacts within the U.S. government and elsewhere to gather sensitive information, including classified information, relating to national defense, for subsequent unlawful communication, delivery and transmission to persons not entitled to receive it.” Those final words are worth noting.
War on Whistleblowers: How the Obama Administration Destroyed Thomas Drake For Exposing Government Waste April 15, 2013 | To order a free DVD of the documentary, War on Whistleblowers, click here. When Thomas Drake, then an official at the National Security Agency, realized that the agency’s decision to shut down an internal data analysis program and instead outsource the project to a private contractor provided the government with less effective analysis at much higher cost, he tried to do something about it. Drake’s decision to join three other whistleblowers in asking the agency’s inspector general to investigate ultimately made him the target of a leak investigation that tore his life apart. In 2005, the inspector general of the Department of Defense, of which NSA is a part, confirmed the whistleblowers’ accusations of waste, fraud and security risk. Earlier this year, former NSA Director Michael Hayden even conceded that TrailBlazer, the program for which the NSA paid over $1 billion to the Science Applications International Corporation, had failed.
Armed agents seize records of reporter, Washington Times prepares legal action Maryland State Police and federal agents used a search warrant in an unrelated criminal investigation to seize the private reporting files of an award-winning former investigative journalist for The Washington Times who had exposed problems in the Homeland Security Department’s Federal Air Marshals Service. Reporter Audrey Hudson said the investigators, who included an agent for Homeland Security’s Coast Guard service, made a pre-dawn raid of her family home Aug. 6 and took her private notes and government documents that she had obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. SEE ALSO: Judicial Watch sues IRS for stonewalling on tea party FOIA The documents, some of which chronicled her sources and her work at The Times about problems inside the Homeland Security Department, were seized under a warrant to search for unregistered firearms and a “potato gun” suspected of belonging to her husband, Paul Flanagan, a Coast Guard employee. PHOTOS: Families suspect SEAL Team 6 crash was inside job
The Danger of Suppressing the Leaks This is a world without leaks. And a world without leaks — the secret government information slipped to the press — may be the direction we’re headed in. Since 9/11, leakers and whistle-blowers have become an increasingly endangered species. The government has its reasons for cracking down. “The government has legitimate secrets that should remain secrets,” Michael V. Journalists tend to view the situation differently, and not just because they want, in the oft-heard phrase, “to sell newspapers.” Declan Walsh, a reporter who wrote many WikiLeaks-based stories for The Guardian before coming to The Times, calls leaks “the unfiltered lifeblood of investigative journalism.” Whatever one’s view, one fact is clear: Leakers are being prosecuted and punished like never before. The crackdown sends a loud message. “There’s definitely a chilling effect,” he told me. And that, says Michael Leiter, is as it should be. Many observers, though, see a useful middle ground. Mr.
Big Brother, Kill Lists, and Secrecy: What to Expect from Obama’s Second Term By Christian Stork on Nov 14, 2012 Following Barack Obama’s significant electoral victory, the ways in which the President will interpret his new “mandate” are still very much up for debate. While pundits, many of whom got the election seriously wrong, fumble to come up with new predictions, an analysis of Obama’s track record and statements on national security policy can be quite illuminating. But even more important was the bombshell story that appeared in the Washington Post on October 23, revealing the existence of a new database within the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) that will list suspected terrorists and militants slated for extrajudicial assassination. Additionally, on October 29, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Amnesty v. What do NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program and the Obama administration’s recently developed “disposition matrix” have to do with one another? Climbing Out of the Abyss, Jumping Back In The Supreme Court’s decision in Amnesty v.
Supreme Court Rejects Challenge to Surveillance Law The decision, by a 5-to-4 vote that divided along ideological lines, probably means the Supreme Court will never rule on the constitutionality of that 2008 law. More broadly, the ruling illustrated how hard it is to mount court challenges to a wide array of antiterrorism measures, including renditions of terrorism suspects to foreign countries and targeted killings using drones, in light of the combination of government secrecy and judicial doctrines limiting access to the courts. “Absent a radical sea change from the courts, or more likely intervention from the Congress, the coffin is slamming shut on the ability of private citizens and civil liberties groups to challenge government counterterrorism policies, with the possible exception of Guantánamo,” said Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at American University. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel A. In dissent, Justice Stephen G. The decision, Clapper v. Mr.
The NDAA and the Death of the Democratic State February 17, 2013 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Last week, a few hundred activists crowded into the courtroom of the Second Circuit, the spillover room with its faulty audio feed and dearth of chairs, and Foley Square outside the Thurgood Marshall U.S. The section permits the military to detain anyone, including U.S. citizens, who “substantially support”—an undefined legal term—al-Qaida, the Taliban or “associated forces,” again a term that is legally undefined. Section 1021(b)(2) was declared invalid in September after our first trial, in the Southern District Court of New York. If we lose in Hedges v. “The stakes are very high,” said attorney Carl Mayer, who with attorney Bruce Afran brought our case to trial, in addressing a Culture Project audience in Manhattan on Wednesday after the hearing.