The American Police State Watch – May 2006 to April 2007

The Year In Tyranny

BACKGROUND: March 2, 2006 – Reauthorization of the Patriot Act passes in Congress, clearing the way for President Bush to sign legislation making permanent most major provisions of the 2001 law. Revisions include an amendment granting the president authority to appoint interim federal prosecutors indefinitely without senate confirmation. It also includes broader powers for the FBI to commit domestic espionage in the name of fighting terrorism, without prior approval by the Justice Department.

June 15, 2006 – Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, both Bush appointees, carry a majority decision to overturn the “knock and announce” requirement for police officers intent on searching a private residence. A central tenet of the Fourth Amendment, in place in America since 1914, and with roots in 13^th century English law, the “knock and announce” rule was basic to the view that one’s home is one’s castle. SWAT teams, acting without being restricted by it, may precipitate extreme violence when met by homeowners who are, for now, in many states allowed to open fire on unknown persons bursting through their doors.

June 23, 2006 – AT&T issues an updated privacy policy that says that AT&T – not its customers – owns the customers confidential info and can use it “to protect its legitimate business interests, safeguard others, or respond to legal process.”

June 2006 – In a story that makes headlines nationwide, FBI agents proclaim that they have broken up a plot to take down Chicago’s Sears Tower. It is subsequently revealed that not only had the so-called conspirators not yet obtained explosives, but that they had not made any material advances whatsoever, had done no surveillance on their target, had never even been to Chicago, and were so ill funded that undercover agents had to provide them with boots. The suspects, a hapless group from Liberty City, Florida, live in an impoverished black neighborhood of mostly single-story dwellings surrounded by new condominium towers in Miami’s red-hot redevelopment area.

July 7, 2006 – A plot to “bomb the Holland Tunnel and flood lower Manhattan” is reported first in the New York Daily News and then headlined nationwide. Proclaimed portentously as “the real deal” by Mark Mershon, chief of the FBI’s New York field office, it is simultaneously clucked over by White House homeland security adviser Fran Townsend on Fox News as the type of “leak” of an ongoing investigation that “helps the terrorists figure out our methods.” It is subsequently revealed that the conspirators, all foreigners, had not yet obtained explosives nor made any material advances whatsoever, had done no surveillance nor been to New York or even the United States, had not in fact even met each other, and had only been communicating in an Internet chat room set up by one Assem Hammoud, a 31 year old Lebanese man living with his mother in Beirut. Ms. Townsend’s so-called secret investigation, “our methods,” were first, the electronic version of using a cup to eavesdrop through a wall, and then, the brilliant tracking down of the suspect through his Internet address. It drops off the news when it is realized that the terror plot defies the laws of physics. The sidewalk entrance to the Jersey-bound tunnel is, according to federal maps, exactly ten feet above sea level.In fact, there is no place in lower Manhattan that is below sea level; the flooding of which would thus require setting up a large and sophisticated pumping operation simultaneous with the bombing of the tunnel.

August 17, 2006 - A federal judge rules in Detroit that the Bush administration's wiretapping program is illegal and unconstitutional, violating the First and Fourth Amendment protections of free speech and privacy. The White House and Justice Department voice disappointment over the ruling and vow they will fight to overturn it.

September 28, 2006 – House and Senate pass a Terror Bill that will go on record as the most tyrannical law in the 217-year history of the United States, far worse than the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, or the nightmare that was the McCarthey era. Railroaded by the Bush administration and cynical republican legislators, this law broadens the definition of illegal enemy combatants to include legal residents of the United States, empowers the president to apply that label to anyone he chooses and thus subjecting them to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal, strips suspects of the right to Habeas corpus, repudiates the Geneva Conventions by allowing Mr. Bush to determine in secret which abusive interrogation techniques he considers permissible, narrows the definition of torture so as to, for example, effectively eliminate rape as an offense, allows coerced evidence to be permissible, weakens protections against secret evidence, and eliminates judicial review except by military tribunal.

Oct 2006 – US State Department will begin issuing passports with RFID chips consisting of a microchip and a tiny antenna that transmit data whenever the antenna comes within range of a reader. The chip, according to statements, will contain only the details printed in the passport and a digital photograph. Passport covers will contain anti-skimming material to block casual access and only recognized readers will be able to access the data. Generic programmable readers are available online for less than $100.

December 7, 2006 – Seven State Prosecutors are dismissed, including Paul Charlton (Phoenix) who had pushed to tape-record FBI interviews, John McKay (Seattle) who had advocated a computerized law enforcement information-sharing system, and Carol Lam (San Diego) who had prosecuted Randy Cunningham, the disgraced Republican congressman.

December 20, 2006 – The Supreme Court is considering weighing in on TSA requirements that domestic travelers must show photo ID as a violation on the right to privacy. At present such requirements are demonstratively unenforceable: passengers who refuse to show photo ID are bumped to the front of the line for thorough security inspections but otherwise permitted entrance to a concourse. Exact details of the rules are secret; contained as SSI (Secret Security Information). That the rules are undiscoverable violates a long-standing American legal tradition that citizens have the right to know the laws that apply to them. Secret law is a basic, long-standing instrument of tyranny.

December 21, 2006 – Department of Homeland Security is sued by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to disclose details of its “Risk Assessment” program that assigns travelers crossing US borders computerized scores rating their risks as possible terrorists or criminals. These ratings are to be held on file for 40 years and individuals will not be permitted access to them. These ratings have affected every traveler including US citizens who have crossed borders in the last 4 years.

Feb 20, 2007 - A federal judge in San Francisco, U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker, denies requests from media groups to unseal evidence in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) class-action lawsuit against AT&T. EFF's suit accuses the telecom giant of collaborating with the National Security Agency (NSA) in illegally spying on millions of Americans. The sealed evidence includes a declaration by Mark Klein, a retired AT&T telecommunications technician, as well as several internal AT&T documents and portions of a declaration from EFF's expert witness. Some of the evidence was previously released in redacted form, while other evidence is still completely unavailable to the media and the public.

"We're disappointed that the court did not choose to unseal all of the documents that include or refer to the evidence presented by Mark Klein and our expert, J. Scott Marcus. The government has already agreed that the evidence is neither classified nor a state secret, and is only being held under seal because of AT&T's weak trade secrecy claims," said Cindy Cohn, EFF's Legal Director. "Given that the privacy of millions of Americans is at stake, we strongly believe that the public would benefit from seeing this evidence for themselves."

March 2007 - Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee are shocked (!) to discover that the FBI has been grossly overstepping the bounds of even its recently broadened powers, powers that those same republicans enabled. These powers granted the FBI much greater latitude to commit domestic espionage in the name of fighting terrorism. A report to the H.J.C. by the Justice Department’s inspector general Glen A. Fine, found the FBI, using the investigative tool known as national security letters, has in all 56 of its field offices engaged in illegal activities to gather vast amounts of information on private citizens. They have been collecting telephone, Internet, financial, credit, and other personal records about Americans without judicial approval. The report found repeated violations of the rules governing use of NSLs, including frequent invocations of emergency proceedings when there was no emergency, and large gaps in record keeping.

March 14, 2007 – In a statement intended to deflect blame amidst a rising clamor over the unwarranted dismissal of state prosecutors, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will only conclude, “mistakes were made,” the classic Reaganesque cop out with the missing subject and the passive verb. The White House lays blame on failed Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers who was dismissed herself as White House counsel in January 2007, and is then forced to reveal a stream of e-mail correspondence between Miers and Kyle Sampson, top aide to Gonzales, detailing a scheme to replace every one of the 93 state prosecutors in the nation.

March 15, 2007 – The Pentagon earnestly declares that a Guantanamo Bay prisoner named Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has been held without bail or trial or representation and who has been continuously tortured mentally and physically for four years, has suddenly confessed to the US military in a secret hearing, that he planned and financed every major terrorist attack worldwide prior to 2003. The “we got him!” style announcement by the Pentagon, accompanied by a heavily redacted transcript, temporarily knocks besieged Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez off the front pages of the madding mainstream press.

April 6, 2007 – For only the 51st time in its 99 year history, and the first time in 10 years, an FBI agent is killed in the line of duty. It happens during a massive stakeout of a small time gang of bank robbers in suburban New Jersey. When the hapless bank robbers show up outside the bank, two dozen FBI agents carrying significant firepower, along with U.S. Marshals, a task force from the NJ State Police, and several heavily-armed SWAT teams from surrounding communities descend upon them. Three lightly-armed robbers give up immediately and one runs away and hides, but in the confusion an agent is shot in the back at close range by a cop with an assault rifle. It is a tragedy resulting from the perfect triangulation of three modern realities: 1. a saturation of military surplus hardware among police departments nationwide, 2. a culture of fear that leads to an inclination towards excessive force, and 3. the impossibility of containing militaristic tactical maneuvers in real urban settings.

April 26, 2007 - Two Atlanta police officers plead guilty to manslaughter after killing an elderly woman who opened fire on them during a "no-knock" drug raid on her house on Nov. 21, 2006 (see June 15, 2006 above.) The officers also plead guilty to lying about information from an informer that there was surveillance equipment in her house in order to obtain the no-knock warrant that same day. Kathryn Johnston, 92, who lived alone in a modest green-trimmed house at 933 Neal Street, fired one shot from a .38-caliber revolver through her front door as the plains clothed police, who had already pried off her burglar bars, began to ram the door open. Ms. Johnston was then struck five times in a hail of gunfire and died instantly from taking a bullet to the chest. The police fired 39 shots in all, and after handcuffing her dead body, searched the house without finding any drugs.