The Slow Creep Of Fascism & Civil Liberties Erosion

Making Martial Law Easier

Anyone paying attention to the events in government cannot help but notice that there is a continuous erosion of civil liberties and a steady creep of fascism taking hold of our nation. Even with the Dems in control of Congress there has been a latent manifestation of these dynamics, including a tendency to hide legislative measures in benign appearing bills that include amendments that empower the government to circumvent our rights, the rule of law, and the basic foundations of our way of life.

Are we really that fearful of the bogeyman that we are willing to surrender our first principles and liberties in the name of being secure... even when that sense of security is nothing more than an illusion propagated by the propaganda and lies of those that seek to dominate us? I pray that such is not the case.

I renew my call for rules in both houses of Congress that prohibit attaching unrelated amendments to bills on matters on a specific topic that no one would suspect having the ramifications such as the one discussed in the NY Times editorial that prompted this post. I am also calling for each house of Congress to post a web site that clearly indicates the full parameters of a bill, in plain English that can be understood by someone with an 8th grade education, and identifying each congress critter responsible for the bill and each amendment... and the reasons for the amendments.

A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night. So it was with a provision quietly tucked into the enormous defense budget bill at the Bush administration’s behest that makes it easier for a president to override local control of law enforcement and declare martial law.

The provision, signed into law in October, weakens two obscure but important bulwarks of liberty. One is the doctrine that bars military forces, including a federalized National Guard, from engaging in law enforcement. Called posse comitatus, it was enshrined in law after the Civil War to preserve the line between civil government and the military. The other is the Insurrection Act of 1807, which provides the major exemptions to posse comitatus. It essentially limits a president’s use of the military in law enforcement to putting down lawlessness, insurrection and rebellion, where a state is violating federal law or depriving people of constitutional rights.

The newly enacted provisions upset this careful balance. They shift the focus from making sure that federal laws are enforced to restoring public order. Beyond cases of actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or to any “other condition.”

Changes of this magnitude should be made only after a thorough public airing. But these new presidential powers were slipped into the law without hearings or public debate. The president made no mention of the changes when he signed the measure, and neither the White House nor Congress consulted in advance with the nation’s governors.

There is a bipartisan bill, introduced by Senators Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, and Christopher Bond, Republican of Missouri, and backed unanimously by the nation’s governors, that would repeal the stealthy revisions. Congress should pass it. If changes of this kind are proposed in the future, they must get a full and open debate.

Further, there are issues with ID, banking laws, and telecommunication records that follow suit with this trend of surreptitious erosion of liberty and the creeping crawl of fascism.

Driver’s License Emerges as Crime-Fighting Tool, but Privacy Advocates Worry

On the second floor of a state office building here, upstairs from a food court, three facial-recognition specialists are revolutionizing American law enforcement. They work for the Massachusetts motor vehicles department.

Last year they tried an experiment, for sport. Using computerized biometric technology, they ran a mug shot from the Web site of “America’s Most Wanted,” the Fox Network television show, against the state’s database of nine million digital driver’s license photographs.

The computer found a match. A man who looked very much like Robert Howell, the fugitive in the mug shot, had a Massachusetts driver’s license under another name. Mr. Howell was wanted in Massachusetts on rape charges.

The analysts passed that tip along to the police, who tracked him down to New York City, where he was receiving welfare benefits under the alias on the driver’s license. Mr. Howell was arrested in October.

At least six other states have or are working on similar enormous databases of driver’s license photographs. Coupled with increasingly accurate facial-recognition technology, the databases may become a radical innovation in law enforcement.

Other biometric databases are more useful for now. But DNA and fingerprint information, for instance, are not routinely collected from the general public. Most adults, on the other hand, have a driver’s license with a picture on it, meaning that the relevant databases for facial-recognition analysis already exist. And while the current technology requires good-quality photographs, the day may not be far off when images from ordinary surveillance cameras will routinely help solve crimes.

Critics say the databases may therefore also represent a profound threat to privacy.

“What is the D.M.V.?” asked Lee Tien, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a privacy advocate. “Does it license motor vehicles and drivers? Or is it really an identification arm of law enforcement?”

Add to this the push for using DNA registries for anyone and everyone arrested--ARRESTED, not convicted--of felonies, and we see the trend grow even larger. While DNA is a useful tool, the over-reaching effort to catalog DNA is a broad, vague, arbitrary and capricious effort to begin a surveillance approach on every citizen and resident in the US.

U.S. SET TO BEGIN A VAST EXPANSION OF DNA SAMPLING

Justice Dept plans vast expansion of DNA gathering that will include hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, by far largest group affected; officials say goal is to make practice of DNA sampling as routine as fingerprinting for anyone detained by federal agents; new forensic DNA sampling was authorized by Congress in little-noticed amendment to Jan 2006 renewal of Violence Against Women Act; amendment permits DNA collecting from anyone under criminal arrest by federal authorities, and also from illegal immigrants detained by federal agents; Peter Neufeld, lawyer and co-director of Innocence Project, which has exonerated dozens of prison inmates using DNA evidence, says government is overreaching; notes DNA profiles have potential to reveal physical diseases and mental disorders, allowing government to mine most intimate matters; immnigration lawyers voice dismay at sweeping scope of measure; they note most immigration violations are civil, not criminal offenses.

Then there is the obvious erosion of the writ and principle of habeas corpus in the matters of terrorism and combatants held at Gitmo and elsewhere. When the government can hold anyone--even a suspected terrorist, murderer or enemy combatant--without providing for a challenge to the charges and a challenge to the evidence against them, the door for overt fascism is held open for other improprieties. It is important to note that while the reasoning of the court on this matter might sound fair and logical, the court has overlooked the role of various treaties and the rules of conduct incumbent upon US, including the Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Guantanamo Detainees Lose Appeal and Court Endorses Law’s Curbs on Detainees

A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that hundreds of detainees in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, do not have the right to challenge their imprisonment in federal courts, a victory for the Bush administration that could lead to the Supreme Court again addressing the issue.

In its 2 to 1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld one of the central components of the Military Commissions Act, the law enacted last year by a then-Republican-controlled Congress that stripped Guantanamo detainees of their right to such habeas corpus petitions. Lawyers have filed the petitions on behalf of virtually all of the nearly 400 detainees still at Guantanamo, challenging President Bush's right to hold them indefinitely without charges. Yesterday's ruling effectively dismisses the cases.

Attorneys for the detainees vowed to quickly petition the Supreme Court to hear the case.

A divided federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a new law stripping federal judges of authority to review foreign prisoners’ challenges to their detention at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The decision set the stage for a third trip to the Supreme Court for the detainees, who will once again ask the justices to consider a complex issue that tests the balance of power among the White House, Congress and the courts in the murky context of the fight against international terrorism.

It also prompted some senior Democratic lawmakers, who have fought the Bush administration on the matter before and who now hold sway in Congress, to vow enactment of a law more favorable to the prisoners.

Add to these things the continued execution of domestic spying via the collection of ISP and telecommunication accounts without warrants, subpoena or probable cause. The collection of records--which count as papers and effects under the Fourth Amendment--without probable cause or evidence of a crime is clearly a deliberate attempt to circumvent the law and the privacy of every American.

MCLU Applauds Public Utility's Demand that Verizon Tell the Truth About Cooperation with NSA's Spying Program

The Maine Civil Liberties Union applauded the Maine Public Utilities Commission's decision today to initiate contempt proceedings against Verizon Maine for failure to comply with an August 9 order by the Commission. The order required a Verizon official to swear under oath to the truth of previous statements issued by Verizon regarding the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance and data collection program.

"The Commission's decision today was an important first step in getting to the bottom of whether Verizon and the federal government violated Mainers' privacy," said Shenna Bellows, Executive Director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union.

The complaint, filed in May by 22 Verizon customers, urged the Commission to protect the privacy of Mainers by investigating whether Verizon allowed the NSA access to the phone records of its customers without their knowledge or legal consent. In August the Commission asked Verizon to confirm under oath statements made in earlier press releases claiming that Verizon did not give customer records to the NSA are true and not misleading.

In response to the order, the United States Department of Justice sued the Maine PUC and Verizon Maine to stop Verizon from complying with the order and to keep the PUC from opening any future investigations into the matter. The MCLU entered the proceedings as an intervenor on behalf of the original complainants.

I remind everyone that the characteristics of a fascist government are clearly being fulfilled in our times. All 14 major characteristics have been predominant and present as part of the Bush administration, the former Congress and, to some extent, continues under the Dems, despite their claims that they have a mandate to act against the platform and policies of the Bush gang and GOP/Christian Right.

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
4. Supremacy of the Military
5. Rampant Sexism
6. Controlled Or Manipulated Mass Media
7. Obsession with National Security
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
9. Corporate Power is Protected
10. Labor Power is Suppressed
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
14. Fraudulent Elections