Surveillance in the Homeland Series
Written by Nancy Murray and Kade Crockford Thursday, 29 September 2011 18:01
In the past ten years, the invasive, often discriminatory practices imposed by the Patriot Act and other oppressive policies have become commonplace in America. As the anniversary of 9/11 approaches, Truthout is teaming up with the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts to launch a series of critical analyses and investigative pieces related to privacy, homeland security and surveillance. Through this project, entitled "Ten Years Later: Surveillance in the 'Homeland,'" we hope to reawaken awareness of the true extent of government surveillance, and of the violations routinely carried out in the name of securing the "homeland."
Below is a list of the stories published in this series:
What a Difference a Decade Makes: Ten Years of "Homeland Security"
Creating the Intelligence Bureaucracy
Toward Total Information Awareness
The Advent of the Surveillance Society
Little Brothers are Watching: The Example of Massachusetts
Targeting Dissent
Targeting Muslims
Targeting Immigrants
A Nation of "Suspects"
Targeting Immigrants
Written by Nancy Murray and Kade Crockford Thursday, 29 September 2011 03:22
"Let the terrorists among us be warned," then-attorney general John Ashcroft intoned before the US Conference of Mayors on October 25, 2001: "If you overstay your visa - even by one day - we will arrest you."
Ashcroft's vow to "use all weapons within the law" against noncitizens to "enhance security for America" initially targeted Muslims.
They have been singled out for discriminatory enforcement of immigration regulations, from the post-9/11 "special interest" arrests to the present. But the search for the "terrorists among us" has had a broad reach. In March 2003, The Philadelphia Inquirer found, among cases classified as "terrorism" by the Justice Department, one involving 28 Latinos charged with working illegally at the airport in Austin, Texas.
Targeting Muslims
Written by Nancy Murray and Kade Crockford Thursday, 29 September 2011 03:13
In August 2002, police were called to a home in Seminole, Florida, by a woman who said her husband had threatened to kill her. She invited them to conduct a search. They found a cache of weapons, including 20 live bombs, mines and more than 30 guns, among them semi-automatic weapons, 50-caliber machine guns and sniper rifles. There was also a list of targets - 50 worship centers across the state.
Little attention outside of Florida was paid to the elaborate plan to bomb the Islamic Center of Pinellas County, target mosques and "kill all rags" drawn up by Robert Jay Goldstein, a Tampa podiatrist. Goldstein was not referred to as a "terrorist" in thelimited national coverage and neither was there a mention of his religious background. Goldstein, who was not a Muslim, did not fit the frame.
The FOIA Wars: Just How Open Is Our "Open Government"?
Written by Alissa Bohling Friday, 16 September 2011 15:31
"American democracy has a disease, and it's called secrecy."
So begins a July 2011 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) report on secrecy laws and the security establishment's heavy-handed use of the classified stamp.
Of course, even unclassified documents don't just magically make their way into the public domain.
Much of the shocking (and sometimes, not so shocking) news we read wouldn't have come to light without the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, the open records law passed as an antidote to the secrecy disease in 1966. FOIA was amended for the first time in the wake of the Watergate scandal, and, most recently, by the Open Government Act at the close of George W. Bush's second term.
FOIA was especially important in unearthing the secrets of the Bush presidency, when early rumors of extraordinary rendition, "enhanced interrogation techniques" and "black site" prisons challenged everything Americans thought they knew about their country.
Targeting Dissent
Written by Nancy Murray and Kade Crockford Thursday, 15 September 2011 15:34
How little - yet how much - has changed in the last 40 years. The COINTELPRO papers sound distinctly 21st century as they detail the monitoring of perceived threats to "national security" by the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency (NSA), Secret Service, and the military, as well as the intelligence bureaucracy's war on First Amendment protest activity.
The Church Committee investigation concluded in 1976 that the "unexpressed major premise of the programs was that a law enforcement agency has the duty to do whatever is necessary to combat perceived threats to the existing social and political order." In addition to massive surveillance, assassinations and dirty tricks "by any means necessary" included the creation of NSA "watch lists" of Americans ranging "from members of radical political groups, to celebrities, to ordinary citizens involved in protests against their government," with names submitted by the FBI, Secret Service, military, CIA, and Defense Intelligence Agency. The secret lists, which included people whose activities "may result in civil disturbances or otherwise subvert the national security of the US," were used by the NSA to extract information of "intelligence value" from its stream of intercepted communications.
Little Brothers Are Watching: The Example of Massachusetts
Written by Nancy Murray and Kade Crockford Tuesday, 13 September 2011 15:15
Early in the morning on March 13, 2008, Australian-born Peter Watchorn, one of the world's foremost harpsichordists, was standing on a subway platform in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a professional cellist from Australia who had his instrument with him. They were on their way to Logan International Airport to catch a plane.
After going a few stops, all the trains in the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) subway system were brought to a halt while theirs was searched with sniffer dogs.
They thought they still could make their plane when their train started up again and they made it to the connecting bus. But before they reached their terminal, they were hauled off the bus and subjected to an abusive search - by no fewer than eight officers - during which the cello, valued at $250,000, was nearly tipped out of the case.
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