Dec 5th, 2008
Posted by Amanda Simon, ACLU at 4:22pm	National Security, Racial Justice, Technology and Liberty

He Says Tomato. We Say No, Seriously…That's Unconstitutional.

Stuart Taylor at the National Journal has some strong opinions on how President-elect Obama should tackle national security issues. So does the ACLU. It turns out we're not exactly on the same page.

Allow me to shoot down a few of Taylor's proposals. First up is group profiling. To advocate for profiling is to begin sliding down a perilously slippery slope, concerning both individual rights and national security. The practice alienates entire segments of the American public and has even been shunned by law enforcement professionals as ineffective. Well, bad news: that's been proven useless too. Check out this report financed by DHS (and our release praising it).

Like Mr. Taylor, we are not national security experts but we are experts on the laws upon which this country was founded. You have to ask yourself this: who wins when we pit the Constitution against hypothetical threats? America was never meant to be a country that kidnapped, detained, surveilled, nor tortured. The threat that many choose to ignore is the threat to our ideals and national identity. The past eight years of horrific national security policy are a reflection of just that. Now, with a new Congress and new president, we get a shot to repair that damage (psst - here's how we'd do it).

It's true that the ACLU will be just as tough on President Obama as we were on President Bush. That's exactly our job. The Constitution is not a suicide pact as Mr. Taylor states, but we'd argue that neither is it collateral damage.

Permalink |	National Security, Racial Justice, Technology and Liberty

1. Candice L. Says:
   Dec 12th, 2008 at 10:03am

   I AGREE THAT OUR NATIONAL SECURITY SYSTEM IS NOT TIP TOP. BUT HOPEFULLY WITH PRESIDENTIAL ELECT OBAMA WILL HELP WITH ALL OF THAT....
   SEE MR HONS I DID MYHOMEWORK.....
   ....OBAMA 4 LIFE YALLZ...!

2. scrivener Says:
   Dec 15th, 2008 at 11:16am

   FISA has been misused to enable a series of secret programs used in the extrajudicial targeting of U.S. citizens by government agencies involved in intelligence, law enforcement and revenue collection. These agencies have been hijacked by ideologues who are using the war on terror as a pretext for a peculiar form of social engineering.

   I’m a longtime mainstream journalist whose career, finances and physical well-being have been decimated by these programs. Agencies of government are using “directed energy weapons” that emit silent radiation to slowly incapacitate their targets. THIS IS TORTURE AND IT IS GOING ON IN COMMUNITIES ACROSS AMERICA.

   Please read the following article, and the additional article cited in the link that follows. I have been trying to secure legal assistance on behalf of untold thousands of Americans who have been victimized as I have been over the past five years. I put my 35+ years of credibility on the line here. Only recently have my posts been allowed to go through to the ACLU blog with some consistency. My communications are not just being surveilled — my internet and telephonic communications are subject to malicious interference and interception.

   Please read this article, which is based on first-hand experience and reporting, and please help me arrange a meeting with ACLU attorneys. If this can happen to me, it can (and is) happening to many other innocent Americans:

   …Secret programs are destroying families…

   ‘Extrajudicial Targeting’ of U.S. Citizens by Gov’t Agencies: Root Cause of Global Financial Crisis?

   GET POLITICAL w/ VIC LIVINGSTON columnist, members.nowpublic.com/scrivener; former business reporter, Fox TV Phila., N.Y. Daily News ‘Tonight’, Philadelphia Bulletin, St. Petersburg Times

   Could government “targeting” of American citizens outside the bounds of the judicial system be one of the root causes of the Wall Street financial meltdown that threatens to devastate the global economy?

   Victims of so-called “organized gang stalking” claim that federal and local government agencies involved in intelligence, law enforcement, and revenue collection have established a network of secret programs aimed at destroying the financial well-being of “targeted” individuals — who are denied due process of law as their financial resources are systematically expropriated.

   These programs allegedly involve the interception of mail; surveillance, interception, and alteration of telecommunications, including telephone and internet communications; fabrication of bank, credit card, mortgage and billing statements; surreptitious manipulation of personal and business bank and mortgage accounts.

   Victims of this alleged “extrajudicial targeting” report being inundated with offers of “easy credit” from banks, mortgage companies and credit card issuers — even if their financial situation does not warrant the extension of generous lines of credit. Typically, consumers are lured in by low interest rates — only to see those rates raised to usurious levels months later.

   In effect, victims say, a secret parallel system of transaction processing has been established for persons targeted by government agencies. They allege that the goal is to destroy their capacity to earn a living and to support themselves and their families.

   Victims theorize that these “programs of personal destruction” are a derivative of past controversial government programs such as Cointelpro and Total Information Awareness. They maintain that the enactment of sweeping laws such as the USA Patriot Act, passed by Congress in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has emboldened those who would use the powers of the state to restrict civil liberties as a tool of social control.

   The “mechanics” of these programs of personal destruction, victims say, closely resemble the tactics employed by pre-war Nazi Germany in its campaign against the Jews and other targeted groups, such as those deemed to be political “dissenters.”

   Victims charge that some of these programs also are designed to degrade their physical health, with health care professionals sometimes pressured to cooperate. Citizen vigilantes affiliated with government-funded community policing and “watch” groups are employed to relentlessly stalk, harass and intimidate those targeted by these government programs, victims charge.

   These civilian vigilantes, with retired military and public safety officers among their ranks, are said to have access to surveillance imposed upon their targets, who are tracked and followed like prey, whether in vehicles or on foot.

   The vigilante stalkers are believed to be equipped with high-tech instruments such as radiation-emitting “directed energy” weapons capable of causing serious adverse health effects — what some describe as a “slow genocide.”

   Officials in the private sector are believed to have knowledge of some of these programs, since their cooperation is key to the functioning of the system. Victims charge that the government is using national security and the “war on terror” as a pretext to secure the cooperation of local law enforcement, corporations and businesses. But they say it’s also possible that the civilian overseers of these agencies, as well as civilian operatives, have been kept in the dark about the most nefarious aspects of these programs.

   It’s feared that the government takeover of more than half of the nation’s mortgage market, and government bailouts and supervision of failed and financially troubled banks, investment houses and insurers, could facilitate this extrajudicial targeting of citizens and their personal and business assets.

   Those who say they have been victimized by these programs are calling upon Congress to immediately convene hearings on unconstitutional, extra-legal abuses of power carried out under the direction of government agencies — what they see as an unraveling of the American constitutional democracy and a descent into a corporate-fascist police state.

   FOR MORE ON STATE-SUPPORTED DOMESTIC TERRORISM:

   http://www.nowpublic.com/world/american-gestapo-stat e-supported-terrorism-targets-u-s-citizens

   OR (if link is disabled): members.NowPublic.com/scrivener RE: “American Gestapo…”

   (NOTE: MR. Livingston’s bio, contact information and additional writings can be found at his web site.)

3. scrivener Says:
   Dec 15th, 2008 at 1:56pm

   A recent article on the Wired.com magazine "Danger Room" blog site discusses a court document said to indicate that the U.S. Secret Service is involved in the development of directed energy weapons technology. The article speculates that the agency may have deployed such devices in the course of its official duties.

   http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/11/presidents-secr.h tml

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