http://www.salon.com/2013/01/10/europe_sees_grave_risks_from_us_spy_law/...

Thursday, Jan 10, 2013 2:53 PM UTC
Europe sees “grave risks” from US spy law
The renewed FISA allows for warrantless U.S. surveillance of foreign citizens with information in the cloud
By Natasha Lennard

Concerns about the newly-renewed Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Amendments Act (FISA) in this country have focused on how the government’s program of warrantless wiretapping affects Americans. But a new report [pdf] produced for the European Parliament illustrates that FISA has raised serious concerns about encroachment on Europeans’ privacy.

According to the report, FISA poses a “much graver risk to EU data sovereignty than other laws hitherto considered by EU policy-makers.” The report, produced by the Centre for the Study of Conflicts, Liberty and Security, sees the greatest threat in U.S. government surveillance of information stored in U.S.-owned public data clouds, like those of Facebook or Google.

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/01/10/1427861/denying-the-existen...

Denying The Existence Of Islamophobia

By Matt Duss on Jan 10, 2013 at 12:14 pm

'm hesitant to wade into a discussion on a book I haven’t yet read, but Jonathan Schanzer’s review of Nathan Lean’s “The Islamophobia Industry: How the Right Manufactures Fear of Muslims” in today’s Wall Street Journal makes some pretty big claims about the term “Islamophobia” itself, so I’ll confine my comments to those.

“In reality,” Schanzer writes, “Islamophobia is simply a pejorative neologism designed to warn people away from criticizing any aspect of Islam”:

Those who deploy it see no difference between Islamism — political Islam and its extremist offshoots — and the religion encompassing some 1.6 billion believers world-wide. Thanks to this feat of conflation, Islamophobia transforms religious doctrines and political ideologies into something akin to race; to be an “Islamophobe” is in some circles today tantamount to being a racist.

http://911blogger.com/node/add/blog

The Second Anniversary
Posted by John Feal, 9/11 Survivor and Advocate | January 8, 2013

What an amazing, and often times horrendous, six year journey from 2005-2011 was for many 9/11 First Responders. As so many of us began to get ill we had hope in 2005 that our federal government would take care of us, provide medical treatment for us and not allow our heroic efforts be a distant memory as we struggled to survive. A bill, a lifesaving bill, had been introduced by our champions from the New York Congressional Delegation. The James Zadroga 9/11 Health & Compensation Act would help ensure that we would not go bankrupt paying for medical treatment and supplies for our 9/11 related impairments. It would also compensate those injured or ill from their exposure to the World Trade Center Site, allowing those that could no longer work because of their efforts at Ground Zero to have some peace of mind, if only economic. Such a piece of legislation would fly through Congress we thought; how could our leaders not provide for those that risked it all for their fellow citizens.

http://www.911healthwatch.org/blog/physicians-perspective/

Blog
A physician’s perspective on the Zadroga Act
Posted by Jacqueline Moline, MD, MSc, Director, Queens World Trade Center Clinical Center of Excellence | January 4, 2013

As an occupational and environmental physician based in New York, I have had the privilege to have been a part of the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program since its inception, which set out first to describe the medical conditions affecting first responders. We diagnosed many different physical and mental ailments – but had to fight for our responders against authorities who doubted any lasting health effects. At the start of the program, we were only abole to diagnose individuals with World Trade Center related health problems, but were unable to treat them under program funding. We then sought federal funding to cover medical costs for ailments arising out of the response to the World Trade Center disaster, which finally became available around the fifth anniversary in 2006.

http://www.peterbcollins.com/newscomment/pbc-news-comment-no-more-appeal...

PBC News & Comment: No more appeals in wiretap case, President can break the law

by Peter B. Collins on January 8, 2013

Further nullification of 4th Amendment rights, as lawyer Jon Eisenberg explains why further appeals would be too risky–big setback!As detailed in today’s in-depth interview, attorney Eisenberg returns for the last of many interviews about the al-Haramain wiretapping case, the only one to survive ferocious government opposition and win a verdict. Overturned by the allegedly-liberal 9th Circuit in San Francisco, the legal team has decided it’s too risky to appeal to the Supreme Court, which might lock in an even worse, national precedent.

–Marin County activist Jonathan Frieman challenges traffic ticket for driving solo in a carpool lane that required at least two persons in the car. His novel defense: he had corporation papers in the passenger seat, and since the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, the ticket should be dismissed

–Oil tanker scrapes tower of Bay Bridge, no oil spill reported

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=T09FRrP9y8WbXZpBq...

Leaks! Torture! Drones! Obama’s CIA Pick Faces Skeptical Senators

By Spencer Ackerman and Noah Shachtman
01.09.13
2:48 PM

The chances are high — astronomically high — that the Senate will confirm John Brennan’s nomination as the CIA director. But Brennan may face tougher-than-expected questions from the senators on everything from drones to torture to leaks that exposed one of America’s only undercover agents in al-Qaida.

As perhaps the President’s most important national security aide, Brennan has been a key general in the shadow wars that the U.S. has been fighting around the globe during the first Obama administration. He’s also been in a position to disclose secrets surrounding those espionage, sabotage and paramilitary operations. And many of those secrets have in recent months leaked out into the public.

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/anti-leak/

Anti-Leak
By DOROTHY J. SAMUELS

Before hurtling deeper into the maw of the new year, let’s note an important victory for the First Amendment from the end of 2012.

Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, cast the only dissenting vote when the Senate Intelligence Committee approved a version of the 2013 intelligence authorization bill that would have severely chilled news coverage of critical national security issues.

The bill included several misguided anti-leak provisions, including new limits on background briefings by intelligence officials, a constitutionally questionable prohibition on a broad range of former government employees providing paid analysis or commentary on intelligence matters, and the ability to strip intelligence officers of their pensions if they disclose classified information, even if the disclosure poses no harm to national security.

http://davidswanson.org/node/3926

You are hereBlogs / davidswanson's blog / Talk Nation Radio: Shahid Buttar on Spying, Detention, Torture, and Zero Dark Thirty
Talk Nation Radio: Shahid Buttar on Spying, Detention, Torture, and Zero Dark Thirty

By davidswanson - Posted on 09 January 2013

Shahid Buttar is the executive director the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and the People’s Campaign for the Constitution which works to defend civil liberties, constitutional rights, and rule of law principles threatened within the United States by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. He is a constitutional lawyer, grassroots organizer, independent columnist, musician, and poet. He discusses President Obama's signing of two new pieces of legislation permitting warrantless spying and indefinite detention. He also discusses rendition, torture, and the new film "Zero Dark Thirty."

Total run time: 29:00

Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

Download or get embed code from Archive or AudioPort or LetsTryDemocracy.

Syndicated by Pacifica Network.

Please encourage your local radio stations to carry this program every week!

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/obama-whistleblower-protecti...

Why Is Obama Bashing a Whistleblower Law He Already Signed?
In a signing statement, the president criticized—and perhaps undermined—a law intended to protect whistleblowers.

Remember that scene in Mean Girls where Regina George, the blonde queen bee, tells a classmate, "I love your skirt, where did you get it?" but then says, "That is the ugliest f-ing skirt I've ever seen," behind the other teen's back? President Barack Obama might have just pulled a similar stunt with the whistleblower community.

http://www.alternet.org/story/152670/how_the_fbi's_network_of_informants_actually_created_most_of_the_terrorist_plots_"foiled"_in_the_us_since_9_11/?page=entire

October 9, 2011
Mother Jones

How the FBI's Network of Informants Actually Created Most of the Terrorist Plots 'Foiled' in the US Since 9/11
The FBI has built a massive network of spies to prevent another domestic attack. But are they busting terrorist plots - or leading them?
by Trevor Aaronson

JAMES CROMITIE WAS A MAN of bluster and bigotry. He made up wild stories about his supposed exploits, like the one about firing gas bombs into police precincts using a flare gun, and he ranted about Jews. "The worst brother in the whole Islamic world is better than 10 billion Yahudi," he once said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/07/john-brennan-dishone...

John Brennan's extremism and dishonesty rewarded with CIA Director nomination

Obama's top terrorism adviser goes from unconfirmable in 2008 to uncontroversial in 2013, reflecting the Obama legacy

Prior to President Obama's first inauguration in 2009, a controversy erupted over reports that he intended to appoint John Brennan as CIA director. That controversy, in which I participated, centered around the fact that Brennan, as a Bush-era CIA official, had expressly endorsed Bush's programs of torture (other than waterboarding) and rendition and also was a vocal advocate of immunizing lawbreaking telecoms for their role in the illegal Bush NSA eavesdropping program. As a result, Brennan withdrew his name from consideration, issuing a bitter letter blaming "strong criticism in some quarters prompted by [his] previous service with the" CIA.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/05/fbi-occupy-wall-street_n_241078...

FBI Surveillance Of Occupy Wall Street Detailed

Posted: 01/05/2013 7:42 am EST | Updated: 01/05/2013 10:33 am EST

WASHINGTON -- Was Tim Franzen stockpiling weapons? What was Tim Franzen's philosophy? What was his political affiliation? Did Tim Franzen ever talk about violent revolution?

The Federal Bureau of Investigation wanted to know. In late 2011, an agent or agents -- Franzen still isn't quite sure -- began trying to find out. It was during this time that Franzen became a well-known and central presence in Occupy Atlanta. He helped start the Occupy Wall Street offshoot, and had been arrested when police razed their encampment in a downtown Atlanta park.

After the first police sweep of the park, Franzen told The Huffington Post that the FBI began interviewing his fellow Occupy Atlanta activists about whether Franzen might have a cache of weapons for a future violent revolution. He said the feds interviewed three different activists at their homes about his activities and beliefs.

"It definitely rattled my cage to have these kids getting knocks on their door," Franzen said.

http://m.upi.com/story/UPI-75011357461000/

WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- Congress ended the suspense and re-enacted the FISA Amendments Act in late December, giving the U.S. Supreme Court, which has already heard argument on one aspect of the law, a living controversy to chew on.

Without congressional action, some key provisions of the law, known as the FAA in court documents, would have expired Tuesday. President Obama has signed the legislation into law.

Reaction to the five-year extension of the surveillance, which was never in any serious doubt, predictably has been mixed. Conservatives and others praise the extension as a bipartisan effort to protect the nation from terror. Liberals and civil libertarians tend to see it as a privacy disaster.

The Washington Times points out the FAA, having previously been approved by the U.S. House, passed the U.S. Senate with votes from both parties.

https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commen...

The Magician’s Con: Renewing FISA and the NDAA Under Cover of the Fiscal Cliff Debates

By John W. Whitehead
January 07, 2013

“If the broad light of day could be let in upon men’s actions, it would purify them as the sun disinfects.”—Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

What characterizes American government today is not so much dysfunctional politics as it is ruthlessly contrived governance carried out behind the entertaining, distracting and disingenuous curtain of political theater. And what political theater it is, diabolically Shakespearean at times, full of sound and fury, yet in the end, signifying nothing.

By CAROL ROSENBERG
crosenberg@MiamiHerald.com

When victims of al-Qaida attacks want to talk to reporters at Guantánamo, retired Navy Capt. Karen Loftus squires the so-called “victim family members” to Camp Justice’s press shed and introduces herself as their escort.

When The New York Post put a spotlight on Loftus’ unique role as victim and witness advocate in the coming Sept. 11 death penalty trial, the native New Yorker willingly posed for a photo at the Brooklyn Bridge.

So it came as a puzzlement in December when the Pentagon blacked out her name on a military judge’s order compelling her to testify this month in a pre-trial hearing of a Guantánamo death penalty case. The job description in the order made it clear Loftus would be the witness — even with her name covered up.

So why the secrecy in postings on the Pentagon’s military commissions website, the portal for tribunal documents, whose motto is “Fairness, Transparency, Justice?”

“I’m following the office policy because I’m a witness,” said Loftus, who works from the Pentagon’s War Crimes prosecutor’s office in Washington, D.C.

By Any Measure, the U.S. Is the Largest Sponsor of Terror

Preface: As a patriotic American – I was born here, lived here all of my life, and love this country – I want the best for the U.S.  

Lawless actions are tearing my country apart.  I want my country to regain its vision, strength and moral compass.  Thomas Jefferson said that “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism”.  I criticize my country because I know we are better than this … and that if enough people know how far we have fallen, we can start to pull ourselves back and reclaim our greatness.

Many Countries Sponsor Terror … But America Is the Worst

The director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan – Lt. General William Odom said:

By any measure the US has long used terrorism. In ‘78-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism – in every version they produced, the lawyers said the US would be in violation.

(audio here).

The Washington Post reported in 2010:

The United States has long been an exporter of terrorism, according to a secret CIA analysis released Wednesday by the Web site WikiLeaks.

The head and special agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office said that most terror attacks are committed by our CIA and FBI.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/15403-zero-dark-thirtys-t...

Zero Dark Thirty's Torture Lie

By Naomi Wolf, Guardian UK

05 January 13

By peddling the lie that CIA detentions led to Bin Laden's killing, you have become a Leni Riefenstahl-like propagandist of torture

he Hurt Locker was a beautiful, brave film; many young women in film were inspired as they watched you become the first woman ever to win an Oscar for directing. But with Zero Dark Thirty, you have attained a different kind of distinction.

Your film Zero Dark Thirty is a huge hit here. But in falsely justifying, in scene after scene, the torture of detainees in "the global war on terror", Zero Dark Thirty is a gorgeously-shot, two-hour ad for keeping intelligence agents who committed crimes against Guantánamo prisoners out of jail. It makes heroes and heroines out of people who committed violent crimes against other people based on their race - something that has historical precedent.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/04/war-on-terror-endles...

The 'war on terror' - by design - can never end

As the Pentagon's former top lawyer urges that the war be viewed as finite, the US moves in the opposite direction

Last month, outgoing pentagon general counsel Jeh Johnson gave a speech at the Oxford Union and said that the War on Terror must, at some point, come to an end:

"Now that efforts by the US military against al-Qaida are in their 12th year, we must also ask ourselves: How will this conflict end? . . . . 'War' must be regarded as a finite, extraordinary and unnatural state of affairs. We must not accept the current conflict, and all that it entails, as the 'new normal.' Peace must be regarded as the norm toward which the human race continually strives. . . .

"There will come a tipping point at which so many of the leaders and operatives of al-Qaida and its affiliates have been killed or captured, and the group is no longer able to attempt or launch a strategic attack against the United States, that al-Qaida will be effectively destroyed."

Sunday, December 16 2012 - 9/11 Consequences
TSA'S Grip on Internal Travel is Tightening

APPLICATION TO MAKE U.S. INTO AN AIRPORT SCREENING ZONE
by Wendy McElroy
The Dollar Vigilante

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is tightening its grip on domestic travcel. I don't mean the random, unpredictable security checks at bus, subway and train stations which already exist. I mean a coordinated and systematic police control of internal travel within America. Groundwork is being laid.

The application was tucked away on page 71431 of Volume 77, Number 231 of the Federal Register (November 30). It was surrounded by soporific references to forwarding “the new Information Collection Request (ICR) abstracted below to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and approval under the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA).”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/defense-bills-guan...

Defense bill’s Guantanamo Bay provisions have human rights groups upset with Obama

By Peter Finn, Published: January 3

With President Obama’s second term about to begin, one of his administration’s first promises, that it would close the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, looks all but abandoned after he signed a defense bill late Wednesday that includes an array of tough restrictions on the transfer of detainees out of the facility.

Obama had threatened to veto the $633 billion National Defense Authorization Act but signed it, as he did last year, with a statement criticizing sections of the bill that he said are “unwarranted restrictions on the executive branch’s authority” by Congress.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/why-we-hate-them-arabs-i...

January 02, 2012
The American Conservative

Why We Hate Them: Arabs in Western Eyes
A new PBS documentary reveals how films and other media have shaped an anti-Muslim narrative.

By Philip Giraldi

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.

January 4, 2013
The Guardian (UK)

The 'war on terror' - by design - can never end
As the Pentagon's former top lawyer urges that the war be viewed as finite, the US moves in the opposite direction

If you were a US leader, or an official of the National Security State, or a beneficiary of the private military and surveillance industries, why would you possibly want the war on terror to end? That would be the worst thing that could happen. It's that war that generates limitless power, impenetrable secrecy, an unquestioning citizenry, and massive profit.

Glenn Greenwald

Last month, outgoing pentagon general counsel Jeh Johnson gave a speech at the Oxford Union and said that the War on Terror must, at some point, come to an end:

"Now that efforts by the US military against al-Qaida are in their 12th year, we must also ask ourselves: How will this conflict end? . . . . 'War' must be regarded as a finite, extraordinary and unnatural state of affairs. We must not accept the current conflict, and all that it entails, as the 'new normal.' Peace must be regarded as the norm toward which the human race continually strives. . . .

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/01/how-obama-decid...

How Obama Decides Your Fate If He Thinks You're a Terrorist

Jan 3 2013, 7:52 AM E

Over the past two years, the Obama administration has begun to formalize a so-called "disposition matrix" for suspected terrorists abroad: a continuously evolving database that spells out the intelligence on targets and various strategies, including contingencies, for handling them. Although the government has not spelled out the steps involved in deciding how to treat various terrorists, a look at U.S. actions in the past makes evident a rough decision tree.

http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/01/president-obama-signs-the-ndaa-2013/

President Obama Signs the NDAA 2013

By Benjamin Wittes
Thursday, January 3, 2013 at 8:11 AM

Told you so. President Obama has signed this year’s NDAA–along with a meek kind of signing (whining?) statement. Here is the statement’s discussion of the detention-related provisions–an account of which can be found in my previous post:

http://rt.com/usa/news/fbi-assassination-ows-sniper-227/

FBI classified information about OWS assassination plot

Published: 02 January, 2013, 21:29
Edited: 03 January, 2013, 20:30

Only one month into the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations last year, plans were formulated to identify key figures in the movement and execute them with a coordinated assault using sniper rifles, new documents reveal.

The revelation — discussed in a heavily redacted FBI memo unearthed late last month through a Freedom of Information Act request — reveals that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was aware of plans for a violent assault on the peaceful protest movement but stayed silent on rumors of an assassination attempt only until now.

Information on the alleged plot to kill off protesters appears on page 61 of the trove of documents obtained recently by a FOIA request filed by the Partnership For Civil Justice Fund. On the page in question, marked “SECRET,” the FBI acknowledges:

https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commen...

Government Violence: The Missing Link in the Gun Control Debate

By John W. Whitehead
January 02, 2013

“We need to look more closely at a culture that all too often glorifies guns and violence.”—President Barack Obama

It didn’t take long for the tragedy of the Newtown, Connecticut shootings, which left 20 schoolchildren and six adults dead, to be co-opted by politicians and special interest groups alike, all eager to advance their ideas about how to prevent another deranged madman from taking innocent lives. President Obama is calling on Congress to issue gun control legislation that would limit access to assault weapons. The National Rifle Association (NRA) wants armed guards patrolling every school in America. Legislators in several states, including Florida, want to allow teachers to carry guns on school grounds. Others are clamoring for a lockdown of the schools, complete with metal detectors and guard dogs.

http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2013/01/public_accountability.html

Intelligence Oversight Steps Back from Public Accountability
January 2nd, 2013 by Steven Aftergood

The move by Congress to renew the FISA Amendments Act for five more years without amendments came as a bitter disappointment to civil libertarians who believe that the Act emphasizes government surveillance authority at the expense of constitutional protections. Amendments that were offered to provide more public information about the impacts of government surveillance on the privacy of American communications were rejected by the Senate on December 27 and 28.

Beyond the specifics of the surveillance law, the congressional action appears to reflect a reorientation of intelligence oversight away from public accountability. The congressional intelligence committees once presented themselves as champions of disclosure. They no longer do so.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vincent-warren/zero-dark-thirty-torture_b_...

Does Torture Work? Wrong Question!
Posted: 12/21/2012 11:27 am

The premier in New York and Los Angeles this week of the movie Zero Dark Thirty, about the hunt for and killing of Osama bin Laden, has touched off a national debate about the appropriateness of torture. Alarmingly, the conversation has revolved around when to torture, rather than whether to torture.

The film's opening 45 minutes feature U.S. intelligence officers torturing a prisoner at a CIA black site, until he gives up the clue that births an ultimately-successful hunt for bin Laden. For some the message is simple: "No waterboarding, no Bin Laden." Zero Dark Thirty, laments Adam Serwer in Mother Jones, "may do what Karl Rove could not have done with all the money in the world: embed in the popular imagination the efficacy, even the necessity, of torture." Meanwhile, others insist that #ZD30, as the film was quickly hashtagged, "leave[s] audiences to decide for themselves whether torture was necessary to stop al Qaeda."

Why, exactly, are we deciding whether torture was "necessary" to capture bin Laden?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/opinion/the-dawning-of-domestic-drones...

Editorial
The Dawning of Domestic Drones
Published: December 25, 2012

The drones are coming to a neighborhood near you.

The unmanned aircraft that most people associate with hunting terrorists and striking targets in Pakistan are on the brink of evolving into a big domestic industry. It is not a question of whether drones will appear in the skies above the United States but how soon.

Congress has ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to quickly select six domestic sites to test the safety of drones, which can vary in size from remote-controlled planes as big as jetliners to camera-toting hoverers called Nano Hummingbirds that weigh 19 grams.

The drone go-ahead, signed in February by President Obama in the F.A.A. reauthorization law, envisions a $5 billion-plus industry of camera drones being used for all sorts of purposes from real estate advertising to crop dusting to environmental monitoring and police work.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/29/us/politics/senate-votes-to-extend-ele...

Federal Power to Intercept Messages Is Extended
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: December 28, 2012

WASHINGTON — Congress gave final approval on Friday to a bill extending the government’s power to intercept electronic communications of spy and terrorism suspects, after the Senate voted down proposals from several Democrats and Republicans to increase protections of civil liberties and privacy.

The Senate passed the bill by a vote of 73 to 23, clearing it for approval by President Obama, who strongly supports it. Intelligence agencies said the bill was their highest legislative priority.

Critics of the bill, including Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon, a Democrat, and Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Republican, expressed concern that electronic surveillance, though directed at noncitizens, inevitably swept up communications of Americans as well.