In the early months after the 9/11 terror attacks, America’s visceral reaction was to gird for a relentless, whatever-it-takes quest to punish those responsible and prevent any recurrences.
To a striking extent, those goals have been achieved. Yet over the years, Americans have also learned about trade-offs, about decisions and practices that placed national security on a higher plane than civil liberties and, in the view of some, above the rule of law.
* * * * *It’s by no means the first time in U.S. history that security concerns spawned tactics that, when brought to light, troubled Americans. But the past decade has been notable, even in historical context, for the scope and durability of boundary-pushing practices.
Abroad, there were secret prisons and renditions of terror suspects, the use of waterboarding and other interrogation techniques that critics denounced as torture, and the egregious abuse of detainees by U.S. military personnel at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere.
At home, there has been widespread warrantless wiretapping authorized by the National Security Agency and the issuance of more than 200,000 national security letters ordering an array of Americans — including business owners and librarians — to turn over confidential records.
President Obama on Friday signed into law a bill that extends three Patriot Act surveillance authorities until late May.
Obama signed the “FISA Sunsets Extension Act of 2011,” which refers to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Surveillance authorities under that act were extended in part by amending the USA Patriot Improvement and Reauthorization Act.
With Obama’s signature, the ability of the United States to access business records, conduct roving wiretaps and monitor individual terrorists is maintained until May 27. The administration has said it supports a longer extension, and the Senate next week will begin working on a three-year extension.
With all the news on Hellerstein standing up for the 9/11 first responders - I thought he might be a good guy….well, I learned something that others may already know real fast tonight .
A federal judge on Thursday refused to force the public release of CIA methods relating to Sept. 11 detainees who were interrogated harshly, saying the judiciary’s authority is limited when national security is at stake.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein rejected arguments by the American Civil Liberties Union that it should be able to force the CIA to release names and documents related to the detainees if the methods used by the agency were illegal.
He said to do so would “confer an unwarranted competence to the district court to evaluate national intelligence decisions.”
The judge said releasing the documents requested by the ACLU would provide operational details about the application of various interrogation techniques in various circumstances for a particular detainee.
“The difference between the information officially released and the CIA operational records here is different in quality, degree, and kind,” Hellerstein said.
He cited an earlier court case that he said was consistent with his findings. In that case, the Supreme Court let the government withhold identifying information of scientists who worked on a covert CIA program researching the use of chemical, biological and radiological materials to control human behavior. The program led to the death of some human test subjects.
This is NOT a new paper; it was penned in 2003 and uploaded recently (to the best I can tell). However I was pleased with the analysis (besides not questioning 9/11 itself) and the emphasis for maintaing civil liberties through the courts in the least. 2003 was a much harder year to be “against the grain” than 2010 as it was only a year or so after the 9/11 attacks. I doubt the author of the paper would is pleased at the current state of affairs.
After September lIth. governments around the world have taken swift action to address what is now perceived as a world-wide threat of terrorism. The measures adopted are powerful and far-reaching. They also have the very real potential seriously to restrict civil rights and freedoms: the very rights and freedoms in the name of which the new anti-terrorism initiatives have been taken. While Courts have the power to ensure that these initiatives do not improperly infringe on individual rights and liberties. in recent judicial pronouncements. it appears that several high courts – specifically including the Supreme Court of Canada – are suggesting more, not less, judicial deference to government initiatives taken at this troubled time.
I found this the other day browsing around but unfortunately I cannot open or download the file. I am hoping someone out there has an account with this group Palgrave Connect. All the chapter contents seem to be very interesting. I somehow get the feeling the issue will say basically that the means will justify the end. See comments below.
The Impact of 9-11: The New Legal Landscape is the third volume of the six-volume series The Day that Changed Everything? edited by Matthew J. Morgan. The series brings together from a broad spectrum of disciplines the leading thinkers of our time to reflect on one of the most significant events of our time. With a foreword by the former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Senator Bob Graham, the volume’s contributors include Alan Dershowitz, Aziz Huq, William Weaver, and other leading scholars.
List of Contents:
Acknowledgments * About the Contributors * Foreword – Bob Graham * Introduction – Matthew J. Morgan * The Preventative State: Uncharted Waters after 9/11 – Alan M. Dershowitz * Section I: The Impact on American Civil Liberties * The Logic of Suspending Civil Liberties – Dewi Williams * The Use of “Speech Zones” to Control Public Discourse in 21st Century America - Paul Haridakis and Amber Ferris * Challenges to Academic Freedom since 9/11 - Peter N. Kirstein * The Right to Bear Arms and Gun Control after 9/11 - David B. Kopel, Paul Gallant, and Joanne Eisen * National Security Letters and Diminishing Privacy Rights – Christopher P. Banks *
Radio talk show host Alex Jones is calling for petitions, boycotts and lawsuits en mass in an effort to block the nationwide implementation of full body scanners that represent a total violation of privacy, a health risk, and the next wave of tyranny being metered out against the American people and the people of the world under the phony pretext of fighting terrorism.
“Our long journey into domestication and dependency on the scientific dictatorship is accelerating, our entire society is being turned into a massive surveillance grid, it has been designed to persecute the people,” Jones warned on his show yesterday, adding that the scanners were the latest manifestation of the prison planet being constructed around humanity.
Allied with the contrived global warming movement, terrorism is the other prong of the pincer being used to crush freedom and advance totalitarianism in the developed world as Homeland Security follows the plan it was created to carry out – the gradual implementation of martial law in America characterized by the kind of stifling security we now see in airports being introduced into our daily lives in shopping malls, public schools, and many other buildings.
Forget that the government’s spying on Americans began before 9/11 (confirmed here and here).
Forget that the draconian Patriot Act was written before 9/11.
Forget that the Bush administration used its heightened powers granted under the state of emergency declared in 2001 (and continuing to the present day) to harass those who disagreed with its policies. See this, this and this.
Syed Fahad Hashmi can tell you about the dark heart of America. He knows that our First Amendment rights have become a joke, that habeas corpus no longer exists and that we torture, not only in black sites such as those at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo Bay, but also at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. Hashmi is a U.S. citizen of Muslim descent imprisoned on two counts of providing and conspiring to provide material support and two counts of making and conspiring to make a contribution of goods or services to al-Qaida. As his case prepares for trial, his plight illustrates that the gravest threat we face is not from Islamic extremists, but the codification of draconian procedures that deny Americans basic civil liberties and due process. Hashmi would be a better person to tell you this, but he is not allowed to speak.
This corruption of our legal system, if history is any guide, will not be reserved by the state for suspected terrorists, or even Muslim Americans. In the coming turmoil and economic collapse, it will be used to silence all who are branded as disruptive or subversive. Hashmi endures what many others, who are not Muslim, will endure later. Radical activists in the environmental, globalization, anti-nuclear, sustainable agriculture and anarchist movements–who are already being placed by the state in special detention facilities with Muslims charged with terrorism–have discovered that his fate is their fate. Courageous groups have organized protests, including vigils outside the Manhattan detention facility. They can be found at www.educatorsforcivilliberties.org or www.freefahad.com. On Martin Luther King Day, this Jan. 18 at 6 p.m. EST, protesters will hold a large vigil in front of the MCC on 150 Park Row in Lower Manhattan to call for a return of our constitutional rights. Join them if you can.
As a WASHINGTON — Rebuffed this month by skeptical lawmakers when it sought finances to buy a prison in rural Illinois, the Obama administration is struggling to come up with the money to replace the Guantánamo Bay prison.result, officials now believe that they are unlikely to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and transfer its population of terrorism suspects until 2011 at the earliest — a far slower timeline for achieving one of President Obama’s signature national security policies than they had previously hinted.
While Mr. Obama has acknowledged that he would miss the Jan. 22 deadline for closing the prison that he set shortly after taking office, the administration appeared to take a major step forward last week when he directed subordinates to move “as expeditiously as possible” to acquire the Thomson Correctional Center, a nearly vacant maximum-security Illinois prison, and to retrofit it to receive Guantánamo detainees.
Posted by Brian 
