Catalogued, Databased, Controlled

Biometric Database of All Adult Americans Hidden in Immigration Reform

 

Latest “Immigration Reform” bill creates biometric database of ALL AMERICANS controlled by high priests in the Department of Homeland Security (SS).

WIRED:

“Buried in the more than 800 pages of the bipartisan legislation (.pdf) is language mandating the creation of the innocuously-named “photo tool,” a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID.

Employers would be obliged to look up every new hire in the database to verify that they match their photo.

…It starts to change the relationship between the citizen and state, you do have to get permission to do things,” said Chris Calabrese, a congressional lobbyist with the American Civil Liberties Union. “More fundamentally, it could be the start of keeping a record of all things.”

For now, the legislation allows the database to be used solely for employment purposes. But historically such limitations don’t last. The Social Security card, for example, was created to track your government retirement benefits. Now you need it to purchase health insurance.

Gov. Surveillance: Your Cell Phone

More unconstitutional fascist / authoritarian / police state crap — what else were you expecting?

The “StingRay” Cell Phone Spying Device

 

Spying on You

When even corporate media shouts, “The Internet is a surveillance state,” you know things are pretty bad out there.

Leahy has introduced a law to require warrants on government spying (day late dollar short?), which may or may not go anywhere:

“Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced legislation on Tuesday that would require government officials to obtain a search warrant before accessing emails and other private online content.

Senate Bill

The ACLU is on the case, and this needs all that support we witnessed recently.  The fascist thugs will keep grabbing power until you grab it back.

 

PS.

ACLU Lawsuit Challenges Warrantless Searches of Cell Phones

Suit Charges that Police Searches of Cellphones at Arrest Without a Warrant Violate Constitutional Rights of Arrestees, and their Friends, Family, and Colleagues

For Immediate Release: March 20, 2013

Today, the ACLU of Northern California filed suit against the City and County of San Francisco and San Francisco Police Chief Gregory Suhr on behalf of a civil rights activist, Bob Offer-Westort, whose cell phone was searched by the San Francisco Police Department without a warrant after he was arrested while engaging in peaceful civil disobedience.

The suit charges that warrantless cell phone searches at the time of arrest violate the constitutional rights not only of arrestees but also of their family, friends, co-workers, and anyone whose information is in their phones. This practice violates the right to privacy, and the right to speak freely without police listening in to what we say and who we talk to.

“Our mobile devices hold our emails, text messages, social media accounts, and information about our health, finances, and intimate matters of our lives. That’s sensitive information that police shouldn’t be able to get without a warrant,” said Linda Lye, staff attorney at the ACLU of Northern California. “The Constitution gives us the right to speak freely and know that police won’t have access to private communications in our cell phones unless there is a good reason.”

“Cell phones today are virtual home offices that contain personal, professional, and financial information not just about us, but about anyone we communicate with in any way. Police need a warrant to search our home office. Our cell phones should be treated the same way,” said Marley Degner, an attorney with the law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP.

In January 2012, Offer-Westort was engaging in non-violent civil disobedience to protest a proposed city law that unfairly targeted homeless people. He was arrested after pitching a tent in San Francisco, as part of his protest. After he was arrested a police officer began scrolling through Offer-Westort’s text messages and reading them out loud. A longtime local activist, Offer-Westort worried that some of his community relationships could be damaged if private text messages he sent, and the people he communicated with, were made public.

“I rely on my cell phone to communicate. We shouldn’t have to worry that our personal information, and that of everyone in our phone, will be up for grabs every time we go to a political protest,” said Offer-Westort.

This is the first civil suit in California to challenge warrantless cell phone searches at arrest. In 2011, the California Supreme Court ruled in People v. Diaz that the police can search the cell phone of arrestees without violating the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. This suit brings a challenge under the California Constitution’s stronger guarantees of privacy and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, as well as a challenge under the U.S. and California Constitutions’ guarantees of freedom of speech and association.

The lawsuit, Offer-Westort, et al. v. City and County of San Francisco, et al., was filed in the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco. The law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP is providing pro bono assistance in the suit.

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SUPPORT THE ACLU (while it’s still legal)

Or perhaps you like living in a police state, a large maximum security prison?

 

IMPEACH THEM ALL

“President Obama has utterly failed the first test of his second term, even before inauguration day,” American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony Romero said in a statement. “His signature means indefinite detention without charge or trial, as well as the illegal military commissions, will be extended.” Obama signs NDAA

The executive and legislative branches have declared war on the US Constitution.  The passage of “indefinite detention” without charge or trial should lead to immediate impeachment for violating their oaths of office to “defend the Constitution”.  Every clown who voted in violation of the Constitution for detaining American citizens without due process is now a criminal, under the US Constitution itself.  This is the end of America as we know it.

Need I remind anyone that the obligation to defend the Constitution is from all enemies, both foreign and domestic?

“In November, the ACLU and other organizations sent a letter to President Obama urging him to veto the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) if it impedes the closing of Guantánamo Bay prison by extending restrictions on transferring detainees from the facility. The current transfer restrictions are due to expire on March 27, 2013, but the pending NDAA bills in Congress would extend them until September 30, 2013. The letter tells the president that if the restrictions are extended, “the prospects for Guantánamo being closed during your presidency will be severely diminished, if not gone altogether.” You can read the full letter here.On December 31, 2011, President Obama signed the 2012 NDAA, codifying indefinite military detention without charge or trial into law for the first time in American history. The NDAA’s dangerous detention provisions would authorize the president — and all future presidents — to order the military to pick up and indefinitely imprison people captured anywhere in the world, far from any battlefield. The ACLU will fight worldwide detention authority wherever we can, be it in court, in Congress, or internationally.Under the Bush administration, similar claims of worldwide detention authority were used to hold even a U.S. citizen detained on U.S. soil in military custody, and many in Congress now assert that the NDAA should be used in the same way again. The ACLU believes that any military detention of American citizens or others within the United States is unconstitutional and illegal, including under the NDAA. In addition, the breadth of the NDAA’s detention authority violates international law because it is not limited to people captured in the context of an actual armed conflict as required by the laws of war.”

http://www.aclu.org/blog/tag/ndaa

“Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

PRIVACY (short doc.)

Privacy International’s 16-minute mini-documentary from DEFCON about privacy is a great, compact answer to the question, “Why does privacy matter?”

FREE APP – From ACLU: Secretly Record Police Stops

Must have phone app, for those who use these devices.  Program disappears from the screen even though it continues to record.  Also uploads a copy to ACLU-NJ, so it cannot be deleted.

 

Tortured Logic (2009) (Short)

Tortured Logic: A Project of the ACLU

This short film features Oliver Stone and other celebrities weighing in on the Bush administration’s “torture memos.” This is an action alert of the American Civil Liberties Union, and a web page makes sending a message to Attorney General Eric Holder easy and convenient.

These memos were written by Bush white house lawyers, particularly John Yoo and David Addngton. They display a clear intent to break the law and an insane attempt to redefine torture as non-torture. These are grave crimes and must be addressed by the current president and his Attorney General, or else the rule of law can simply not continue.

People who are tortured will give “testimony” to anything their torturers demand of them. This is incompatible with a free and democratic society, and is expressly forbidden right in the US Constitution (“cruel and unusual punishment”).