• 7/29, Adam Serwer, American Prospect, Administration Wants To Expand Reach Of National Security Letters
• 7/29, Jordan Flaherty, Common Dreams, A Movement Rises in Arizona
• 7/29, Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post, White House proposal would ease FBI access to records of Internet activity
• 7/29, Andy Worthington, Eurasian Review, Guantanamo Algerian Returns Home; Will Obama Suspend Further Transfers?
• 7/29, Gloria Goodale, TruthOut, WikiLeaks Q&A with Daniel Ellsberg
• 7/29, Ioan Grillo, Global Post, Mexico Celebrates Ruling on Arizona Law
• 7/29, Stephanie Rice, TruthOut, “Anti-Islamic” Bus Ads Appear in Major Cities

www.bordc.org

Yesterday, a federal judge blocked the most constitutionally offensive provisions of Arizona’s controversial immigration law, SB 1070, just one day before it was set to go into effect.

Today, we ask you to take the lead in your community by supporting a local effort to stop profiling, as well as government surveillance, where you live.

Copycat laws modeled on Arizona’s have been introduced in more than a dozen states. This victory for civil rights in Arizona–which remains at risk on appeal–is hardly the end of the struggle to stop racial profiling and other law enforcement excesses.

As SB 1070 demonstrates, one of the most powerful tools in struggles over civil rights is legislative change at the local level. City and state officeholders are more accessible than their federal counterparts and have more influence over the legislatures in which they serve. We at the Bill of Rights Defense Committee have developed a strategy for stopping racial profiling city by city and town by town, and but we can’t put it into action without your help.

Help us defend the Constitution, restore the Fourth Amendment, and stop profiling and government spying.

Sign up to work on an effort to stop racial profiling in your community.

We’re eager to provide you with resources and assistance to take action at the local level.

The largely debated Arizona bill, SB 1070, has sadly taken effect today. Yesterday, US District Judge Susan Bolton enjoined sections of the bill that required officers to check a person’s immigration status while enforcing other laws. Bolton also put on hold parts of the law that required non-citizens to carry their immigration papers at all times. The following is a complete list of the blocked provisions:

1. Portion of Section 2: Requires police to inquire about the immigration status of individuals stopped, detained, or arrested based on reasonable suspicion of the person’s immigration status.
2. Section 3: Criminalizes the failure to produce immigration documents when stopped.
3. Portion of Section 5: Criminalizes the solicitation, application for, or performance of work by an undocumented immigrant.
4. Section 6: Authorizes the warrantless arrest of any person suspected to have committed a public offense that makes the person “removable.”

Despite yesterday’s ruling, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer vowed to fight all the way to the Supreme Court “for the right to protect the citizens of Arizona.” It seems that in her efforts to “protect” Arizona, she has also caused harm.

Since Brewer signed the legislation in April, “the state has been buffeted by fallout from SB1070, including tourism boycotts and strained relations with Mexico, its biggest trading partner.” The law has even caused harm to the University of Arizona, where foreign students who were supposed to join the honors program withdrew their acceptance. Mario Hernandez, a UA student stated that “as a fifth-generation Mexican American I now have to carry the burden of being accidentally stereotyped.” Many alumni are distancing themselves from the school; some have even cancelled season football tickets in attempts to protest. Additionally, SB 1070 has made it increasingly difficult for the university to replace senior vice president, Joel Valdez, who resigned. All of the Hispanic candidates withdrew their applications, citing SB 1070 as their main concern.

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• 7/28, Stephanie McCrummen & William Branigin, Washington Post, Judge blocks key parts of Arizona immigration law
• 7/28, Danny Postel, Ted Smukler, Common Dreams, ‘Go Ahead, Try and Make Me Pay You’: Wage Theft and SB 1070
• 7/28, Democracy Now!, FBI Surveillance Program Invites Racial Profiling
• 7/28, Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Washington Post, FBI director defends bureau over test cheating
• 7/28, Erwin Chemerinsky, Los Angeles Times, Afghan war documents point to overuse of government secrecy
• 7/28, Thomas Walkom, Toronto Star, WikiLeaks offer insight into Canada’s detainee affair
• 7/28, Margery A. Beck, Huffington Post, Fremont, Nebraska Suspends Tough Immigration Law, Forcing Trial
• 7/28, Suzanne Gamboa, Huffington Post, Arizona Deportation Stats: Thousands Deported Even Without New Law
• 7/28, Stacy Sullivan, Foreign Policy Journal, A Lack of Conviction

Colbert addresses the pressing issue of whether portions of the PATRIOT Act should be reinstated, or if corporations—dubbed the “Spyvate Sector”—should pick up the slack and spy on their own customers for the government.

Yesterday, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee submitted a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee on behalf of 46 organizations. The letter raises concerns about the 2008 FBI Guidelines promoted by then-Attorney General Mukasey.

UPDATE: While news from today’s hearing was dominated by questions about how widely FBI agents had cheated on tests about their spying powers, Senators Leahy and Durbin also pressed FBI Director Mueller about racial and religious profiling under the 2008 Mukasey Guidelines.  The FBI director reportedly erred when claiming that agents are currently allowed to initiate surveillance based only on suspicion of wrongdoing, and conceded in a note after the hearing that FBI surveillance is not limited by suspicion.

The coalition letter organized by BORDC reads, in part:

We write to request further congressional oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (“FBI”) operations pursuant to the 2008 Attorney General’s Guidelines, which were implemented over congressional objections and threaten the constitutional rights of all Americans. In the wake of the Washington Post series exposing the secrecy and unaccountability of our nation’s intelligence establishment, the Senate Judiciary Committee has a responsibility to seek transparency into FBI operations and restore the Bureau’s accountability.

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The US District Court in Tacoma, Washington, has awarded $248,817 in attorney’s fees and costs for an Olympia activist in a case involving covert surveillance by several government agencies. The money comes after plaintiff Phil Chinn accepted three offers totaling $169,000 in May from the Washington State Patrol, the City of Aberdeen, and Grays Harbor County in settlement that officials of those agencies violated his rights to lawful protest.

The Court stated, “This case was far more than a wrongful arrest case. Besides ordinary damages, it was an attempt to vindicate the plaintiff’s civil rights, and involved issues of whether governmental agencies were unconstitutionally targeting and arresting protesters without probable cause.” The Court further observed that, “… the willingness of the defendants to make the offers of judgment could be viewed by the plaintiff and the public as some vindication of the plaintiff’s position.”

Chinn stated that police officers pulled him over in May 2007 because he was driving in a car with “three identified anarchists.” Chinn asserted that he and his passengers were presumed to be “anarchists” by the state troopers and were therefore pulled over based on covert surveillance operations.

Prior to the incident, the Washington State Patrol had been ordered to deter and prevent anti-war demonstrations at the Port of Grays Harbor. A plan was designed to deter and prevent individuals believed to be “anarchists” or associated with anarchists from participating in anti-war demonstrations.

Chinn was driving from Olympia to Aberdeen on May 6, 2007, to participate in a lawful demonstration against the use of the Port of Grays Harbor for military shipments. Chinn abided by all traffic laws and was not under the influence of any substance. Despite this, state troopers received a message to find Chinn’s vehicle (identified by make, model, and license plate) because they were informed that known anarchists were in the car on their way to the demonstration.

“In America, people have the right to engage in lawful protest without being targeted by law enforcement because of their political beliefs. This settlement sends a strong message to public officials around the state that they need to respect free speech rights and political dissent,” said ACLU of Washington Executive Director Kathleen Taylor.

After being arrested and charged with DUI, Chinn was released after copies of the police dispatch log and audio recording were released in response to a request for public records. These revealed the “attempt to locate” alert, including the statement that Chinn’s vehicle was carrying “three identified anarchists,” who were believed to be headed to the demonstration. All charges were then dismissed.

• 7/27, Randall Amster, Common Dreams, Climate of Fear: SB 1070 and Extremist Violence on the Arizona Border
• 7/27, Bonnie Bricker, Adil E. Shamoo, Baltimore Sun, Secrecy Industry Hits Home
• 7/27, Joshua Stanton, Frank Fredericks, Huffington Post, Ground Zero Mosque and Religious Freedom in America
• 7/27, Huffington Post, Arizona Immigration Law: Jan Brewer Asks Judge To Throw Out Federal Challenge To Law
• 7/27, Associated Press, Ex-Guantanamo detainee charged in native Algeria
• 7/27, Carol Rosenberg, McClatchy Newspapers, Commentary: For reporters, the rules at Guantanamo change daily
• 7/27, Jonathan Saltzman, Boston Globe, ACLU affiliates want FBI to disclose data
• 7/26, Center for Constitutional Rights, Algerian Former Detainee Released to Family

www.bordc.org

If the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has its way (and the Obama administration apparently supports them), by 2013 every jail in the country will be feeding the fingerprints of every criminal suspect they book straight to the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration database. They will do this regardless of whether suspects are ever convicted.

The federal government is rapidly expanding a program to identify illegal immigrants using fingerprints from arrests, drawing opposition from local authorities and advocates who argue the initiative amounts to an excessive dragnet.

The program has gotten less attention than Arizona’s new immigration law, but it may end up having a bigger impact because of its potential to round up and deport so many illegal immigrants nationwide.

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America, though generally deserving of its image of a haven of civil liberties, has had many notorious lapses from that ideal over the years. Even the most recklessly reactionary legal assaults on freedom in the recent past, however, have stopped short of actually trying to proscribe entire literary, intellectual, and cultural traditions as “un-American”. Yet that, as Roberto Rodriguez, a research associate at the University of Arizona in Tucson, explains, is precisely the intent and implication of the state of Arizona’s proposed law to effectively outlaw ethnic studies programs and curricula in schools statewide, HB 2281.

For the next few months, the world will be focusing on Arizona’s SB 1070—the state’s new racial profiling law. However, in this insane asylum known as Arizona, where conservatives have concocted one reactionary scheme after another, another law in particular stands out for its embrace of Dark Ages-era censorship—the 2010 anti-ethnic studies HB 2281—a law that seeks to codify the “triumph” of Western Civilization with its emphasis on Greco-Roman culture.

Unless it is blocked, HB 2281—which creates an Inquisitorial mechanism that will determine which books and curriculums are acceptable in the state—will go into effect on Jan 1, 2011. Books such as Occupied America by Rodolfo Acuña and Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire, have already been singled out as being un-American and preaching the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.

Both laws are genocidal: one law attacks the physical presence of red-brown peoples; the other one, our minds and spirits.