“While the N.Y.P.D. should continue to have the ability to stop and frisk people where there is a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, I remain convinced that with better monitoring, supervision and accountability we can avoid the corrosive impact of a poorly targeted program. We cannot continue to stop, question and frisk nearly 700,000 New Yorkers in this way without doing harm to the relationship between police officers and the people they are protecting, particularly in communities of color.”

This video illustrates grassroots frustration from diverse New Yorkers:

Rather than ensuring safety, or even the misleading appearance of it, racial profiling apparent in the NYPD’s stop & frisk regime strains the relationship with communities and increases distrust of police, which in turns undermines public safety.

While many New Yorkers resent the NYPD’s stop & frisk abuses, the Department has evaded any accountability for similar abuses of civil rights. The Associated Press recently won a Pulitzer price for revealing that:

[T]he [NYPD] secretly infiltrated cities and states around the Northeast to spy on students, businesses and houses of worship – based not on any reason to suspect potential crime, but entirely based on the faith of individuals subjected to spying.

Advocates have connected the NYPD’s racial profiling in the stop & frisk regime to the religious profiling apparent in its domestic surveillance activities, but the press has largely failed to do so, leading to confused disparities in the attitudes of New Yorkers.

Whether in the context of stops & frisks, or domestic surveillance, stronger monitoring of the NYPD is long overdue.  Is the City Council up to the job?

Our op-ed quotes some of the local & state elected officeholders who have raised their voices to oppose domestic military detention, alongside the thousands of grassroots activists who have organized since the NDAA became law last December. In addition to Dan Gordon (a Republican state Representative in Rhode Island) and Larry Bragman (a Green party affiliated City Councilmember in Fairfax, CA) elected representatives in eight states from coast-to-coast have secured resolutions decrying domestic military detention and supporting the restoration of due process and the right to trial.

Michael & I conclude that:

As Americans, we should not trust any president with the powers authorized by the NDAA. Not President Obama. Not President Bush. Not the next president. Not any future president. Yet, last December, Congress gave every future president this unchecked executive power.

Our defense must not come at the expense of our freedom. Representatives Smith & Amash — like “We the People of the United States” clamoring across the country — aim to unite our divided nation under the liberty promised by our Constitution. Everyone who has taken the oath of office owes them a vote.

Melinda and Margaret lived in Chile during the 1970’s when General Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship was in full force. While there, many people they knew were taken as political prisoners and tortured. Having fully observed the human and community costs of this cruel treatment, the two sisters were inspired to promote humane treatment by US law enforcement and the military.

Two and a half years ago, they joined the Illinois Coalition Against Torture (ICAT), a collaboration among local, state, and national groups to stop cruel and inhumane treatment. As members of ICAT, Melinda and Margaret were key advocates for the Chicago “Torture-Free Zone” Resolution, which the Chicago City Council unanimously passed this January, making it the first city in the United States to take a stand against all forms of torture, including extended solitary confinement.

The resolution requires the mayor and city council not only to oppose torture, but also to hold those who commit torture accountable and publicly declare support for survivors of torture. It further states that the mayor and city council must affirm the human rights of prisoners, with no restriction on whether they are local, state, federal, or international detainees.

Melinda worked on the technical parts of the resolution and met with elected officials to advocate for its passage. Margaret, on the other hand, did more organizing groundwork, mobilizing supporters to circulate their petition of support and also hitting the streets to meet the people of Chicago face to face. Together, the coalition collected more than 3,500 signatures from both local Chicago residents and people from all over the world who signed online.

The two met many people with mixed feelings along the way. They found many people were less sympathetic about military torture because of what they deemed the “threat of terrorism.” “People are becoming oblivious,” says Melinda. “There is a view that some people are worth less.”

They found that people were more sympathetic when they spoke about former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge, who during his tenure was responsible for the torture of more than 100 African Americans. At the same time, the Power sisters were bothered by how little many people knew about the case.

“It’s imperative to expose and oppose torture because it deals with the moral fiber of our society,” says Melinda. The two sisters will soon publish a toolkit detailing their process as a case study for others interested in passing similar resolutions. BORDC salutes Margaret and Melinda for their inspiring activism.

May 2012, Vol. 11, No. 5

Congress considers bills to reform the NDAA’s detention powers

BORDC News

• BORDC informs new audiences around the country
• BORDC in the news
• Summer interns join BORDC team
• Get the latest news and analysis on our blog
• Job opening: Legal fellow

Grassroots News

• Patriot Award: Melinda and Margaret Power
• Local Civil Rights Restoration campaign organizers convene in Chicago
• Western Massachusetts: Local activists dance for their rights
• New Britain, CT: Campaign against NDAA begins
• Takoma Park, MD: Activists challenge the NDAA’s military detention provisions
• Charlotte, NC: Coalition mobilizes to protect dissent and communities
• Los Angeles, CA: Forums shed light on detention and surveillance
• San Francisco, CA: Mayor signs coalition’s civil liberties ordinance
• Berkeley, CA: City council to vote on groundbreaking reforms

Law and Policy

• Landmark Senate report rejects torture, but may remain secret
• White House officially acknowledges drone strikes
• NSA’s surveillance could create an “Orwellian state”
• CISPA moves forward, threatening online privacy
• Cosmetic changes to S-COMM change little on the ground

New Resources and Opportunities

• June is Torture Awareness Month
• BORDC offers micro-grants to grassroots organizers

Inspired by this success, three grad students from New York University have developed a Kickstarter ”to resolve global conflicts:” Kickstriker.

Currently, the site features four projects:

• Free Tibet by training warrior monks ”to wage a successful guerrilla campaign against the Chinese invaders.” Anyone who donates $100 or more will receive a personal thank you note from Richard Gere.
• Help finance three MIT engineering students to build the Panopticopter, “the world’s first open-source drone.” (It’s also an allusion to Jeremy Bentham’s idea of the Panopticon.)
• Hire Academi (formerly Xe Services, originally Blackwater), a private military corporation, to hunt down and capture Joseph Kony, a Ugandan warlord and viral video sensation. If he’s killed in action, whoever contributes $1 million will get Kony’s skull.
• Assist the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, in creating “a discrete interrogation vehicle.” Equipped with tinted windows, sensory-deprivation chambers and a nausea-inducing sound system, once completed, this mobile black site will be perfect for “indefinitely detaining enemy combatants.”

Kickstriker has been praised by Arianna Huffington. and was recently featured on Wired.

It’s also a joke.

Before anyone can whip out a credit card or PayPal account, a window pops up revealing the site’s a hoax. However, that pop-up generously links to (real) human rights nonprofits like the American Civil Liberties Union or the Tibet Fund.

In an interview with blogger Evan Fleischer, co-founder Mehan Jayasuriya outlined what they hope Kickstriker visitors will gain from the site:

In terms of issues, we hope that people who land on the Kickstriker page will walk away thinking about the privatization of warfare, the long-term ramifications of ‘clicktivism,’ and the somewhat unique sense of entitlement that we, as Americans, feel to prescribe solutions to conflicts that arise in other countries.

While Kickstriker is definitely a parody, NYU professor Clay Shirky notes that it might be a reality someday soon:

Polemically, that’s really interesting, but that’s actually a thing that could happen, given that there are these guns for hire. What would it take to create a crowdsourced hire of [mercenaries]?

Even though Cuba has ultimate sovereignty over Guantánamo Bay, the Court held that the privilege of habeas corpus extends to prisoners held there because the United States exercises “de facto” sovereignty over the territory. The Court also held that the Detainee Treatment Act did not provide an adequate and effective substitute for habeas corpus because it applied a flawed fact-finding process. Rather, the judge “must have sufficient authority to conduct a meaningful review of both the cause for detention and the Executive’s power to detain.”

Titled “No Hearing Habeas: D.C. Circuit Restrict Meaninful Review,” the report examines the particular consequence of a 2010 decision by the DC Circuit called Al-Adahi v. Obama. Detainees won 56 percent of the 34 habeas petitions prior to Al-Adahi whereas they lost 92 percent of the 12 habeas petitions after Al-Adahi. The sole grant in Latif v. Obama was vacated and remanded by the DC Circuit. The reports explains that the DC Circuit’s message to lower courts has been to stop scrutinizing the government’s factual allegations so closely and even give a presumption of accuracy to certain evidence submitted by the government. In sum,

The effect of Al-Adahi on the habeas corpus litigation promised in Boumediene is clear. After Al-Adahi, the practice of careful judicial fact-finding was replaced by judicial deference to the government’s allegations. Now the government wins every petition.

Essentially, following Al-Adahi, habeas review has been rendered meaningless.

The other seven found guilty are:

former US Vice President Richard Cheney; former US Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld; former Counsel to Bush, Alberto Gonzales; former General Counsel to the Vice President, David Addington; former General Counsel to the Defense Secretary, William Haynes II; former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo.

Tribunal president judge Tan Sri Lamin Mohd Yunus said the eight accused were also individually and jointly liable for crimes of torture in accordance with Article 6 of the Nuremberg Charter. “The US is subject to customary international law and to the principles of the Nuremberg Charter and exceptional circumstances such as war, instability and public emergency cannot excuse torture.”

One of the prosecutors, Professor Francis Boyle of Illinois University’s College of Law, has stated he is hopeful that other countries will hold trials as well. Until then, the verdict from the tribunal will be forwarded to the United Nations.

Transcripts of the five-day trial will be sent to the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, the United Nations and the Security Council.

That the United States is ignoring international law totally demeans us and generates major disrespect from the world at large.

…the user, Malcolm Harris, lost ownership of his tweets once he posted them online, and therefore had no legal standing to challenge the subpoena. This decision prompted several worried responses, including our own, because our Fourth Amendment privacy rights should not be surrendered simply because we use online service providers that store information remotely. Even Twitter stepped in to defend Harris, filing a motion to quash…the subpoena.

There are other rulings within the opinion that “have received less scrutiny.”

First, the court allowed the government to get the contents of communication — in this case, Harris’ tweets — with a mere subpoena. But consistent with the Fourth Amendment, Congress made clear that the contents of communication can only be accessed by law enforcement with a search warrant.

Basically, the search warrant requirement is now out the window. Another problem consists of the government’s being able to track a person’s location.

The judge also allowed the government to get access to location information without a search warrant. Twitter keeps a record of a user’s IP address when he logs in to post a tweet. Since the majority of Twitter users access the site through mobile phones, these IP addresses are keys that help unlock a person’s location.

This, according to the article is the real crux of the government’s intentions:

…we believed it was all about location, location, location. The real reason NYC prosecutors wanted this information was to get location data that would give the government information about the workings of the Occupy Wall Street movement and its members. That explains why Harris was singled out: he had over 1,500 followers, 7,200 tweets and was outspoken about his involvement in the Occupy movement.

Hopefully Twitter’s move to quash the subpoena will be granted.

While several communities have already been successful in preventing ICE hold requests, aiming to stop ICE detainers is only part of a coherent local civil rights reform platform. Buttar explained, “Proposed reforms developed by the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) create enforceable protections to stop and prevent future racial profiling as it impacts each of the several communities vulnerable to law enforcement excesses. BORDC’s reforms also restrict domestic intelligence collection (local spying) operations. By combining these seemingly disparate elements in their grassroots campaigns, organizers at the local level can build broad coalitions across not only African-American, Latino, Muslim, Arab and South Asian communities, but also libertarian allies who share concerns about the erosion of the Fourth Amendment.”

The guide is a three-part tool kit designed to help communities prevent deportations of their residents by keeping the local police separate from ICE.   For people who want policy reform in their communities, an additional appendix with sample materials, templates, ordinances, and other campaign materials is available upon request from the National Immigration Project.