February 2013, Vol. 12 No. 02

View this newsletter as a webpage: http://www.bordc.org/newsletter/2013/02/

CIA nominee Brennan ducks Senate question on torture, assassination without trial

On Thursday, February 7, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) held a hearing on the nomination of John Brennan to lead the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). BORDC live tweeted the hearing, and Executive Director Shahid Buttar attended the first five minutes of the hearing, before Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) removed the public after repeated criticism of Brennan’s record on torture, human rights, and arbitrary assassination.

BORDC News

BORDC in the news

In the last month, BORDC and coalitions we support across the nation have appeared in various press outlets to promote concerns about constitutional rights and the powers of police and intelligence agencies that abuse them.

Read the latest news & analysis from the People’s Blog for the Constitution

Have you read BORDC’s blog lately? The People’s Blog for the Constitution has attracted a growing audience that has tripled over the past year. Featuring news & analysis beyond the headlines on a daily basis, it offers a great way to stay up to date and informed.

Highlights from the past month include:

• Appeals court hears arguments on indefinite military detention under NDAA by Michael Figura
• Police consultants spread zero-tolerance policing over local objections…but who’s listening? by Nadia Kayyali
• An implausible inauguration speech by Shahid Buttar
• CIA torture whistleblower honored after criminal sentencing by Emily Walsh
• Demonstration condemns random bag searches on MBTA by  Annette Macaluso
• Oregon Senator questions CIA nominee on drone strikes by Yiqian Wang
• Drones talk in NYC inspires inquiry and action by Nabill Idrisi

CIA nominee Brennan latest official asked to declassify Senate report condemning torture

The first task of the incoming CIA Director will be to declassify a 6,000 page report on torture compiled by the SSCI based on a three year investigation. BORDC’s online petition calls on the President to declassify the report and enable its release to the public and the press, as required by his repeated pledges to promote transparency.

BORDC expands capacity in 2012

Thanks in part to record contributions from individual supporters like you, BORDC’s budget grew an astounding 60% in 2012! We expanded our vital work, but were able to do so only because our donors made the important choice to get involved.

Grassroots News

February 2013 Patriot Award: Peggy Littleton

Every month, BORDC honors an individual who has made an outstanding contribution in his or her community to the movement to restore civil liberties and the rule of law. This month, the Patriot Award goes to Peggy Littleton, from El Paso County, CO, for her longstanding commitment to civil liberties.

Grassroots updates

To view campaigns supported by BORDC at a glance, visit our interactive campaign maps for local coalitions addressing surveillance and profiling by local law enforcement, or military detention under the NDAA. To get involved in any of these efforts, please email the BORDC Organizing Team at organizing@bordc.org. We’re eager to hear from you and help support your activism!

• Seattle, WA: Coalitions challenge racial profiling
• Washington State fights back against the NDAA
• Oakland, CA: Community opposes Stop and Frisk
• San Francisco, CA: Coalition challenges inadequate briefing to Police Commission
• San Francisco, CA: Largest city to introduce resolution opposing detention under NDAA
• Alameda County, CA: Community mobilizes to stop Sherriff from deploying drones
• Los Angeles, CA: Coalitions challenge surveillance, profiling, and torture
• Wyoming moves toward nullifying the NDAA
• Dallas, TX: Dallas Peace Center launches local anti-NDAA campaign
• Chicago, IL:  Events across the city connect issues and communities
• Cleveland, OH: Groups mobilize to challenge racial profiling across the state
• Charlotte, NC:  Community members mobilize to challenge racial profiling
• Charlottesville, VA: First City in the country to regulate drones
• Maryland state legislators introduce bill to challenge indefinite military detention under the NDAA
• New York, NY: Manhattan events focused on drones, NDAA
• Boston, MA: Local groups oppose TSA searches on transit system, prepare broader campaign
• Vermont Law School event dives into debate on drones, torture, cybersecurity
• Montana Representative aims to ban indefinite detention with anti-NDAA bill

Law and Policy

Appeals court hears arguments on indefinite military detention under NDAA

On Wednesday, February 6, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard oral arguments in Hedges v. Obama, a lawsuit challenging domestic military detention authority under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012.

BORDC joins in asking Supreme Court to protect email privacy

BORDC has joined an amicus brief, filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) calling for the Supreme Court to hear a case that could strengthen privacy protections for anyone who uses e-mail.

FAA expands drone authorizations, while some cities fight back

In response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has recently released an updated list of jurisdictions in which drone use is now authorized across the country.

New Resources and Opportunities

BORDC to host spring convenings for organizers in the Northeast and Northwest

BORDC supports grassroots organizers as they build coalitions seeking to advance Local Civil Rights Restoration (LCRR) and to challenge the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

Micro-grants offer opportunities for grassroots action

To help encourage outreach, public education, and grassroots mobilization, BORDC has provided micro-grants to coalitions that have participated in one of BORDC’s anchor convenings, such as the May 2012 convening in Chicago. Grants of $300 to $500 are available to help active coalitions expand their local visibility, host events, or build capacity.

On Friday, February 4^th, Utah Governor Gary Herbert signed a declaration to officially make January 30th Fred Korematsu Day. For 40 years, Korematsu fought as the test case to stop the government’s unconstitutional internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Korematsu’s struggles included an appeal of a ruling that accounted for the detention of more than 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent, at locations including the Central Utah War Relocation Center in Topaz, Millard County. Two-thirds of this group were US citizens.

Gov. Herbert acknowledged the bravery and perseverance of Korematsu, who died March 30, 2005. He was just 23 years old when Ernest Besig, director of the San Francisco office of the ACLU, visited him and helped him start the fight for his rights. At the event Gov. Herbert discussed the unconstitutionality that Korematsu faced:

The declaration was wrong, the conviction was wrong, and under our Constitution, it shouldn’t have happened…He continued to fight for 40 years, and finally in 1983 had it overturned. That requires more than just a declaration, and having a Fred Korematsu Day is the least of what we can do for his great courage.

The director of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute for Civil Rights and Education, Ling Woo Liu, expanded on the Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution bill in California. Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed this bill, designating January 30th as Fred Korematsu Day in California.

A Japanese-American activist who famously defied domestic military detention during  World War II, Fred T. Korematsu was a man who held our government accountable to uphold the human rights as a priority, not just an ideal.

One way to expand remembrance of his example is to propose BORDC’s model resolution to restore due process, which includes a provision based on the CA and UT resolutions, to your city council or state legislature.

On Saturday, February 2, a new civic group called “Defend the 4^th” protested against “random” bag searches on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. Two hundred people marched from different stops on the MBTA system and joined together on the Boston Common. This group of people was a large coalition including political, religious, and other civic groups.

Since 2006, the Transportation Security Administration has been searching bags on the MBTA. The process is that the TSA will choose one out of five individuals to have their bags searched. The TSA claims that this system is used due to a federal law requiring that suspicion-less searches must be conducted at random. However, the TSA has been targeting areas that have large populations of people of color, such as the Dudley Square T station. If an individual does not consent to a search, they are refused admittance to that particular entrance, but can go to another station or entrance. Clearly, if the TSA is trying to keep any dangerous materials or substances from getting into the transportation system, allowing an individual to enter elsewhere would not be effective. Also, TSA workers are not present at MBTA stations on the weekends.

However, this most upsetting facet of this case is how far these “random” searches expand the authority of the TSA over the lives of citizens that have done nothing to warrant a search. Also, these new policies require expanding budgets as well. There have been no new threats to passenger safety known at this time to warrant the TSA’s involvement, or the need for searches at MBTA stops generally. Without probably cause for the search, is there any way to be sure they are taking place at random? It hardly seems that this system is efficient or random in nature.

If observers want to criticize the President, they should challenge his derogation in practice of the same values he professes.

Critics of Mr. Obama have described his inaugural address as radical.  But insisting on values as fundamental as “equality before the law” and the “enduring strength of our Constitution” are hardly radical.  Indeed, they are simply restatements of principles that have long united America.

If observers want to criticize the President, they should instead challenge his derogation in practice of the same values he professes in lofty speeches. Rhetoric is no substitute for reality, and given the President’s unfortunate extension of the Bush-Cheney assault on civil liberties, his administration deserves criticism.

Forgotten promises

The President seems no more inclined than his neo-con predecessors to heed longstanding constitutional limits on executive power. Indeed, his first term witnessed several extensions of the Bush-Cheney legacy.

Extrajudicial assassination using armed drone aircraft, the use of unmanned aerial drones for unwarranted domestic spying, the NSA’s dragnet domestic wiretapping, the FBI’s resurrection of COINTELPRO, the unprecedented crackdown on immigrants under President Obama, the use of immigration enforcement as a pretext to create a national biometric identification scheme for all Americans (including citizens), continued racial profiling in the drug war, and the new threat of military detention within the US, all reflect a dark side of President Obama’s legacy.

I’ve written at length about the secrecy pervading the administration’s national security efforts, which butcher constitutional rights in many ways that are unfortunately even worse than the sum of their parts.

If President Obama wants to leave a legacy in his second term, he need cite no transformative agenda. He need merely remember his own campaign promises from 2008, or the need to ensure accountability for documented recent violations by federal agencies, or alternatively the oath of office he adopted again this week.

Several looming policy issues offer opportunities for the administration to finally walk the President’s talk in its second term.

(more…)

Every month, BORDC honors an individual who has made an outstanding contribution in his or her community to the movement to restore civil liberties and the rule of law. This month, the Patriot Award goes to Andrew Bashi from Chicago, IL for his extraordinary and committed activism and organizing.

Andrew Bashi is a first-generation American from an Iraqi family who graduated from Loyola University Chicago School of Law in spring 2012. He recently joined the Defending Dissent Foundation (DDF) as the organization’s Program and Communications Associate, and is the Loyola Law School Public Interest Law Fellow at Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights (CCDBR).

Bashi works on a variety of projects, at both the local and national levels. His work with CCDBR focuses on local organizing to end police abuse and surveillance. He is working on a program delivering impromptu “know your rights” workshops to grassroots communities in various Chicago neighborhoods to raise awareness about racial profiling and police abuse. He has also developed an after-school program called “Acting Free,” in which students learn about the Bill of Rights and perform a play based on what they learned.

Bashi’s work with DDF involves developing systems to alert activists and the general public about threats to their civil liberties. To do this, he is developing a new website for the organization, publishing a monthly newsletter, and producing a forthcoming podcast to highlight news, legislation, and inspiring figures building the civil liberties movement.

This prolific activist’s passion stems largely from the strong influence of his parents, galvanized by current events. Bashi’s parents, who immigrated to the US from Iraq, have experienced war and life under an authoritarian regime. Over the decade since the September 11th attacks, Bashi has observed the US government claim increasingly vast powers, violating the rights of even its citizens. He notes, “I thought things could have been different after September 11th….but it has just been used to create repression.”

Bashi knows the importance of basic rights to any political or social movement, and is committed to ensuring that dissent remains viable. Bashi explains that we need to “get off the defensive and start getting offensive” in advocating to restore constitutional rights. BORDC is proud to stand alongside Andrew Bashi in Chicago, and thankful for his invaluable work advancing the movement around the country.

Today is the anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights, adopted 221 years ago to protect freedom in America. The principles articulated in the first 10 amendments to our Constitution have long inspired the rest of the world.

This past Saturday, the Connecticut Coalition to Stop Indefinite Detention along with BORDC organized “An Injury to One is An Injury to All: A Conference in Defense of Civil Liberties and to End Indefinite Detention”.  A litany of advocacy groups and activists attended to demonstrate solidarity against the systematic and divisive abridgment of Americans civil liberties.  The conference encompassed critical issues such as police militarization, government aggression against dissident voices, prejudiced enforcement practices, and domestic surveillance.  The ideology under which so many civil liberties groups gathered expresses that, though all Americans face significant challenges to their civil liberties,  no one community should endure isolation, even in marginalization.

The conference featured notable speeches addressing the most pernicious assaults on Americans civil liberties.  Critical Guardian columnist and best-selling author Glenn Greenwald spoke out against indefinite detention and the use of laws to undermine the rights they ought to preserve.  He also raised the issue of surveillance drones already in American airspace, which suggests the further adaptation of foreign conflict policies for domestic law enforcement.

BORDC Executive Director Shahid Buttar revealed the disturbing implications emboldened ‘criminal justice agencies’ and Next Generation Identification (NGI) for Americans’ privacy and freedom.  Through biometric data-sharing among federal agencies and local police, community cops become proxy feds and every American is a suspect.  Professor Sahar Aziz extended this discussion with a piece on government plants and informants utilized to listen in on dissident voices, instigate criminal acts, and enable manufactured investigations against targeted communities, which you can view online.

The conference also entailed multiple workshops to closely examine pertinent issues such as prejudiced law enforcement and diminishing speech rights.  The simultaneous impact of these violations  marginalizes targeted communities such as African-Americans, South Asians, and Latinos while negating opportunities to expose and challenge abuse.  Though not all groups experience the same levels of discrimination, the liberty of all peoples requires each group to represent the cause of others. Without such solidarity, we will all be competing for false freedom.

Ultimately, the “Conference in Defense of Civil Liberties”  brought together a diverse cross-section of civil liberties advocates for a singular purpose: preserve the rights of all Americans.  Though tireless organizing, activism, issue engagement, and resistance to regressive and abusive policies, We the people can build the power to keep the state in its proper place.  In identifying with the struggles of other groups and communities, we develop the understanding necessary to truly contextualize our own efforts to establish liberty and justice.

• 12/3, Jennifer E. Sims, New York Times Opinion Pages, Demilitarize the C.I.A.
• 12/3, Debaters, New York Times Opinion Pages, A New Director or a New Direction?
• 12/3, Joe Sharkey, New York Times, T.S.A. Skips a Hearing on Terminating the T.S.A.
• 12/3, Editor, SCNow.com, ACLU claims immigration program leads to racial profiling
• 12/3, Glenn Greenwald, Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), Whistleblower’s treatment exposes dark side of Obama

November 2012, Vol. 11 No. 11

View this newsletter as a webpage: http://www.bordc.org/newsletter/2012/11/

Will President Obama’s second term finally fulfill his 2008 promises?

BORDC News

BORDC seeks spring 2013 interns

BORDC in the news

Support BORDC—without opening your wallet

Happy Thanksgiving from BORDC

Read the latest news & analysis from the People’s Blog for the Constitution

• Whistleblower sentenced for exposing torture during Bush Administration by Annette Macaluso
• Seattle grand jury: guilt by association? by Nadia Kayyali
• Michigan county passes resolution against NDAA by Yiqian Wang
• Communities come together to stop collective criminalization by Michael Figura
• Will Obama’s second term finally fulfill his 2008 promises? (Part II) by Shahid Buttar

Grassroots News

Patriot Award: Arthur Persyko

Grassroots updates

• Albany, NY: Coalition fights racial profiling in policing
• Charlotte, NC: People’s Power Assembly brings communities together
• Cleveland, OH: Building connections between mass incarceration and immigrant rights
• Chicago, IL: Art exhibit addresses torture
• Los Angeles, CA: Collecting their own data in the fight against LAPD spying
• Alameda County, CA: Coalition forms in response to Sheriff’s efforts to purchase drones
• Berkeley, CA: Coalition challenges Sheriff’s efforts to purchase drones
• Seattle, WA: Rights Working Group holds conference to unite coalitions in protecting civil liberties

Upcoming events

• Oak Brook, IL: MLFA Legal Fellow Michael Figura to address conference outside Chicago
• New Britain, CT: December 8 statewide convening, “An Injury to One is an Injury to All”
• San Francisco, CA: NLG Legal Fellow Nadia Kayyali to speak at conference in Bay Area

Law and Policy

Drones and the Obama Administration

All is fair in love and e-mail: the Petraeus scandal’s case for electronic privacy reform

CO and WA take steps to fight mass incarceration by legalizing marijuana

What will the lameduck session hold for the 2013 NDAA amendments?

Senate prepares to extend FISA amendments during the lameduck session

New Resources and Opportunities

Join BORDC in opposing the FISA and the NDAA during this year’s lameduck session

Inspire students in conversations about civil liberties

 

The first installment in this series reviewed President Eisenhower’s prescient warnings about “the military-industrial complex…endanger[ing] our liberties or democratic processes.” It also examined various casualties of the national security state, including transparency, accountability, and democratic legitimacy. Part II, below, continues the analysis and identifies further costs of national security efforts including budgetary waste and constitutional violations. Part III examines specific policy recommendations for the second Obama administration and Congress.

Casualties of the national security state: the federal budget

The national security boondoggle is also a hole in the bottom of our budgetary bucket, bleeding our national treasury and largely prompting the budget crisis that has gripped Washington since 2010. The alphabet soup of duplicative and wasteful intelligence agencies — the NSA, NCTC, FBI, DNI, CIA, over 70 DHS-funded fusion centers, CBP, various military intelligence divisions, and the dozens of state agencies involved in intelligence collection, analysis, retention, and dissemination — collectively burn through hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars every year.

These agencies have co-opted huge — but publicly unknown — volumes of resources to construct a high-tech Panopticon. The NSA’s $2 billion data center in Utah, the $1.5 billion that DHS has thrown at fusion centers, or the FBI’s billion dollar facial recognition database, are mere tips of an iceberg. The war on terror has ultimately become a bureaucratic arms race among agencies fighting for turf, facilities, and federal funds. The NCTC currently seeks data retention authority that would duplicate that of other agencies, much like the FBI has periodically sought intelligence capabilities already housed in the NSA.

These agencies duplicate each others’ efforts and bleed the federal budget, which has prompted enormous and continuing conflict in Washington over the distribution of inevitable cuts. Especially in light of the looming fiscal cliff, ending the era of blank checks for redundant national security agencies could enable solutions to any number of pressing social crises, from climate change and education to the housing crisis.

Casualties of the national security state: your constitutional rights

The national security state not only drains the federal budget and undermines the legitimacy of our government, but also assaults the rights of we taxpayers who fund it. Stretching beyond counter-terrorism to also include border integrity and immigration enforcement agencies, increasingly militarized local police, and networks of publicly-funded fusion centers around the country, our nation’s internal security agencies pour budgetary salt on constitutional wounds, assaulting constitutional rights and liberties of which we were once justifiably proud.

(more…)