• 9/7, Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post, New lawsuit to challenge laptop searches
• 9/7, Andy Worthington, Eurasian Review , Judge Denies Habeas Petition of Afghan Shopkeeper At Guantánamo
• 9/6, Editorial, Daily Illini (University of Illinois), Practice zero tolerance for racial profiling
• 9/5, Editorial, Tuscaloosa News (Alabama), U.S. fight is against terror, not Muslims
• 9/5, Jameel Jaffer and Larry Siems, New York Times, Responsibility for Torture
• 9/4, Chandra S. Bhatnagar and Alessandra Soler Meetze, CNN, Reporting Arizona law to UN was correct
• 9/4, Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek, What America Has Lost

• 8/25, Peter Gorman, Fort Worth (TX) Weekly, Fusing Fear and Data
• 8/25, Nat Hentoff, Village Voice, What Obama Could Learn From Paterson
• 8/25, Spencer Ackerman, Wired, U.S. Scans Afghan Inmates for Biometric Database
• 8/25, Andy Worthington, Eurasian Review , Lawlessness Haunts Omar Khadr’s Blighted War Crimes Trial At Guantánamo
• 8/24, Jen Phillips, Mother Jones, TSA’s Frisky New Pat-Downs

What do Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, The Scottsboro Boys, and The Hollywood 10 have in common? All were famous miscarriages of justice, yes. But all of these abrogations of civil liberties also spawned massive public protests. By contrast their contemporary counterparts, victims of “war on terror” zealotry run amok, remain unknown to the public, reflecting—as Peter Gelderloo argues in Counterpunch—a profound “decline of resistance,’ 83 years after the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti brought out millions of people in global protest.

“The War on Terror is even more replete with frame-ups and judicial lynchings than the Red Scare, although life imprisonment and solitary confinement, arguably far more cruel than capital punishment, have come to replace the electric chair.

The main targets of this War are Muslims and Middle Eastern or South Asian immigrants, radical environmentalists, and anarchists. In one sense, not so much has changed, as immigrants also bore the brunt of the Red Scare. The resounding difference is the general silence outside the most directly affected communities.

How many people today even know the names of Tarek Mehanna, Marie Mason, and Eric McDavid?

In a massive campaign of racial profiling after September 11th, 2001, the FBI visited and questioned people in every single Muslim and Middle Eastern or South Asian immigrant community in the country. Afraid of groups they saw as not culturally integrated, they pressured thousands of people into becoming informants for them, repeating the COINTELPRO tactic that helped destroy resistance in black communities in the ’60s and ’70s. An unknown number of Muslims have been disappeared to secret prisons in other countries, separated from their children, and tortured over the course of years. Some are unaccounted for and may have been killed. “

“Sacco and Vanzetti were probably engaged in other highly illegal activities, as participants in a tense and bloody workers’ struggle. And it’s beyond dispute that the two of them, from prison, continued to call for revolution against capitalism, and for vengeance against their executioners.

The most remarkable aspect of the whole affair is how much public support they received, not only on the streets, but from internationally renowned political figures and intellectuals. People like John Dos Passos, George Bernard Shaw, Dorothy Parker, H.G. Wells, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Albert Einstein wrote letters and protested in their defense. In today’s political climate, no one who cared about their social status would be caught dead speaking out in favor of a political criminal who espoused fiery and radical ideas.”

Guantánamo Bay is a United States detainment facility located in Cuba. After September 11, 2001, it was used to house captured prisoners suspected of being al Qaeda members or supporters. It became the central prison for suspected enemy combatants in the “war on terror.”

On January 22, 2009, President Obama directed that the camp be closed. However, because of strong criticism, Obama has not fulfilled his promise to close the detention camp. According to The New York Times, the Obama administration decided to “continue to imprison without trials nearly 50 detainees at the Guantánamo Bay military prison…because a high-level task force has concluded that they are too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release.”

Although many detainees have been transferred, 176 remain. Read the Guantánamo Docket, which lists all detainees transferred, held, or deceased.

• 6/22, Glenn Greenwald, Salon, Cause and effect in the War on Terror
• 6/22, Andy Worthington, Eurasian Review , UN Secret Detention Report: The CIA’s ‘High-Value Detainee’ Program And Secret Prisons
• 6/22, Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle, Giving peace advice to terrorist can be illegal
• 6/22, Declan McCullagh, CNET, ACLU: FBI used ‘dragnet’-style warrantless cell tracking
• 6/22, Niamh Marnell, DC Bureau, America’s Secret Prisons
• 6/22, G.W. Schulz, Center for Investigative Reporting, One terror fusion center’s big catch: dollar-store thief

Despite promises of change, the Obama administration has proven itself either unwilling—or unable—to shift the paradigm driving increasingly invasive surveillance, or increasingly pervasive profiling according to race, religion, and national origin. Nearly halfway through the Obama administration’s term, the battle to banish the Bush administration’s policy legacy remains largely unfought, let alone won.

But this is no time for progressive and libertarian constitutionalists to throw in the political towel. While “change you can believe in” may have been a premature promise from our president, we at the grassroots enjoy ample opportunities to shift the landscape in DC.

Whether concerned by government spying, or the guilt by association apparent in profiling Latinos, African Americans, and Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians for various so-called “signature crimes,” limits on local law enforcement authorities offer the potential to galvanize solidarity among communities of color. Measures restricting domestic intelligence operations can also attract the support of libertarians—including some elements of the Tea Party—disaffected by the Washington consensus favoring expanding executive power.
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• 5/27, Glenn Greenwald, Salon, Democrats and the McCarthyite attack on detainee lawyers
• 5/27, William Fisher, Antiwar.com, Rights Groups Condemn Ruling on Bagram Detainees
• 5/27, Michael Cicero, Ventura County (CA) Reporter, Preserving civil liberties supports our troops
• 5/27, Adam Serwer, TAPPED: Blog of The American Prospect, Justice Department Gearing Up to Challenge AZ Immigration Law
• 5/27, Austin Raynor, The Libertarian Solution, Due Process and the War on Terror
• 5/27, Paul Simao, Reuters, UNICEF head opposed to Khadr trial at Guantanamo
• 5/27, Editorial, Washington Post, Politics and fear-mongering keep Guantanamo open
• 5/27, Ian Cobain, Guardian (UK), Torture inquiry should leave no stone unturned, says Amnesty
• 5/27, Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica, Privacy groups on Facebook updates: meh
• 5/26, Peter Grier, Christian Science Monitor, Police chiefs pan Arizona immigration law: Federal lawsuit coming?

Last July, three American hikers were detained by Iranian forces for illegally crossing the border of Iran.  The hikers have maintained that they simply got lost; the Iranian government has asserted that the hikers were actually spies, and this has led to heightened animosity between Iran and the United States.  Why?  Our citizens have been detained and charged with espionage for almost an entire year, but they have not been tried nor have they seen a lawyer or a judge.  Citizens of the US have found this policy by Iran unacceptable and reprehensible.  In an interview with the President Ahmadinejad, George Stephanopoulos made clear that in the U.S. people have rights.

STEPHANOPOULOS: They would be allowed to have representation. They would be charged.

AHMADINEJAD: Allow me. Can anybody enter the borders? No, they can’t. These three individuals entered our borders illegally. They have confessed to that. They crossed our border. Now, they’re being handled by our judicial system and the judicial system will review their crimes according to the law. We have laws. There’s a due process of law that is being observed. The judicial system in Iran is independent of political influence. It’s under the influence of judicial laws.

Now, I’d like to ask you. There’s seven Iranians right now in prisons in the United States. These seven Iranians did not cross American borders illegally. They had official visas another country, a third country. Either for pilgrimage or for business or trade or for fun. Now, the U.S. Intelligence Service illegally arrested them in a third country and brought them to the United States. There is no clear crime stated. They don’t have a lawyer. Their families haven’t been able to visit them. Do you think this is fine? Do you think this is any respect for human rights? But there’s three Americans who’ve crossed our border. First of all, why did they do that? What was their reason? They have to give a clear response to the judge.

Unfortunately, Stephanopoulos is wrong in his assertion that people are ALWAYS treated with due process in the US prison system.  Last week, David Wilson highlighted on this blog that the mothers of the hikers were headed to Iran to visit their children.  Throughout the post, Wilson made a point-by-point comparison of detainee systems, underscoring substantial differences in the way the US treats prisoners.

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• 5/26, Amy Goodman, TruthDig, Alleged Chicago Torturer’s Overdue Day in Court
• 5/26, Glenn Greenwald, Salon, American demands for civilian trials of accused Terrorists
• 5/26, Raza Rasheed, The Dartmouth (Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH), Executing Restraint
• 5/26, Jessica Vess, KVUE-TV (Austin, TX), Law enforcement agencies push for fusion center
• 5/26, Heidi Vogt, Associated Press, US prison in Afghanistan to hold first trial
• 5/26, William Fisher, Inter Press Service, Rights Groups Condemn Ruling on Bagram Detainees

The Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) has joined 34 groups urging Eric Holder to re-think the administration’s “strategy” regarding weakening Miranda rights. This letter is the direct result of yet another push by members of Congress and Obama’s administration to create a severe dichotomy within the US: one that would give certain rights to some and other rights to others, in violation of the Constitution. If enacted, this move would undermine not only our longstanding laws but also those very principles of freedom by which we define ourselves.

As the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) points out,

Miranda embodies a centuries-old tradition designed to prevent coerced confessions that lead to wrongful incarceration and diminish our collective security. Codifying or expanding the public safety exception would almost certainly lead to the exception being invoked far more often than is strictly necessary and would function as an end run around the constitutional requirements of Miranda.

The public safety exception to Miranda, granted in 1984, gives interrogators leeway when it comes to a “ticking time-bomb” scenario. Therefore, in situations like a terrorism attempt, the authority to question a suspect prior to the reading of Miranda rights already exists. Why attempt to additionally weaken the Constitution?  As the letter states,

Should the need arise to conduct an un-Mirandized interrogation unrelated to any immediate threat to public safety, law enforcement is free to do so under the Constitution. Miranda imposes no restriction on the use of unadvised statements for the purpose of identifying or stopping terrorist activity. The Fifth Amendment only requires that such statements be inadmissible for the purposes of criminal prosecution.

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