LP Response to Obama's NSA "Reform"

Statement from Geoffrey J. Neale, chair, Libertarian National Committee, in response to President Barack Obama's announced plan for minor reforms of NSA mass surveillance:

"Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of the rights of its citizens, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it. And, make no mistake, our governments — federal, state, and local — have all become injurious to the rights of citizens.

"Barack Obama today delivered a speech that promised next to nothing. He promised that 'greater safeguards for civil liberties' will be enacted, and that steps will be taken to rein in the worst of the NSA surveillance abuses.

"But government cannot be reined in. Once it has power, it seeks more. Once it has information, it keeps it — and often tells us that it didn't keep it (such as the records of gun purchases run through the NICS system) even though it really did — and then it wants more. It is the nature of the beast; everything it thinks it can use, it stuffs into its gaping, insatiable maw.

"There is already a list of 'safeguards,' and they are mentioned specifically in the Constitution. If the supreme law of the land is 'just a piece of paper,' what other 'safeguards' will keep millions of bureaucrats from breaking the law further?

"The only way to limit government intrusion into our lives is to eliminate the functions that have little to do with defending individual rights within our borders. If government were restricted only to acting on its one legitimate function — protecting individual rights — 95 percent of government operations would cease to exist. And Edward Snowden would have had little incentive to break the news on the government's rampant criminality.

"Edward Snowden should be granted a full pardon and complete immunity from prosecution. The government's ire should instead be turned toward prosecuting the millions of bureaucrats who have violated both their oaths of office, statute law, and even the Constitution itself.

"A non-interventionist nation at peace with the world doesn't need a worldwide security apparatus. A nation that doesn't meddle in conflicts around the world doesn't need a two-ocean Navy, or thousands of nuclear weapons, or gargantuan stockpiles of chemical and biological agents. A nation that stays out of foreign conflicts is less likely to be a target of terrorists. And a nation like that doesn't need to spy constantly on its own citizens."

Sen, Church's Premonitory Statement

Gold, Guns and Drones

The bills continue to flow through the legislative sausage press in Des Moines. They range from atrocious to pretty good. Here are a few more that caught my eye.

Bad Bills:

Two of the bad bills, SF233 & HF 164, are "universal background check" bills. Remember: "Universal Background Checks= Gun Registration= Gun Confiscation."

Senate File 233: Iowa Gun Owners calls this Iowa's "Most Dangerous Anti-Gun Bill of 2013." Hidden among innocuous provisions of an "education" bill, this bill would mandate that virtually every firearm transfer in the state go through a licensed gun dealer so that a NICS check may be conducted. If you think the gun dealer will do that for you for free when you want to sell your old shotgun to your neighbor, I've got some beachfront property in Arizona to sell you.

Even more ominous, this bill would also require social workers, guidance counselors, physician's assistants and even nurses to report you to authorities if they think you're acting a little too weird to have Second Amendment rights. Obviously no one wants dangerous lunatics to have guns, but I don't want some busybody nurse or social worker being able to strip people of their rights.

House File 164: According to Iowa Firearms Coalition: "It would require background checks be conducted by an FFL on ALL private firearm transfers with no exceptions, and allows the dealer to collect fees in the process. HF 164 would also provide for limitless fees (taxes) for transfers in order to fuel this enormous bureaucratic process, and allow the Department of Public Safety (DPS) to create 'rules' as necessary on how to implement the system, which is just another form of universal registration."

House File 163: This would ban the sale and transfer of any ammunition feeding device that holds more than 10 rounds of ammo. This was introduced by Representative Bruce Hunter (D-34), the same guy who introduced HF164 above. What a douche!

Senate Study Bill 1165/ House Study Bill 91: These twin bills would circumvent Iowa's normal search warrant process and replace it with a phony-baloney rubberstamp process for allowing officials to plant GPS trackers on Iowans' vehicles. That is inconsistent with the constitutional requirements under the U.S. and Iowa constitutions governing searches. Click HERE to learn more and to contact the appropriate subcommittee members on this bill.

Good Bills:

House File 346: This bill would recognize gold and silver coin as legal tender in the state of Iowa. You may recognize that this is an authorized state power under the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 10. There are lot of good economic reasons for this as well as ones dealing with federalism. Caffeinated Thoughts had a great writeup on the bill you should check out for more details.

Senate File 276: This would place a moratorium on the use of surveillance drones by all state agencies in Iowa and strictly prohibit weaponized drone systems. It would allow the use of drones under several limited circumstances such as search and rescue operations or AMBER Alert searches. Anything that can slow the growth of the surveillance state that we more and more find ourselves living in is a good thing.

SF276 is currently stalled because the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Robert Hogg (D- Cedar Rapids), is sitting on it. Please contact Hogg and ask him to give SF276 the consideration it deserves and schedule a hearing ASAP. (rob.hogg@legis.iowa.gov , 319-247-0223)

With all these bills please contact your state legislator and voice your support or opposition.

Four Minutes For Freedom

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
attributed to Edmund Burke

Americans have been asked to do a lot to secure the blessings of liberty over the years.  I hope that you'll do two more things to that end.  They won't involve suffering through a long winter at Valley Forge or getting tear gassed and billy clubbed at Selma.  They'll only take a few minutes each and you can do them right over the computer before you now.  Let me explain why they're important.

In the previous post I chronicled a few personal horror stories of the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) new enhanced security measures.  These involve expensive new "body scanners" that basically conduct a virtual stripsearch of air travellers and transmit the image to a TSA officer for viewing.  The naked image of the citizen can also be stored and transferred elsewhere.  Other technologies, that are equally effective yet raise fewer privacy concerns, already exist and are operation in European airports.  The only alternative the TSA offers for its body scanners is an even more intrusive full-body pat-down.

These searches are clearly in violation of the Fourth Amendment rights of U.S. citizens.  The Fourth Amendment says, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." [Emphasis added.]

While the Supreme Court has not ruled on airport screening technology yet, lower courts have.  According to George Washington University law professor Jeffrey Rosen in a recent Washington Post article:

[T]he U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled in 2007, that "a particular airport security screening search is constitutionally reasonable provided that it 'is no more extensive nor intensive than necessary, in the light of current technology, to detect the presence of weapons or explosives.' "

In a 2006 opinion for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, then-Judge Samuel Alito stressed that screening procedures must be both "minimally intrusive" and "effective" - in other words, they must be "well-tailored to protect personal privacy," and they must deliver on their promise of discovering serious threats. Alito upheld the practices at an airport checkpoint where passengers were first screened with walk-through magnetometers and then, if they set off an alarm, with hand-held wands. He wrote that airport searches are reasonable if they escalate "in invasiveness only after a lower level of screening disclose[s] a reason to conduct a more probing search."

As currently used in U.S. airports, the new full-body scanners fail all of Alito's tests.

Most Americans don't need these highfaluting legal opinions to tell us what our gut is already telling us, namely that there is something wrong with all this.  We know that the new TSA procedures look, sound, feel and stink like a police state.  So, what can we do about it?  I suggest two things for starters.

First, write your elected officials.  I know that seems trite and lame.  I've pretty well given up on that civics class pap, but this is important enough that it's worth a try.  If we raise enough of an uproar perhaps even our representatives might have to awaken and do something.  If you go to the ACLU's website you can send a pre-written message to DHS Secretary Napolitano, your U.S. Senators and U.S. Representative urging them to "rein in these invasive searches, and to implement security measures that respect passengers' privacy rights."  It only takes a few clicks and you can use the service even if you're not a fan of the ACLU. 

CLICK HERE.

Secondly, please help out Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).  Back in July, when the rest of us were thinking about barbecues and fireworks, EPIC was already slapping a lawsuit on the DHS to stop them from implementing the new scanner/pat-down procedures.  Unfortunately the wheels of the justice system turned too slowly to have it stopped before it started, but better late than never.  The on-going lawsuit alleges that the new procedures violate travelers' Fourth Amendment rights, and violate both the Privacy Act and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act as well as a bunch of administrative regulations.

Legal battles aren't cheap, especially when you're going up against the federal government with it's deep pockets (our pockets, that is).  According to its website, "EPIC is a public interest research center in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1994 to focus public attention on emerging civil liberties issues and to protect privacy, the First Amendment, and constitutional values."  Contributions to EPIC are tax-deductible.  I know times are tight, but please try to send them whatever you can.  Even $5 would help, if enough of us do it.  You can DONATE ONLINE or send a check to:  "EPIC," 1718 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20009.

So please, there are two small things we can do to defend freedom.  It will only take a few minutes and a few clicks.  The other option is to do nothing and allow evil to triumph.

TSA Travel Terror

Holiday travelers be on alert: An organized and determined group has launched a coordinated effort to disrupt airline travel and terrorize American citizens.  The "good" news is that the group is our own federal government.

No doubt you've already heard horror stories of the Transportation Security Administration's new "enhanced pat-down" techniques and body scanners.  The new security measures are supposedly in response to the Christmas bomber Farouk Abdulmutallab who snuck explosives onto a plane in his underwear.

David Rittgers of the Cato Institute explains that the expensive new body scanners, "that look beneath clothing to perform virtual strip searches," aren't the panacea they're made out to be.  "Despite what their proponents would have us believe, body scanners are not some magical tool to find all weapons and explosives that can be hidden on the human body," writes Rittgers.  "Yes, the scanners work against high-density objects such as guns and knives — but so do traditional magnetometers."

He continues: "And the scanners fare poorly against low-density materials such as thin plastics, gels and liquids. Care to guess what Abdulmutallab's bomb was made of? The Government Accountability Office reported in March that it's not clear that a scanner would've detected that device."

Rittgers also explains how Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has already figured out a low-tech way of defeating the machines by inserting the explosives in their rectums.  Drug smugglers have been doing this for years with their product and AQAP has already tried this in an assassination attempt against a Saudi official.  A would-be terrorist could smuggle the explosive device on board a plane, then remove it from its "hiding place" during the flight in the plane's lavatory.

What the scanners lack in effectiveness they make up for in expense.  According to Rittgers, "executives for scanner-producing corporations — mostly former high-ranking Homeland Security officials — successfully lobbied Congress into spending $300 million in stimulus money to buy the scanners. But running them will cost another $340 million each year. Operating them means 5,000 added TSA personnel, growing the screener workforce by 10 percent. This, when the federal debt commission is saying that we must cut federal employment rolls, including some FBI agents, just to keep spending sustainable."

For airports that don't yet have the expensive scanners, or for people who decline to be scanned by them (perhaps out of fear of the unknown long-term health effects), or for people on whom the scanners see something suspicious, an "enhanced pat-down" becomes necessary.  During this procedure TSA agents manually check passengers intimate areas for weapons or explosives.

This experience is traumatic enough for most travelers but especially for a rape survivor like "Celeste" in Minnesota who, despite public assurances that pat-downs will be performed only by same-sex agents, had hers performed by a male agent.  She recounts her encounter with the TSA here:  "He started at one leg and then ran his hand up to my crotch. He cupped and patted my crotch with his palm. Other flyers were watching this happen to me. At that point I closed my eyes and started praying[.]  He also cupped and then squeezed my breasts. That wasn’t the worst part. He touched my face, he touched my hair, stroking me. That’s when I started crying. It was so intimate, so horrible. I feel like I was being raped. There’s no way I can fly again. I can’t do it.”

Or there's the story of 61 year old Thomas D. Sawyer of Lansing Michigan.  According to an msnbc.com article, "Sawyer is a bladder cancer survivor who now wears a urostomy bag, which collects his urine from a stoma, or opening in his stomach. 'I have to wear special clothes and in order to mount the bag I have to seal a wafer to my stomach and then attach the bag. If the seal is broken, urine can leak all over my body and clothes.'"

When the scanners picked up Sawyer's urostomy bag he was pulled aside for a pat-down procedure.  When Sawyer tried to explain his condition to the TSA agents they said they didn't need to know about it.  Once Sawyer removed his sweatshirt and they spotted the bag they finally asked him about his medical condition.

“One agent watched as the other used his flat hand to go slowly down my chest. I tried to warn him that he would hit the bag and break the seal on my bag, but he ignored me. Sure enough, the seal was broken and urine started dribbling down my shirt and my leg and into my pants.”

The security officer finished the pat-down, tested the gloves for any trace of explosives and then, Sawyer said, “He told me I could go. They never apologized. They never offered to help. They acted like they hadn’t seen what happened. But I know they saw it because I had a wet mark.”

Humiliated, upset and wet, Sawyer said he had to walk through the airport soaked in urine, board his plane and wait until after takeoff before he could clean up.

These are just two examples, but a quick search of the internet will show more stories like this than you'd care to read.  These are all real Americans being treated like cattle by their government.  Thankfully the people appear to be fighting back.  Multiple lawsuits have been filed against the TSA and there has been a vocal public outcry against the new procedures.  Some local district attorneys have threatened to prosecute TSA agents who engage in inappropriate behavior.  Despite all this, TSA head John Pistole has said that they're not going to change the policies.

Pistole and the rest of the federal security bureaucracy, as well as many fellow citizens, probably think that all of this is a perfectly acceptable trade-off to keep the American people "safe."  However, as the government is diligently fondling Grandma's labia in a vain attempt to prevent the previous terrorist attack, they will meanwhile be failing to "connect the dots" to prevent the next one.  When it hits, Homeland Security will treat the present level of intrusiveness as a floor, not a ceiling, and the current infringements upon our liberty and dignity will have all been for naught.  They will just demand more of our liberty the next time.

Perhaps the best summation of the situation comes from Thomas D. Sawyer, the traveler who had his urostomy bag ruptured by the probing fingers of an overreaching government.  “I am a good American and I want safety for all passengers as much as the next person.  But if this country is going to sacrifice treating people like human beings in the name of safety, then we have already lost the war.”  Wise words from someone whose dignity was a collateral casualty in the federal government's "war on terror."

Embracing Little Brother or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Electronic Surveillance

A recent Cedar Rapids Gazette article says that downtown Iowa City businesses, tired of “bad behavior” on the pedestrian mall, will be installing surveillance cameras outside their buildings to discourage crime. Ben Stone of the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa said that the group does not support the move. While the ACLU would be right to oppose more government surveillance (as they often do), in this instance I don‘t think electronic surveillance is all bad.

We should oppose more government surveillance because we already have so much of it. Some would argue that we already live in an Orwellian surveillance state. In Privacy International’s 2007 ranking of 47 industrialized nations, the United States ranked near the bottom for privacy protections, falling into the “Endemic Surveillance Societies” category. Only Thailand, Taiwan, United Kingdom, Singapore, Russia, China, and Malaysia tied with or scored lower than the United States. If the American public is already under the government’s microscope, how can we justify more private surveillance?

Firstly, it matters who is doing the surveilling and where. The businesses on Iowa City’s ped mall, for instance, shouldn’t be able to place cameras where there is some expectation of privacy, such as in dressing or restrooms, but why NOT facing the public walkways around their property? When we are in public areas we can have no expectation of privacy from being seen or photographed. Image if a photographer, taking a wide shot of Times Square in New York, had to get release forms signed by everyone of the thousands of people who may be in the photo. They don’t have to because such a requirement would obviously be impractical. The same principles apply with other forms of observation technology.

Private security cameras and portable recording devices are becoming more and more prevalent with business owners and private citizens. If we call the government’s surveillance organization “Big Brother,” perhaps we can call these private efforts “Little Brother.” (I didn’t come up with that term, I read it somewhere.) Little Brother often helps the government, by supplying video of bank robbers or shoplifters for instance, but it can also keep an eye on the government as well.

The first example of Little Brother watching government officials that springs to my mind is the famous Rodney King beating video. In this footage shot by a bystander with a video camera, several Los Angeles police officers are seen beating Rodney King after he led them on a high-speed chase. King was a drunken convict who was resisting arrest, so whether or not he deserved a few love taps remains open for debate. Regardless, the incident was widely seen as blatant police brutality when it was shown repeatedly on television and led to the 1992 Los Angeles riots and federal charges against four officers.

Another, more recent, example was during the 2009 Iranian election protests. While the traditional media was largely blacked out by the Iranian government, protesters with cell phone cameras were able to record the governments brutal suppression of the protests and transmit the images to the world with some help from social networking sites.

A less epic example occurred during Washington D.C.’s recent blizzards. Some D.C. locals got together for a snowball fight after the idea spread on the internet site Twitter. Things went alright at the snowball fight until a red Hummer passing by got zinged with a snowball. A plain clothes D.C. police officer, Mike Baylor, hopped out and confronted the revelers without identifying himself as a cop. Baylor pulled his sidearm which caused several bystanders to call 911 about an armed man. This caused more police to show up, at least one of whom also drew his pistol.

Despite many cell phone videos of Baylor waving his pistol available on the internet, Assistant Police Chief Pete Newsham stated that, “There was no police pulling guns on snowball people.” He repeated that lie to several news outlets. Mainstream media like The Washington Post unquestioningly declared Chief Newsham’s version to be the official truth. The Post even ignored the eyewitness account of one of their own staffers who was present at the snowball fight. Luckily, bloggers and smaller newspapers like the Washington City Paper, actually investigated the story (imagine!) by watching the videos and interviewing witnesses (including the Post employee) and exposed Newsham’s story as the deceitful cover-up that it was. Score another one for Little Brother!

We will always need to guard against egregious abuse of our privacy by Little Brother, just as we need to roll back Big Brother’s surveillance state. I don’t want Little Brother tapping my phone or ransacking my house any more than I want Big Brother to. But when Big Brother menacingly warns, “We’re watching you,” I want Little Brother to confidently reply with the same phrase.