and travel records, social media—and map them to collect "all the attributes that any individual has" in every type of activity and build a profile based on that data.
When classified details were leaked to the press at some point in 2005, critics began to question the legality of the program. The crux of the debate over legality is twofold, the main issues being
FISA explicitly covers "electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence information" performed within the United States, and there is no court decision supporting the theory that the president's constitutional authority allows him to override statutory law. This was emphasized by fourteen constitutional law scholars, including the dean of Yale Law School and the former deans of Stanford Law School and the University of Chicago Law School:
- Are the parameters of this program subject to FISA and
- If so, did the president have authority, inherent or otherwise, to bypass FISA.
"The argument that conduct undertaken by the commander in chief that has some relevance to 'engaging the enemy' is immune from congressional regulation finds no support in, and is directly contradicted by, both case law and historical precedent. Every time the Supreme Court has confronted a statute limiting the commander in chief’s authority, it has upheld the statute. No precedent holds that the president, when acting as commander in chief, is free to disregard an Act of Congress, much less a criminal statute enacted by Congress, that was designed specifically to restrain the president as such." (Emphasis in original.)[32] The American Bar Association, the Congressional Research Service, former congressional representative of New York Elizabeth Holtzman, former White House Counsel John Dean, and lawyer/author Jennifer van Bergen have also criticized the administration's justification for conducting electronic surveillance within the U.S. without first obtaining warrants as contrary to current U.S. law. [29] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] President Bush's former Assistant Deputy Attorney General for national security issues, David Kris, and five former FISC judges, one of whom resigned in protest, have also voiced their doubts as to the legality of a program bypassing FISA [38] Stanford's Chip Pitts has usefully distinguished between the core NSA eavesdropping program, the data mining program, and the use of National Security Letters to clarify that each continues to present serious legal problems despite the government's supposedly bringing them within the relevant laws.[39]
Drake tried to get the word out. But now, as a result, he has been charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 and if convicted of all charges could spend the next 35 years of his life in prison. The government says he betrayed his country.
"From the government and prosecution's point of view, it's an important case to state that if you're a government person and you signed a confidentiality agreement and you've got a security clearance based on your promise to keep our secrets secret, that you don't get the right as an individual to decide when that secret should be kept or not because you've decided that the government is right or wrong about something it wants to do," Lowell explained.
There are agencies which use keyword capture to ID postings of note . . . when the computers locate connections between frequency, word associations and source . . . someone is asked to take a look . . . yes many people are involved but not as many as you might think . . . legally you can capture and store all electronic communication . . . you cannot review it without a court order . . . but if you have reason to believe there is criminal activity the court order is very possible . . . who knows what is possible under the Patriot Act . . .
A former US marine who was taken from his home and involuntarily detained for psychiatric evaluation for posting controversial song lyrics and conspiracy theories on Facebook is to file a civil lawsuit against the FBI and police.
Speaking for the first time since his release, after a judge ruled there was insufficient evidence to detain him, Brandon Raub said his experience was frightening and that it sent a "extremely alarming" message to Americans.
His case has sparked vigorous online debate over First Amendment rights versus concerns over security.
lol, it's right there in the article, actually... he quoted a rap-lyric, "Sharpen up my axe: I'm here to sever heads", from the song Bring Me Down by Swolen Members. How many rap lyrics about violence get quoted on Facebook every day, do you think? Several hundred thousand I'd bet. He also happened to be a 'truther' himself. For posting a violent rap lyric, and being a truther, this officer of the united states military who served at least two terms in two separate foreign nations in service to his country, pictured in the article literally embracing a puppy in a desert, was taken into custody and held without charges, and without being read his rights, for OVER A WEEK. Last time I checked, if someone seems 'a bit unhinged' the customary thing to do is ask them if they're alright, not causelessly detain them for days at a time with no access to legal counsel, and then make an effort to have him groundlessly committed in the long-term.
It's very easy to get someone hauled off to the looney bin. I had a crazy roommate who would stop taking her medication and slowly slide into crazy. My other roommate and I had to practically babysit her to prevent her from harming herself. Twice we had her committed. The first time we didn't know what to do and called her ex-husband for advice. Her 12 yo daughter answered the phone and she said to call 911! We did and starting explaining "we have a mentally ill woman who stopped taking her medication and---" when the operator stopped us and said she was sending the police out. That's all it took. a 30 second phone call. It really sucked having to do that because she was the nicest person in the world but she was a danger to herself.Hopewell Circuit Judge W. Allan Sharrett found that a document ordering Raub's transfer this week from a Hopewell hospital to the Salem VA Medical Center was faulty and "so devoid of any factual allegations that it could not be reasonably expected to give rise to a case or controversy."
Raub, 26, was released from the Salem hospital shortly after 5 p.m.
The case raises anew concerns about Virginia's civil commitment proceedings for mentally ill people, proceedings that were overhauled after Virginia Tech mass murderer Seung-Hui Cho underwent a similar process that upon closer scrutiny was shown to be full of deficiencies and miscommunications between caregivers and the judicial system.
Raub's release follows a procedural error, the failure of a special justice to check off on a petition for involuntary admission to a hospital the elemental findings about Raub's mental condition. Sharrett likened the faulty order to an arrest warrant that lists no specific illegality.
The order was signed Monday by Special Justice W. Douglas Stokes, but the boxes on a form designating the nature of Raub's condition were not marked. Court files, however, show that Raub had undergone mental-health assessments shortly after being taken into custody Aug. 16 and was found to be mentally ill and a danger to others.
You make it sound like he had every reason to be committed, but managed to slip through the cracks thanks to publicity.
Those lawyers seemed to think an evaluation of someone's mental health taken while they've been unlawfully detained by the FBI with no charges leveled doesn't count for much. The judge seemed to agree. Do you know better?
Jacob Appelbaum is an independent computer security researcher and hacker. He was employed by the University of Washington,[1] and is a core member of the Tor project. Appelbaum is known for representing Wikileaks at the 2010 Hope conference.[5] He has subsequently been repeatedly targeted by US law enforcement agencies, who obtained a court order for his Twitter account data, detained him 12[6] times at the US border after trips abroad, and seized a laptop and several mobile phones.
Appelbaum, under the handle "ioerror", has been an active member of the Cult of the Dead Cow hacker collective since 2008,[7] and is the co-founder of the San Francisco hackerspace Noisebridge with Mitch Altman. He has worked for Greenpeace[8] and has volunteered for the Ruckus Society and the Rainforest Action Network.[9] He is also an ambassador for the art group monochrom.[10]
And also no such thing as organised crime, drug dealing, etc?? Or alternatively you do know they exist, but are happy for law enforcement to be utterly powerless to do anythign about them??
The facts are, what they are doing is ILLEGAL... As JVNK points out... they are hoovering up and storing virtually everything on the net, emails, personal data like contacts, whereabouts, financial, tel conversations ... every last thing on EVERYBODY. Further they are trying to lock people up for decades who are blowing the whistle on their ILLEGAL actions.
[O]ur unhinged government, with an obsession like that of Melville's Ahab, has crippled Nancy Black's scientific career, cost her more than $100,000 in legal fees — so far — and might sentence her to 20 years in prison. This Kafkaesque burlesque of law enforcement began when someone whistled.
Black, 50, a marine biologist who also captains a whale-watching ship, was with some watchers in Monterey Bay in 2005 when a member of her crew whistled at the humpback that had approached her boat, hoping to entice the whale to linger. Back on land, another of her employees called the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to ask if the whistling constituted "harassment" of a marine mammal, which is an "environmental crime." NOAA requested a video of the episode, which Black sent after editing it slightly to highlight the whistling. NOAA found no harassment — but got her indicted for editing the tape, calling this a "material false statement" to federal investigators, which is a felony under the 1863 False Claims Act, intended to punish suppliers defrauding the government during the Civil War.
A year after this bizarre charge — that she lied about the interaction with the humpback that produced no charges — more than a dozen federal agents, led by one from NOAA, raided her home. They removed her scientific photos, business files and computers.
The psychologists who's report was thrown out of court? This is a soldier who was deployed in two wars, and thus has every reason/is entirely entitled to be in less than perfect mental health. Few people are in perfect mental health. This guy was a 'truther', a soldier home from two wars who both held and openly expressed a belief that elements of his government were or could have been complicit in the attacks of 9/11. Being in his particular circumstances, a little paranoia would be entirely understandable as well.
Oh, he threatened directly to kill someone? Wow, that is serious. Who? Who did he threaten to kill? That particular accusation isn't mentioned in any of the articles I've read/information on the thread. Or are you referring to the song lyric in which no direct threat was made against anyone's life whatsoever? "Sharpen up my axe: I'm here to sever heads" is not a death threat by any stretch of the imagination. Death is not even mentioned, let alone any specific party being threatened. And when you break the law, or more importantly are accused of breaking the law, you absolutely do not forfeit your other rights. That's why when being arrested, the arresting officers are obliged to read you your rights. Cases where the crimes have been as serious as murder have been thrown out of court because arresting officers failed to read their apprehended suspect their rights.
Nope, but it's the job of the Judge to read that report and decide its validity.
Then I guess that settles that then, doesn't it? As it's the official function of the judge to 'know better'?
Was it night-time? If so, what's your beef exactly? If not, sue me, I exaggerated a little.
The Ridenhour and Sam Adams, obviously not to do with government.He is also a whistleblower. In 2010 the government alleged that he 'mishandled' documents, one of the few such Espionage Act cases in U.S. history. His defenders claim that he was instead being persecuted for challenging the Trailblazer Project.[4][5][6][7][8][9
He is the 2011 recipient of the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling and co-recipient of the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) award.
No someone was mentioned. He could be talking about culling the spring chickens for all you know.
It's not a death threat if it's not specific. You don't charge someone with conspiring to commit arson for posting 'The roof is on fire, we don't need no water let the motherfucker burn.' Claiming that "Sharpen up my axe: I'm here to sever heads" is a death threat is equally ludicrous. No actual roofs were being threatened with immolation, no actual people were being threatened with decapitation. It is not a death-threat. They didn't even charge him/attempt to charge him with uttering a death-threat. You're making this 'death-threat' business up.
more often than not they most certainly do for any charge of a death threat to hold up in court.
Huh? This is what the judge had to say:
doesn't sound like 'Ooop, you failed to dot the I's, to the trash with your case..!' to me.
lol, woah, hold on there a second. I didn't -know- the circumstances of his arrest, other than what information I've been given access too via this thread. I knew he was arrested by the FBI, wasn't read his rights, and was held for seven days. The FBI did still come along and cart the guy away against his will, they just did it in the daytime, and not in the nighttime... which I admittedly included for dramatic effect.
lol, really? I suppose the difference between night and day IS night and day, but aren't you going just a little overboard here? Now I'm a kook, and this veteran is a nut, and my apparently egregious moral error of switching night for day (having had no idea which it had been) renders my outrage at the abuse this man suffered somehow hypocritical or something? How is my mistaking the time of day worse than you fabricating charges?
Now on it's own... it is not illegal... if the words are taken out of context... it is not illegal, I do not have to quote the whole thing."Bring Me Down"
(feat. Saigon)
[Intro: Saigon]
You ever get the feelin
No matter what they do, no matter what they say
Know you'll make it, some day
[Chorus: Saigon - singing]
They'll say I'm a killer
I feel I'm as high as I can be
And now they gon' die as high as me
I can't be no realer
Y'all ain't gon' bring me down [3X]
I can't be no realer; y'all ain't gon' bring me down
[Saigon]
You know the feelin when your back is up against in the wall
People say that they love you but you ain't convinced at all
Tell 'em they full of shit and they'll tell you you're insecure
Calling you immature, does that make sense to y'all?
You ever feel like it's you against the whole world?
Like everybody is schemin even your own girl
Your homeboy seem to be countin your money
Tell em you ain't got it and he lookin at you funny
I'm feeling like I probably need to either leave the game alone
or either be the G to bang the chrome to get his name known
How does the Saigon story end? How?
Know what they're sayin for now?
[Chorus]
[Mad Child]
When Mad Child step on stage, I cause hysteria
Now they won't let my crazy ass back in America
Eagle labeled me as an illegal evil immigrant
I'm far beyond the magic of a wand inside a wizard's fist
Sharper than the hand of Edward Scissor's, I'm a wiz at this
Hotter than the desert but I'm colder than a blizzard kid
Harder than a prison bid, with God I'm never hesitant
My business it isn't as amazin as it's ever been
As long as God allows me to be clever it will never end
Sharpen up my axe and I am back, I'm here to sever heads
Compulsive obsessive, I'm also aggressive
My mouth is the message, my life is a lesson, my pulse is a blessing
[Chorus]
[Prevail]
If there's Hell below we're all gonna go; yo Curtis Mayfield
God and the devil still tryin to level the playin field
Some people sayin that this life is all about free will
I'd rather have free rent, and never pay these bills
That's why I'm thankful every day that I'm blessed with these skills
And Mad is still alive after swallowin all those pills
I ride for Saigon, New York to the Hollywood Hills
(The Greatest Story Never Told) is now yours to reveal
I feel like helium balloons are stuck up on the ceilin
Trying to make that breakthrough before I catch deflated feelings
Dying with a heart full of regrets is not amazing either
I'll just see the gatekeeper, or you meet the Grim Reaper
[Chorus]
[dub version of Chorus]
[Chorus - echoes at the end]
