Librarians Speak Up

Four Connecticut librarians who had been barred from revealing that they had received a request for patrons' records from the federal government spoke out yesterday, expressing frustration about the sweeping powers given to law enforcement authorities by the USA Patriot Act.

The librarians took turns at the microphone at their lawyers' office and publicly identified themselves as the collective John Doe who had sued the United States attorney general after their organization received a confidential demand for patron records in a secret counterterrorism case. They had been ordered, under the threat of prosecution, not to talk about the request with anyone. The librarians, who all have leadership roles at a small consortium called Library Connection in Windsor, Conn., said they opposed allowing the government unchecked power to demand library records and were particularly incensed at having been subject to the open-ended nondisclosure order.

"I'm John Doe, and if I had told you before today that the F.B.I. was requesting library records, I could have gone to jail," said one of the four, Peter Chase, a librarian from Plainville who is on the executive committee of Library Connection's board....

"I was shocked by the restraints the gag order imposed on me," said Mr. Christian [Library Connection's executive director], who said that after receiving the request he was unsure whether he could consult a lawyer or his board of directors.

"The fact that the government can and is eavesdropping on patrons in libraries has a chilling effect, because they really don't know if Big Brother is looking over their shoulder," he added...

Iran may force Jews and Christians to sew badges onto their cloths

Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims.

"This is reminiscent of the Holocaust," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. "Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis."

Iranian expatriates living in Canada yesterday confirmed reports that the Iranian parliament, called the Islamic Majlis, passed a law this week setting a dress code for all Iranians, requiring them to wear almost identical "standard Islamic garments."

The law, which must still be approved by Iran's "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenehi before being put into effect, also establishes special insignia to be worn by non-Muslims.

Iran's roughly 25,000 Jews would have to sew a yellow strip of cloth on the front of their clothes, while Christians would wear red badges and Zoroastrians would be forced to wear blue cloth.

"There's no reason to believe they won't pass this," said Rabbi Hier. "It will certainly pass unless there's some sort of international outcry over this."

Bernie Farber, the chief executive of the Canadian Jewish Congress, said he was "stunned" by the measure. "We thought this had gone the way of the dodo bird, but clearly in Iran everything old and bad is new again," he said. "It's state-sponsored religious discrimination."

Ali Behroozian, an Iranian exile living in Toronto, said the law could come into force as early as next year.

It would make religious minorities immediately identifiable and allow Muslims to avoid contact with non-Muslims.

Mr. Behroozian said it will make life even more difficult for Iran's small pockets of Jewish, Christian and other religious minorities -- the country is overwhelmingly Shi'ite Muslim. "They have all been persecuted for a while, but these new dress rules are going to make things worse for them," he said... (Continued)

America, home of the free? Not so fast unmarried roomates with kids.

Black Jack Missourie City Council has rejected a measure allowing unmarried couples with multiple children to live together, and the mayor said those who fall into that category could soon face eviction.

Olivia Shelltrack and Fondrey Loving were denied an occupancy permit after moving into a home in this St. Louis suburb because they have three children and are not married.

The town's Planning and Zoning Commission proposed a change in the law, but the measure was rejected Tuesday by the City Council in a 5-3 vote...

The current ordinance prohibits more than three people from living together unless they are related by "blood, marriage or adoption." The defeated measure would have changed the definition of a family to include unmarried couples with two or more children.

Mayor Norman McCourt declined to be interviewed but said in a statement that those who do not meet the town's definition of family could soon face eviction.

First Images of Pentagon 9/11 Attack

Yesterday, the Pentagon released the first official images of the American Airlines Flight 77 that crashed into the military headquarters building and killed 189 people on September 11, 2001.

The conservative group Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request in December 2004, which was denied a month later, the group says.

The Pentagon said it could not release the videos in question because they were part of an ongoing investigation against al-Qaeda plotter Zacarias Moussaoui, according to Judicial Watch.

Judicial Watch sued the government over its refusal, saying there was "no legal basis" for it.

Government resistance collapsed after a court sentenced Moussaoui to life in prison for his role in the 9/11 attacks, and they agreed to release the video, a Judicial Watch spokeswoman told the BBC.

The group wanted to have the images released in order to "put to rest the conspiracy theories involving American Airlines 77."

His remark was apparently a reference to ideas aired in books such as Thierry Meyssan's The Pentagate, which argues that a missile, not a plane, struck the headquarters of the US defense department.

Ok, but did you see the footage (video link here)? That could have easily been a missile. The plane is no where to be seen. Was the video selectively edited by the Pentagon? I'm just sayin!

Mathmagicians At the NSA?

So it's been a while since my last post but this much-shared Op-Ed piece from the NY Times lured me out of hiding. This Op-Ed writer criticizes the collection of call records from phone companies. There are some surprisingly funny quotes in a rather cerebral article.

[The] National Security Agency's entire spying program seems to be based on a false assumption: that you can work out who might be a terrorist based on calling patterns. While I agree that anyone calling 1-800-ALQAEDA is probably a terrorist, in less obvious situations guilt by association is not just bad law, it's bad mathematics...
...
Even if there is only a 1 in 150 million chance that someone might share the profile of a terrorist suspect, it still means that, in a country the size of the United States, two people might share that profile. One might be a terrorist, or he might be Cat Stevens.

This line is not secure...

It's been a while, so let's kick it back off with something that should be near and dear to all of us, our privacy. But have no fear, our government is hear to protect and serve by stepping over such trivial hurdles like the law in order to make America a safer but scarier place to live in. In the weeks following 9/11, Dick Cheney argued that the National Security Agency should intercept domestic telephone calls and e-mails without warrants as part of its war on terrorism, The New York Times reported in Sunday editions.

Cheney and his top legal adviser, David Addington, believed the Constitution permitted spy agencies to take such sweeping measures to defend the country, The newspaper said, citing two senior intelligence officials who spoke anonymously...

On one side was a strong-willed vice president and his longtime legal adviser, David S. Addington, who believed that the Constitution permitted spy agencies to take sweeping measures to defend the country. Later, Mr. Cheney would personally arrange tightly controlled briefings on the program for select members of Congress.

On the other side were some lawyers and officials at the largest American intelligence agency, which was battered by eavesdropping scandals in the 1970s and has since wielded its powerful technology with extreme care to avoid accusations of spying on Americans...

Mr. Cheney traced his views to his service as chief of staff to President Gerald R. Ford in the 1970s, when post-Watergate changes, which included the FISA law, "served to erode the authority I think the president needs to be effective, especially in a national security area."

In the meantime, looks like our phones are being monitored without a court order or due cause. Pennsylvania Republican, Senator Arlen Specter said, "we do not know whether it's constitutional or not." To date, he added, administration briefings had been inadequate and "there has been no meaningful congressional oversight on this program." He also said he wanted to know whether the big telephone companies like AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth had been coerced to do so. USA Today quoted unidentified officials as saying that a smaller company, Qwest, had been threatened with losing future government contracts.

53% of Americans recently polled believe that the N.S.A. program "goes too far in invading people's privacy," while 41% said they viewed it as a necessary tool against terrorism. [Editor's note, 41% of Americans are fucking tools.]