by Declan McCullagh

(AP / CBS)

In a case that raises questions about online journalism and privacy rights, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a formal request to an independent news site ordering it to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day.

The grand jury subpoena also required the Philadelphia-based Indymedia.us Web site “not to disclose the existence of this request” unless authorized by the Justice Department, a gag order that presents an unusual quandary for any news organization.

Kristina Clair, a 34-year old Linux administrator living in Philadelphia who provides free server space for Indymedia.us, said she was shocked to receive the Justice Department’s subpoena. (The Independent Media Center is a left-of-center amalgamation of journalists and advocates that – according to their principles of unity and mission statement – work toward “promoting social and economic justice” and “social change.”)

The subpoena (PDF) from U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison in Indianapolis demanded “all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us” on June 25, 2008. It instructed Clair to “include IP addresses, times, and any other identifying information,” including e-mail addresses, physical addresses, registered accounts, and Indymedia readers’ Social Security Numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and so on.

“I didn’t think anything we were doing was worthy of any (federal) attention,” Clair said in a telephone interview withCBSNews.com on Monday. After talking to other Indymedia volunteers, Clair ended up calling the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, which represented her at no cost.

Under long-standing Justice Department guidelines, subpoenas to members of the news media are supposed to receive special treatment. One portion of the guidelines, for instance, says that “no subpoena may be issued to any member of the news media” without “the express authorization of the attorney general” – that would be current attorney general Eric Holder – and subpoenas should be “directed at material information regarding a limited subject matter.”

Still unclear is what criminal investigation U.S. Attorney Morrison was pursuing. Last Friday, a spokeswoman initially promised a response, but Morrison sent e-mail on Monday evening saying: “We have no comment.” The Justice Department in Washington, D.C. also declined to respond.

Kevin Bankston, a senior staff attorney at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, replied to the Justice Department on behalf of his client in a February 2009 letter (PDF) outlining what he described as a series of problems with the subpoena, including that it was not personally served, that a judge-issued court order would be required for the full logs, and that Indymedia did not store logs in the first place.

Morrison replied in a one-sentence letter saying the subpoena had been withdrawn. Around the same time, according to the EFF, the group had a series of discussions with assistant U.S. attorneys in Morrison’s office who threatened Clair with possible prosecution for obstruction of justice if she disclosed the existence of the already-withdrawn subpoena — claiming it “may endanger someone’s health” and would have a “human cost.”

Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of The Press, said a gag order to a news organization wouldn’t stand up in court: “If you get a subpoena and you’re a journalist, they can’t gag you.”

Dalglish said that a subpoena being issued and withdrawn is not unprecedented. “I have seen any number of these things withdrawn when counsel for someone who is claiming a reporter’s privilege says, ‘Can you tell me the date you got approval from the attorney general’s office’… I’m willing to chalk this up to bad lawyering on the part of the DOJ, or just not thinking.”

Making this investigation more mysterious is that Indymedia.us is an aggregation site, meaning articles that appear on it were published somewhere else first, and there’s no hint about what sparked the criminal probe. Clair, the system administrator, says that no IP (Internet Protocol) addresses are recorded for Indymedia.us, and non-IP address logs are kept for a few weeks and then discarded.

EFF’s Bankston wrote a second letter to the government saying that, if it needed to muzzle Indymedia, it should apply for a gag order under the section of federal law that clearly permits such an order to be issued. Bankston’s plan: To challenge that law on First Amendment grounds.

But the Justice Department never replied. “This is the first time we’ve seen them try to get the IP address of everyone who visited a particular site,” Bankston said. “That it was a news organization was an additional troubling fact that implicates First Amendment rights.”

This is not, however, the first time that the Feds have focused on Indymedia — a Web site whose authors sometimes blur the line between journalism, advocacy, and on-the-streets activism. In 2004, the Justice Department sent a grand jury subpoena asking for information about who posted lists of Republican delegates while urging they be given an unwelcome reception at the party’s convention in New York City that year. A Indymedia hosting service in Texas once received a subpoena asking for server logs in relation to an investigation of an attempted murder in Italy.

Bankston has written a longer description of the exchange of letters with the Justice Department, which he hopes will raise awareness of how others should respond to similar legal demands for Web logs, customer records, and compulsory silence. “Our fear is that this kind of bogus gag order is much more common than one would hope, considering they’re legally baseless,” Bankston says. “We’re telling this story in hopes that more providers will press back and go public when the government demands their silence.”

Update 1:59pm E.T.: A Justice Department official familiar with this subpoena just told me that the attorney general’s office never saw it and that it had not been submitted to the department’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. for review. If that’s correct, it suggests that U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison and Assistant U.S. Attorney Doris Pryor did not follow department regulations requiring the “express authorization of the attorney general” for media subpoenas — and it means that neither Attorney General Eric Holder nor Acting Attorney General Mark Filip were involved. I wouldn’t be surprised to see an internal investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility; my source would not confirm or deny that.

by Glenn Greenwald

Even when government officials purposely subject an innocent person to brutal torture, they enjoy full immunity.

It’s not often that an appellate court decision reflects so vividly what a country has become, but such is the case with yesterday’s ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Arar v. Ashcroft (.pdf).  Maher Arar is both a Canadian and Syrian citizen of Syrian descent.  A telecommunications engineer and graduate of Montreal’s McGill University, he has lived in Canada since he’s 17 years old.  In 2002, he was returning home to Canada from vacation when, on a stopover at JFK Airport, he was (a) detained by U.S. officials, (b) accused of being a Terrorist, (c) held for two weeks incommunicado and without access to counsel while he was abusively interrogated, and then (d) was “rendered” – despite his pleas that he would be tortured — to Syria, to be interrogated and tortured.  He remained in Syria for the next 10 months under the most brutal and inhumane conditions imaginable, where he was repeatedly tortured.  Everyone acknowledges that Arar was never involved with Terrorism and was guilty of nothing.  I’ve appended to the end of this post the graphic description from a dissenting judge of what was done to Arar while in American custody and then in Syria.

In January, 2007, the Canadian Prime Minister publicly apologized to Arar for the role Canada played in these events, and the Canadian government paid him $9 million in compensation.  That was preceded by a full investigation by Canadian authorities and the public disclosure of a detailed report which concluded “categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense or that his activities constituted a threat to the security of Canada.”  By stark and very revealing contrast, the U.S. Government has never admitted any wrongdoing or even spoken publicly about what it did; to the contrary, it repeatedly insisted that courts were barred from examining the conduct of government officials because what we did to Arar involves “state secrets” and because courts should not interfere in the actions of the Executive where national security is involved.  What does that behavioral disparity between the two nations say about how “democratic,” ”accountable,” and “open” the United States is?

Yesterday, the Second Circuit — by a vote of 7-4 –  agreed with the government and dismissed Arar’s case in its entirety.  It held that even if the government violated Arar’s Constitutional rights as well as statutes banning participation in torture, he still has no right to sue for what was done to him.  Why?  Because “providing a damages remedy against senior officials who implement an extraordinary rendition policy would enmesh the courts ineluctably in an assessment of the validity of the rationale of that policy and its implementation in this particular case, matters that directly affect significant diplomatic and national security concerns” (p. 39).  In other words, government officials are free to do anything they want in the national security context — even violate the law and purposely cause someone to be tortured — and courts should honor and defer to their actions by refusing to scrutinize them.

Reflecting the type of people who fill our judiciary, the judges in the majority also invented the most morally depraved bureaucratic requirements for Arar to proceed with his case and then claimed he had failed to meet them.  Arar did not, for instance, have the names of the individuals who detained and abused him at JFK, which the majority said he must have.  As Judge Sack in dissent said of that requirement:  it “means government miscreants may avoid [] liability altogether through thesimple expedient of wearing hoods while inflicting injury“ (p. 27; emphasis added).

The commentary about this case from Harper‘s Scott Horton perfectly captures the depravity of what our Government has done — and continues to do — to Arar.  His analysis should be read in its entirety, and he concludes with this:

When the history of the Second Circuit is written, the Arar decision will have a prominent place. It offers all the historical foresight of Dred Scott, in which the Court rallied to the cause of slavery, and all the commitment to constitutional principle of the Slaughter-House Cases, in which the Fourteenth Amendment was eviscerated. The Court that once affirmed that those who torture are the “enemies of all mankind” now tells us that U.S. government officials can torture without worry, because the security of our state might some day depend upon it.

I want to add one principal point to all of this.  This is precisely how the character of a country becomes fundamentally degraded when it becomes a state in permanent war.  So continuous are the inhumane and brutal acts of government leaders that the citizens completely lose the capacity for moral outrage and horror.  The permanent claims of existential threats from an endless array of enemies means that secrecy is paramount, accountability is deemed a luxury, and National Security trumps every other consideration — even including basic liberties and the rule of law.  Worst of all, the President takes on the attributes of a protector-deity who can and must never be questioned lest we prevent him from keeping us safe.   This is exactly why I find so objectionable and dangerous the ongoing embrace by the Obama administration of these same secrecy and immunity weapons.  Obama had nothing to do with the Arar case — all the conduct, and even the legal briefing, occurred before he was President — but he has taken numerous steps to further institutionalize the core injustice here, including in cases that are quite similar to Arar:  namely, that the Executive can use secrecy and national security claims to shield himself from the rule of law, even when he’s accused of torture and war crimes.  That’s exactly what happened here, yet again.

Read the rest at this link.

by Butler Shaffer

For might makes right,
And till they’ve seen the light,
They’ve got to be protected,
All their rights respected,
Till somebody we like can be elected.

~ Tom Lehrer
(Lyrics from his “Send the Marines“)

“Democracy” is a central part of the mantra by which the modern political establishment continues to exercise the same monopoly on the use of violence that was enjoyed by earlier monarchs and warlords. The rationale for the political domination of the more numerous by the few has morphed from “divine right of kings” to “democracy,” each serving, during its time, to convince people of the propriety of their subservience to power. There have been many definitions of “democracy” – none more to the point than those offered by the likes of H.L. Mencken and Ambrose Bierce. My own definition is that “democracy is the illusion that my wife and I, combined, have twice the political influence of David Rockefeller.”

This concept has been used to camouflage the violation of the values and principles upon which democratic societies are allegedly based: the protection of life, liberty, and property; respect for human rights; and the belief that the state should represent and be controlled by the general population rather than by privileged elites. From at least the time of Woodrow Wilson’s warmongering to “make the world safe for democracy,” to current efforts to “make the world safe for democracy,” most Americans have accepted this state of perpetual war as one whose totality of costs could be measured solely in dollars and the lives of American soldiers. It was not until 9/11 that American civil society was on the receiving end of what Lord Byron called “the feast of vultures, and the waste of life”; an experience that most thought was supposed to be confined to other people in other lands.

As growing numbers of thoughtful Americans begin to question the war system – and the thinking that makes it possible – it is timely to consider how the imposition of “democracy” through “shock-and-awe” bombing raids, the massive destruction of homes, and the slaughter of members of the electorate is having on its “let’s pretend” beneficiaries. Whatever one’s opinions about the virtues of democratic systems, or of the self-contradictory efforts to prescribe them through warfare and conquest, reason demands that careful attention be paid to the views of those being made subject thereto. To this end, a “Statement of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban): Regarding the Runoff Elections” in that country has been obtained and made public by the NEFA Foundation. The statement was issued on October 25, 2009, and its translation is reproduced here in its entirety.

“For the past eight years, the sole invaders of the world have embarked on an ambitious road aimed at slapping an illegitimate rule on the Afghan people and mobilizing views of the public of the world in their own favor. They are trying to trouble the water and then fish in it. Time and again, they resort to staging parodies under the name of Loya Jirga and elections in order to distract the attention of the people from their unlawful invasion and confound the mind of the public. But still, these wicked maneuverings have not availed them [of the] capability to achieve their evil goals, nor they have been able to divert the attention of the people from their invasion. Contrarily, their conspiracies and collusion have been exposed and lost their credibility in the sight of the masses.”

“Some time ago, the invaders conducted presidential and provincial council elections concurrently in order to legitimize their handpicked regime. But the elections revealed flagrant fraud in addition to bring to [the] open the fact that the invaders’ conspiracies have lost their flagrance. The invaders realized that our people not only boycott the elections and avoided going to the polling stations but also took part shoulder to shoulder with Mujahideen to neutralize the fraudulent plots of the enemy. It was because of their efforts, that the enemy achieved nothing from staging the elections drama.”

“At…[the international] level, every one knows the elections were no more than an eyewash. The elections substantiated the well-known quotes of our leader who had said one year ago that the real decision was taken in Washington. It is never taken on the basis of the votes of the Afghans. The enemy is trying to prolong the drama which is now…in full swing. Therefore, they have decided to conduct the election once again and keep the attention of our countrymen and the public of the world diverted in order to hide their defeat…[on] the…[battle] field.”

“The Afghans know why the elections are being held and what for? And what will be its certain outcome. The Afghans also know that the format of the current elections will not be different from the past elections. Furthermore, the Afghan nation has been witnessing the shameful posturing and political collusions. The clandestine motives behind the announcement for the runoff could be understood from the suffocated voice and the pale countenance of the besieged miserable president! The people witnessed…how powerless and incapable was the Independent Commission of Elections and how far the ICE is under the influence of the Complaint Commission whose majority members are foreign nationals. Even the Independent Election Commission is not authorized to make any announcement or issue any statement without prior permission of the Complaint Commission. The people also know that the election drama, which is now being played with a new episode as a soap opera, in fact, panders to the invaders’ ambitions and goals. What could be expected of this election for the benefit of the country and our miserable people?”

“The public of the world like the Afghans have reached the conclusion that the miserable people of Afghanistan are hostage in the hands of the global terrorists under the leadership of America whereas the Kabul surrogate Administration is entangled in the claws of the invaders. Through coercion and manipulation, they want to impose on the Afghans a regime, which is only palatable to the invaders. But our brave nation will never stoop to this.”

“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan deems it necessary to announce the following points to the pious people and the believing Mujahideen regarding the second round of the devious conspiracy of the invaders.”

“1. The Islamic Emirate announces to all countrymen to avoid participating in the deceitful and foreign-made electoral process. On the command of your belief and the Afghan conscience, you should completely boycott the elections on the basis of the rule of Sharia.”

“2. All Mujahideen should make efforts to foil this wicked process; should carry out operations against their centers; prevent people from participating in the elections and block all roads and paths for all public and government vehicles one day before the day of the polling and inform people about this. Similarly, with the help of religious scholars, clerics and elders, educate people about the clandestine motives behind the elections. Create awareness among people regarding the conspiracies of the enemy.”

“3. The Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan have worked out programs to foil and prevent this process. They closely monitor all workers, officials and voters including other related programs hammered out in this regard. Every one is responsible for the harm he sustains as a result of his participation in the elections. The Mujahideen have repeatedly warned the people and announced their program of action.”

“4. All Mujahideen and their local chief are instructed to execute their plans against the enemy. They should put to use new experiences and the action program now at the disposal of the provincial leaders. This is in addition to the previous tactics, which were utilized in the past. Similarly, they should foil the last conspiracy of the enemies of the country and Islam.”

“5. We know the enemy is not able to make the elections successful. So they will try to make exaggerations about this empty and failed process of the elections by using the mass media through coercion and bribes. They will falsely show that the election was successful. Therefore, we call on all impartial and independent media outlets to abide by the timeless rule of journalism and do not tarnish your reputation by partial reporting but rather fulfill the rightful mission in the best way it can be done.”

FORMER BOLTON CHIEF FOCUSES ON CONSTITUTION

The annual commemoration of the April 19, 1775, Battle at Lexington Green — with its “Don’t Tread on Me” slogans and tea dumping tax protest — seemed a particularly auspicious time for Celia S. Hyde to join Oath Keepers, a new group dedicated to upholding the U.S. Constitution.

It also helped that Ms. Hyde, a retired Bolton police chief and owner of the Stowaway Inn in Stow, had a room available for Patriot’s Day weekend, when an official from the national organization came to give a talk on Lexington Green.

Now the Massachusetts director for Oath Keepers, and a member of its national board, Ms. Hyde said the goal of the group is simple — to abide by and protect the Constitution.

Although it mostly comprises current and retired police officers, military veterans, and active military personnel — including some high-ranking active duty troops in the Middle East — she said anyone can join.

There are no membership fees, but donations are accepted. Ms. Hyde said Oath Keepers is nonpartisan.

“It’s all about protecting the rights of the people. We don’t want our rights to be stepped on,” she said.

The state chapter, she said, has been busy organizing rallies, lectures and other events. It held a Constitution Day in September at the Statehouse, when members met with state legislators. A current key Oath Keepers state effort, she said, is to oppose a legislative bill dealing with pandemics that would require mass vaccinations against illnesses such as the H1N1 virus.

According to the organization’s Web site, www.oathkeepers.org, there are approximately 70 members in Massachusetts. Ms. Hyde said there are thousands nationwide.

The group was founded in Las Vegas in March by Stewart Rhodes, a former Army paratrooper.

In an Oath Keepers news release this week, Mr. Rhodes announced a National Liberty Summit to be held Dec. 15 and 16 (the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party) in the nation’s capital. They will join the National 912 Project, another Constitutionalist group, for the event.

“The goal will be for those groups to work even more closely together right down to the local level, in every country and district,” Mr. Rhodes said in the release.

He quotes Ben Franklin (“Join or Die!”) and John Quincy Adams, and announces plans for a larger April summit and a tax protest march April 15.

Ms. Hyde emphasized that the group is not made up of right-wing extremists, although Chris Matthews, host of “Hardball,” a liberal-leaning political commentary television program on MSNBC, recently confronted Mr. Rhodes on the air about what he described as conspiracy theorists going after Americans who do not agree with the Patriot Movement, which is dedicated to protecting Americans’ rights, and the fact that most of its members carry weapons.

While acknowledging that no one, including extremists, is prevented from joining and posting comments on the Oath Keeper site’s forums and blogs, Ms. Hyde said the basic premise is the nonviolent defending of the Constitution against foreign and domestic enemies.

“We are the good guys,” she said. “We contend that we don’t have to obey illegal orders. Our order is to stand down. We are nonviolent.”

Ms. Hyde, a Bolton native who lives in Stow, joined the Bolton Police Department in 1975, and was named chief in 1999. She retired in 2004, after battling with the police union for months. During her tenure, she taught rape awareness and self defense to high school girls, and was instrumental in a long investigation that eventually ended in the child molestation conviction and civil commitment of John R. Kendrick, former head of the Bolton Conservation Trust and a once respected town citizen.

Look at the list of ten imperatives the Oath Keepers have laid down (your forwarded article, below). Do these points, taken together, not represent the NWO’s complete domestic enforcement agenda for the former United States… in reverse?

The concept constitutes a brilliant rhetorical device. No wonder K-Talk hosts — Joe Jackson and S.P. Romney in particular — have started-in, early and vicious, to demean this organization as seditious, its agenda untenable and silly. As I listen to the station and the bevy of Tory-like callers who call-in to support these hosts, their schoolyard sneers and accusations of treason, it reminds me of the torrent of smearing and bad mouthing which flowed from the station during the peak of the Minute Man Project. The Oath Keepers must be on to something.  -Dale

KSBY.com

Reported by: Stacy Daniel

The governor signed a new bill into law on Monday, October 12. The move is sparking mixed reaction.

The new law requires stores that sell ammunition to keep track of every customer who makes a purchase.

The idea is that local law enforcement can use the records to find illegal guns.

It also requires store owners to keep hand gun ammunition behind the counter or in some other “safe” place.

A thumbprint will be taken from anyone purchasing bullets and customers will also have to provide a valid California driver’s license.

Most gun owners will tell you the right to bear arms is the most important of all of our inalienable rights.

They say the second amendment helps enforce the other amendments.

Gun Owner, Nelson Dymond says, “It’s another chip at getting guns out of people’s hands. If you don’t have ammunition what good is the gun.”

Dymond is disappointed the governor signed the bill.

He says all it does is make things harder for law abiding citizens.

“The more law we put in the more it favors the gang banger because you and I don’t have a gun to protect ourselves. We don’t have ammunition to protect ourselves and therefore, the gang bangers is a nice brave little gut out there because he knows nobody can shoot back at him”, says Dymond.

Not everyone thinks along those same lines. Mark Buchman supports gun control. He says, “I just can’t believe that anyone, anyone would be opposed to it.”

Buchman believes any law that places tougher regulations on gun owners is a good thing.

He says as long as you’re a law abiding citizen you’ve got nothing to worry about.

Adds, “I give my thumb print when I sometimes have to cash a check at a bank. Oh my God. Is that an imposition on my freedom? There’s a speed limit on the freeway. Is that an imposition on my rights? No. It’s part of living in a society.”

Two very different view points.

But, both sides say they want what’s best for the people of California and that’s to keep them safe. Exactly how to do that is still up for debate.

Los Angeles and Sacramento have similar ordinances already in place