Land Of The Flea

A Congressman who Doesn’t Cotton to the Constitution

"Rep. Cotton has proposed a measure that would punish family members of people who violated U.S. sanctions against Iran with prison sentences of up to 20 years. As Cotton explained: 'There would be no investigation. If the prime malefactor of the family is identified on the list for sanctions, then everyone within their family would automatically come within the sanctions regime as well.' The sanctions measure itself is constitutionally illegitimate, since Congress has no jurisdiction over the military and economic policies of any other nation. Rep. Cotton would compound that offense against the Constitution by imposing collective punishment – without trial – on the basis of kinship." Continue reading →

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Our Moral Crisis

"It seems official, the United States is a permanent wartime state. Senior Obama Administration officials have stated that the War on Terror, in its 'limitless form,' will carry on for another decade, possibly two. Given our role in the world, as an economic and military super-power, and given the economic, social and environmental crisis we see the world in, we must no longer deny that US foreign policy is a great agent of repression. We are a global threat to peace, security, liberty and the environment. Violence has become our foreign policy – it is the status quo. Perhaps what is most disturbing is the support the public lauds on politicians who support aggressive foreign policy." Continue reading →

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Why NSA Snooping Is Bigger Deal in Germany

"While the U.S. has few laws concerning data privacy, Germany has something unknown to Americans: 17 state data protection supervisors (one national and one for each state), who watch over the compliance of authorities and companies with data privacy laws. After the Snowden revelations, they have discontinued giving out new licenses to companies under the so-called Safe Harbor principles, which are meant to guarantee that personal data is only transferred to countries with sufficient data protection, for example when Germans use American companies’ cloud storage space. The supervisors consider user data in the hands of U.S. companies not safe anymore." Continue reading →

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Dan Rather: NSA ‘is demolishing the trust in the government’

"AXS TV anchor Dan Rather and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Wednesday night said the National Security Agency couldn’t justify its sweeping surveillance powers. An internal audit found the NSA had violated its own privacy rules due to errors, such as using wrong the area codes. On Wednesday, it was revealed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had halted an NSA online surveillance program because the agency was unable to separate American emails from foreign emails. Rather said he was skeptical that the NSA’s actions could simply be attributed to ineptitude." Continue reading →

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NSA inspector general admits to ‘willful violations’ of agency’s authority

"US intelligence analysts have deliberately broken rules designed to prevent them from spying on Americans, according to an admission by the National Security Agency that undermines fresh insistences from Barack Obama on Friday that all breaches were inadvertent. A report by the NSA’s inspector general is understood to have uncovered a number of examples of analysts choosing to ignore so-called 'minimisation procedures' aimed at protecting privacy, according to officials speaking to Bloomberg. These cases flatly contradict assurances given by President Obama that the NSA was only ever acting in good faith." Continue reading →

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Retiring FBI director warns ‘the threat is still here’

"He took the reins of the FBI a week before the attacks of September 11, 2001. Twelve years later, Robert Mueller is retiring, convinced that 'the threat is still here.' At the time, 2,000 out of 11,000 special agents were immediately transferred from fighting crime to combatting Al-Qaeda. Since then, the number of intelligence analysts at the FBI has more than tripled. Telephone and Internet surveillance programs are 'tremendously important,' Mueller explained. He was in the top FBI post for the second longest period after J. Edgar Hoover, who held it for 48 years until his death." Continue reading →

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Don’t Fly During Ramadan

"No matter how I’ve tried to rationalize this in the last week and a half, nothing can block out the memory of the chilling sensation I felt that first morning, lying on my air mattress, trying to forget the image of large, uniformed men invading the sanctuary of my home in my absence, wondering when they had done it, wondering why they had done it. In all my life, I have only felt that same chilling terror once before - on one cold night in September twelve years ago, when I huddled in bed and tried to forget the terrible events in the news that day, wondering why they they had happened, wondering whether everything would be okay ever again." Continue reading →

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Guantanamo Bay Authorities Ban Solzhenitsyn’s ‘The Gulag Archipelago’

"The legal team for Shaker Aamer, a British resident who has been detained in Guantanamo without charge or trial for 11 years, attempted to deliver a copy of The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn during a recent visit. Of course, this isn't the first time that 'The Gulag Archipelago' has had problems with the authorities: when it was completed in 1968, it had to be smuggled out of the Soviet Union on microfilm so that it could be published in the West." Continue reading →

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300-pound fake corrections officer gets 10 years for sneaking into jails

"Jail fetishist Matthew Matagrano, 36, was sentenced to 10 years in prison today for posing as a correction officer and sneaking into the Manhattan Detention Complex earlier this year. The 300-pound convicted sex offender waddled into Manhattan Supreme Court in a bright orange jumpsuit looking sullen as Judge Ronald Zweibel handed down his punishment for the bizarre July 27th crime. The former counselor for at-risk-youth spent seven hours gleefully strolling through the White Street facility where he strip searched an inmate, stole a $2,500 walkie talkie and handed out cigarettes. It wasn’t a first for the Yonkers prison enthusiast – he’s been accused of sneaking into jails in four boroughs." Continue reading →

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Bar Shares Scanned ID Card Data with Cops

"Across the country, citizens are surprised and sometimes outraged by increasing demands by businesses and government to submit to the instant capture and downloading of all of the data contained on their driver’s licenses and ID cards as a condition for access. You might wonder what your data is being used for after it is taken. The article below gives one example of how your once lowly driver’s license that is now empowered with machine readable technology (RFID or 2D barcodes) and your facial biometrics, is performing exactly as designed. These technologies are designed to make you easier to track, monitor and control." Continue reading →

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