Civil Rights & Security

"In just five years, Bush has challenged more than 750 new laws, by far a record for any president, while becoming the first president since Thomas Jefferson to stay so long in office without issuing a veto." [more]

"When former military liberation movements come to power, the very 'command character' that ensured success against the enemy tends to become the structural flaw which impedes their building of the democratic institutions required by civil society ... The much-celebrated attainment of formal peace with the north and, maybe eventually, independence for the south, should not be equated with liberation, and certainly not with the creation of lasting democracy." [more]

"Once you sign a plea you cannot appeal it. I was threatened with 20 years in prison under an additional terrorist enhancement if I didn't take a plea, and I didn't have the financial resources to acquire the appropriate legal council for trial. I was railroaded." [more]

"The Minutemen left California as a failure, drawing few people to their project while encountering strong resistance from a broad coalition of opposition." [more]

"The Israel Defense Forces recently began to distribute 'resident' stickers to West Bank settlers to be affixed to their cars' windshields. The stickers are intended to allow settlers to drive quickly through army checkpoints along the Green Line." [more]

"The Bush administration has told a federally funded conference on LGBT suicide to remove the words 'gay,' 'lesbian,' 'bisexual' and 'transgender' from its material. [...] 'It is incredible, the venom from these people,' said spokesperson Mark Weber who added that the name change was 'only a suggestion'. / But, when pressed by the Post about how strong a suggestion it was, Weber replied: 'Well, they do need to consider their funding source.'" [more]

"The Bush administration has turned Guantánamo into a place that is devoid of due process and the rule of law. It's a place where human beings can be imprisoned for life without being charged or tried, without ever seeing a lawyer, and without having their cases reviewed by a court. Congress and the courts should be uprooting this evil practice, but freedom and justice in the United States are on a post-9/11 downhill slide." [more]

"In the Senate hearings, lawmakers grilled Gonzales on whether it is legally permissible for U.S. personnel to engage in 'cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment' of noncitizens detained outside of the United States. Gonzales replied that 'aliens interrogated by the United States outside the United States enjoy no substantive rights' under the U.S. Constitution or the Convention Against Torture, a treaty ratified by the Senate in 1994 that bans all interrogation methods that cause severe pain or discomfort." [more]

"Taking a look at the new Bush administration composition in the ministries and institutions that are affiliated to the White House reveals that powerful and influential neo-conservative leaders that earlier were busy in America's research and study centers such as the American Enterprise, the Heritage Institute, the Near East Political Institute, etc., devising and drawing up projects such as the "New American Century", the national security document, have been transferred from centers of producing ideas to centers of decision-making." [more]

"The FBI complained that military interrogators have gone far beyond the restrictions of the Geneva Conventions prohibiting torture and have followed an apparently new executive order from President Bush that permits the use of dogs and other techniques to harass prisoners." [more]

"Many of the arguments wedding the war in Iraq with a strategy for neoliberal expansion are not readily convincing. They risk reading causality into tangential relationships. And, in their drive to connect, they overlook important disjunctures between the Bush administration’s foreign policy and the policy preferred by many business elites." [more]

"The Treasury Department lists the Jewish Legion and the Voice of Judea as Kahanist aliases and prohibits U.S. citizens from transactions with them. The group's Web site invites volunteers to Israel for a paramilitary training program in West Bank Jewish settlements." [more]

Unlike 1800, the people are given no meaningful choice. Senator John Kerry, the President’s only real challenger, voted in favor of the PATRIOT Act and authored some of its provisions. According to the Kerry campaign, the problem is not with the PATRIOT Act itself, but with those enforcing it... [more]

Their transfer had been requested by the French anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-Louis Bruguiere, who has been investigating the men since November 2002 on possible terrorism charges, and was approved after France gave guarantees that they will face judicial proceedings. [more]

"'While this information is critical to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities in the system, it can equally be employed by hostile actors to identify vulnerabilities for the purpose of exploiting them,' the DHS argued in an FCC filing this month. 'Depending on the disruption in question, the errant disclosure to an adversary of this information concerning even a single event may present a grave risk to the infrastructure.'" [more]

The body bags have been shipped in, locals are running scared, and foreigners are being arrested and deported. Organisers of this week's G8 Summit are taking no chances with security... [more]

"'The detective told me if I did not medicate my son, I would be arrested for child abuse and neglect,'" Taylor said." [more]

"For its part, the Federal Commission for Foreigners warned that the statistics could lead to “erroneous interpretations” because they gave the impression that suspects had actually committed the crimes of which they were accused." [more]

"So Mr. Sanchez, in late 2000, was sent back for another week in a grim detention center in Lower Manhattan, severed from his family and livelihood, because his fingerprints had been mistakenly placed on the official record of another man. / Remarkably, this was not the first time Mr. Sanchez had paid for that mistake. He had been arrested three times for Mr. Rosario's crimes, and ultimately spent a total of two months in custody and was threatened with deportation before the mistake was traced and resolved in 2002." [more]

Germany's landmark immigration law will not introduce a law-free zone in which foreigners suspected of ties to terrorist groups can be held without trial or legal representation. That is a good thing... [more]

"Unlike early reports suggesting the abuses were failings by individual soldiers, Provance told the AP and other media outlets that interrogators at the prison viewed sleep deprivation, stripping inmates naked and threatening them with dogs as normal ways of dealing with 'the enemy.'" [more]

"Baker's traumatic brain injury is outlined in a military document in his possession, which says the injury "was due to soldier playing role as a detainee who was uncooperative." [more]

"What Bush seemed to have in mind was applying his broad doctrine of pre-emption to interrogations: to get information that could help stop terrorist acts before they could be carried out. This was justified by what is known in counterterror circles as the 'ticking time bomb' theory—the idea that when faced with an imminent threat by a terrorist, almost any method is justified, even torture." [more]

"'Our daughter is adopted. Her DNA is different,'" Deirdre Sassaman said. 'We wouldn't have a sample without this program.'" [more]

"The torture is not limited to the Abu Ghurayb prison and other jails all over that afflicted homeland. The occupation itself has become the instrument of torture and major destruction that is directed against the Iraqi people, their achievements, and culture." [more]

"The latest allegations will be an unwelcome blow to Malaysia, which was also embroiled in a scandal over the nuclear black market earlier this year." [more]

"The Americans in the photographs are not enacting hatred; hatred can coexist with respect, however strained. What they display, instead, is contempt: their victims are merely objects." [more]

"Practices such as lying to prisoners, intimidating them, screaming at them, stripping them, hiding their faces under hoods, and depriving them of toiletries and comforts are permissible to a degree if there is a valid reason, Ritz said./ But he drew the line at the sort of excesses allegedly committed by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, such as sodomizing prisoners with a broom and forcing them to simulate and commit sex acts." [more]

"'It seems prejudiced to me,' said Abdul Bucky, 40, who works within sight of a camera at Deal Beauty Supply and General Merchandise in East Garfield Park. 'Why didn't they put them in all the neighborhoods?'" [more]

"The terminals had failure rates of 24 per cent in Alameda County and 40 per cent in San Diego county. Incredibly, tests were only performed on ten to fifteen per cent of machines before they left the factory. Diebold president Bob Urosevich admitted that thousands of voters had been disenfranchised." [more]

"'There's only one path to safety, and that's the path of action,' Bush said. 'Congress must act with the Patriot Act. We must continue to stay on the offense when it comes to chasing these killers down and bring them to justice.'" [more]

"Demonstrator Abby Puls, 24, a Spanish interpreter at the Kent County Courthouse was singled out by undercover police officers and told she could be fired for 'choosing sides', she was also threatened with arrest for 'hindering and opposing' police if she identified any of them. Grand Rapids police chief Harry Dolan confirmed Puls's statement saying he feared for his officers' safety at peace demonstrations." [more]

"The public interest law firm's president hopes the court decision in Buonanno's case will embolden other Christian workers to challenge similar company policies that contradict their religious beliefs, whether those involve war, abortion, homosexuality, or other issues." [more]

"If Hendon had his way, the cameras would be eliminated altogether because, he said, they stigmatize neighborhoods as crime-ridden ghettos--now called 'blue-light districts'--and are an intrusion into privacy." [more]

"'[A] terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world -- it may be in the United States of America -- [would cause] our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event,' says General Tommy Franks." [more]

"The intelligence officers at Fort Meade rely on a sophisticated suite of supercomputers and telecommunications equipment to analyze millions of messages and phone calls each day, looking for certain keywords or traffic patterns." [more]

"Most of the 'erased' are fellow former Yugoslavs, whom many Slovenes regard as poor Balkan cousins who failed to show sufficient loyalty to independent Slovenia. Supporters of the law and opponents of the referendum called the 4 April vote a victory for xenophobia and injustice." [more]

"Canadians are now among the few travellers in the world exempt from a controversial Bush administration program that requires visitors to be fingerprinted and photographed when entering the United States." [more]

"I can't advocate a news blackout on these issues; the term 'marketplace of ideas' is engraved on each cell in my body. But I'd like the marketplace to be a real one: complex, thoughtful, diverse. And right now, the coverage is being increasingly circumscribed by the agenda of conservative groups bent on shutting conversation down, quelling dissent and the free exchange of ideas--while they simultaneously and hypocritically claim that their moves are based on the twin pillars of free speech and fairness. It's a clever argument the local media seem to have swallowed hook, line and sinker." [more]

"Utah is the 11th state to withdraw from the federal pilot program for either privacy or financial reasons, according to the New York-based American Civil Liberties Union. Connecticut, Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania are still participating. / The other states that have withdrawn from Matrix are Alabama, California, Georgia, Oregon, Louisiana, New York, Oregon, South Carolina Texas and Wisconsin, the ACLU said." [more]

"'Nobody is forced to work overtime,' she said. 'It's just that sometime the supervisors tell us to put in extra time in an impolite, menacing way.' Overtime pay was theoretically time-and-a-half, but in practice this had little effect on their overall take-home pay, she said." [more]

Undercover city officers were sent to monitor anti-war meetings and rallies when opposition to the war in Iraq began to mount last year, the police chief confirms. [more]

"After a few more slides, there was a shot of Bush looking under furniture in the Oval Office. 'Nope,' Bush said. 'No weapons over there.' More laughter. Then another picture of Bush searching in his office: 'Maybe under here.' Laughter again." [more]

"Traditionally, when organizations want to secure 802.11b-based wireless networks, the only solution available to them is virtual private networking. But VPNs can be cumbersome to deploy and difficult to manage. And when, like DMLSS, the organization uses handheld devices to connect to the wireless network, VPN technology can be especially difficult to use." [more]

"The impact that terrorism has on society is determined by the authorities under target and how they deal with the threat, rather than by the terrorists' outrages." [more]

"Under the 1994 scheme, many universities agreed to contact the government when assessing applicants from potential students from countries then designated as rogue states. But after 9/11, institutions were asked to go further and secretly gather information on foreign students." [more]

"'On the contrary, it's the irrational fear of the "undesirable other" that has always been -- and continues to be -- the greatest threat to American national unity.'" [more]

Activist and singer/songwriter Evan Greer explains how public spaces are being coopted for private interests and calls for a re-claimation of public space and social interactions. [more]

"Perhaps the most ominous signal that we've allowed government snooping to go too far recently came to light: Now the military is getting into the surveillance and gathering of information on law-abiding citizens -- in a big way. Despite a 126-year-old federal law that seems to prohibit military involvement in such matters as gathering evidence on citizens and others within our borders, the Pentagon is involved in a wide variety of domestic snooping operations." [more]

"ADC advised the Army that the personnel who attended the conference were in civilian attire, did not identify themselves as representing the Army during the event, and did not express any concern or report any of their alleged suspicions to the conference organizers, UT Austin or civilian law enforcement. Further, ADC expressed grave concern about the logic underlying these alleged suspicions." [more]

"I recommend that the Supreme Court justices read Brent Kendall's report in the Feb. 13 Los Angeles Daily Journal about what actually happened when federal public defender Frank Dunham finally met Hamdi, whom he had never seen before. Dunham 'found himself in an interview room not only with Hamdi, but with a naval commander who was there to observe their conversation.'" [more]

"The push would effectively expand the scope of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, a 1994 law that requires the telecommunications industry to build into its products tools that U.S. investigators can use to eavesdrop on conversations with a court order." [more]

"Angel Berroeta’s bakery is at 18, Martin Azpilkueta street in the Donibane quarter and the police officer lives next door in flat 'C' on the first floor. According to neighbours, at about 13.30 hours the policeman's wife had had a heated argument with Berrueta about a poster saying ETA, ez (No to ETA); the neighbours were eager to stress that the woman did not go to that bakery to get bread, 'as she always goes to buy bread at the bakery opposite'." [more]

Matrix, a controversial program intended to find criminals and terrorists, appears to be withering under its critics' attacks. [more]

"Abitz joined Wallace in questioning why the proposed uranium mining is still being considered. 'We are trying to figure out why it is done differently here than in the rest of the world.' / Norman Patrick Brown, Navajo and spokesperson for a coalition of grassroots groups Diné Bidziil, said it is obvious why HRI is being allowed to proceed with the plan. 'Navajos are considered expendable.'" [more]

"While we’re all fretting over the Patriot Act, John Ashcroft’s Justice Department is after much bigger game." [more]

"Wisconsin is not alone in reconsidering the Matrix, or Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange. Of the 13 states that originally signed up, six remain. Concerns center on how detailed a picture it could paint of a person's life and activities." [more]

"Along with the shaving ban, the mayor has proclaimed all men and women must dress in Western or historic clothing on Fridays beginning in May." [more]

"John Kerry said early in the race that he intended to treat female voters exactly like male voters, because they care about the same things—jobs, health care, good wages, security. He's right—up to a point. But far more men have health coverage through work, and women's jobs not only pay less, they're more marginal. Many employers keep part-time hours just below the threshold where laid-off workers can collect unemployment, and the largest group working for minimum-wage jobs is adult women." [more]

"What that means in simple English is that the US government has just bought the world's biggest RAM drive in order to speed up cross-checking across several vast databases." [more]

"...but again I couldn't vote on the democratic primary. What gives? I flip open my voter booklet and on the second or third page it stated something to the effect of: 'non-partisan voters can vote in 3 of the 7 party primaries, just request a ballot to do so'. So I requested the ballot." [more]

"An RFID tag consists of a microchip the size of a grain of sand attached to an antenna that transmits information whenever it passes in front of an RFID reader." [more]

"The Treasury Department has warned publishers they may face grave legal consequences for editing manuscripts from Iran and other disfavored nations, on the ground that such tinkering amounts to trading with the enemy." [more]

"The anti-terrorism bill, designed as a reaction to the increased terrorism activity worldwide, had caused massive concern among South Africa's human and civil rights groups, including the country's trade union and several ANC members. Given its unclear definition of "terrorism", the groups feared the law could be used against peaceful activism, dissidents and protesters." [more]

"The United States military is facing the gravest accusations of sexual misconduct in years, with dozens of servicewomen in the Persian Gulf area and elsewhere saying they were sexually assaulted or raped by fellow troops, lawmakers and victims advocates said on Wednesday." [more]

"FBI agents arrested a Louisiana man last week under the cyberterrorism provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act for allegedly tricking a handful of MSN TV users into running a malicious e-mail attachment that reprogrammed their set-top boxes to dial 9-1-1 emergency response." [more]

"The Iowa National Guard says it will punish 21 soldiers who failed drug tests before being sent overseas. / The...soldiers will be discharged dishonorably. The troops were not discharged or put through rehab at the time of the drug tests. / Guard officials say that's because deployment schedules didn't allow for it." [more]

"A fire that damaged an Islamic mosque in southeast Houston was intentionally set, federal investigators said today." [more]

"The Bush administration's education secretary, Rod Paige, referred to the nation's largest teachers union as a 'terrorist organization.'" [more]

"A key provision of the law bars the government from using the vulnerability information in any enforcement action against the company, or from using it as the basis for proposing new legislation or regulations on industry. And if the information does somehow leak out, it cannot be used in court against the company." [more]

"Advanced Research and Development Activity works for all the nation's intelligence services, including the CIA, FBI, Defense Intelligence Agency and parts of dozens of other departments. Its budget is part of the National Foreign Intelligence Program and is secret." [more]

"There is also a growing belief that the release was a cynical move to divert attention from the US Supreme Court’s hearing later this year to test the legality of holding the Camp Delta detainees. Two of the released British detainees were named as plaintiffs in a legal challenge mounted by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), arguing that the US cannot order indefinite detention without due legal process in 'a prison that operates entirely outside the law.'" [more]

Eight new books assess the effects of the 9/11 attacks on American freedom and privacy. [more]

"All the elements are in place for a series of Supreme Court rulings this spring that will define the power of the commander in chief during wartime — and bring an election-year climax to the national debate over civil liberties and public safety that has been simmering since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001." [more]

"Mr Begg is believed by his family to have cracked after repeated questioning and confessed to a plot to attack the Houses of Parliament with planes laden with anthrax. His supporters say this is a sign that he will say anything in the hope of getting out. There have been at least 28 suicide attempts among the 680 detainees." [more]

"Republicans used to be the party that opposed social engineering, but now they push programs to outlaw marriage for some people, and encourage it for others." [more]

"Given that so much confusion exists about whether to apply wartime or law-enforcement rules to a given situation, a better approach would be to make the decision based on its public policy implications. Unfortunately, the Bush administration seems to have ignored such concerns." [more]

"A subpoena compelling Drake University to provide information about an antiwar forum on its campus on Nov. 15 was also withdrawn, as was an earlier court order that barred Drake officials from speaking publicly about the case." [more]

"The American Civil Liberties Union issued a condemnation Thursday of St. Bernard Parish Sheriff Jack Stephens' plan to seek Homeland security grants to install cameras at the parish line to photograph motorists' faces and license plates as they come and go." [more]

"A leading maker of computer election equipment defends itself in court against charges that it overreached itself in trying to stifle critics." [more]

"While it has been reported that Jabarah had been co-operating with American agents and faced unknown charges, his case has been shrouded in secrecy. Hearings have been held in private. There is no listing of his case on New York court databases and prosecutors with the Southern District of New York state won't comment to reporters." [more]

"Monroe Community College in Rochester, N.Y., for example, has recently opened the Homeland Security Management Institute, run by a retired Army colonel who was a commander at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba." [more]

"If there's an upset in a close presidential race, will we be able to trust it? Ironically, the paperless systems were supposed to restore trust in a democracy that saw the presidency hang by a few thousand chads in Florida three years ago. In Georgia, and increasingly across the nation, they're in danger of doing quite the opposite." [more]

"In what may be the first subpoena of its kind in decades, a federal judge has ordered a university to turn over records about a gathering of anti-war activists." [more]

"The law is clear that the use of the grand jury to investigate protected political activities or to intimidate protestors exceeds its authority. The government has no business investigating legal conferences held in academic institutions." [more]

"It's worth noting that the announcement came from an anonymous official, The Associated Press reported, a sign that the Pentagon wants its backpedaling to be done with as much secrecy as the American citizen gets inside the voting booth." [more]

"When Bush was elected, activists had employed irony ... we'd deconstructed traditional protest models, reaching the limits of play and camp. By the time Resolution 909 came along, we were faced with the painful question: What do you do after post modernism? You can't live on irony alone; there is too little to show for it. So we re-embraced a canonical narrative of 'straight' protest ... If we are going to suggest that another world is possible, we'd better be able to suggest that this world is more than simply ridiculous." [more]

" 'So much is being done in the name of New York, we are saying don't use our name to infringe on people's rights,' said Glenn C. Devitt, an organizer with the Bill of Rights Defense Committee." [more]

"After a series of lower-court rulings, the government convinced a federal appeals court in Richmond that the military — and not the courts — had the sole authority to wage war and that courts should defer to battlefield judgments. More than 100 law professors and other legal experts weighed in on Hamdi's side, arguing that no U.S. citizen can be held without a lawyer." [more]

"Video surveillance is a key component of BEP security. Both the Fort Worth and Washington facilities have recently begun upgrading from analog to digital video surveillance systems and have chosen Loronix Video Solutions from Verint for the process. Benefitting from decades of experience with surveillance, BEP officials have crafted methods to use the new digital systems for far more than just security." [more]

"When the State of Maryland hired a computer security firm to test its new machines, these paid hackers had little trouble casting multiple votes and taking over the machines' vote-recording mechanisms. The Maryland study shows convincingly that more security is needed for electronic voting, starting with voter-verified paper trails." [more]

A report presented to the Maryland state legislature indicated that Diebold voting systems, which have been purchased by many states, are not tamper-proof. [more]

"The United States has released three teenage boys who have been held in custody at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba for more than a year. The Pentagon cautioned, however, that 'age is not a determining factor in detention.'" [more]

"The question of whether the students were within their rights to post the [politically embarassing] memos was essentially moot: thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, their speech could be silenced without the benefit of actual lawsuits, public hearings, judges or other niceties of due process." [more]

"At least 37 female service members have sought sexual-trauma counseling and other assistance from civilian rape crisis organizations after returning from war duty in Iraq, Kuwait and other overseas stations." [more]

Top officials of the Navy prison at Guantanamo Bay told a military judge in Florida that the prison's Muslim chaplain, Army Capt. James Yee, would soon be charged with mutiny, sedition, espionage, spying and aiding the enemy — crimes that could lead to his execution. But authorities never charged him with any of those offenses. [more]

"A military defense lawyer for an Australian detainee expected to be the first man tried before a military tribunal denounced President Bush's rules for the special courts yesterday, saying they are skewed against defendants and could result in proceedings that resemble political trials in authoritarian Third World countries." [more]

"U.S. security agents have a master list of five million people worldwide thought to be potential terrorists or criminals, officials say. 'The U.S. lookout index contains some five million names of known terrorists and other persons representing a potential problem,' Brian Davis, a senior Canadian immigration official in Paris, said in a confidential document obtained by the Sun." [more]

"Sandivar must wear the monitor, a thick band with a box attached, at all times, even in the shower. A large black box on her bedroom nightstand sends a signal from the ankle device to federal deportation officers ... She may not leave [the county] without permission. Immigration officials also are monitoring her phone calls and have given strict instructions about the phone, such as not to pick up before two rings ... 'It's embarrassing and inhumane,' she said." [more]

"Sami Omar Hussayen, a doctoral candidate in computer science in a University of Idaho program sponsored by the National Security Agency, is accused of creating websites and an e-mail group that disseminated messages from him and two radical clerics in Saudi Arabia." [more]

"Federal and local police rely heavily on wiretaps. In 2002, the most recent year for which information is available, police intercepted nearly 2.2-million conversations with court approval, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts." [more]

"While the nation was distracted last month by images of Saddam Hussein's spider hole and dental exam, President George W. Bush quietly signed into law a new bill that gives the FBI increased surveillance powers and dramatically expands the reach of the USA Patriot Act." [more]

"The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) made news last year for its Total Information Awareness (TIA) project, which called for technologies to search commercial databases in order to identify potential terrorists. HSARPA Director David Bolka said his agency will research data mining but, unlike DARPA, will not seek to mine individuals' data." [more]

"The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular reference books covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist planning." [more]

"The split decision by a three-judge panel in San Francisco raised the possibility that all the approximately 660 prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay jail for alleged al Qaeda and Taliban fighters could also be given their first habeas corpus hearings in a U.S. court." [more]

"A federal appeals court ruled today that the Bush administration overstepped its authority by detaining Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen seized in Chicago ... [and] said the administration has no inherent constitutional power to sidestep the normal procedures required to imprison a U.S. citizen seized on American soil." [more]

"In twin setbacks for the Bush administration's war on terror, federal appeals courts on opposite coasts ruled Thursday that the U.S. military cannot indefinitely hold prisoners without access to lawyers or the American courts." [more]

"Federal prison officers in Brooklyn physically and verbally abused immigrants detained after the Sept. 11 attacks, slamming them against the wall and painfully twisting their arms and hands, the U.S. Justice Department's inspector general said on Thursday." [more]

"Saddam's capture is a 'model opportunity' for international justice, says the head of Amnesty International USA, but it doesn't justify Bush's civil liberties crackdown." [more]

"The trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in an American court in connection with the attacks, has also been thrown into doubt by the government's refusal to make captured Qaeda operatives available for questioning." [more]

"Federal authorities do not have a clear understanding of how terrorists move their financial assets and are still struggling to prevent the flow of money to terror groups." [more]

"The court also upheld two other pillars of the law: a ban on the solicitation of soft money by federal candidates, and a prohibition against political advertisements by special interest groups in the weeks just before an election." [more]

"Throughout the five-day course, Lisa Reed and her fellow Terror Tourists will fire machine-guns, learn hand-to-hand combat and take part in mock attacks by Israeli commandos pretending to be Arab terrorists." [more]

" 'Piracy is like terrorism today and it exists everywhere and it is a very dangerous phenomenon.' "` [more]

"Of the more than 600 detainees at the US prison camp at Guantanamo, none has been charged with any crime. But the US has repeatedly promised that at least some of the prisoners will be charged and tried by military commissions, an arcane form of tribunal based on long-disused models from the 1940s." [more]

"The dominant position the United States occupies in the world is the element of reality that is being distorted. The proposition that the United States will be better off if it uses its position to impose its values and interests everywhere is the misconception. It is exactly by not abusing its power that America attained its current position." [more]

The city was closed down by squads of riot police during the Free Trade Area of the Americas meeting ... armored vehicles patrolled the streets, police helicopters hovered overhead and, during street clashes on Nov. 20, police fired volleys of rubber bullets and pepper spray at protesters in the city center. [more]

"Congress approved a bill on Friday that expands the reach of the Patriot Act, reduces oversight of the FBI and intelligence agencies and, according to critics, shifts the balance of power away from the legislature and the courts." [more]

"The abuses of the Hoover era, which included efforts by the F.B.I. to harass and discredit Hoover's political enemies under a program known as Cointelpro, led to tight restrictions on F.B.I. investigations of political activities. Those restrictions were relaxed significantly last year, when Attorney General John Ashcroft issued guidelines giving agents authority to attend political rallies, mosques and any event 'open to the public.' " [more]

"With no public evidence or open court hearing in Abu Ali's case, the degree to which he may have been involved in terrorism remains a mystery. Neither Saudi nor U.S. authorities will say publicly whether charges have been filed against him or tell his family what alleged acts led to his lengthy detention. His rights as a U.S. citizen offer him no legal protection while he is in Saudi custody. And U.S. law enforcement officials appear content to leave him where he is." [more]

"A report issued yesterday by the House Committee on Government Reform gave the fullest accounting to date of the F.B.I.'s use of murderers as informants in Boston for three decades and its protection of them even to the point of allowing innocent men to be sentenced to death."