Another report on American civil liberty abuses

Who? How many people?

I can think of one: Joseph Padilla. ALL Guantanamo and Bagram detainees have appeared before a military tribunal which is fully consistent with the Geneva Convention.

[quote=“fred smith”]
ALL Guantanamo and Bagram detainees have appeared before a military tribunal which is fully consistent with the Geneva Convention.[/quote]

Fred

The report that is cited in the OP has nothing do do with the detainees at Guantanamo and Bagram, nor does it have anything to do with the Geneva Convention.

It is about the U.S. governments use of the Material Witness Law to incarcerate individuals without trial or charge.

In the new People’s Republic of America, courtesy of the radical right and it’s war on “those who hate freedom”:

Section 215 of the just renewed “Patriot Act” gives the government the power to do:

    * Order any person or entity to turn over "any tangible things," so long as the FBI specifies that the order is part of an authorized terrorism or intelligence investigation.

    * Obtain personal data, including medical records, without any specific facts connecting those records to a foreign terrorist.

    * Prohibit doctors and insurance companies from disclosing to their patients that their medical records have been seized by the government.

    * Obtain library and book store records, including lists of books checked out, without any specific facts connecting the records to a foreign agent or terrorist.

    * Obtain private financial records without a court order, and without notification to the person involved.

    * Conduct intelligence investigations of both United States citizens and permanent residents without probable cause, or even reasonable grounds to believe that they are engaged in criminal activity or are agents of a foreign power.

    * Investigate U.S. citizens based in part on their exercise of their First Amendment rights, and non-citizens based solely on their exercise of those rights. (A secret court, meeting secretly, decides when this provision can be exercised.)

[color=blue]
* Those served with Section 215 orders are prohibited from disclosing that fact to anyone – even their attorney.[/color]

Section 213 of PATRIOT, meanwhile, allows federal agents to:

    * Conduct secret

And interestingly enough… many such laws and regulations are already on the books in many nations including most notably France and are being considered in many European nations following the outbreak of terrorist violence there. So the evil US is about stealing innocent peoples’ freedoms OR about adopting sensible policies that are being considered all over the world to deal with threats realistically?

First off, are you calling the French “sensible”?

Second, while none of us have any problem with somebody combing through the info of actual terror suspects, we’ve seen that the Patriot Act provisions are already being used for a wide range of non-terror-related crimes.

Third, while the FBI might have a strong interest in the reading habits of known terrorists, my guess is that they’ll start trying to go the other way around and start trying to find “terrorists” by using key words. I don’t think anybody wants to be rendered over to Egypt’s torture chambers just because they spent too much time downloading content from websites connected to dynomite.

http://www.dynomitejj.com/good_times.html

In this case yes. I have never (rarely?) said the French were not sensible, amoral and calculating and greedy and selfish and disloyal, yes.

As were anti-racketeering laws used against gangs in the 1970s. So what’s the big beef now?

So we are bad for detaining them in Guantanamo when they should be given their freedom to return home and bad for returning them to their home countries where they may be tortured and then given the sudden interest in torture and judicial rights, we are even worse for having the audacity to remove the worst two regimes in the Middle East? What is it with you lefties anyway? Jesus Louise. No wonder no one takes the neurotic, self-satisfied ramblings of the left with any seriousness any more. What are you really trying to say? haha Moonbat got your tongue?

I saw an HBO made-for-tv movie last night called “Strip Search.” which compared the US’ policies for detaining and dealing with terrorist suspects with the PRC “legal system.” I thought it was in extremely poor taste, grossly inaccurate, and I am a little surprised that HBO would produce such an obviously political movie … it wasn’t even entertaining in the slightest, it was obviously just one big political rant.

Little Buddha:

Intelligent portrayals of any issue from the Hollywood left? What can you be thinking?

I have splitted the thread, please refer to here if you are missing some posts, and please stay on topic.

Thanks,
Rascal
Moderator

Abraham Lincoln suspended the Writ of Habeus Corpus during the American Civil War … and he is still remembered as one of the greatest presidents in American history. During times of war, certain civil liberties sometimes need to be rolled back. The good thing about the American system, however, is the separation of powers and checks & balances. I’m sure briefs are already being prepared to submit to the courts regarding the constitutionality of the Patriot Act, and if they are found to be unconstitutional, the law will be overturned. I believe in the American political and legal systems, and although they are not perfect, the processes should be allowed to play out.

Maybe there’s a valid justification for the quasi police-state tactics but I can’t think of any valid reason for calling a curtailment of civil liberties law the “Patriot Act.” I’m concerned the Orwellian logic behind choosing that name doesn’t just stop there but riddles the whole Act and the way it will be applied…

Beyond the hyperbole Spook, really try and think now about how many people and name them of course because their cases must be famous, have had their rights severely curtailed under this police state? Also, explain how the Patriot Act differs from property seizure laws for dealing drugs or the anti-racketeering and anti-mafia laws of the 1970s and 1980s. Just waiting to see when oh when after all these excessive posts, you will ever get around to pointing to more than little Jose Padilla as suffering because of the Patriot Act. Quando, quando, quando…

Not that this relates directly to the Patriot Act per se, but an American filmmaker and ex-US Navy Seal (he presented his passport and VA card to the police and US coalition forces) was detained in Iraq (at Abu Ghraib prison nontheless!) for 55 days because the taxi he and his cameraman had been riding in was found to have timing devices in the trunk that could have been used to make IEDs. The taxi driver admitted that they were his and the foreigners in his car had nothing to do with them, the FBI cleared the guy within 10 days, and he was denied contact with an attorney or the US embassy in Iraq.

This is certainly a problem and needs to be looked at seriously.

“ex filmmaker” hmmm sounds like he deserves to be shot rather than detained. So, we have TWO people whose rights may have been infringed by the evil Patriot Act. That’s really racheting them up. Any more?

Not an “ex-filmmaker” … he had all of the appropriate visas and permission to be in Iraq making a film … it was a documentary about some ancient Persian king. He was an ex-Navy Seal, not an ex-filmmaker. But other than that, I can’t think of any more cases off the top of my head.

Oh. I see. My mistake. Anyway, as with many others, I will remain quaking in my boots for the dreaded Patriot Act and the police-state powers of the Bush administration to abuse my rights.

Just found an article that calls these trials into question. Apparently a couple of military prosecutors involved with the trials have claimed that in the words on one prosecutor “the process is perpetrating a fraud on the American people” . He claims that they are ethically, morally amd professionally intolerable. This was from a leaked memo to supervisors.

The article can be read at

abc.net.au/news/newsitems/20 … 426797.htm

What were those values that America claims it’s fighting for again?