Two provisions of the USA Patriot Act are unconstitutional because they allow search warrants to be issued without a showing of probable cause, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken ruled that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as amended by the Patriot Act, “now permits the executive branch of government to conduct surveillance and searches of American citizens without satisfying the probable cause requirements of the Fourth Amendment.”

Portland attorney Brandon Mayfield sought the ruling in a lawsuit against the federal government after he was mistakenly linked by the FBI to the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people in 2004.

More at CNN

By Edith Honan
Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A provision of the Patriot Act that requires people who are formally contacted by the FBI for information to keep it a secret is unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled on Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero sided with the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the lawsuit and argued that an FBI letter requesting information — called a National Security Letter — is effectively a gag order but without the authorization of a judge.

The FBI tells people who receive the letters to keep them secret, but recipients can challenge the secrecy order in court under a 2006 congressional amendment to the NSL law.

The law says judges must defer to the FBI’s view that secrecy is necessary, undermining the judiciary’s check on the power of the executive branch, the ACLU said.

In a written ruling issued on Thursday, Marrero said the gag order violated the First Amendment guarantee of free speech and was unconstitutional.

Marrero based his ruling on the seriousness of the potential intrusion on privacy and on “the significant possibility of a chilling effect on speech and association — particularly of expression that is critical of the government or its policies.”

read more HERE

I’m so glad and feel so protected by the Patriot Act and Border Patrol. It’s been six years! When is this system of, so called, security going to be fixed. - JS

By GREG BLUESTEIN and DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writers

ATLANTA - A globe-trotting Atlanta lawyer with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis was allowed back into the U.S. by a border inspector who disregarded a computer warning to stop him and don protective gear, officials said Thursday. The inspector has been removed from border duty.

The unidentified inspector explained that he was no doctor but that the infected man seemed perfectly healthy and that he thought the warning was merely “discretionary,” officials briefed on the case told The Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter is still under investigation.

The patient was identified as Andrew Speaker, a 31-year-old personal injury lawyer who returned last week from his wedding and honeymoon trip through Italy, the Greek isles and other spots in Europe. His new father-in-law, Robert C. Cooksey, is a CDC microbiologist whose specialty is TB and other bacteria.

Cooksey would not comment on whether he reported his son-in-law to federal health authorities. Nor did the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explain how the case came to their attention. However, Cooksey said that neither he nor his CDC laboratory was the source of his son-in-law’s TB.

Speaker is now under quarantine at a hospital in Denver. He is the first infected person to be quarantined by the U.S. government since 1963.

The disclosure that the patient is a lawyer - and specifically a personal injury lawyer - outraged many people on the Internet and elsewhere. Some travelers who flew on the same planes with Speaker angrily accused him of selfishly putting hundreds of people’s lives in danger.

read more at YAHOO! NEWS

(Cross-posted at Vagabond Scholar)

Sir Percy Browne (Head of Security): One day, Mr. Fiennes, you will have the entire British population under permanent 24 hour surveillance - will you be happy?

Mr. Fiennes: Happy? No - Satisfied.

- A Very British Coup (TV adaptation)

The British Evening Standard reports:

The Big Brother nightmare of George Orwell’s 1984 has become a reality - in the shadow of the author’s former London home.

It may have taken a little longer than he predicted, but Orwell’s vision of a society where cameras and computers spy on every person’s movements is now here.

According to the latest studies, Britain has a staggering 4.2million CCTV cameras - one for every 14 people in the country - and 20 per cent of cameras globally. It has been calculated that each person is caught on camera an average of 300 times daily.

[...]

One fear is a nationwide standard for CCTV cameras which would make it possible for all information gathered by individual cameras to be shared - and accessed by anyone with the means to do so.

Read more »

(Cross-posted at Vagabond Scholar)

Caesar: Antonius!
Antony: Caesar.
Caesar: Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’ nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Antony: Fear him not, Caesar, he’s not dangerous;
He is a noble Roman, and well given.
Caesar: Would he were fatter!
- Julius Caesar, 1.2, 190-198, William Shakespeare

Bush’s men are both fat and still hungry. As corrupt as these men and women get, they are never satiated. But they-ve been choking these past few weeks. Our boy-emperor need not fear plots with daggers - but subpoenas are another matter.

Libby has been found guilty. The FBI’s abuse of the Patriot Act and their lies about their activities have been revealed. Alberto Gonzales has been laid bare as the fraud and liar he is. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are testing the limits of how low an approval rating can go. And Karl Rove, who is still accusing the Democrats of playing dirty politics, is watching more and more of his dirty tricks being exposed.

The more we learn about the Bush administration, the worse they look. And hallelujah, Congress is scrutinizing them, and the general public is seeing more of the truth.

A year ago, this U.S. attorney scandal, a mere fraction of the wrongdoing perpetrated by this administration, would have been furious fodder for liberal blogs, but little probably would have been done. This time, the liberal blogs were right as usual - and the mainstream media actually listened. Is this a dream? Not that all the coverage is fantastic, but isn-t this widespread furor over obvious misdeeds, incompetence and villainy exactly what’s supposed to happen? Not that everything is going well, but isn-t this cause for hope?

Did the divine inspiration and brilliant instincts of George W. Bush warn him of this? Has Dick Cheney’s unerring judgment fled to an undisclosed location? Did Karl Rove see this in the entrails of a crony, or have his powers of prognostication left him?

In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Marc Antony says:

The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interrèd with their bones.

The truth always comes out eventually. But there’s now real hope that some of the evil can be dug out while the culprits are still alive, or even while they-re still in office. Every lie exposed and misdeed challenged is a small victory. And the permanent discrediting of these knaves and scoundrels is a matter of national security. There is providence in the fall of an attorney general. (Or something like that.)

Happy Ides of March!

(Cross-posted at Vagabond Scholar)

Welcome to the Chart Project! This is the first and probably weightiest installment of a week-long series. All of these charts are works in progress, imperfect and perhaps dealing in gross overgeneralizations, but they result from my desire to try to visualize some of the dynamics at work in society and politics today.

Derrida and many post’structuralists would argue that Western civilization tends to see everything in terms of binary oppositions, and furthermore, that one half of the pair is seen as slightly superior: male-female, white-black, etc. Regardless, it’s certainly the case that much political reporting and commentary traffics in oversimplifications, false dichotomies and false equivalencies.

For instance, most media outlets will approach any political issue using this framework:
Read more »

Whodda thunk……

WASHINGTON - The FBI improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information about people in the United States, underreporting for three years how often it forced businesses to turn over customer data, a Justice Department audit concluded Friday.

FBI agents sometimes demanded the data without proper authorization, according to a 126-page audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. At other times, the audit found, the FBI improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances.

The audit blames agent error and shoddy record-keeping for the bulk of the problems and did not find any indication of criminal misconduct.

Still, “we believe the improper or illegal uses we found involve serious misuses of national security letter authorities,” the audit concludes.

Read more at YahooNews

H/T Bat for link!!!

They got caught, so now they’re willing to do things the right way. The Dems better proceed with these hearings and get rid of Gonzales. The man is a menace to the U.S. Constitution and to the American people.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration, bowing to an uproar over its firing of eight federal prosecutors, agreed Thursday to tightening the law for replacing U.S. attorneys and letting Congress hear from senior officials with roles in the ousters.

“The attorney general told us the administration would not oppose our legislation requiring Senate confirmation for all U.S. attorneys,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., after a private meeting with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

He and other senators said Gonzales also agreed to let five of his top aides involved in the firings talk with the committee, rather than wait for the panel to authorize subpoenas.

In another development casting a cloud over the Justice Department, a report to be released Friday accuses the FBI of underreporting its use of the Patriot Act to force businesses to turn over customer information in terrorism cases, according to officials familiar with its findings.

The report also says the FBI failed to send follow-up subpoenas to telecommunications firms that were told to expect them, according to several government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the report by the Justice Department’s inspector general had not yet been released.

Continue reading here