'Friendly-fire' pilots were on speed: report

CTV News Staff

Updated: Sat. Dec. 21 2002

The two U.S. pilots involved in an accidental bombing that killed four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan last April were on government-issued amphetamines, ABC's 20/20 reports.

The report, which aired Friday night, said the amphetamines, also known as speed or uppers, were standard issue to U.S. Air Force combat pilots to help them stay awake on long combat missions.

Maj. Harry Schmidt, 37, and Maj. William Umbach, 43, say they took the pills an hour before the accidental bombing of Canadian soldiers conducting a live-fire nighttime exercise near Kandahar when they were bombed.

The pilots each face four counts of manslaughter and dereliction of duty for the April 17 bombing, in which four Canadian troops died and eight were wounded.

In an exclusive cockpit tape of the pilots, obtained by ABC News, Schmidt is heard saying he is going to fire in self-defence, despite being told to hold his fire.

"I've got some men on a road and it looks like a piece of artillery firing at us... I am rolling in self-defence."

Next, Schmidt says "Bombs away breaking left. Lasers on."

It was only after he dropped the bomb that Schmidt was told it was not the enemy.

'Go-pills'

The two pilots, who are facing up to 64 years in jail if convicted of all charges, were told by superiors they could be found unfit to fly the mission unless they took the pills, their defence lawyers say.

News of the amphetamines, which the Air Force calls "go pills," comes less than a month before the two pilots are to face an Article 32 hearing that will determine if there is enough evidence to go ahead with a trial.

A joint Canadian-American investigation accused the pilots of not following procedure before dropping the 225-kilogram bomb. The pilots claim they were acting in self defence.

Defence lawyers for the two now say the pills would have been at their "maximum serum level" at the time of the bombing and could have caused them to react too quickly.

"They were not told of the most important warning on every label by every manufacturer: Caution," defence lawyer David Beck said.

The U.S. Air Force has ruled out the "go pills" Schmidt and Umbach took as being responsible for the friendly-fire incident and will not be changing their policy, saying they are essential for combat pilots being sent to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Schmidt's mother, Joan, dismisses the military argument that it was the pilot's choice to take it.

"That is not the truth. I mean if you want to fly, you take the pills. If you don't want to take the pills, you're grounded," she said.

Canada a no-go on the go-pills

ABC said the go-pills were "quietly reintroduced" after being banned in 1992 by then Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Merrill McPeak.

In Canada, retired Lt. Col. Laurie Hawn, a military analyst, told CTV Newsnet that amphetamines are used only in the U.S. Air Force. The Navy and Marine Corp. do not use the pills.

"And we certainly do not do it and our pilots fly similar lengths of missions in combat," Hawn said. "If you're properly trained and fit, we see no reason to have performance-enhancing drugs."

When asked if he thought the pills could have affected the pilots' judgment, Hawn said, "I'm not doctor and I've never taken any of those kind of drugs, but my gut feel would tell me that anything I'm going to put into my body that's going to alter my thought process or my normal performance is probably not good."

Amphetamines are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration to combat fatigue and are listed by the Drug Enforcement Administration as a Schedule Two narcotic, the same category as cocaine, ABC News reports.

With a report from CTV's Roger Smith

© Copyright 2002 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc.

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It will be a dangerous game when all nations can strike first

Law changes to empower the US's defences are a serious threat to global stability, writes Chris Reus-Smit.
for the Sydney Morning Herald

December 2, 2002

One of the greatest achievements of the post-1945 world has been the dramatic decline in the number of traditional interstate wars. The number of sovereign states has multiplied to almost 200, yet the vast majority of conflicts today are civil wars. The Howard Government now proposes changes to international law that risk seriously destabilising this order.

A critical factor in reducing the incidence of interstate wars has been the near-universal acceptance of two rules of international law: the principle of non-intervention, which bans external interference in the internal life of sovereign states; and the principle that force may be used only in clear-cut cases of self-defence or as part of a United Nations-mandated action to preserve international peace and security.

Since the end of the Cold War, the international community has relaxed these rules to allow force in humanitarian emergencies, such as starvation in Somalia and ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. But these have been tentative moves, and the vast majority of states remain committed to a set of rules that have substantially contributed to the preservation of international order.

The Howard Government is now calling for the revision of these rules. With the rise of global terrorism, we face fundamentally new security challenges and international law must change to allow effective responses. Defence Minister Robert Hill said last week that the "international legal machinery is slow to adapt to these rapidly changing circumstances ... but it is important that it does". He argued that the doctrine of self-defence should be redefined and that "it's time for a new and distinct doctrine of pre-emptive action to avert a threat".

International law is an evolving institution and few would deny that it should evolve. However, anyone concerned for international peace and security must be worried about this latest turn in foreign policy.

The principal motive behind the Government's campaign is to create an international legal environment that permits maximum freedom of action for the United States and its allies in the prosecution of the "war against terrorism" and the "axis of evil". One of the main goals here is to redefine the doctrines of self-defence and non-intervention to allow two kinds of use of force. The first is the extra-judicial killing exercised in the recent US attack with an unmanned drone on alleged al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen. The second is the war of disarmament and regime change envisaged for Iraq. If the rules of self-defence and non-intervention can be sufficiently relaxed, then it would become permissible to conduct such actions unilaterally, outside the UN.

The dangers with such a move are multiple and deeply serious. First, it has the potential to render the UN Security Council irrelevant.

Second, it threatens to replace the current rule-based international order with a much more permissive environment in which states need only claim that they face an imminent threat to launch a pre-emptive war. Once the US, Australia and others have claimed this right, on what basis can it be denied to Pakistan, China, Israel, North Korea, or others?

Third, the relaxation of rules of self-determination and non-intervention may have serious implications for the stability of the Asia-Pacific region. General acceptance of these rules has been a crucial factor in stabilising relations among ASEAN states.

Finally, a campaign by the US and Australia to revise the rules of self-defence to allow pre-emptive war is likely to greatly intensify anti-Western sentiment globally. For the vast majority of states, particularly in the developing world, the right of non-intervention and legal restrictions on the use of force by powerful states are seen as fundamental guarantees of security and independence. They will defend these norms vigorously.

The onus is on the Howard Government to explain why it is worth risking these dangers. At a very minimum, the Government must answer two core questions. How, precisely, can the basic rules governing the use of force be revised to permit genuine responses to imminent danger while preventing the abuse of more permissive rules for purposes of adventurism and aggrandisement? And by what mechanism should the rules be revised?


Chris Reus-Smit is the head of the department of international relations, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, at the Australian National University.

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U.S. Hopes to Check Computers Globally: System Would Be Used to Hunt Terrorists

Robert O'Harrow Jr.

Washington Post (US), November 12, 2002

A new Pentagon research office has started designing a global computer-surveillance system to give U.S. counterterrorism officials access to personal information in government and commercial databases around the world.

The Information Awareness Office, run by former national security adviser John M. Poindexter, aims to develop new technologies to sift through "ultra-large" data warehouses and networked computers in search of threatening patterns among everyday transactions, such as credit card purchases and travel reservations, according to interviews and documents.

Authorities already have access to a wealth of information about individual terrorists, but they typically have to obtain court approval in the United States or make laborious diplomatic and intelligence efforts overseas. The system proposed by Poindexter and funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) at about $200 million a year, would be able to sweep up and analyze data in a much more systematic way. It would provide a more detailed look at data than the super-secret National Security Agency now has, the former Navy admiral said.

"How are we going to find terrorists and preempt them, except by following their trail," said Poindexter, who brought the idea to the Pentagon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and now is beginning to award contracts to high-technology vendors.

"The problem is much more complex, I believe, than we've faced before," he said. "It's how do we harness with technology the street smarts of people on the ground, on a global scale."

Although formidable foreign policy and privacy hurdles remain before any prototype becomes operational, the initiative shows how far the government has come in its willingness to use information technology and expanded surveillance authorities in the war on terrorism.

Poindexter said it will take years to realize his vision, but the office has already begun providing some technology to government agencies. For example, Poindexter recently agreed to help the FBI build its data-warehousing system. He's also spoken to the Transportation Security Administration about aiding its development of a massive passenger-profiling system.

In his first interview since he started the "information awareness" program, Poindexter, who figured prominently in the Iran-contra scandal more than a decade ago, said the systems under development would, among other things, help analysts search randomly for indications of travel to risky areas, suspicious e-mails, odd fund transfers and improbable medical activity, such as the treatments of anthrax sores. Much of the data would be collected through computer "appliances" -- some mixture of hardware and software -- that would, with permission of governments and businesses, enable intelligence agencies to routinely extract information.

Some specialists question whether the technology Poindexter envisions is even feasible, given the immense amount of data it would handle. Others question whether it is diplomatically possible, given the sensitivities about privacy around the world. But many agree, if implemented as planned, it probably would be the largest data-surveillance system ever built.

Paul Werbos, a computing and artificial-intelligence specialist at the National Science Foundation, doubted whether such "appliances" can be calibrated to adequately filter out details about innocent people that should not be in the hands of the government.

"By definition, they're going to send highly sensitive, private personal data," he said. "How many innocent people are going to get falsely pinged? How many terrorists are going to slip through?"

Former senator Gary Hart (D-Colo.), a member of the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, said there's no question about the need to use data more effectively.

But he criticized the scope of Poindexter's program, saying it is "total overkill of intelligence" and a potentially "huge waste of money."

"There's an Orwellian concept if I've ever heard one," Hart said when told about the program.

Poindexter said any operational system would include safeguards to govern the collection of information. He said rules built into the software would identify users, create an audit trail and govern the information that is available. But he added that his mission is to develop the technology, not the policy. It would be up to Congress and policymakers to debate the issue and establish the limits that would make the system politically acceptable.

"We can develop the best technology in the world and unless there is public acceptance and understanding of the necessity, it will never be implemented," he said. "We're just as concerned as the next person with protecting privacy."

Getting the Defense Department job is something of a comeback for Poindexter. The Reagan administration national security adviser was convicted in 1990 of five felony counts of lying to Congress, destroying official documents and obstructing congressional inquiries into the Iran-contra affair, which involved the secret sale of arms to Iran in the mid-1980s and diversion of profits to help the contra rebels in Nicaragua.

Poindexter, a retired Navy rear admiral, was the highest-ranking Regan administration official found guilty in the scandal. He was sentenced to six months in jail by a federal judge who called him "the decision-making head" of a scheme to deceive Congress. The U.S. Court of Appeals overturned that conviction in 1991, saying Poindexter's rights had been violated through the use of testimony he had given to Congress after being granted immunity.

In recent years, he has worked as a DARPA contractor at Syntek Technologies Inc., an Arlington consulting firm that helped develop technology to search through large amounts of data. Poindexter now has a corner office at a DARPA facility in Arlington. He still wears cuff links with the White House seal and a large ring from the Naval Academy, where he graduated at the top of his class in 1958.

As Poindexter views the plan, counterterrorism officials will use "transformational" technology to sift through almost unimaginably large amounts of data, something Poindexter calls "noise," to find a discernable "signal" indicating terrorist activity or planning. In addition to gathering data, the tools he is trying to develop would give analysts a way to visually represent what that information means. The system also would include the technology to identify people at a distance, based on known details about their faces and gaits.

He cited the recent sniper case as an example of something that would have benefited from such technology. The suspects' car, a 1990 Chevrolet Caprice, was repeatedly seen by police near the shooting scenes. Had investigators been able to know that, Poindexter said, they might have detained the suspects sooner.

The office already has several substantial contracts in the works with technology vendors. They include Hicks & Associates Inc., a national security consultant in McLean; Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., a management and technology consultant in McLean; and Ratheon Corp., a technology company that will provide search and data-mining tools.

"Poindexter made the argument to the right players, so they asked him back into the government," said Mike McConnell, a vice president at Booz Allen and former director of the NSA.

The office already has an emblem that features a variation of the great seal of the United States: An eye looms over a pyramid and appears to scan the world. The motto reads: Scientia Est Potentia, or "knowledge is power."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

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Edited by author 11-16-2002 04:09 PM
The Usa Patriot Act: One Year Later

Part II

by C. William Michaels*

t r u t h o u t | Report, Thursday, 14 November, 2002

The first part of this two-part article on the occasion of the first anniversary of the USA PATRIOT Act, looked at the background of the statute and reviewed some of its more significant sections among its very extensive ten Titles. This second part will review some of the trends occurring as a result of the USA PATRIOT Act and also identify some developments which will require attention in the foreseeable future.

Some Resulting Trends

There are any number of new trends and developments to be identified as coming directly from the PATRIOT Act itself. Of course, we cannot ignore numerous other developments, such as the Office of Homeland Security, dramatic new aviation security measures, several ominous national trends, and the impending war with Iraq, but unfortunately they are outside the present discussion as not being directly related to the PATRIOT Act. As to the Act, least 10 such trends could be noted, and they all deserve increased attention.

1. Reduced judicial review. The entire PATRIOT Act is designed for increased surveillance, information gathering, and investigation, of terrorism with a minimum of judicial review. Investigations under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) can be expanded and notification of sneak and peek warrants can be delayed. The FISA court which reviews and grants these warrant requests has refused perhaps 1 in its entire history, granting 12,178 warrants of 12,179 requests.
Under the PATRIOT Act, mostly under Title II, investigators can obtain information ranging from consumer reports, certain phone data, certain details from Internet service providers, educational records, and banking transactions, all without a court order. All that is required is a certification by a federal investigator that the information is necessary or required for a particular investigation, which does not even reach the standard of probable cause that is required with ordinary search and seizure warrants. There is no opportunity for judicial review of these information gathering activities since in general the information obtained is obtained in secret and the Act provides that the person or entity providing the information is immune from civil liability.

The Act's establishment of single jurisdiction search warrants and national service of search warrants effectively means that federal investigators only have to stop by to one federal district court to obtain a search warrant for a particular investigation. Investigators will not be required to further justify their information request and continue to meet search warrant standards in any other federal court even if the investigation goes into other jurisdictions. This is "one stop shopping" for federal search warrants and essentially takes the federal courts out of the loop.

The information sharing which will go on--and in fact is mandated--chiefly by Titles II and IX are conducted by and large without any judicial review. In those limited instances where judicial review might be involved, such review is limited to specific challenges and those challenges can be delayed at the request of the government.

The very extreme and detailed "special measures" which under Title III can be imposed by federal investigators upon domestic banks and other financial institutions are completely unprecedented in the history of federal banking regulation and represent a total rewrite of banking law. Yet these "special measures" can be submitted to banks by investigators once various required "certifications" are made by the Treasury Department, without any condition for a court order or court review. In fact, the Act does not even provide for a court review or challenge to a "special measures" order once imposed--and any given "special measures" order can last for 120 days.

There is no provision in the Act for court review of the information which federal agencies can require from banks or financial institutions under the 120-hour rule established by the Act. In fact, no court would be able to review and properly pass upon the propriety of the information required, in that span of time.

Title IV of the Act identifies three types of terrorist organizations: "Section 219" designations of terrorist groups borrowed from existing immigration law, terrorist groups identified by the government under a similar procedure but with fewer requirements and no express judicial review, and a wide-ranging category of any group of two persons or more "whether organized or not" which engages in any of the broadly-defined list of "terrorist activities." Yet only one of them (adopting the "Section 219" designations from previous immigration law) allows for judicial review of a terrorist group designation. The second type of terrorist group, the PATRIOT Act describes a procedure similar to a "Section 219" terrorist group identification procedure, but any express reference to the same type of judicial review is curiously omitted in the statute's description. The third type of terrorist organization, any group organized or not which engages in terrorist activity, again contains no provision is for judicial review of that designation.

The Act therefore gives federal investigators or agencies tremendously wide latitude in designating terrorist groups--with all that would follow, once the entire range of the investigative and surveillance authorities also granted by the PATRIOT Act are brought into play against any group so identified. It must be noted that the definitions of "terrorism" and "domestic terrorism" and "foreign intelligence" do not exclude the potential involvement of American citizens, so PATRIOT Act investigation, surveillance, and prosecution, authorities are not restricted to aliens.

The mandatory detention of aliens under Title IV allows for habeas corpus review (similar, in fact, to other parallel provisions in existing immigration law although they were not as extreme). Yet habeas corpus review has not been utilized with great vigor by federal courts. An appeal of denial of habeas corpus is also provided, but such an appeal is extremely unlikely to succeed. Aside from habeas corpus, the only review allowed by an alien in indefinite detention is a request for administrative review of the detention, every six months. These provisions make a mockery of our system of judicial oversight of executive activity.

There is limited judicial oversight of many other Act provisions such as forfeiture provisions, long arm jurisdiction, and reduced or eliminated statutes of limitations. While these provisions may be seen as giving federal courts more power, in actuality the power is being given to federal prosecutors and investigators, who continue to drive federal criminal investigations and prosecutions.

2. Limited Congressional review or oversight. There are provisions scattered throughout the PATRIOT Act requiring various federal agencies or departments (chiefly State, Treasury, and Justice) to report to Congress on their activities or on the results of particular studies. Among them are reports to be made to Congress by the Treasury Department about "special measures" imposed on banks under Title III and by the Justice Department on the detention of aliens under Title IV.

Yet, little is said in the Act about Congressional power to take any action as a result of the reports. Also, little is said about the status of these various reports themselves, whether they are secret, how they can be distributed, if Congress has the power to restrict agency activity if Congress becomes concerned about information in them,, and so on. Congress itself, by enacting the PATRIOT Act, has withdrawn any authority it might have to oversee the results of the agency activity put into motion by its extreme provisions.

A prime example is the report to Congress on detention of aliens. The report only needs to include how many were detained at the start of the time period covered by the report, how many have been released, how many have sought judicial review of their detention, and how many are still detained. Notably absent from the requirements of this report are the names of the detainees, what each detainee may be charged with, the circumstances of the detention, the locality of the detention, and whether criminal prosecution is underway. Again, Congress has abdicated its opportunity to exercise detailed oversight of such extreme provisions.

There has been some movement in the direction of Congressional oversight. For example, in June of 2002, Rep. F. James Sessenbrenner, Jr. and Rep. John Conyers, Jr. of the House Judiciary Committee sent an extensive letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft raising 50 rather pointed questions (many of those questions in several parts) about Justice Department activity related to the PATRIOT Act, especially Titles II and IV. The tone of this letter and its criticism of potential overbroad Executive Department conduct was commendable. But on the whole, Congressional action of this kind has been lackting. Much more is needed if Congress intends to exercise some control and oversight of the forces it set in motion with this Act.

3. "Fellow PATRIOT Acts." Congress surely is well aware that legislatures in the 50 States follow Congressional lead in identifying and acting on legislative priorities, from handguns to drunk driving. It has been no different in anti terrorism legislation. Within months after the PATRIOT Act was enacted by Congress and signed into law, other State legislatures acted on the mood of the country and the concern about terrorism investigation and considered if not passed similar State level legislation.

There are examples ranging from Maryland to California. In Maryland, new legislation rewrote State search and seizure guidelines, imposed new requirements on security for chemical plants and facilities, enacted new security measures for State office buildings (either by legislative act or Governor's order), and gave sweeping new powers to the Governor to declare special emergencies with subsequent powers for agencies dealing with health, transportation, policing, and security.

These "fellow PATRIOT Acts" pose problems no less severe than the Federal version. While perhaps not as extensive as the original, these other statutes are likely not to be interpreted with the same precision as might be imposed by federal courts, give new powers to certain State agencies ordinarily not accustomed to wielding them, and may not contain sunset provisions. Unfortunately, these State statutes and their effects will be with us for some time.

4. The "enemy combatant". A disturbing development among federal investigators is the announcement that a particular person seized and detained for suspected terrorist involvement or charged with a terrorism offense is a "enemy combatant." Even more alarming is the fact that this label has been used against a United States citizen. Investigators have made this announcement with arrests like Jose Padilla the so-called "dirty bomber" and his supposed accomplice, Adham Hassoun. Both were arrested in May and June, 2002 in Florida, and have been held in a Navy brig in North Carolina. Their eventual fate is still unknown. The government also has argued this theory in a brief filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

According to this approach, which has followed the wide investigative and detention authorities either established or expanded by the PATRIOT Act, an "enemy combatant" is not entitled to the same due process protections as any other detainee or arrestee. Such a person does not have the same rights to challenge their detention or to seek court review. Such a person can be held until the "conflict" is "concluded." If this is to mean the end of the "war on terrorism," then the time frame could be years. Yet this "enemy combatant" designation appears nowhere in the PATRIOT Act or in general federal criminal law. How this very alarming approach will be met by the courts is one of the major unfolding issues in the post-PATRIOT Act world.

5. Detention of aliens and detention conditions/the new American Gulag. The detention of aliens, now tremendously expanded by PATRIOT Act Title IV, and the conditions of their detention, is one trend that fortunately continues to receive media and activist group attention. Many of the aliens seized and detained in roundups occurring immediately after September 11 and especially after the PATRIOT Act was signed, and which continue to occur, have been marked by serious deprivations of basic constitutional rights under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, as well as rights and practices traditionally available to anyone in pretrial detention. Those include the rights to see family, to communicate with others, to meet with counsel, and to know of the charges being brought.

Stories coming from places like the Metropolitan Detention Center outside New York, federal detention facilities in Illinois near Chicago, and detention facilities in North Carolina (some of them military facilities) include other deprivations such as extreme conditions, solitary confinement, restrictions on food, beatings, and other brutalities. Many of the individuals seized and detained have little by way of family in this country, little or no financial resources, and only minimal knowledge of their own rights. The government is seizing the opportunity to exercise its considerable investigative, surveillance, and detention powers granted by the PATRIOT Act against a population that is least able effectively to respond.
The result, besides wholesale violations of the Constitution, protocols of detention, and human decency, is the potential development of a new American "gulag"--facilities where aliens or others seized under these expanded authorities will be placed and which can be relied upon by investigators to provide the proper conditions designed to elicit appropriate information by the arrestee useful in the investigation, not to mention confessions. Such a development if it occurs will be another black page on an already too-long history of extreme governmental treatment of suspect groups.

6. New "terrorist" group identifications globally/"their" terrorists become "our" terrorists. Part of the new globalization of the war on terrorism is activity by the United States seeking assistance or cooperation by other countries in investigating and tracking terrorist groups of immediate interest to the United States and who are suspected of involvement in the September 11 attacks, chiefly Al Queda. Of course, this interest also includes other terrorist groups so "designated" by United States authorities, which is already a tremendously long list.

In a show of further United States cooperation with these other nations, American authorities are also designating other groups in other countries which are deemed by these countries to be "terrorist" groups. In December, 2001 and on later dates, federal agencies announced that groups such as the Basque separatist movement in Spain (the ETA) and the Sendero Luminiso in Peru had been officially designated as "terrorist" groups for purposes of United States policy, notably invoking the considerable powers of surveillance, investigation, and prosecution granted by the PATRIOT Act.

Such groups clearly had nothing to do with September 11 although they have resorted to violence in their particular campaigns, but their official designation as a "terrorist" group has more to do with the United States recognizing another nation's "terrorists" in order to obtain that nation's assistance in acting against "terrorists" of interest to this country. That will soon develop into another disturbing trend of rebel groups of one sort or another in various countries being designated by the United States as "terrorists"--again, with all that entails in terms of surveillance and investigation. It is one way in which nations interested in preserving the status quo against the challenge of a dissident group can obtain the involvement and support of the United States and eliminating that group. How this plays out remains to be seen.

7. Using FISA material for criminal prosecution. The main reason why surveillance warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act are not subject to quite the same restrictions and requirements as search and seizure orders in other investigations is that FISA-type investigations are not designed to lead to direct criminal prosecution, but are expected to produce information to allow investigators to track the activities of certain suspect foreign nationals under some sort of structure and guidelines. Yet after the PATRIOT Act, federal authorities are becoming more interested in using FISA investigations as the basis of a criminal investigation.

A recently-announced decision by the FISA court that was issued in May, 2002 (and was made public by the Senate Judiciary Committee--the first instance of a public FISA court opinion), criticized this approach. The FISA court in that opinion made it plain that it would be the arbiter of the FISA statute and how information obtained through FISA may be used. But the Justice Department has taken issue with that opinion. It has already taken the opinion up on appeal.

Using FISA information as the basis for standard criminal prosecution would go against the intent of FISA and would be, in effect, an end-run around the Fourth Amendment. This will be another trend to watch.

8. New information and surveillance technologies. As PATRIOT Act emphasis on surveillance and intelligence continues, so also will arise a whole new or expanded corporate subculture in surveillance technologies and methods. One example of this was quite evident in September 18 and 19, 2002, when a Homeland Security Technology Expo and Conference was held in Washington, D.C.

Hosted in part by the Department of Commerce in association with the Office of Homeland Security, this Tech Expo featured presentations, workshops, and displays by scores of technology-related firms involved in investigation, security, and surveillance. A sampling of these firms, whose particular expertise is indicated by the name alone, were: Ideal Shield, Language Analysis Systems, Biometric Key Systems, Dialogic Communication Corporation, Davidson Optronics, GM Defense/Patriot 3, Identicard Systems, QuickHire, Mindbank, WeGuardYou.com, and Vigilant Warning Systems.
This is only the beginning. A new generation of security and special electronic and surveillance methodology is about to unfold, some of which may have already been on the drawing board, but now given a serious boost by the studies, mandates, reports, grants, new offices, and special funding under the PATRIOT Act.

9. New corporate attitude as to employee surveillance. Congress may be well aware that the private sector/corporate world takes its lead from Congressional and White House interest and action on particular issues. The PATRIOT Act and the new emphasis on security is surely no exception.

Corporations, businesses, and merchants are now doing more than ever to track the movements of employees and customers, conduct background checks for new hires, review resumes, refuse hire to almost anyone with a criminal background even if it has nothing to do with the job involved, and track daily employee activities. Some computer surveillance programs in use in the corporate world allow a system administrator of a LAN to track keyboard keystrokes or even screen activity on any given computer in the system, down to whether the employee is conducting unauthorized shopping on the Internet (and this can even include credit card numbers entered) to slacking off by playing solitaire.

Some of these surveillance programs were already in use well before the PATRIOT Act. But the Act and the new atmosphere of security have given them a new legitimacy and have encouraged corporations either to expand or to institute similar surveillance systems. Keep in mind that if anything of any real import were discovered through these surveillance processes, its use in a criminal investigation is not restricted by the Fourth Amendment.

10. Reach of State and local authorities. The new PATRIOT Act provisions for information sharing, grants and funding, and cross agency training and cooperation, as well as the "fellow PATRIOT Acts" passed by State legislatures has given State and local governmental law enforcement units a new emphasis and a new influence.<blockquote>
Now, the county Sheriff or local municipal law enforcement unit may be involved in a terrorism investigation, can search for "foreign intelligence" and can watch out for "domestic terrorism." The professionalism of these organizations can sometimes be called into question, not to mention their lack of experience in these types of investigations. While that does not at all mean that it was a good thing for federal agencies to be given all of the new authorities provided by the PATRIOT Act, the expansion of these authorities to the State and local law enforcement levels is a disturbing "vertical expansion" of already disturbing police power.

Increased funding for everything. Not so much a trend as an observation, is the fact that the PATRIOT Act is part of an entire new federal and security apparatus due to receive, since September 11, an entire new wave of federal funding. It used to be that if a corporation was involved in drug enforcement, treatment, or surveillance, it was a prime recipient for federal contracts. Now the operative word is "terrorism" and corporations learn quickly. All sorts of new systems and mandates, contracts and grants, training and procedures, will be the subject for contracts at the federal, State and local levels. There already is enough funding in the PATRIOT Act to amount to $2.6 billion, not including "authorizations" without a specific sum. And that does not include funding for bioterrorism, which was the subject of a recently-enacted separate statute by Congress also recently signed by President Bush, aviation security (through the Aviation and Transportation Security Act which among many other things established the enormously large Transportation Security Administration), or increased military spending. The funding process is taking a new direction. It will be years before its effect is fully felt.

Watching for the Future

These 10 trends are enough for anyone interested in keeping abreast of immediate PATRIOT Act developments. But there are still four particular long-term matters to watch for in the foreseeable future.

<blockquote>1. "Domestic terrorism". The PATRIOT Act in Title VIII creates a new crime of "domestic terrorism." This is an act which is 1) a federal or State crime, 2) is dangerous or harmful to human life, 3) is designed to effect policy by coercion or intimidation, and 4) occurs within the United States. The intent of this new crime obviously is to "federalize" certain criminal acts and call them "terrorism" to bring them under federal surveillance, prosecution, and enhanced sentencing under the PATRIOT Act.

Civil liberties groups have raised concerns that "domestic terrorism" could include legitimate political protest, although the requirement that the action be dangerous or harmful to human life would place most political protest such as marches, demonstrations, and other activity, even if illegal, outside the definition. Also, to date, even a year since the PATRIOT Act no one has been prosecuted under the crime of "domestic terrorism."

Still, this is a development worth watching. How and in what way a prosecution for "domestic terrorism" would proceed clearly would show how the federal government will utilize that statute. Also, in a parallel way, the PATRIOT Act makes it clear that providing material support for, being in a conspiracy with, and attempting to commit, a terrorist act is also "terrorism." Prosecution of legitimate action such as political protest in support of a particular group or action, could be seen as terrorism under those definitions even if it is not prosecuted under the "domestic terrorism" crime. Both developments need to be watched.

2. Judicial review and oversight. Much has been made, even in this two-part series, of the lack of judicial oversight of government action in the PATRIOT Act. But it is a double-edged sword, for oversight and review of government action by the courts has not universally meant judicial restriction of that action. For example, the Alien and Sedition Acts enacted during World War I, the Espionage Act enacted subsequently, the detention of Japanese Americans during World War II, the actions of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, all were upheld by federal courts including the Supreme Court. So, if there is going to be judicial review and oversight, it needs to be materially different than historic judicial deference to Congressional conduct. It needs to be much more concerned with the Constitution than with Congress, with destruction of civil liberties than the detention of terrorists. If the courts are involved in the long view, they need to recognize that the horizon may very well be a cliff with a 300 foot drop.

So far there has been no overall challenge to the constitutionality of the PATRIOT Act or its major provisions. Some federal courts have taken up issues relating to legal authorities granted by the PATRIOT Act, with interesting results. XXXXX [add list].

For certain, the Supreme Court has yet to reach any major PATRIOT Act issue. There appear to be no such cases on the Court's current docket. But there is time. Even the more extreme provisions are not due to sunset until 2005, and the rest of the PATRIOT Act is permanent. Federal courts will be dealing with this statute indefinitely. Federal courts not only need to seriously take up the question of judicial oversight but also take it up in dramatic and effective ways for the protection of all Americans and all within her shores.

3. PATRIOT Act backlash. Perhaps some impetus for the strength that the judiciary needs to apply to its review of the PATRIOT Act and governmental conduct under its provisions, will come from the recent resolutions passed by several municipalities rejecting or criticizing the Act. Such resolutions were passed by towns in Massachusetts, California, and Colorado.

While these resolutions have no ultimate legal authority--the PATRIOT Act as a federal statute would override any such local government resolutions--their effect is to demonstrate to the federal government and to the citizenry nationwide that not all Americans will be as complacent as Congress and the White House might expect when it comes to the PATRIOT Act. If any trend identified in this series needs to continue, it is this. More municipalities and other jurisdictions small and large need to take notice of the issues and trends surrounding the PATRIOT Act and make it plain that they will not lie down and let the Constitution be sacrificed to the ever-expanding "war on terrorism."

4. Sunset provisions. Finally and perhaps most important, the American public cannot be distracted and complacent when it comes to those portions of the PATRIOT Act which are due to sunset. Certain sections in Title II are due automatically to sunset on December 31, 2005. The entire Title III is due to sunset on or before October 1, 2005 but only if Congress passes a joint resolution so declaring.

It stands to reason that if the American public remains complacent and if Congress continues to be distracted, pressure will be brought to bear--chiefly by federal investigative and intelligence agencies which have become far too accustomed their expanded surveillance, investigative, and prosecutorial powers--to repeal the sunset provisions for Title II and not to pass the joint resolution to inactivate Title III. That should not be allowed to happen, and only a vigilant American public can prevent it.

Of course, the Act does not explain what will happen to all of the information gathered, new federal offices established, and other activities initiated, under Titles II and III if these Titles do sunset. It is extremely doubtful that those offices will be disbanded or the information discarded. This in itself will be another matter to watch and another question to ask, as 2005 comes around.

------------------------------------

C. William Michaels is an attorney and writer in Baltimore, Maryland. His just released book, No Greater Threat: America After September 11 and the Rise of a National Security State (Algora Publishing NYC, 2002) contains a review and analysis of the entire USA PATRIOT Act. The book is available from Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com. For more about the book and the author, go to "www.nogreaterthreat.com"

*In preparing these articles, Mr. Michaels gratefully acknowledges the assistance and collaboration of truthout.org columnist Jennifer Van Bergen (J.D. Cardozo School of Law; Faculty, New School University in New York).

----------------------------------

Also see :

The Usa Patriot Act: One Year Later -- Part I by C. William Michaels and Jennifer Van Bergen

The Usa Patriot Act: One Year Later -- Part II by C. William Michaels

Free Speech & G.W. Bush by Jennifer Van Bergen

Repeal the USA Patriot Act by Jennifer Van Bergen

#

You Are a Suspect

By WILLIAM SAFIRE for The New York Times, November 14, 2002

WASHINGTON - If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is what will happen to you:

Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend - all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."

To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you - passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance - and you have the supersnoop's dream: a "Total Information Awareness" about every U.S. citizen.

This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario. It is what will happen to your personal freedom in the next few weeks if John Poindexter gets the unprecedented power he seeks.

Remember Poindexter? Brilliant man, first in his class at the Naval Academy, later earned a doctorate in physics, rose to national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan. He had this brilliant idea of secretly selling missiles to Iran to pay ransom for hostages, and with the illicit proceeds to illegally support contras in Nicaragua.

A jury convicted Poindexter in 1990 on five felony counts of misleading Congress and making false statements, but an appeals court overturned the verdict because Congress had given him immunity for his testimony. He famously asserted, "The buck stops here," arguing that the White House staff, and not the president, was responsible for fateful decisions that might prove embarrassing.

This ring-knocking master of deceit is back again with a plan even more scandalous than Iran-contra. He heads the "Information Awareness Office" in the otherwise excellent Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which spawned the Internet and stealth aircraft technology. Poindexter is now realizing his 20-year dream: getting the "data-mining" power to snoop on every public and private act of every American.

Even the hastily passed U.S.A. Patriot Act, which widened the scope of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and weakened 15 privacy laws, raised requirements for the government to report secret eavesdropping to Congress and the courts. But Poindexter's assault on individual privacy rides roughshod over such oversight.

He is determined to break down the wall between commercial snooping and secret government intrusion. The disgraced admiral dismisses such necessary differentiation as bureaucratic "stovepiping." And he has been given a $200 million budget to create computer dossiers on 300 million Americans.

When George W. Bush was running for president, he stood foursquare in defense of each person's medical, financial and communications privacy. But Poindexter, whose contempt for the restraints of oversight drew the Reagan administration into its most serious blunder, is still operating on the presumption that on such a sweeping theft of privacy rights, the buck ends with him and not with the president.

This time, however, he has been seizing power in the open. In the past week John Markoff of The Times, followed by Robert O'Harrow of The Washington Post, have revealed the extent of Poindexter's operation, but editorialists have not grasped its undermining of the Freedom of Information Act.

Political awareness can overcome "Total Information Awareness," the combined force of commercial and government snooping. In a similar overreach, Attorney General Ashcroft tried his Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIPS), but public outrage at the use of gossips and postal workers as snoops caused the House to shoot it down. The Senate should now do the same to this other exploitation of fear.

The Latin motto over Poindexter"s new Pentagon office reads "Scientia Est Potentia" - "knowledge is power." Exactly: the government's infinite knowledge about you is its power over you. "We're just as concerned as the next person with protecting privacy," this brilliant mind blandly assured The Post. A jury found he spoke falsely before.

#

Edited by author 11-12-2002 01:03 AM
Bush dishes out licences to kill on a wide front

Sydney Morning Herald, November 12 2002

US President George W Bush has authorised a variety of people in his administration to launch attacks like the missile strike that killed six suspected al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen last week.

Bush's national security adviser Condoleezza Rice has told Fox News that's because the United States is fighting a new kind of war on many different fronts.

The principal target of the Yemen attack was senior al-Qaeda leader Qaed Senyan Al-Harthi, a suspect in the 2000 bombing of the warship USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden.

Newsweek magazine says several other al-Qaeda operatives are being tracked and targeted for strikes in Islamic countries in the Middle East and Asia.

Human rights group Amnesty International has called on the US to state clearly that it doesn't sanction such executions.

AAP

#

Global Eye -- Into the Dark

Chris Floyd

Moscow Times (Ru), November 1, 2002

This column stands foursquare with the Honorable Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Defense Secretary, when he warns that there will be more terrorist attacks against the American people and civilization at large. We know, as does the Honorable Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Defense Secretary, that this statement is an incontrovertible fact, a matter of scientific certainty. And how can we and the Honorable Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Defense Secretary, be so sure that there will be more terrorist attacks against the American people and civilization at large?

Because these attacks will be instigated at the order of the Honorable Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Defense Secretary.

This astonishing admission was buried deep in a story, which was itself submerged by mounds of gray newsprint and glossy underwear ads in last Sunday's Los Angeles Times. There -- in an article by military analyst William Arkin detailing the vast expansion of the secret armies being massed by the former Nixon bureaucrat now lording it over the Pentagon -- came the revelation of Rumsfeld's plan to create "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" that will "bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence and cover and deception."

According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization -- the "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)" -- will carry out secret missions designed to "stimulate reactions" among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to "counterattack" by U.S. forces.

In other words -- and let's say this plainly, clearly and soberly, so that no one can mistake the intention of Rumsfeld's plan -- the United States government is planning to use "cover and deception" and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. Let's say it again: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other members of the unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment the murder of innocent people -- your family, your friends, your lovers, you -- in order to further their geopolitical ambitions.

For P2OG is not designed solely to flush out terrorists and bring them to justice -- a laudable goal in itself, although the Rumsfeld way of combating terrorism by causing it is pure moral lunacy. (Or should we use the Regime's own preferred terminology and just call it "evil"?) No, it seems the Pee-Twos have bigger fish to fry. Once they have sparked terrorists into action -- by killing their family members? luring them with loot? fueling them with drugs? plying them with jihad propaganda? messing with their mamas? or with agents provocateurs, perhaps, who infiltrate groups then plan and direct the attacks themselves? -- they can then take measures against the "states/sub-state actors accountable" for "harboring" the Rumsfeld-roused gangs. What kind of measures exactly? Well, the classified Pentagon program puts it this way: "Their sovereignty will be at risk."

The Pee-Twos will thus come in handy whenever the Regime hankers to add a little oil-laden real estate or a new military base to the Empire's burgeoning portfolio. Just find a nest of violent malcontents, stir 'em with a stick, and presto: instant "justification" for whatever level of intervention/conquest/rapine you might desire. And what if the territory you fancy doesn't actually harbor any convenient marauders to use for fun and profit? Well, surely a God-like "super-Intelligence Support Activity" is capable of creation ex nihilo, yes?

The Rumsfeld-Bush plan to employ murder and terrorism for political, financial and ideological gain does have historical roots (besides al-Qaida, the Stern Gang, the SA, the SS, the KGB, the IRA, the UDF, Eta, Hamas, Shining Path and countless other upholders of Bushian morality, decency and freedom). We refer of course to Operations Northwoods, oft mentioned in these pages: the plan that America's top military brass presented to President John Kennedy in 1963, calling for a phony terrorist campaign -- complete with bombings, hijackings, plane crashes and dead Americans -- to provide "justification" for an invasion of Cuba, the mafia/corporate fiefdom that had recently been lost to Castro.

Kennedy rejected the plan, and was killed a few months later. Now Rumsfeld has resurrected Northwoods, but on a far grander scale, with resources at his disposal undreamed of by those brass of yore, with no counterbalancing global rival to restrain him -- and with an ignorant, corrupt president who has shown himself all too eager to embrace any means whatsoever that will augment the wealth and power of his own narrow, undemocratic, elitist clique.

There is prestuplyeniye here, transgression, a stepping-over -- deliberately, with open eyes, with forethought, planning, and conscious will -- of lines that should never be crossed. Acting in deadly symbiosis with rage-maddened killers, God-crazed ranters and those supreme "sub-state actors," the mafias, Bush and his cohorts are plunging the world into an abyss, an endless night of black ops, retribution, blowback, deceit, of murder and terror -- wholesale, retail, state-sponsored, privatized; of fear and degradation, servility, chaos, and the perversion of all that's best in us, of all that we've won from the bestiality of our primal nature, all that we've raised above the mindless ravening urges and impulses still boiling in the mud of our monkey brains.

It's not a fight for freedom; it's a retreat into darkness.

And the day will be a long time coming.

----------

http://www.latimes.com/la-op-arkin27oct27001451,0,7355676.story
The Secret War
Los Angeles Times, Oct. 27, 2002

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNew...tchiefs_010501.html
Friendly Fire: Operation Northwoods
ABCNews.com, May 1, 2001

http://www.publici.org/dtaweb/report.asp?R...2=10&L3=0&L4=0&L5=0
Making a Killing: The Business of War: Overview
Center for Public Integrity, Oct. 29, 2002

http://www.icij.org/dtaweb/icij_bow.asp?Section=Chapter&ChapNum=1
Making a Killing: The Business of War
Center for Public Integrity, Oct. 29, 2002

http://www.icij.org/dtaweb/icij_bow.asp?Section=Chapter&ChapNum=2
Privatizing Combat: The New World Order
Center for Public Integrity, Oct. 29, 2002

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2002/102702a.html
Deeper Into the Big Muddy
Consortiumnews.com, Oct. 27, 2002

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/021104/usnews/4contractors.htm
America's Secret Armies
US News & World Report, Nov. 4, 2002 issue

http://www.iht.com/articles/74614.html
An American Invitation to Deter America
International Herald Tribune, Oct. 24, 2002

http://www.observer.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,819932,00.html
Vidal Claims 'Bush Junta' Complicit in 9-11
The Observer, Oct. 27, 2002

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021021&s=hartung
Operation Endless Deployment
The Nation, Oct. 3, 2002

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,821306,00.html
U.S. Weapons Secrets Exposed
The Guardian, Oct. 29, 2002

http://slate.msn.com/?id=2073238
The Rumsfeld Intelligence Agency
Slate.com, Oct. 28, 2002

#

Diebold - The face of modern ballot tampering

by Faun Otter at bartcop.com

You can't vote them out if....
 You never voted them in.

The lack of any exit polling on November 5 has been oddly ignored by the media. Those pesky tracking polls leading up to the elections have been explained away by a ‘late surge to the Republicans’ caused by.... hmmmm, how about sun spot activity? With no exit polls, there was no other feedback to conflict with the "official" results, this allowed the Diebold touch screen machines to change the way election fraud is carried out.

Previously, election cheating was a complex matter of ballot tampering combined with sample skewing. That is to say, you screwed up ballots for your opponent with under or over votes, made sure that people likely to vote against you wouldn't even get that chance (the program of voter disenfranchisement in Florida) and padded your own vote total with such things as falsified absentee ballots.

In the much more high tech world of Diebold electronics we are seeing a wonderfully efficient vote rigging system, the long proposed 'black box' technology. Imagine a black box in which you cannot see the workings. The only things you can discern are an input and an output; in this case votes go in and collated totals come out. There is no paper record of each individual vote cast to enable any cross check of the collated output. The only information you can know for sure is the total number of votes cast on the machine. Each vote is stripped of any information as to who cast that ballot to guarantee anonymity for the voters. You now have a system in which you have no way to check vote recording, vote collation and transmission of the collated totals out of the black box.

The perfect crime?

Not quite.
Let me suggest an experiment. We take two ‘markets’ with similar socioeconomic mixtures and a well established record of moving in the same political direction. We provide them with candidates from party X and party Y. We then expose them to similar news stories, we spill TV and radio ads over between the markets to make the effects less ‘local’ and give them identical weather on election day. The differences between the markets are 1. the candidates and 2. the method of casting and counting the votes. We then take a series of tracking polls on the gap between the candidates leading up to election day.

If we express the tracking poll data as the relative preference for the candidates (12 point lead by X, down one point from last week etc.), any substantial discrepancy between the forecast and actual election outcomes should arise from major news changes, the weather effects on turn out or a a social tendency to misrepresent voting intent. Since both groups get the same news, the same weather and have the same social tendencies, any difference between tracking poll and actual poll data should be in the same direction and of a similar magnitude.

Sooooo...... how come the South Carolina elections had the Democrats doing much better than the tracking poll data showed and the Georgia elections, in an area with the same weather, same news and same social values, had a massive swing in a single day after the last tracking poll, in the opposite direction? Could it be the Diebold touch screen machines in use across the entire state of Georgia but not used at all in SC?

Of course, such a perfect method of mischief has been attempted before,

http://www.votescam.com/frame.html
-- Go to the link marked "Chapters" and read all about it.
Watch how few lines pass before the names Bush and Sununu come up.
  

You can trim the wheels in mechanical voting machines but that is easier to spot than a computer program set up to be date sensitive so it causes only to ‘misfunction’ on November 5. The current problem with virtual ballot tampering was apparent as long ago as 1989. Jonathan Vankin made this warning in "Metro: Silicon Valley's Weekly Newspaper," of Sept. 28, 1989

"A single, Berkeley- based firm manufactures the software used in the machines that compile more than two-thirds of the nation's electronically-counted votes. Analysts describe the software as "spaghetti code," tangled strands of instructions indecipherable to outsiders. The experts say the code could be manipulated without detection. In fact, that may have happened already."

http://www.conspire.com/vote-fraud.html

After systematic punch card fraud was revealed in the 2000 election, touch screens were proposed as a panacea and have been rapidly adopted against the warning of experts,

"Critics warn local election officials could be trading one set of problems for another potentially as bad, or worse, than last year's election debacle. They vigorously argue that fully electronic systems pose data-security problems and lack a paper trail. "There's no way to independently verify that the voter's ballot as cast was actually the ballot being recorded by the machine,'' said Rebecca Mercuri, a computer scientist and visiting lecturer at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania."

http://www.kioskcom.com/article_detail.php?ident=1021

It would be interesting to impound a few machines from the heaviest leaning Democratic areas in Georgia and reset the date in the machine to November 5, 2002. A hand counted series of inputs could be made to the machines. Note to James Baker: hand counting is the gold standard against which we check machine counting efficiency. An input of 500 or so ‘dummy’ votes could then be tabulated and the outcome checked against the inputs. Of course, you could just check the software code. Except for one problem; the company refuses to let anyone see their code on the grounds that is a trade secret.

Oddly enough, Diebold aren’t the only Republican partisans who "helped" select our candidates for office yesterday:

"According to his press office, in 1995 Chuck Hagel resigned as CEO of American Information Systems (AIS), the voting machine company that counted the votes in his first Senatorial election in 1996. In January 1996 Hagel resigned as president of McCarthy & Company, part of the McCarthy Group that are one of the current owners of Election Systems and Software (ES&S), which itself resulted from the merger of AIS and Business Records Corporation. According to publicist/writer Bev Harris, Hagel is still an investor in the McCarthy Group. ES&S is now the largest voting machine company in America. One of its largest owners is the ultra-conservative Omaha World-Herald Company."

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/Landes_Ambush.htm
  
For more background reading on who gets to play with your ballot, see:

http://www.talion.com/election-machines.html
  
Who are Diebold?
The corporate officers are as thick as thieves with the Republican hard right religious nut division. For those who have been lucky enough to forget, Senator Faircloth was the protege of Jesse Helms in NC. It looks like the board and the directors were all putting up money for a Faircloth victory when Edwards took that senate seat. I wonder if they conspired to put things right.....?

http://www.diebold.com/

Board of Directors
Louis V. Bockius III (2,4,5)
6/28/00 $15,000.00
REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE - RNC
11/3/00 $10,000.00
REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE - RNC
10/9/97 $1,000.00
VOINOVICH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE
10/9/97 $1,000.00
VOINOVICH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE
  
Christopher M. Connor
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, The
Sherwin-Williams Company
5/22/00 $1,000.00
VOINOVICH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE
3/30/00 $1,000.00
DEWINE FOR US SENATE
  
Gale S. Fitzgerald (2, 6)
President and Chief Executive Officer , QP Group, Inc.
7/12/00 $500.00
NEW YORK REPUBLICAN FEDERAL CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE
10/12/98 $200.00
FRIENDS OF JOHN LAFALCE
10/18/99 $1,000.00
BUSH FOR PRESIDENT INC
  
Donald R. Gant (1,3,5)
Senior Director, The Goldman Sachs Group, L.P.
  
L. Lindsey Halstead (2,3,6)
Retired Chairman of the Board, Ford of Europe
12/22/98 $500.00
RNC REPUBLICAN NATIONAL STATE ELECTIONS COMMITTEE
1/23/97 $500.00
REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE - RNC
5/27/97 $200.00
REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE - RNC
10/31/97 $500.00
REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE - RNC
12/28/99 $500.00
REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE - RNC
3/7/01 $300.00
REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE
6/12/01 $200.00
REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE
11/27/01 $200.00
REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE
1/24/02 $500.00
REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE
  
Phillip B. Lassiter (1,3,6)
Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Ambac Financial Group, Inc.
4/16/98 $250.00
NATIONAL REPUBLICAN CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE
CONTRIBUTIONS
9/21/98 $250.00
NATIONAL REPUBLICAN CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE
CONTRIBUTIONS

John N. Lauer (1,4,5)
Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Oglebay Norton Co.
10/10/00 $1,000.00
DEWINE FOR US SENATE
8/23/00 $250.00
REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE - RNC
3/17/97 $1,000.00
VOINOVICH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE

Walden W. O'Dell
Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer, Diebold
2/14/01 $2,015.00
RNC REPUBLICAN NATIONAL STATE ELECTIONS COMMITTEE
12/17/97 $1,000.00
VOINOVICH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE
1/30/01 $3,950.00
RNC REPUBLICAN NATIONAL STATE ELECTIONS COMMITTEE
8/16/01 $500.00
VOINOVICH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE
12/17/97 $1,000.00
VOINOVICH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE
6/30/00 $1,000.00
DEWINE FOR US SENATE
  

Eric J. Roorda
Former Chairman, Procomp Amazonia Industria Eletronica, S.A.
W.R. Timken Jr. (2,3,4)
Chairman , The Timken Company
6/23/00 $50,000.00
RNC REPUBLICAN NATIONAL STATE ELECTIONS COMMITTEE
6/8/01 $100,000.00
2001 PRESIDENT'S DINNER - NON-FEDERAL TRUST
3/14/01 $10,000.00
RNC REPUBLICAN NATIONAL STATE ELECTIONS COMMITTEE
8/19/99 $15,000.00
RNC REPUBLICAN NATIONAL STATE ELECTIONS COMMITTEE
11/3/00 $15,000.00
RNC REPUBLICAN NATIONAL STATE ELECTIONS COMMITTEE
2/22/02 $1,000.00
RELY ON YOUR BELIEFS FUND
6/12/02 $1,000.00
OHIO'S REPUBLICAN SALUTE

Corporate Officers

Walden W. O'Dell
Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer, Diebold (See above)

Wesley B. Vance
Chief Operating Officer
8/16/01 $500.00
VOINOVICH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE

Michael J. Hillock
President, Diebold International
11/18/97 $500.00
FAIRCLOTH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE 1998

David Bucci
Senior Vice President, Customer Solutions Group
11/18/97 $500.00
FAIRCLOTH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE 1998

James L.M. Chen
Vice President and Managing Director, Asia-Pacific

Warren W. Dettinger
Vice President, General Counsel and Assistant
Secretary
11/18/97 $300.00
FAIRCLOTH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE 1998
1/30/97 $250.00
DEWINE FOR U S SENATE (2000)

Donald E. Eagon, Jr.
Vice President, Global Communications & Investor
Relations
11/18/97 $300.00
FAIRCLOTH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE 1998

Charee Francis-Vogelsang
Vice President and Secretary

Larry D. Ingram
Vice President, Procurement and Services
1/30/97 $250.00
DEWINE FOR U S SENATE (2000)
11/18/97 $300.00
FAIRCLOTH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE 1998
  
Dennis M. Moriarty
Vice President, Customer Business Solutions
11/18/97 $300.00
FAIRCLOTH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE 1998
  
Anthony J. Rusciano
Vice President, National Accounts
11/18/97 $300.00
FAIRCLOTH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE 1998
--- Hey Tony! Listing yourself as "retired" and using your vacation home address to avoid campaign donation limits is a tad naughty don’t you think?
  
Charles B. Scheurer
Vice President, Corporate Human Resources
11/18/97 $300.00
FAIRCLOTH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE 1998
  
Ernesto R. Unanue
Vice President and Managing Director, Latin America
  
Robert J. Warren
Vice President and Treasurer
11/18/97 $300.00
FAIRCLOTH FOR SENATE COMMITTEE 1998
  
#

TERRORISM: Experts Warn Anti-Terror Measures Threaten Human Rights

By Jim Wurst, UN Wire November 08, 2002

UNITED NATIONS -- U.N. experts at a roundtable on human rights and terrorism warned Tuesday that anti-terror actions are eroding human rights safeguards.

"The war against terrorism has given a license to some governments to deviate from human rights norms in the name of wiping out terrorism," said Asma Jahangir, the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions. "Just as society is under threat from terrorists, we are also under threat by governments who believe that human rights can be set aside for a while until we first deal with the terrorists. That cannot bring about peace and freedom in this world."

According to Hina Jilani, the U.N. special representative on human rights defenders, "It has become extremely easy to label someone a terrorist and then to violate his or her human rights with impunity."

Theo van Boven, the special rapporteur on torture, said anti-terrorism "offers a convenient climate for labeling opponents as terrorists and to delegitimize and demonize them. ... The purpose of anti-terrorism measures is to protect human rights and democracy, not to undermine these fundamental values."

Jahangir and Jilani went further, saying this hardening is not limited to human rights issues, but to societies in total. Jahangir said she noticed "that there is a militarization of [conflict] resolution, that an issue that has to be resolved will not now be resolved politically, the emphasis is to resolve it through military means. That really makes the whole society and decision-making militant. It takes it out of the hands of politicians and politics."

Jilani said, "I feel very uncomfortable with a situation in which multilateral and more diplomatic approaches to solving international problems are fast surrendering ground to unilateral and more aggressive approaches." She said she saw the rise of "a more arbitrary world order in which powerful states would be in a stronger position to assert their interests."

Another "very worrying trend," she said, "is the recourse to military solutions as the first rather than the last resort to political violence." This attitude "marginalizes human rights values ... and human rights work, which relies for effectiveness on the respect for law," she said.

"It will not be very long before these standards are demolished beyond recognition," said Jilani.

Jahangir also said she saw "a very sinister role being played by intelligence agencies ... who are now taking a lead in decision-making, and indeed taking it away from legislators and other political and civil actors."

It is not only a problem of states using terrorism as a reason to crack down on human rights, but also the problem of states themselves using terrorism, they said. Van Boven said the fight is becoming more complicated because terrorism is not only used by illegal movements, "but also by states or with the active involvement of states. And although states have the monopoly of force, that does not mean they can make use of force in any way they wish."

Amnesty International organized the panel. Yvonne Terlingen, Amnesty's U.N. representative, said she hoped the General Assembly would consider a possible draft resolution on "what are the means through which the fight [against terrorism] must be conducted" to address the need of "striking the right balance so that we can prevent handing terrorism precisely that victory beyond their dreams." That draft may come before the humanitarian committee next week.

Experts Present Reports To General Assembly Committee

Van Boven, Jahangir and Jilani presented reports this week to the General Assembly's Social and Humanitarian Committee. Issues of impunity for human rights violators and the erosion of human rights were themes running through the reports.

Jahangir's report on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions said, "It is a cause for grave concern that in some countries impunity for serious human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings, has become systematic and institutionalized." In addition, Jahangir wrote, "The direct targeting of civilians has increasingly become a part of the tactics employed by the parties involved [in conflicts] in order to spread terror among the larger population."

Her report also covers capital punishment. She wrote that international law and U.N. resolutions "stipulate that capital punishment shall be allowed only as an extreme measure for the most serious crimes and only in cases where the highest standards of fair trial are met," but that "there is reason to believe that international restrictions pertaining to the use of the death penalty are not respected." Jahangir cited in particular national laws allowing the execution of the mentally handicapped and of people who were minors when they committed their crimes.

Van Boven, in his report on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, said some countries have adopted anti-terrorism legislation that grants immunity to security forces. "It is feared that such provisions may effectively constitute an offer of impunity to law enforcement agents who use torture ... during interrogations," he wrote. "The legal and moral basis for the prohibition of torture [is] absolute and imperative and must under no circumstances yield or be subordinated to other interests, policies and practices," wrote van Boven.

The report also finds that other rights are compromised by anti-terrorism laws. In particular, van Boven wrote, three "basic legal safeguards" should remain in any such laws: "the right to habeas corpus, the right to have access to a lawyer within 24 hours from the time of arrest and the right to inform a relative or friend about the detention." He wrote, "These safeguards guarantee the access of any person in detention to the outside world and thus ensure his or her humane treatment while in detention."

In her report on human rights defenders, Jilani wrote that she "is greatly alarmed by the ineffectiveness of guarantees for the right to life of human rights defenders. Impunity is one serious consequence of any weakness in fulfilling state responsibility in this regard."

She added, "The use of national security legislation against human rights defenders for their human rights activities is a widespread problem." While recognizing the requirements of national security, in the cases she studied "it is difficult to establish that the activity for which defenders were prosecuted undermined, or was in any way relevant to, the security of the state."

Jilani's report was based on regional consultations she held with human rights defenders in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East.

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Judges attack US treatment of Guantanamo Bay detainees

By Nikki Tait, Law Courts Correspondent for Financial Times

November 7 2002
 
Three senior judges yesterday launched a strongly worded attack on the US government's treatment of terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay.

The three said that the US was acting "in apparent contravention of the fundamental principle of law" by detaining indefinitely about 600 people, including seven British citizens, at the US military camp in Cuba.

They spoke of "deep concern" over the indefinite detention of one of the British citizens, Feroz Abbasi.

"What appears to us to be objectionable is that Mr Abbasi should be subject to indefinite detention in territory over which the US has exclusive control with no opportunity to challenge the legitimacy of his detention before any court or tribunal," the three judges said.

The unusually forceful comments by Lord Philips, Master of the Rolls, Lord Justice Waller and Lord Justice Carnwarth came ahead of a likely petition to the US Supreme Court to consider the legitimacy of the Guantanamo Bay arrangements.

But despite the strong language, the Court of Appeal rejected a judicial review application by Mr Abbasi's lawyers to force the Foreign Office to make representation to the US government on his behalf.

They said it would not be appropriate to order the foreign secretary to do this - "even in the face of what appears to be a clear breach of a fundamental human rights" - since this would affect foreign policy at a "particularly delicate time".

However, the comments were seized on by Mr Abbasi's lawyers as a direct signal from the British judiciary to the highest court in the US.

"This is the Court of Appeal sending a direct message to the Supreme Court," said Louise Christian of Christian Fisher Khan, the law firm acting for Mr Abbasi.

This summer, a federal judge in Washington ruled that the suspected terrorists had no right to bring their cases to the US courts. She concluded that the military base was outside the US sovereign territory and that "aliens" held there had no grounds for challenging the validity of their detention within the US legal system.

Yesterday, the three British judges acknowledged that the decision was being appealed against, and the last word on the subject had not yet been spoken by the US courts.
 
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US braces for retaliation after Yemen assassination

By Greg Miller in Washington for The Sydney Morning Herald

November 7 2002

The CIA's assassination in Yemen of alleged al-Qaeda operatives has triggered outrage in some quarters and forced United States officials into the difficult position of defending a tactic it has criticised Israel for using.

For years, a debate raged within the CIA: should the US hunt down and kill its terrorist foes or would Israeli-style "targeted killings" only invite retribution and feed an endless cycle of violence?

The debate ended on Sunday when the CIA incinerated an alleged al-Qaeda leader, Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, and five other alleged operatives with a laser-guided Hellfire missile, fired from an unmanned drone aircraft.

Even those who applauded the strike said it was sure to inflame militant Muslims, including those belonging to the al-Qaeda network, and expose US diplomats and other overseas officials to possible retaliation. On Tuesday the US said it was closing its embassy in Yemen to the public indefinitely amid fears it might become a target for an attack to retaliate for the killings.

But US officials and top Pentagon advisers said al-Qaeda should expect more of the same. "We've got new authorities, new tools and a new willingness to do it wherever it has to be done," one Administration official said.

As the embarrassed Yemeni Government remained tight-lipped about the assassination on its soil, more details emerged of how the unmanned Predator drone found the six men in a car and killed them with a missile.

It was reported that the Yemeni intelligence service had monitored the operatives for months and had relayed the information to the Americans.

The Yemeni cabinet issued a brief statement urging its people to unite against "terrorist activities targeting our country, its people and its national economy", but it refused to say whether it had given the CIA permission to carry out the attack.

In Washington, senior officials said the attack was carried out under the broad authority President George Bush had given the CIA over the past year to pursue al-Qaeda well beyond the borders of Afghanistan.

Sweden's Foreign Minister, Anna Lindh, said: "If the USA is behind this with Yemen's consent, it is nevertheless a summary execution that violates human rights. If the USA has conducted the attack without Yemen's permission it is even worse. Then it is a question of unauthorised use of force."

While military experts said the incident could herald a new era of robotic warfare, lawyers debated the implications of the surprising turn in US strategy - killing specific individuals in countries where there is no war.

"To have a drone that engages and kills people - that is quite a threshold to cross," said Clifford Beal, editor of Jane's Defence Weekly. "This is the beginning of robotic warfare. There is underlying tension in the military about using it ... this is really the first success story of this system."

A US State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, refused to discuss the attack and trod carefully around questions on whether US involvement in the strike contradicted Washington's long-standing disapproval of targeted killings.

Asked whether the US had altered its opinion, Mr Boucher replied, "Our policy on targeted killings in the Israeli-Palestinian context has not changed."

Israeli scholars said the attack in Yemen was tantamount to US endorsement of the Israeli policy of pre-emptive attacks.

"Israel knows that it's going to be attacked no matter what it does," said Barry Rubin, head of the Global Research and International Affairs Centre. "The US situation has become more like the Israeli situation. It is the impact of September 11."

Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Agence France-Pres

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