US Police State

[outsider]

Random Immigration and drug searches within 100 miles of sea or land borders:

"Failure to Obey" Documentary on Checkpoint Refusal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnMDXj6Nkzk

[fish5133]

excellent and a 911 truther as well!

[outsider]

Do Police Have a Right to Withhold Video When They Kill Someone?:
http://www.thenation.com/blog/207865/do-police-have-right-withhold-vid eo-when-they-kill-someone?

'In Gardena, California, south of Los Angeles, three police officers killed an unarmed man, shooting him eight times, and shooting a second, seriously wounding him. They said the men were suspected of stealing a bicycle, but in fact they were friends of the man whose bike had been stolen, the Los Angeles Times reported, and “were searching for the missing bicycle.” The City agreed to pay a $4.7 million settlement to the survivor. The whole incident was recorded on a video camera mounted inside a police car. The officers involved were allowed to view the video, but the Gardena police refused to release it to the public, claiming that making the video public would violate the privacy rights of the officers involved.

Do the police have a privacy right to withhold video shot by in-car cameras or body cams? Do public officials, acting in their public capacity, have a right to prevent the public from reviewing video evidence of their conduct? You’d think the answer was obviously “no.” When the police kill somebody, it’s not “private.”

But 15 states are considering legislation to exempt video recordings of police encounters from release under state public records laws, according to the Associated Press, or to limit what can be made public. In Kansas the state Senate voted 40-0 in April to exempt police body-cam videos from the state’s open-records act. Police would have to release them only to people who are the subject of the recordings. Kansas police, on the other hand, would be able to release videos “at their own discretion.” In Minnesota, a state Senate committee has approved a bill making most police body-cam videos off-limits to the general public, “except when an officer uses a dangerous weapon or causes bodily harm..........”

[outsider]

Rocky Anderson vs. NSA & FBI:
http://www.cityweekly.net/utah/rocky-anderson-vs-nsa-and-fbi/Content?o id=2947789

'When former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson reactivated his law license, it appears he also reactivated his activism. Long a civil-liberties defender, he decided to call out the federal government after reports surfaced in 2013 that the NSA and FBI allegedly conducted illegal surveillance on Salt Lake-area residents before and during the 2002 Winter Games. He recently filed a lawsuit (that two City Weekly staff joined) seeking damages from the U.S. government for unlawful invasions of privacy. Anderson explained the purpose of his lawsuit below:

The Winter Olympics were so 13 years ago. Why sue now?
Apparently, no one outside the NSA and FBI knew of the blanket surveillance over Salt Lake City during the 2002 Olympics until The Wall Street Journal broke the story in an article on Aug. 20, 2013. The information would probably never have been known to the public if one or more courageous sources hadn't provided the information.

The 9/11 attacks took place less than six months prior to the 2002 Winter Olympics. Wasn't safety a huge issue, serving to justify such drastic measures?
As mayor during the Olympics, my greatest concern, even before 9/11, was safety. In fact, the only heated words between Mitt Romney and myself related to my incessant demands that we have a far more robust immediate response capacity in the event of violence or major property destruction. However, there was absolutely no justification for the abandonment of the rule of law and unprecedented violations of the protections of individual rights, including fundamental privacy, provided by our state and federal constitutions and statutes passed by Congress to prevent these very sorts of Stasi-like governmental abuses. To accept the illegal and unconstitutional spying on people in this country by our government only helps pave the way for further disregard of the rule of law by the executive branch and, ultimately, a more totalitarian society.

Did employees at local phone and Internet companies need to cooperate?
Some employees of telecommunications service companies would have needed to cooperate. At the time, such cooperation would have constituted a federal felony, just as every instance of the surveillance by the FBI and NSA constituted a federal felony. That is exactly why, in 2008, Congress (including then-Senator Obama) voted for the unprecedented, outrageous bill [an update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] granting retroactive immunity from prosecution and civil law suits for telecommunication companies that cooperated with the illegal and unconstitutional initiatives of the federal government under the Bush administration.

What's happened to the data that was captured during the Olympics?
We do not know what has happened to the data unlawfully captured by the NSA and FBI. However, the guiding philosophy of the NSA is to hoard everything possible so it will be available in future years if the government seeks to investigate anyone who has been subjected to surveillance. One director of the NSA justified such hoarding by saying, "You have to have a haystack to find a needle in the haystack." An unbelievable amount of data from illegal surveillance is being stored at the enormous NSA facility recently constructed in Bluffdale.'


Related Stories

Suiting Up

Rocky Anderson prepares to take feds to task for reports of illegal spying on Salt Lakers during the 2002 Olympics
by Jerre Wroble


Former Salt Lake City Mayor takes on the State - yet not a tweet from the UK MSM, or US MSM, for that matter - although an Aussie news service does mention it: 'Ross ‘Rocky’ Anderson alleges NSA engaged in ‘blanket spying’ of Salt Lake City residents during 2002 Winter Olympics':
http://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/ross-rocky-anderson-alleges -nsa-engaged-in-blanket-spying-of-salt-lake-city-residents-during-2002 -winter-olympics/story-fnh81jut-1227492921984

and RT has a TV interview with Rocky Anderson:
'‘NSA put surveillance cone over Salt Lake City during 2002 Olympics without warrant’ –fmr SLC mayor': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vpxUMfItLU&feature=em-uploademail

[outsider]

Communications Management Units:
http://willpotter.com/cmu/

'Father Daniel Berrigan once said that “writing about prisoners is a little like writing about the dead.”[i]

I think what he meant was that we treat prisoners as ghosts, unseen and unheard. It’s easy to simply ignore them, and even easier when the government goes to great lengths to keep them hidden.

As a journalist, I think these stories—of what people in power do when no one is watching—are precisely the stories we need to tell.

That’s why I began investigating the most secretive and experimental prison units in the United States, for so-called “second-tier terrorists.”[ii]

The government calls these prisons Communications Management Units, or CMUs. Prisoners and guards call them Little Guantanamo.

They are islands unto themselves, but unlike Gitmo, they’re right here at home, floating within larger federal prisons.

There are two CMUs. One is inside the prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.

The second is inside this prison in Marion, Illinois. [iii]

Neither underwent the formal review process required by law when they were opened.[iv]

CMU prisoners have all been convicted of crimes. Some cases are questionable, and some involve threats and violence. I’m not here to argue the guilt or innocence of any prisoner. I’m here because, as Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall said, when the prison gates slam shut, prisoners do not lose their human quality.[v]

Every prisoner I’ve interviewed has said there are three flecks of light in the darkness of prison[vi]: phone calls, letters, and visits from family. CMUs are not solitary confinement, but they radically restrict all of these, to levels that meet or exceed the most extreme prisons in the country.

Their phone calls can be limited to 45 minutes per month, compared to the 300 minutes other prisoners receive.[vii]

Their letters can be limited to six pieces of paper. [viii]

Their visits can be restricted to 4 hours per month, compared[ix] to the Supermax where Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph can receive 35 hours.[x] On top of that, CMU visits are non-contact, meaning prisoners aren’t allowed to hug their family.

As one CMU prisoner has said: “We are not being tortured here, except psychologically.”[xi]

The government won’t say who is imprisoned here. [xii] [xiii] But through court documents, public records requests, and interviews with current and former prisoners, small windows into the CMUs have opened.

There’s an estimated 60-70 prisoners in CMUs, and they are overwhelmingly Muslim.[xiv]

They have included people like Dr. Rafil Dhafir, who violated the economic sanctions on Iraq by sending medical supplies for the children there. [xv]

And they’ve included people like Yassin Aref. Aref and his family fled to New York from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as refugees. [xvi]

He was arrested in 2004 as part of an FBI sting. Aref is an imam, and he thought he was being asked to bear witness to a loan, which is a tradition in Islamic culture. It turned out that one of the people involved in the loan was an FBI informant trying to enlist someone else in a fake attack. Aref didn’t know. He was convicted of conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist group.

CMUs also include some non-Muslim prisoners. The guards refer to them as “balancers.”[xvii] Meaning, they help balance out the racial numbers, in hopes of deflecting lawsuits.

These balancers include animal rights and environmental activists, like Daniel McGowan. McGowan was convicted of participating in two arsons in the name of defending the environment as part of the Earth Liberation Front.

During his sentencing, McGowan was afraid he would be sent to a rumored secret prison for terrorists. The judge dismissed him, saying those fears were not “supported by any facts.”[xviii]

That might be because the government hasn’t fully explained why some prisoners end up in a CMU, and who is accountable for that decision.

Prisoners are transferred out of general population and into a CMU without warning.

After McGowan was transferred, he was told it’s because he is a domestic terrorist[xix], a term the FBI uses repeatedly when talking about environmentalists.[xx]

In U.S. prisons, there are about 400 prisoners labeled as terrorists[xxi], but only a handful are in CMUs. In McGowan’s case, he was previously at a low-security prison, and had no communications violations. So why was he moved?

Like other CMU prisoners, McGowan repeatedly asked for an answer, a hearing, or some opportunity for appeal.

This example, from another prisoner, shows how those requests are viewed.

“Wants a transfer.” “Told him no.”[xxii]

At one point, the prison warden recommended McGowan’s transfer out of the CMU, saying he had great behavior. But the warden was overruled by the Bureau of Prisons’ Counter-Terrorism Unit working with the Joint Terrorism Task Force of the FBI.[xxiii]

Later, we found out that McGowan was really sent to a CMU not because of what he did, but what he has said.

A memo from the Counter-Terrorism Unit cited McGowan’s “anti-government” beliefs. [xxiv]......'

[outsider]

Carl Dix, a breath of fresh air in the cesspit of police brutality (he's not a cop, but a Revolutionary campaigner:

Police Violence & Mass Incarceration - Which Side Are You On? (Carl Dix Interview w/ Cenk Uygur):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMWDHA_ffOo

Here's his website: http://stopmassincarceration.net/

[outsider]

Well-Armed Activists Openly Defy Texas Law to Feed The Homeless:
http://www.thedailysheeple.com/well-armed-activists-openly-defy-texas- law-to-feed-the-homeless_122015

'When feeding the homeless becomes an act of civil disobedience, Americans have been asleep for far too long.

Luckily, however, there are still good people who are willing to defy such arbitrary and ill-conceived laws and ordinances.

The folks over at the aptly named organization Don’t Comply, took to the streets just outside the Austin Street Shelter in Dallas this weekend to perform, what has now become a revolutionary act – feeding the homeless.

“We are not complying with a bad law today,” Matthew Short, PR director of Don’t Comply said. “Evidently the city of Dallas believes that it’s wrong, or bad, or unlawful for us to feed more than a certain number of people at a time. But, during Christmas, we want to show love to our community and give these people a chance to survive the winter, whether it be with blankets or coats, or just giving them a holiday party like today with all kinds of cookies, and goodies, turkey and dressing, and the whole nine yards.”.....'


Not that anyone on here would suggest it, but most Americans are decent, albeit brain-washed, people.

Obama’s Four-Point Gun Confiscation Plan
http://www.thedailysheeple.com/obamas-four-point-gun-confiscation-plan _122015

New Ban Bill Hits Congress: Targets Semi-Automatic Rifles & Handguns:
http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/new-ban-bill-hits-congress-targe ts-semi-automatic-rifles-handguns-to-ensure-that-the-right-to-keep-and -bear-arms-is-not-unlimited_12272015