States Resist Illegal NSA, FBI, DEA Spying

How Can the States Provide Fourth Amendment Protection Against the NSA?

Friday, 15 November 2013 11:03 By Michael Boldin, Truthout | Op-Ed

(Photo: EFF Photos / Flickr)In her 2004 Brooklyn Law Review article, Ann Althouse offered some powerful suggestions on how to resist "anti-terrorism" powers, such as the Patriot Act, and should be seen as a guide to resisting NSA spying:

The fight against terrorism has raised concerns that the federal government has overreached its legitimate power. Concerns about racial profiling, invasions of privacy, unreasonable searches, and infringement on free speech have fueled a political movement, led by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC), urging state and local government to adopt resolutions directing their officials not to participate in at least some aspects of the antiterrorism effort.

More on applying this to the NSA in a moment. First, is this legal?

The Doctrine
The ACLU and BORDC resolutions against the Patriot Act (and subsequent ACLU-backed state laws refusing to comply with the 2005 REAL ID Act) were based on a widely accepted legal principle known as the "anticommandeering doctrine."
This means the federal government cannot require a state to carry out federal acts. The federal government can pass a law and try to enforce it, but your state isn't required to help them.

The US Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed anticommandeering, relevant court cases being:
* 1842 Prigg: The court held that states weren't required to enforce federal slavery laws.
* 1992 New York: The court held that Congress couldn't require states to enact specified waste disposal regulations.
* 1997 Printz: The court held that "the federal government may not compel the states to enact or administer a federal regulatory program."

Under this doctrine, Althouse noted that "state and local government officials, if they have the nerve, will be able to decline to carry out the anti-terrorism tasks Congress or the president attempts to assign to them."

Applied to NSA
This can have a significant impact on the NSA's ability to continue its mass-spying programs.
In 2006, the Baltimore Sun reported that the NSA had maxed out the capacity of the Baltimore-area power grid:

The NSA is already unable to install some costly and sophisticated new equipment. At minimum, the problem could produce disruptions leading to outages and power surges. At worst, it could force a virtual shutdown of the agency.

To get around the physical limitation of the amount of power required to monitor virtually every piece of communication around the globe, the NSA started searching for new locations with independent resources.

A location was chosen in San Antonio because of the independent power grid in Texas. The new Utah Data Center was chosen for access to cheap utilities, primarily water. The water-cooled supercomputers there require 1.7 million gallons of water per day to function.

That water is being supplied by a political subdivision of the State of Utah. Under the anticommandeering doctrine, Utah isn't required to provide that water.
No water = No NSA data center.

But it's not just Utah, and it's not just water. The war on drugs, for example, is a major benefactor of NSA data collection. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the DEA's Special Operations Division works closely with the NSA, passing "tips" along to local law enforcement and instructing them to cover their tracks so the public doesn't learn where the information came from.
EFF calls this "intelligence laundering," which flat-out "bypasses the Constitution."

The Act
Following the lead of the ACLU and BORDC, model legislation to refuse cooperation with the NSA is now available for introduction in your state. The 4th Amendment Protection Act would ban states like Utah from providing water, or Texas from providing electricity, to NSA data centers. It would also ban law enforcement from receiving "tips" from the DEA's special operations division.
In addition, the Act prevents state-run universities from partnering with the NSA. Currently there are 166 so-called "Centers of Academic Excellence" around the country. These schools are major research and recruiting centers for the agency.

Corporations could find themselves in trouble, too, under the proposed Act:

Any corporation or person that provides services to or on behalf of this state and violates the prohibitions of Section 2 of this act shall be forever ineligible to act on behalf of, or provide services to, this state or any political subdivision of this state.

As a result, corporations like Georgia Power, Rocky Mountain Power, Big-D Construction or Intercontinental Hotels just might give pause before signing a new contract to provide services to the NSA.

Can It Work?
This same process was used effectively by northern abolitionists in resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Today, states like Washington and Colorado are helping end the war on cannabis by refusing to comply with federal prohibition.
We should follow their courageous path against the NSA as well.

Calling your state representative and senator today and encouraging them to introduce and pass the 4th Amendment Protection Act would be a good first step. It's not going to be easy, but sooner or later, we're going to have to stop putting up with it.
Rosa Parks may have put it best:

People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.

Progressive Mayor Wins in NYC

Tom Hayden on Bill de Blasio's Win: A Harbinger of a New Populist Left in America?

Bold stances on inequality and overzealous policing propelled a progressive victory. If he holds true, can De Blasio shift the national debate?

November 6, 2013  |  

The overwhelming support of  New York City voters for  Bill de Blasio is the latest sign of the shift towards a new populist left in America. De Blasio owes his unexpected tailwind to campaigning on issues considered by insiders to be too polarizing for winning politics.

One is De Blasio's promise to redress the " tale of two cities" inequalities among New Yorkers, an issue forced into mainstream discourse by the 2011  Occupy Wall Street movement – not by New York  Democratsaligned with Wall Street. The other is De Blasio's pledge to sharply curb police stop-and-frisk policies directed against young people of color – aggressive tactics  favored by a majority of white voters and overwhelmingly criticized by African Americans, Latinos and Asian-American voters.

Despite its Democratic voter majority, New York in recent decades has been the political stronghold of the plutocratic Mayor  Michael Bloombergand, before him, the abrasive law-and-order Mayor Rudolph Giuliani – both  Republicans with national, even global, reach. Democrats have lacked a progressive voice on the national stage of American politics often provided by the New York mayor's office – until now.

De Blasio will have a mandate for economic and social reform backed by a newly-elected 51-member city council, the most progressive in years. As  Juan Gonzáles of Pacifica's DemocracyNow! put it:

I can't think of a time like this when so many progressives have been elected at once.

With American politics polarized between the Obama center and the thriving Tea Party, the only opening for the left is through state and local federalism serving as "laboratories of reform", to  paraphrase former Justice Louis Brandeis. After the Gilded Age and the Great Crash of the 1920s, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia (1934-47) and legislators like Robert Wagner created the first pillars of the New Deal before it become the national platform of the Democrats. They successfully fought not only Wall Street bankers, but a virulent and racist American right.

De Blasio is positioned to similarly shift the nation's dialogue, policies and priorities in a progressive direction – assuming he delivers on his campaign pledges. Since the financial crisis of 2008, the federal government has passed a  loophole-ridden Dodd-Frank reform law, which failed even to regulate the trillions floating in the derivatives industry. Wall Street investors have been richly rewarded since then, while  middle-class incomes stagnate and the numbers of poor Americans reach the highest in 50 years. A report last week from the respected  American Community Survey noted:

No other major American city has such income inequality when it comes to rich and poor when it comes to New York.

Among De Blasio's first challenges will be prodding Governor Andrew Cuomo and the state legislature in Albany to permit local tax increases to fund universal pre-kindergarten in New York City. Cuomo and most pundits say the De Blasio proposal is going nowhere, but seasoned reporters like Gonzales are not so sure. "It's hard but doable. I'm not sure that Albany will resist the home rule message from a new mayor with a large mandate."

De Blasio has direct power over New York City's $70bn budget and re-zoning policies, which, under Bloomberg, showered favors on a real estate industry bent on  competing with London and Hong Kong at the expense of residential neighborhoods. An early test for De Blasio will be the  Midtown East re-zoning project left unfinished by Bloomberg, which would erect Empire State Building skyscrapers from the East River to downtown. De Blasio wants to "fix" the proposal, while community groups are 100% opposed, saying they would be left in permanent shadows.

Bold stances on inequality and overzealous policing propelled a progressive victory. If he holds true, can De Blasio shift the national debate?

De Blasio also can tackle income inequality by signing the living wage ordinance on city contracts, or by preventing Wall Street developers getting special city abatements – measures that Bloomberg vetoed. De Blasio didn't flinch on the issue when confronted in closed meetings with developers during the campaign.

When De Blasio first  raised his opposition to the police stop-and-frisk policies, according to  Vincent Warren of the Center for Constitutional Rights, the candidate began rising in the polls against other contenders in the Democratic primary. The stop-and-frisk policy, a variation of racial profiling against black and brown young people, is generally supported by white and worried New Yorkers and overwhelmingly opposed by communities of color.

De Blasio and his African-American wife have a teenager, named Dante, whose  Afro style even caught the attention of President Obama. As Dante leafleted with his father at subway turnstiles, emotional memories of the murdered Florida teenager Trayvon Martin were palpable, if rarely mentioned.

New York under Mayor Giuliani fanned then popular American policies of mass incarceration towards youngsters who resembled Dante de Blasio. From 2008 to 2012, the  NYPD stopped nearly 2.9 million New Yorkers, a majority of them young, about 85% black or brown. On average, 88% of those stopped were  completely innocent of any crime or misdemeanor.

When a federal appeals court  halted a judicial order ordering detailed changes in the NYPD last week, De Blasio expressed "extreme disappointment" and pledged to move forward on police reform from day one. How he will do so is procedurally muddled for the moment, but there is little doubt that another staple of the Bloomberg era is ready for the dustbin.

Will De Blasio adhere to his promises? He is, after all, a mainstream Democratic party operative and policy wonk who once managed Hillary Clinton's centrist campaign for the US Senate. Decades ago, he was deeply involved in the Nicaragua Solidarity Movement against Ronald Reagan's illegal contra war. De Blasio seemed nervous when this past association surfaced earlier in the campaign. But the Republicans could gain no traction on the issue.

It is reassuring that De Blasio has roots in past social movements instead of the usual pedigrees for a political career. If he has veered back to his lefty roots, it is enabled by a popular anger among voters. This anger was fanned by the growing gap between the haves and have-nots, reinforced by heavy-handed policing, in a city whose power brokers are addicted to opulence.

The media widely acknowledges that Occupy Wall Street " changed the conversation" in America. De Blasio won't represent the 99%, but a healthy majority will do. From Wednesday, Bill de Blasio will have the largest megaphone of any conversation-changer on the national scene.

 

Tom Hayden was a leader of the student, civil rights, peace and environmental movements of the 1960s. He served 18 years in the California legislature, where he chaired labor, higher education and natural resources committees. He is the author of ten books, including "Street Wars" (New Press, 2004). He is a professor at Occidental College, Los Angeles, and was a visiting fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics last fall.

GOP Cuts Food Stamps, Loves Corp Welfare

Food Stamps Are Affordable; Corporate Welfare Is Not

Tuesday, 05 November 2013 15:07 By The Daily Take, The Thom Hartmann Program | Op-Ed

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: SqueakyMarmot, teresia )

Republicans are outraged for all the wrong reasons.
This past Friday, $5 billion was automatically slashed from the federal food stamps program, affecting the lives of 47 million Americans.

The USDA estimates that because of these cuts, a family of four who receives food stamps benefits will lose about 20 meals per month.

But these enormous cuts to food stamps aren't enough for Republicans.
They still want to slash an additional $40 billion from the program in the name of reducing spending and federal debt.

Republicans love to argue that programs like SNAP - the federal food stamps program – and other social safety net programs put an unfair burden on American taxpayers, but if they just took a minute to crunch the numbers, they'd realize that's flat out wrong.

In 2012, the average American taxpayer making $50,000 per year paid just $36 towards the food stamps program.

That's just ten cents a day!
That's less than the cost of a gumball.
But Republicans think that's still too high a price to pay to help the neediest and most vulnerable Americans.
 And when it comes to funding the rest of America's social safety net programs, the average American taxpayer making $50,000 a year pays just over six dollars a year.
Simply put, the American taxpayer isn't paying much for social safety net programs like food stamps and Medicare.

But we are paying a lot for the billions of dollars the U.S. government gives to corporate America each year.

The average American family pays a staggering $6,000 a year in subsidies to Republican-friendly big business.

And that's just the average family. A family making more than $50,000 a year - say $70,000 a year - pays even more to pad the wallets of corporate America.
So where does some of that $6,000 that you and I are paying every year actually go?
For starters, $870 of it goes to direct subsidies and grants for corporations.
This includes money for subsidies to Big Oil companies that are polluting our skies and fueling climate change and global warming. Compare that to the $36 you and I pay for food stamps a year.

An additional $870 goes to corporate tax subsidies.
The Tax Foundation has found that the "special tax provisions" of corporations cost taxpayers over $100 billion per year, or roughly $870 per family.
But in reality, that number is much higher.

Citizens for Tax Justice found that the U.S. Treasury lost $181 billion in corporate tax subsidies, which means the average American family could be out as much as $1,600 per year.
 
Finally, of the $6,000 in corporate subsidies that the average American family pays each year,
$1,231 of it goes to making up for revenue losses from corporate tax havens.

This money goes to recouping losses from giant transnational corporations like Apple and GE that hide their money overseas to boost profits and avoid paying taxes to help the American economy.

The bottom-line here is that American families are paying $6,000 or more per year to subsidize giant transnational corporations that are already making billions and billions of dollars in profit each year. In the past decade alone, corporations have doubled their profits.

Republicans on Capitol Hill keep suggesting that we can't afford to help the poor in this country, and they're wrong.

What we really can't afford is doling out $100 billion each year to corporations that don't need it.   That's where the real outrage and the real news coverage should be.

It's time to bring an end to corporate welfare, and to use those dollars to help those Americans who need it the most.

   
This article was first published on Truthout and any reprint or reproduction on any other website must acknowledge Truthout as the original site of publication. 

Progressives & Tea Party Rein in NSA Spying

Congressmen Write Landmark Surveillance Reform

Amash, Bipartisan Coalition Introduce Comprehensive Bill to Rein in NSA Snooping

Oct 29, 2013 Issues: Defense and National Security

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                       

October 29, 2013                                                                               

 

Congressmen Write Landmark Surveillance Reform

Amash, Bipartisan Coalition Introduce Comprehensive Bill to Rein in NSA Snooping

Washington, D.C. – Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) and a bipartisan coalition of congressmen this morning introduced comprehensive legislation to rein in the federal government’s unconstitutional surveillance of Americans.

The USA FREEDOM Act, H.R. 3361, reforms parts of the USA PATRIOT Act that have been used to surveil Americans’ telephone records and Internet activity, according to recent leaks.  Amash joined Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), and more than 70 cosponsors in the House. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced the companion bill in the Senate.

“The days of unfettered spying on the American people are numbered. This is the bill the public has been waiting for. We now have legislation that ceases the government’s unconstitutional surveillance. I am confident that Americans and their representatives will rally behind it,” said Amash.  Amash continued, “I am thrilled to join senior colleagues on the Judiciary Committee such as Subcommittee Chairman Sensenbrenner and Ranking Member Conyers in introducing the bill.  Leading members on the committee of jurisdiction and a diverse group of more than 70 congressmen have signed on as original cosponsors. We have strong momentum.”

The comprehensive bill reforms several provisions in the Patriot Act that reportedly have been used to commit privacy abuses. First, the bill ends the government’s blanket collection of Americans’ records. Second, it increases the transparency of government surveillance. It ends the era of secret law by requiring FISA court opinions to be made available to all congressmen and summaries of the opinions to be made publicly available. Gag orders on telecommunications companies are modified so that the companies can make more information about government surveillance available to customers. Third, the bill increases privacy protections. It installs a Special Advocate to argue on behalf of Americans’ privacy before the FISA court, and the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board receives subpoena power to perform its duties.

Introduction of the Freedom Act marks a major acceleration in the movement to reform government surveillance. The Amash-Conyers amendment, which was substantively incorporated into the Freedom Act, failed narrowly on a 205-217 vote in July. Eight of the Freedom Act’s original cosponsors voted against Amash-Conyers. Sensenbrenner and Leahy are the primary authors of the Patriot Act, which the Freedom Act reforms.

 

CONTACT

Will Adams

(202) 225-3849

will.adams@mail.house.gov

Sliding by NSA's Illegal Spies

New Google technology ‘uProxy’ to provide uncensored Internet for global activists

Published time: October 22, 2013 00:45
Edited time: October 22, 2013 13:33

Get short URL

Reuters / Cathal McNaughton

Share on tumblr

Tags
Hacking, Human rights, Information Technology, Intelligence, Internet, USA

Internet privacy advocates and activists suffering under repressive government regimes may now have a new avenue for free expression with uProxy, a tool developed by Google that is expected to bypass censorship and invasive government monitoring.
Developed by Google’s New York City-based think tank Google Ideas, uProxy is a peer-to-peer service that allows one to establish an encrypted internet connection with someone they trust. Google, which provided the funding to developers Brave New Software and the University of Washington, hopes the new technology will outwit government officials around the world who have cracked down on the internet in recent years.
“If you look at existing proxy tools today, as soon as they’re effective for dissidents, the government finds out about them and either blocks them or infiltrates them,” Jared Cohen, director of Google Ideas, told Time magazine. “Every dissident we know in every repressive society has friends outside the country whom they know and trust. What if those trusted friends could unblock the access in those repressive societies by sharing their own access? That was the problem we tried to solve.”
Like Tor, uProxy consists of a simple browser extension that is capable of finding a user’s friends on Facebook. The service, currently in “restricted beta” mode, is not an anonymizing network like Tor but will render an individual connection indistinguishable from all other encrypted conversations online. That anonymity might itself be valuable, considering the lengths that agencies such as the NSA have gone to in order to crack Tor’s security.
“There’s no uProxy-specific mark on traffic that identifies the traffic as being sent by uProxy,” the service’s website notes.
A user in the US would essentially be able to provide an American connection to a friend in Iran, for example, without fear that the link would be revealed.
“The user in Iran can get unfiltered access to the internet that’s completely uncensored and will look just like it does in the US,” Cohen went on. “Every dissident we know in every repressive society has friend outside the country whom they know and trust. What if those trusted friends could unblock the access in those repressive societies by sharing their own access? That was the problem we tried to solve.”
“This is a company of activists and white-hat hackers,” he said. “When you work at Google and tell these engineers that their skill-set is relevant to somebody in Iran who doesn’t have access to information in their country or the rest of the world, it really inspires them to want to do something about it. There is a genuine altruism that exists at this company, and that’s why I’m here and not anywhere else.”
Google Ideas will introduce uProxy in a New York City conference titled “Conflict in a Connected World.” The event will also be the debut of Project Shield, a measure that will help human rights groups, major media organizations, and others fend off the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks which incapacitate a website by overwhelming it with traffic.
“We believe in human rights, we believe in free expression,” Cohen said. “We believe in election monitoring, and we believe in independent media.”

Murder of Labor Leaders Under CAFTA

AFL-CIO, Guatemalan Trade Unions Call for Reinstitution of Arbitral Panel After Flawed “Enforcement Plan” Failed to Protect Basic Workers’ Rights

October 22, 2013

Over 50 Guatemalan trade unionists killed, five years after the U.S. and Guatemalan trade unions filed a CAFTA petition 

(Washington, DC, October 22) – Recognizing the failure of the “Enforcement Plan” to protect the fundamental workers’ rights of Guatemalan workers under the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the AFL-CIO and the largest Guatemalan trade unions sent a letter today to the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Trade Representative, and to the Guatemalan Ministers of Labor and Economy calling for reinstitution of the arbitral panel. The “Enforcement Plan” was signed by both governments on April 26, 2013.

More than five years after the U.S. and Guatemalan trade unions filed the CAFTA petition, 50 Guatemalan trade unionists have been killed, and thousands of workers continue to be harassed, abused, and denied basic workplace protections.  Using the Enforcement Plan, the Government of Guatemala has further delayed arbitration and the possibility of justice for workers.  This plan has not given workers reason to hope that their rights will be protected and respected, or that the violations will be remedied.

“This plan has made advances on paper, such as the creation of a Rapid Response Team to rein in the worst employers, yet the team has taken no real actions to defend workers. The U.S. government must insist on concrete actions, not just new bureaucracies,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. “If the U.S. government is serious about defending labor rights in its trade agreements, and the government of Guatemala continues to fail in these and other areas detailed in our joint statement, the U.S. government must call to restart the arbitration process.”

In the letter, trade union leaders from both nations write that persistent and systemic violations of fundamental labor rights continue while the Government of Guatemala has failed to provide thorough oversight, effective remedial mechanisms and appropriate sanctions. In both the public and private sectors, Guatemalan workers still face serious barriers to exercising basic labor rights, including ongoing harassment and intimidation, as well as retaliation through firing and other abuses.

“The U.S. government must also insist that Guatemala consult with workers. The government submitted labor law reforms to Congress with no prior consultation and named officials to implement an inter-agency process with no review by the labor movement. Both measures were required by the plan, yet workers were excluded from the process,” said Carlos Luch, STECSA General Secretary; affiliated to FESTRAS.

Carlos Mancilla, the general secretary of CUSG, agreed: “The U.S. government should recognize the Enforcement Plan's failure to hold Guatemala to previous commitments to empower the Ministry of Labor to impose fines and other penalties when violations are found. As conceived, the Plan forces workers to seek justice in costly and slow legal processes.”

The labor unions called for a return to the Arbitral Panel, which was first established by the United States in August 2011 as a result of the Government of Guatemala’s consistent failure to effectively enforce its labor laws under CAFTA.  The two governments suspended the Arbitral Panel when they began negotiating the “Enforcement Plan,” but the plan did not include proposals made by the Guatemalan trade unions and was fundamentally misconceived.

By delaying the Panel, the Plan has given the Government of Guatemala another opportunity to deny justice for Guatemalan workers.  To rectify the situation, the letter recommends the governments use the Panel to engage in a tri-partite dialogue and consultation to address noncompliance with the labor chapter of CAFTA and the ongoing issues of violence against trade unionists. '

Contact: Gonzalo Salvador (202) 637-5018

Chase Fined $13 Billion for Fraud

JPMorgan to Pay $13 Billion for 

Mortgage Claims

Saturday, 19 Oct 2013 05:43 PM

 

Share:

• 9
  inShare

JPMorgan Chase has reached a tentative $13 billion agreement with the U.S. Justice Department to settle a range of mortgage issues, a source familiar with the talks said on Saturday.

The tentative deal does not release the bank from criminal liability, a factor that had been a major sticking point in the discussions, the source said.

As part of the deal, the bank will continue to cooperate in criminal inquiries into certain individuals involved in the conduct at issue, the source, who declined to be identified.

Officials at JPMorgan and the Justice Department declined to comment.

A breakthrough in the weeks-long talks came Friday night, after Attorney General Eric Holder and JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon spoke on the phone and the bank agreed to leave criminal liability out of the settlement, the source said.

The bank and the Justice Department have been discussing a broad deal that would resolve not only a civil investigation into mortgage securities that the bank sold in the runup to the financial crisis, but also similar lawsuits from the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the National Credit Union Administration, the state of New York and others.