Tweet
Here’s the latest news and updates on civil liberties and digital freedom issues. If you have any news tips and would like to contact me, email kevin.gosztola@firedoglake.com.
Former Guantanamo detainee David Hicks has had his book short-listed for a taxpayer-funded literary prize in Australia. The short-listing has drawn criticism, but Queensland’s Premier Anna Bligh defends the short-listing saying the nomination is a “profound reaffirmation of the values that distinguish us from those who want to terrorize others.”
Christian Dominionism poses a profound threat to society. However, reporting on the threat has been attacked. Adele M. Stan has details in a post at AlterNet.
Author of Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier, Suelette Dreyfus, defended WikiLeaks on “Q & A” show. She suggested WikiLeaks had shown regulators of democracy “failed” the people and that WikiLeaks and the media were the people’s last safeguard. ”I would say that the US is at a crisis point because it has become a surveillance state and the [National Security Agency] is intercepting 1.7 billion emails and telephone calls,” Dreyfus added.
If you didn’t get enough on Round 2 of the OpBART protest yesterday evening, Mission Local has a nice collection of tweets, video, photos, etc. Highlights show police let journalists go, because they were able to show their websites to police. Tweets leading to the arrest of a Mission Local appear in the story.
More on the FBI vs. Antiwar.com, from Marcy Wheeler. She examines the FBI’s file on Antiwar.com and draws a conclusion on why she thinks an agent in a Newark office began to investigate the website.
Torture in Bahrain is being made possible by Nokia Siemens. Al Khanjar, who was detained from August 2010 to February, says he was asked to explain his “communications.” If he didn’t explain them properly, he was subjected to more beatings.
A Truthout interview with Representative Jerrold Nadler addresses criticism’s Obama has faced on civil liberties. He mentions, in particular, the war on whistleblowing and also state secrets.
Here is what Nadler says on WikiLeaks in the context of the Obama administration’s attempt to extend the Espionage Act:
…it’s certainly a crime for whoever gave WikiLeaks the information if it was classified. It’s not a crime, or it’s never been considered a crime, for WikiLeaks to publish the information or to give it to The New York Times. And we don’t want to extend that, because you’d really shut down freedom of the press to a large extent.
Digby’s got a take on Mother Jones investigation into the FBI’s use of informants. “All the articles illustrate exactly how creeping authoritarianism overtakes a free nation. All it takes is a boogeyman and government sanctions to build the institutions and create the processes that over time become the norm,” at Digby’s Hullaballoo.
7 Comments
Stop the presses! A federal judge just stood up for the 4th Amendment and the People!
Judge rules warrant required to obtain cell phone location data
“A federal judge in Brooklyn ruled Monday that the federal government must establish probable cause and secure a warrant before obtaining records about a cell phone user’s location, saying it violated the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches, according to the New York Law Journal.
‘”While the government’s monitoring of our thoughts may be the archetypical Orwellian intrusion, the government’s surveillance of our movements of a considerable time period through new technologies, such as the collection of cell-site-location records, without the protections of the Fourth Amendment, puts our country far closer to Oceania than our Constitution permits,” Eastern District Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis wrote (PDF).”
Wow — Thanks for this update.
Thank you, fatster!!!
And especial THANKS to Eastern District Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis!!!
DW
It’s early here on the West coast , rubbing my eyes and WOW I did read that right .
Gonna be good day, starting right after I clean up the coffee you caused me to spill in my lap !!!
I have been being mocked for years about my concern for just what the religion mandated ideas of these dominionists means in practice. Anyone writing about the topic who claims their beliefs are just some exotica and have no influence on how office holders might legislate and regulate has never met one in the flesh. I say come live in my neighborhood. These people are real and numerous. In another world or time they would be considered psychotic. They choose a candidate on the basis of one thing, that being if he believes in Jesus. They expect the rest to follow.
The real issue with Wikileaks is the US practice of classification. The range of classified information is much too broad in practice.
And IMHO, we should very soon question the use of classification as a procedure itself. There needs to be a serious discussion in principle about how a transparent democratic society protects itself from having information exploited in pursuit of the destruction of democracy and transparency. This is not a trivial issue.
I’ll be more optimistic when that judge is in Oklahoma City. But even minor progress is progress.
Loved the judge’s use of Orwell. Even if it was highly circumscribed.