Rachel Neumann in Alternet presents a good wrap-up of the threats to our civil liberties resulting from the Patriot Act (I and II) and other legislation since Sept. 11--along with the good advice, "Use Them or Lose Them."

Still, it is not enough to wait for politicians to act. We must disabuse ourselves of the notion that it is only "other people's" liberties that are at stake. Our own government threatens our collective liberty far more than do outside sources. The response, as the Bill of Rights Defense Committees have shown, is to use our rights or lose them. Our right to think and speak for ourselves, without fear of spying neighbors, surveillance cameras or retaliation, is gravely threatened and only our collective and coordinated resistance will stop that threat.

We wrote in passing last week about the annoyance of the new "click it or ticket" campaign in Colorado aimed at getting drivers to wear seatbelts. Apparently, it's a nationwide program.

The ACLU today denounced the program as unfairly targeting hispanics.

Federal officials defend the checkpoints, saying Hispanics are less likely to buckle up because wearing seat belts is often not the law or custom in their countries of origin.

"Click It or Ticket" campaigns aimed at the general population began nationwide last week and run through Sunday. A separate program grants money for seat belt campaigns in Hispanic neighborhoods. Both are funded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

"In the absence of any data, I would ask why are they targeting Latinos?" said King Downing, the national coordinator for the American Civil Liberties Union's Campaign Against Racial Profiling. "Deciding to target certain areas based upon race goes right to the foundation of racial profiling.

NHTSA says the checkpoints are random in that they target one out of every ten drivers, not hispanics. We side with the ACLU director, who responds: "It's not exactly a random driver if the area that is targeted is a Latino area."

But the best line comes from Lorraine Novak, a senior regional program manager for the NHTSA.

"It's not profiling, it's targeting a specific population," Novak said.

[comments now closed]

The San Francisco Chronicle has some warnings about the newly renamed Terrorism Information Awareness project:

THE PENTAGON'S plan to mine countless governmental and commercial databases is no less worrisome than it was earlier, after a soothing report to Congress and a name change for better public relations. The Defense Department's "Total Information Awareness" program has been rechristened "Terrorism Information Awareness," to offset the impression that the brainchild of former Adm. John Poindexter would compile electronic dossiers on all Americans. The Department of Defense describes it, rather, as an effort "to protect U.S. citizens by detecting and defeating foreign terrorist threats before an attack." "

....The Pentagon's high-tech research now would collect untold trillions of additional "dots" from all kinds of records and transactions, plus far-out data like the shapes of faces and the way people walk (gait analysis), to provide more anti-terrorist tools.

....Civil libertarians are concerned, with good reason, about whether this can be done without intruding on the privacy and other rights of all of us whose everyday lives will be under surveillance. That is why Congress blocked further spending on the system pending a further report from the Pentagon (submitted May 20) on safeguards for innocent citizens. The Department of Defense has an "oversight board" to assess "privacy and civil liberties impacts," and assures us of its "commitment to the rule of law."

All well and good. But Congress should continue to keep Poindexter and his electronic spy team on a short leash as they use our dental records and pedestrian patterns in their search for terrorists.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, dedicated to preserving our privacy rights in the digital world, has this analysis of the DARPA report on the Total Information Awareness Project. The actual report is available here.

Let's hear it for Arcata, California. The Northern California town, not content to voice its disapproval of the Patriot Act, has gone further and made it a crime to comply with the Act.

Starting this month, a new city ordinance would impose a fine of $57 on any city department head who voluntarily complies with investigations or arrests under the aegis of the Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism bill passed after Sept. 11.

The town knows its ordinance is "mostly symbolic" since federal law takes precedence over state law. It doesn't care.

Home to about 16,000 and nearly 300 miles up the coast from San Francisco, Arcata made waves in the early 1990s as the first city with a Green Party majority. Greens now hold two of five seats on the council, which recently issued a proclamation against war in Iraq.

James Bovard takes on Ashcroft and the Patriot Acts I and II in Surveillance State--published in the May 19 issue of American Conservative. Bovard is the author of the upcoming Terrorism & Tyranny: How Bush's Crusade is Sabotaging Freedom, Justice, and Peace.

Welcome to America under the Patriot Act. One person claims to “smell something,” and the feds can round up everyone’s records. From books you check out to credit card purchases, money transfers to medications, your activities are now subject to federal surveillance. Uncle Sam now has a blank check to search and pry—all in the name of security.

Three months after 9/11, Ashcroft announced, “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this, your tactics only aid terrorists for they erode our national unity and ... give ammunition to American’s enemies.” Ashcroft is wrong to portray any criticism of Bush administration civil liberties policies as aiding and abetting terrorism. America is overdue for a searching examination of the powers the Bush administration has seized and the powers it is seeking.

Why is it that so many Conservatives seem to get it while the Democrats remain catatonic when it comes to the loss of our liberties? [link via Buzzflash]

Literary groups are banding together to decry the Patriot Act as an invasion of privacy:

32 organizations, including the American Booksellers Association, the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers, the American Library Association, PEN American Center, and the giant booksellers Borders and Barnes & Noble. It endorses a bill filed in March by Representative Bernard Sanders, Independent of Vermont, that would exempt bookstore sales records and library borrowing records from some provisions of the act.

In a separate statement supporting the Sanders bill, former US representative Patricia Schroeder, president of the library association, said, ''Section 215 seriously undermines the First Amendment-protected activities of authors and publishers, booksellers and librarians, and indeed anyone who reads.''

[link via PatriotWatch]

Sam Hamod and Elayne Cassel tell readers how they can resist the Bush Administration's War on Liberty with some concrete ideas for activism.

Laura Murphy, Director of the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office, testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims Thursday, telling the panel that the Bush Administration should target terrorists, not immigrants. You can read her full testimony here. Murphy first criticizes the Administration's erosion of due process rights through mandatory detention, lengthy detentions without charges, holding immigrants ordered deported, and selective enforcement of obscure immigration infractions.

Could Your Secret Security Profile Stop You from Traveling? Take this quiz from the ACLU and find out.

The next time you go to the airport, your name could be entered in a secretive new government database, and depending on your threat rating -- red, yellow or green -- you could be prevented from flying or even detained.

This new background check program, called Computer-Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System or CAPPS II, would assign a rating to every American based on information from secret intelligence and law enforcement databases and even commercial data such as purchase history and banking records.

Innocent Americans have already been stopped and banned from flying because their names erroneously appeared on government “no fly” lists. Take the ACLU’s new quiz to find out who’s being stopped from flying, and whether you could become one of them.

[link via Lisa English at Ruminate This.]

This first hand account of our Patriot Act at work by Jason Halperin was in the Friday L.A. Times--it's a must read (and reprinted by Common Dreams so you don't need an L.A. Times password:)

Loaded guns pointed in faces, people made to crawl, police officers kicking in doors, taunting, keeping their fingers on the trigger even after the situation was under control. A mistake. And, according to the ACLU, a perfectly legal one, thanks to the Patriot Act.

It happened to two roomates, both U.S. Citizens, during a routine dinner out at an Indian Restaurant in Times Square.

Children seeking asylum have a special need for volunteer legal representation. A new program providing it is the Juvenile Immigrant Representation Project:

According to the ABA, some 5,000 unaccompanied immigrant children were detained in the United States in 2001 alone. Some come to this country seeking asylum for the same reasons that adults do, but many are abandoned, orphaned by war, or brought here by smugglers. And unfortunately, despite facing deportation, they don't have the right to counsel -- which is where volunteer legal help comes in.

Today is the deadline for immigrants from five Muslim countries to register with the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Immigration advocates charge that the Government program is a catch-22.

Many aliens who registered have overstayed their visas or are otherwise in the country illegally, although many have applications pending to legalize their status. Illegal status brings the risk of detention.

The new rule has put immigration lawyer Kamal Nawash's clients in an awkward position. They are among the 640,000 illegal immigrants who took advantage of a special visa offered before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that allowed them to stay in the United States and seek permanent residency.

Those immigrants paid a $1,000 fine -- imposed as punishment for their illegal status -- and often thousands of dollars in legal fees to obtain the visas. Then, after the terror attacks, the federal government imposed the special registration requirements.

Nawash advised his clients to register, based on the assumption that immigration officials would allow latitude for people who were in the process of adjusting their immigration status to become legal.

He was mistaken.

The New York Times has more on the program here.

...more than 9,000 illegal immigrants have registered so far, hoping, perhaps, for leniency. They have all been issued notices to appear in court, often the first step toward deportation; about 2,300 have been detained for further questioning, for anywhere from a few hours to three days, lawyers and officials said. Immigration officials emphasized that the detainees represented only a small minority of those questioned.

There has to be a better way. We're reminded of the opening scenes in The Pianist, where day by day the restrictions increased against Jews in Poland--first registration, then armbands, then curfews, then the ghetto.

If you or a client or a family member have been through the process, the American Immigration Lawyers' Organization is seeking your input. Go here and fill out the form. Help them keep track of what is happening--we can't count on the Government to tell us.