FBI Program Deputizes Corporations To Spy, Report On Workers, Among Others

If you haven't heard about InfraGard, a Bush Administration-FBI initiative to "fight the battle for homeland (in)security", you need to know. I've written about it in some detail at All Things Democrat, but you can also find the Democracy Now videocast of The Progressive's Matt Rothschild detailing it yesterday. Also, you can read his article here ("The FBI Deputizes Business").

At BEST, this is corporate favoritism and yet another program WE have to pay for with our tax dollars (many of these businesses involved with InfraGard not only pay minimal if any taxes, many are the recipients of huge rebates we also pay for).

At worst? Well, it staggers the imagination (like much of what the Bush Administration does).

Vermont's War To Violate Medical Privacy Wages Ever Onward

This latest widespread abuse of confidential medical drug records is IN ADDITION to a story first broken at Green Mountain Daily a few months back and I noted here - and the invasion continues! - that Vermont State Police, apparently bored (not enough one-day-expired emissions stickers they can ticket?), are going to pharmacies and demanding records on anyone taking painkillers along with antidepressants, etc.

And yet Vermont (ha!) is called the People's Socialist Republic of the U.S.:

Lawmakers Tuesday complained that a new electronic database of prescription drug records goes too far into the private lives of Vermonters. Members of the House Human Services Committee, who worked on the plan creating the state-run database of all prescribed drugs in Vermont, said the program now appears to have powers beyond what they envisioned when they passed it two years ago.

Committee members said the proposed policies of the Vermont Prescription Drug Monitoring Program would allow the state to collect too much information on people prescribed medication and share it with too many other state government employees.Bowing to privacy concerns, the bill passed in 2006 called for the commissioner of the Vermont Department of Health "personally" to share that prescription drug data to the commissioner of the Vermont Department of Public Safety "personally."

But the proposed rules for the law – the policies created and carried out by the state based on legislation passed by lawmakers – would now allow lower-level officials within the two departments to give and receive the sensitive information.

"I can't remotely think that anyone could construe from the word 'personally' that we meant designees," said Rep. Anne Donahue, R-Northfield, who added that the changes had her "beyond stunned." "We had lots of discussions about this here in the committee."

The Vermont Legislature passed the drug-monitoring system two years ago to help stop the illegal use of prescription drugs, which is now the top source of fatal drug overdoses in the state. The system will be maintained by the Vermont Department of Health and information from it can be used by law enforcement officials for investigations into specific alleged crimes.

In at least three cases (and this isn't a case with a warrant for a specific person's records, but just wholesale "give us all you got on anyone" situation), they've gotten it, too, with these being only the cases we KNOW about. Many pharmacies, of course, would never admit to providing this information because this would be a pharmacy that would (guaranteed) lose customers.

But the Vermont Congress can't skate here; anyone who agrees to the establishment of such a database DAMN WELL KNOWS it will be abused far worse than what individuals might do with those meds.

Prescriptions: Just Between You, Your Doctor, AND Your State Police

As Julie at DailyKos points out from an article posted yesterday at Green Mountain Daily, the Vermont state police wants prescription drug records on citizens (not those suspected of committing crimes but information about anyone who takes drugs the police find "interesting" - full-scale data-mining of which any fascist police state would be damned proud).

Excuse me, is there a constitutional lawyer reading here who might be willing to help me start a class action suit? I won't stand for this, so I certainly won't sit back.

This isn't some "silly trip down the rabbit hole" - this is yet another bad butcher job on the U.S. Constitution, the Vermont government, and individual privacy. If they are allowed to do it here in Vermont, they WILL do it where you live, too. And imagine the myriad ways they can abuse it and "lose" it to data insecurity.

Patriot Act Follies

Yet another thing US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has lied about; claiming there are no verified reports of abuses of the U.S. Patriot Act when he has them piling up.

Slamming The Door Shut On A Dick

According to the Washington Post, support for the impeachment of (at the very least) Vice President Dick Cheney is growing.

The National Disgrace Called Gitmo

We have committed at least as great atrocities against others - many of them just as innocent as so many who died on September 11th, 2001 - in the name of the national security we not only didn't have then but have even less of today. That we operate anything like Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, or many other politically-oriented prisons like those Jose Padilla is held in as well as the countless "secret" prisons throughout the world does more than endanger us; it betrays absolutely everything that this country and we, its people, are supposed to stand for.

From The New York Times Op/Ed page Wednesday (June 6, 2007):

Ever since President Bush rammed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 through Congress to lend a pretense of legality to his detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, we have urged Congress to amend the law to restore basic human rights and judicial process. Rulings by military judges this week suggest that the special detention system is so fundamentally corrupt that the only solution is to tear it down and start again.

The target of the judges’ rulings were Combatant Status Review Tribunals, panels that determine whether a prisoner is an “unlawful enemy combatant” who can be tried by one of the commissions created by the 2006 law. The tribunals are, in fact, kangaroo courts that give the inmates no chance to defend themselves, allow evidence that was obtained through torture and can be repeated until one produces the answer the Pentagon wants.

On Monday, two military judges dismissed separate war crimes charges against two Guantánamo inmates because of the status review system. They said the Pentagon managed to get them declared “enemy combatants,” but not “unlawful enemy combatants,” and moved to try them anyway under the 2006 law. That law says only unlawful combatants may be tried by military commissions. Lawful combatants (those who wear uniforms and carry weapons openly) fall under the Geneva Conventions.

If the administration loses an appeal, which it certainly should, it will no doubt try to tinker with the review tribunals so they produce the desired verdict. Congress cannot allow that. When you can’t win a bet with loaded dice, something is wrong with the game.

There is only one path likely to lead to a result that would allow Americans to once again hold their heads high when it comes to justice and human rights. First, Congress needs to restore the right of the inmates of Guantánamo Bay to challenge their detentions. By the administration’s own count, only a small minority of the inmates actually deserve a trial. The rest should be sent home or set free.

Read the rest here (no subscription required).

Nicholas Kristof: "Repression By China, And By Us"

I have some very big conflicts when it comes to Kristof, one of The New York Times' top Op/Ed columnists, but I daresay he got most of this right. What's more, it's very important reading for us.

I’d meant to focus this column on a Chinese woman whose battle for justice has led the police to arrest her more than 30 times, lock her in an insane asylum, humiliate her sexually, shock her with cattle prods, beat her until she is crippled and, worst of all, take away her young daughter.

The case of Li Guirong, a graying 50-year-old who now hobbles on crutches, reflects China at its worst — government by thuggery. But each time I start this column, I feel that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have pulled the rug out from under me. Do I really have the right to complain about torture or extra-legal detentions in China when we Americans do the same in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba?

I keep remembering a heated conversation I had in Yunnan Province when I lived in China years ago. I reproached an official for China’s torture and arbitrary imprisonment, and he retorted that China was fragile and had lost hundreds of thousands of lives in the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. “If you Americans ever faced the threat of chaos, you would do just the same,” he said.

“Impossible!” I replied.

Yet I owe him an apology, for he has been proven right. The moment we did feel a threat, after 9/11, we held people without trial, and beatings were widespread enough that more than 110 of our prisoners died in custody in places like Abu Ghraib, Bagram and Guantánamo.

Our extrajudicial detentions and mistreatment of prisoners are wrong in and of themselves. But they also undercut our own ability to speak against oppression and torture around the world.

Read the rest here.

Our Own Tough Times: New Orleans

Although it's unlikely you heard about it (since it's no longer "fashionable" to cover New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there was a big demonstration in NOLA over last weekend because these folks are so damned far from being able to call tbeir beloved city worthy of habitation... at least, worthy of habitation outside big and wealthy neighborhoods and major concerns moving in to grab cheapened land.

Let me share a horrific statistic: NOLA was pledged something like $830 million by various countries to provide aid. To date, the Bush Administration's federal government has released no more than $40 million of this to NOLA. We know they have far more sitting there, and other countries keep asking Washington when they can send their money so it can be used.

(facetious mode on) I'm certain keeping the majority low income, people "of color" population from the funds they need, especially in light of a Democratic mayor and a Democratic woman governor, plays no role whatsover.

And if you believe the last paragraph, I've got some lovely "real estate" in the Ninth Ward to show you.

Paul Krugman: "Distract and Disenfranchise"

Rozius brings us Monday's missive from Professor Krugman; read it all here or accept my big snip-snip-snip:

I have a theory about the Bush administration abuses of power that are now, finally, coming to light. Ultimately, I believe, they were driven by rising income inequality.

Let me explain.

In 1980, when Ronald Reagan won the White House, conservative ideas appealed to many, even most, Americans. At the time, we were truly a middle-class nation. To white voters, at least, the vast inequalities and social injustices of the past, which were what originally gave liberalism its appeal, seemed like ancient history. It was easy, in that nation, to convince many voters that Big Government was their enemy, that they were being taxed to provide social programs for other people.

Since then, however, we have once again become a deeply unequal society. Median income has risen only 17 percent since 1980, while the income of the richest 0.1 percent of the population has quadrupled. The gap between the rich and the middle class is as wide now as it was in the 1920s, when the political coalition that would eventually become the New Deal was taking shape.

And voters realize that society has changed. They may not pore over income distribution tables, but they do know that today’s rich are building themselves mansions bigger than those of the robber barons. They may not read labor statistics, but they know that wages aren’t going anywhere: according to the Pew Research Center, 59 percent of workers believe that it’s harder to earn a decent living today than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

You know that perceptions of rising inequality have become a political issue when even President Bush admits, as he did in January, that “some of our citizens worry about the fact that our dynamic economy is leaving working people behind.”

But today’s Republicans can’t respond in any meaningful way to rising inequality, because their activists won’t let them. You could see the dilemma just this past Friday and Saturday, when almost all the G.O.P. presidential hopefuls traveled to Palm Beach to make obeisance to the Club for Growth, a supply-side pressure group dedicated to tax cuts and privatization.

The Republican Party’s adherence to an outdated ideology leaves it with big problems. It can’t offer domestic policies that respond to the public’s real needs. So how can it win elections?

The answer, for a while, was a combination of distraction and disenfranchisement.

The terrorist attacks on 9/11 were themselves a massive, providential distraction; until then the public, realizing that Mr. Bush wasn’t the moderate he played in the 2000 election, was growing increasingly unhappy with his administration. And they offered many opportunities for further distractions. Rather than debating Democrats on the issues, the G.O.P. could denounce them as soft on terror. And do you remember the terror alert, based on old and questionable information, that was declared right after the 2004 Democratic National Convention?

But distraction can only go so far. So the other tool was disenfranchisement: finding ways to keep poor people, who tend to vote for the party that might actually do something about inequality, out of the voting booth.

Remember that disenfranchisement in the form of the 2000 Florida “felon purge,” which struck many legitimate voters from the rolls, put Mr. Bush in the White House in the first place. And disenfranchisement seems to be what much of the politicization of the Justice Department was about.

Several of the fired U.S. attorneys were under pressure to pursue allegations of voter fraud — a phrase that has become almost synonymous with “voting while black.” Former staff members of the Justice Department’s civil rights division say that they were repeatedly overruled when they objected to Republican actions, ranging from Georgia’s voter ID law to Tom DeLay’s Texas redistricting, that they believed would effectively disenfranchise African-American voters.

The rest is here.

Life In The Bush-Big Brother America: "My National Security Letter Gag Order"

Pundits are great for saying things like "President George W. Bush has never asked Americans to sacrifice anything in these dark and scary times."

But that is simply NOT true. Americans have been required to sign away their freedom and other tenets upon which this nation was founded by ancestors like mine. Time and again, the Bushies prove they cannot accurately assess intelligence and frequently abuse Americans' trust and reasonable expectation of privacy, only to have these same Bushies demand more and more access to our private lives.

With these so-called "National Security Letters" or NSLs, they can snoop wherever and whenever they like; and just the sending of an NSL can make people treat the person being "checked out" quite differently. For example, as in my case, a "friendly inquiry" to a publisher results in lost work because who wants to have to deal with Alberto Gonzales' corrupt Department of (In)Justice?

Here, from the Washington Post, is someone's tale of such a National Security Letter and its attendant gag order. Read it all:

It is the policy of The Washington Post not to publish anonymous pieces. In this case, an exception has been made because the author -- who would have preferred to be named -- is legally prohibited from disclosing his or her identity in connection with receipt of a national security letter. The Post confirmed the legitimacy of this submission by verifying it with the author's attorney and by reviewing publicly available court documents.

The Justice Department's inspector general revealed on March 9 that the FBI has been systematically abusing one of the most controversial provisions of the USA Patriot Act: the expanded power to issue "national security letters." It no doubt surprised most Americans to learn that between 2003 and 2005 the FBI issued more than 140,000 specific demands under this provision -- demands issued without a showing of probable cause or prior judicial approval -- to obtain potentially sensitive information about U.S. citizens and residents. It did not, however, come as any surprise to me.

Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand -- a context that the FBI still won't let me discuss publicly -- I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled.

Rather than turn over the information, I contacted lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union, and in April 2004 I filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSL power. I never released the information the FBI sought, and last November the FBI decided that it no longer needs the information anyway. But the FBI still hasn't abandoned the gag order that prevents me from disclosing my experience and concerns with the law or the national security letter that was served on my company. In fact, the government will return to court in the next few weeks to defend the gag orders that are imposed on recipients of these letters.

Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case -- including the mere fact that I received an NSL -- from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie.

I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation.

The inspector general's report makes clear that NSL gag orders have had even more pernicious effects. Without the gag orders issued on recipients of the letters, it is doubtful that the FBI would have been able to abuse the NSL power the way that it did. Some recipients would have spoken out about perceived abuses, and the FBI's actions would have been subject to some degree of public scrutiny. To be sure, not all recipients would have spoken out; the inspector general's report suggests that large telecom companies have been all too willing to share sensitive data with the agency -- in at least one case, a telecom company gave the FBI even more information than it asked for. But some recipients would have called attention to abuses, and some abuse would have been deterred.

I found it particularly difficult to be silent about my concerns while Congress was debating the reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2005 and early 2006. If I hadn't been under a gag order, I would have contacted members of Congress to discuss my experiences and to advocate changes in the law. The inspector general's report confirms that Congress lacked a complete picture of the problem during a critical time: Even though the NSL statute requires the director of the FBI to fully inform members of the House and Senate about all requests issued under the statute, the FBI significantly underrepresented the number of NSL requests in 2003, 2004 and 2005, according to the report.

I recognize that there may sometimes be a need for secrecy in certain national security investigations. But I've now been under a broad gag order for three years, and other NSL recipients have been silenced for even longer. At some point -- a point we passed long ago -- the secrecy itself becomes a threat to our democracy. In the wake of the recent revelations, I believe more strongly than ever that the secrecy surrounding the government's use of the national security letters power is unwarranted and dangerous. I hope that Congress will at last recognize the same thing.

Paul Krugman: "Don't Cry For Reagan"

Yes, I am very, very late in posting Monday's Paul Krugman, but it's worth the wait (if you haven't already read it. The whole text lies here; I offer a snippet, size large.

As the Bush administration sinks deeper into its multiple quagmires, the personality cult the G.O.P. once built around President Bush has given way to nostalgia for the good old days. The current cover of Time magazine shows a weeping Ronald Reagan, and declares that Republicans “need to reclaim the Reagan legacy.”

But Republicans shouldn’t cry for Ronald Reagan; the truth is, he never left them. There’s no need to reclaim the Reagan legacy: Mr. Bush is what Mr. Reagan would have been given the opportunity.

In 1993 Jonathan Cohn — the author, by the way, of a terrific new book on our dysfunctional health care system — published an article in The American Prospect describing the dire state of the federal government. Changing just a few words in that article makes it read as if it were written in 2007.

Thus, Mr. Cohn described how the Interior Department had been packed with opponents of environmental protection, who “presided over a massive sell-off of federal lands to industry and developers” that “deprived the department of several billion dollars in annual revenue.” Oil leases, anyone?

Meanwhile, privatization had run amok, because “the ranks of public officials necessary to supervise contractors have been so thinned that the putative gains of contracting out have evaporated. Agencies have been left with the worst of both worlds — demoralized and disorganized public officials and unaccountable private contractors.” Holy Halliburton!

Not mentioned in Mr. Cohn’s article, but equally reminiscent of current events, was the state of the Justice Department under Ed Meese, a man who gives Alberto Gonzales and John Mitchell serious competition for the title of worst attorney general ever. The politicization of Justice got so bad that in 1988 six senior officials, all Republicans, including the deputy attorney general and the chief of the criminal division, resigned in protest.

Why is there such a strong family resemblance between the Reagan years and recent events? Mr. Reagan’s administration, like Mr. Bush’s, was run by movement conservatives — people who built their careers by serving the alliance of wealthy individuals, corporate interests and the religious right that took shape in the 1960s and 1970s. And both cronyism and abuse of power are part of the movement conservative package.

In part this is because people whose ideology says that government is always the problem, never the solution, see no point in governing well. So they use political power to reward their friends, rather than find people who will actually do their jobs.

Find the rest at Rozius Unbound.

Bush's Personal Goon Squad

As raised here, in Paul Krugman's op/ed in The Times on Monday, and throughout hundreds if not thousands of blog entries around the blogosphere, virtually no one is surprised by the revelations that Bush and his henchhog, Karl Rove, have basically used U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the entire (In)Justice Department as their personal goon squad: wiping out any federal prosecutor who would not bend to their will, who refused to "invent" indictments against Democrats (not that Dems don't engage in bad behavior, mind you, but it's clear the Bushies and Republicans were willing to resort to fiction here) or continued - damn them! - to investigate the many abuses by Republicans who took their Congressional majority as a license to loot and plunder and rape American laws, American taxpayers, and whoever else they could.

But we need not only to look long and hard at what the Bushies did with these fired federal prosecutors - and what Scooter Libby and his pals did to CIA covert operative Valerie Plame - but also beyond to the many other means and agencies have been called upon to serve the dark masters of the Bush Administration. Agencies like the IRS (whose mandate to go after ever smaller taxpayers often means creating fear in such taxpayers to speak out) and others. I suspect we'd be bowled-over by what they find even if they just rub a tiny bit at the surface. After all, the Bushies have been so certain of their "mandate" that they rarely have bothered to hide their tracks well, since they felt assured they were in control of those who would investigate.

Neat trick.