The question, as Balkan noted at the start of the Obama presidency, is not whether we will have a growing surveillance and police state, but what that state will be like. Obama has begun to wind down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he hasn’t begun to roll back the most extreme civil liberties abuses tied to the earliest phases of that war. Liberals expected otherwise from a former constitutional law professor and candidate who campaigned against the excesses of the Bush administration.   

Here’s what Obama has done:

First, he has read his authority to waive the provision very broadly. He has both made clear that officials have the authority to waive it at any time with respect to individual detainees and has prospectively waived it himself with respect to several whole categories of suspects.

Some of these categories are quite broad–including, for example, any situation in which transferring someone to military custody might impair efforts to secure his cooperation or garner his confession.

Offhand, it’s actually a little hard for me to imagine too many cases that wouldn’t fit comfortably within at least one of the preemptive waivers the president has already issued. I suspect that isn’t an accident.

Second, Obama has set up a process for determining whether transfer to the military is required that will all-but-guarantee that it never is.

Even the estimate of more than $635 billion in such expenditures does not tell the full spending story. That figure does not include the national intelligence or military intelligence budgets for which the Obama Administration is seeking $52.6 billion and $19.6 billion respectively in 2013, or secret parts of the national security budget, the so-called black budget.

Local funding is also unaccounted for. New York’s Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly claims total national homeland security spending could easily be near a trillion dollars. Money well spent, he says — New York needs that anti-terror army, the thousands of surveillance cameras, those sophisticated new weapons, and, naturally, a navy that now includes six drone submarines (thanks to $540,000 in Homeland Security cash) to keep an eye on the terrorist threat beneath the waves.

And even that’s not enough.

Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world. Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for undermining due process. Other countries have been condemned for the use of secret evidence and torture.

Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own — the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves?

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While each new national security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet, objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit.

1) Our Planet Saw the Largest Increase in Carbon Emissions Since the Industrial Revolution
2) Widespread Trafficking Of Iraqi Women And Girls Thanks To The Iraq War
3) More Iraq Veterans Committed Suicide Last Year Than Active-Duty Troops Died In Combat
4) Drone Strikes Kill Innocent Civilians, Not Just 'Militants'
5) Record Number Of US Kids Face Hunger and Homelessness
6) Prisoners Are People Too
7) US Deports 46,000 Parents, Kids Left Behind In Foster Care
8) FBI Teaches Agents That Muslims Are Violent Radicals

As Greenwald points out, this idea - that an American who commits treason can be detained without due process - is in direct defiance of Article III, Section III of the Constitution, which reads:

"No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."

Here are five issues that are especially worrisome to civil liberties watchdogs:


1. Indefinite military detentions of U.S. citizens

According to Ben Brandt, a former adviser to Delta, the airlines and the feds should be less concerned with what gels your aunt puts in her carry-on, and more concerned about lax screening for terrorist sympathizers among the airlines’ own work force. They should be worried about terrorists shipping their bombs in air cargo. And they should be worried about terrorists shooting or bombing airports without ever crossing the security gates.

Mr Holland also seems unaware of the billions that DHS has pumped into domestic police forces, integrated in such a way that it is naïve, in a sense, for him and for me to even be debating whether federal forces "coordinate" with municipal ones because now they are often financially merged into one entity. The amount of money flowing from DHS to NYPD is stunning, as El Diario reports:

"The New York City Police Department plans to spend about $24m in federal homeland security grants to pay for overtime. The NYPD budget lists an estimated $180m in counter-terrorism and intelligence spending for the upcoming year, with one half covered with federal grants. […] A study by the academic journal Environment and Planning estimated that nearly 40% of public space in downtown Manhattan is a 'security zone'."

In other words, this 2011 report indicates that DHS is paying NYPD three and a half times NYPD's overtime budget annually: $180m of DHS money is spent on "intelligence gathering"; so $90m of NYPD's budget, in one year alone, is from DHS. Thus, Holland and I are foolish to debate over whether there is "coordination" between NYPD and DHS. If you look at the numbers, financially, NYPD is, to some extent, DHS. Look at the Nemeth maps: geopolitically, lower Manhattan is, within certain boundaries, the province of DHS. This is true of Zuccotti Park, where NYPD received $25m to surveil and track license plates.

So Holland's criticism that it is invention on my part to reference federal and municipal coordination in protest crackdowns on dissent is not only oblivious to the funding and geopolitical jurisdictional issues cited above, but is also seriously ahistorical. Tom Hayden's piece in the Nation is far more accurate, in that he chides me, on his part, for not going far enough in reminding readers of how common such federal-municipal coordination has been in suppressing US dissent and that such crackdowns are old news:

In twenty-first-century America, “rights” are increasingly meant for those who behave themselves and don’t exercise them. And if you happen to be part of a government in which no criminal act of state -- torture, kidnapping, the assassination of U.S. citizens abroad, the launching of wars of aggression -- will ever bring a miscreant to court, only two crimes evidently exist: blowing a whistle or expressing your opinion. State Department official Peter Van Buren, whose new book about a disastrous year he spent in Iraq, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, is a must read, learned that the hard way. So did Morris Davis. So may we all. Tom

What does PERF have to do with all of this? PERF is a non-profit police professionalism organization, dedicated to shaping and informing the national conversation on policing, and effecting practical change in departments nationwide vis a vis policy recommendations based on its think-tank studies. As demonstrated recently via the coordinated mayors calls, PERF also gives operational assistance to police departments nationwide, in close cooperation with DHS.
 
It is precisely the kind of organization needed in the beltway funding world of metrics and research papers to help to smoothly transition US law enforcement into the Brave New World of intel-led policing. PERF's policy papers and research programs give credibility to the transition from a policing paradigm in which crimes are investigated and criminals prosecuted to a more militaristic paradigm in which “threats” are “assessed” continually; wherein ‘probable cause’ and ‘reasonable suspicion’ are so much old hat; wherein technologies that scour the internet to look for patterns and predict events take the place of corner conversations or cooperation with community groups and religious figures. 
 
Enter PERF’s cooperation with Lockheed Martin. While Joshua Holland of Alternet makes light of PERF Executive Director Chuck Wexler’s close working relationship with DHS, he should take note that Wexler and PERF’s relationship with the war and surveillance technology giant Lockheed is enduring and potentially poses serious conflicts of interest to the parties involved. Unsurprisingly, you don't hear about this aspect of PERF's work on Fox News.

Corey Robin, a professor of political science at Brooklyn College, makes the excellent point that the decentralised application of coercive authority has a storied history:

From the battles over abolition to the labor wars at the turn of the last century to the Red Squads of the twentieth-century police departments to the struggles over Jim Crow, state repression in America has often been decentralized, displaying that very same can-do spirit of local initiative that has been celebrated by everyone from Alexis de Tocqueville to Robert Putnam. Though Tocqueville and Putnam were talking of course about things like creating churches and buildings roads, the fact is: if the locals can build a church or a road on their own, they can also get rid of dissenters on their own, too, no? 
Sometimes little platoons wear jackboots. Mr Robin goes on to say:

It’s not surprising that faced with the crackdown of OWS protests, Wolf would immediately turn to a theory of national, centralized repression. It’s part of our national DNA, on the left and the right, to assume that tyranny works that way. 
I actually find it more than a little surprising that folks on the left would so easily forget that tyranny is often local. The liberal antipathy to the sort of decentralisation of power confusingly known as federalism runs very deep, and is rooted in the very things Mr Robin mentions, such as the struggle to abolish Jim Crow. I would argue that Ms Wolf's it-goes-all-the-way-to-the-top conspiracy theorising seemed so plausible to so many OWS sympathisers because the Occupy movement is itself fueled by a conspiracy theory: that the richest 1% have conspired to capture the political system and use it to bend the economic system to their exclusive advantage. So it's not surprising that Ms Wolf's conspiracy theory, which fits so neatly with OWS's larger conspiratorial narrative, would find such a receptive, credulous audience.

The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.

For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, "we are going after these scruffy hippies". Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women's wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).

What most citizens don’t fully understand is that hardball politics behind the scenes is not about confrontation — it is about waging favors. Most effective it is veiled confrontation (what can that group conceivably do to me if I make them angry?) combined with overt offers of favors (what can they get for me?) Occupy is in a very powerful position if they only begin to understand this. If If you REALLY want to know how the game is played — a game that is being played right now AGAINST you — you would have the OWS reps in every city go to a meeting with police benevolent association with your LOCAL REGISTERED VOTER LISTS in hand and say, “we want to put better pay and retirement for cops and other first responders on the ballot and are willing to get out the vote for this.”
This will work miracles. THEN THEY ARE BEING COURTED BY TWO PAYMASTERS.. that gives them freedom they don’t now have to resist orders to be brutal — .then they have a way to NOT listen to Chase Bloomberg DHS etc because YOU have their back and they have an alternative to beating the sh– out of you — Chase is seeking them out, and offering them 3.6 million in ‘help’, you seek them out and offer a get out the vote drive that is worth millions more to them — YOU become their constituency and their allies AGAINST the banks, shadowy police consultancy, DHS etc — that is how the big boys play. This will literally save lives, not to mention make OWS or other citizen groups an unstoppable force.

Among the “advice” reportedly disseminated by DHS was that cities should demonize their occupations by highlighting health and safety violations, and evict them without warning in the dead of night. As a supporter of the Occupy Movement and a civil libertarian, I find that offensive and inappropriate – DHS should be worried about terrorism, not political dissent.

But missing here is any suggestion that cities are being compelled to crack down on their Occupations in any way – mayors of all of the municipalities that evicted camps in recent weeks had made it very clear that they were going to do so. Oakland Mayor Jean Quan held three press conferences urging people to leave Frank Ogawa Plaza and promising that they would be removed by force if they didn’t comply. Local officials have an agenda, but it is not a hidden agenda, and thus not a particularly shocking story.

I don’t find it in the least bit surprising that law enforcement officials communicate with each other, and such communication is in no way an assault on local communities’ autonomy. Every day professionals dealing with similar issues get on conference calls, send messages to list-servs or otherwise talk shop – it’s just part of our “interconnected world.”

Having established a baseline of reality, let’s turn to Wolf’s claims.

A PERF-ect Storm
How a nonprofit led by Boston's finest peacemakers was blamed for the Occupy crackdowns
By KHADIJAH BRITTON  |  November 26, 2011

In recent weeks, Occupations in cities across America have seen brutal crackdowns by local police forces. Left-wing pundits have speculated that these attacks were coordinated — that they were too tightly synchronized not to have someone directing them.
The conspiracy theory was shored up by two news reports: one from the BBC, in which Oakland Mayor Jean Quan made vague reference to a conference call with other cities to discuss how to handle their Occupy "situation." The other, an Associated Press story, quoted Portland Assistant Police Chief Larry O'Dea saying that he had made a conference call to other Occupy cities' police forces.

The timing on these two conference calls seemed suspicious. Quan's came only a few days before her police force's violent assault on Occupy Oakland. At the time, Quan was in Washington, DC, home of PERF headquarters, leaving her deputy mayor, Sharon Cronu, and legal adviser Dan Siegel to handle affairs back home. Both quit the next day. The second call, requested by Portland Police Chief Mike Reese, occurred on November 4 — 9 days before the Portland police violently shut down that city's Occupy encampment.



Read more: http://thephoenix.com/boston/news/130305-perf-ect-storm/#ixzz1ewV2duOl

In this week's Boston Phoenix, Khadijah Britton reports on PERF, a non-government, non-profit police agency that has been accused of coordinating national police responses to the Occupy movement. Here is the full transcript of Britton's interview with PERF executive director Church Wexler, a Boston native, Boston University graduate, and former operations assistant to three Boston Police Department commissioners who currently serves as an appointee to the Homeland Security Advisory Council.

The police response to protesters in Miami lead to hundreds of injuries to protesters. The ACLU won multiple suits against the Miami P.D. over abuse to protesters and free speech concerns.

Prior to the 2003 protest, Timoney was quoted as saying that the FTAA was “the first big event for homeland security … the first real realistic run-through to see how it would work.”

Timoney arrived in Miami with plenty of baggage. At the 2000 Republican National Convention, Timoney coordinated a crackdown that resulted in more than 420 arrests with only 13 convictions, none of which resulted in jail time. As in Miami, there was well documented abuse of some of the people arrested.

Also among PERF's directors is Minneapolis police chief Tim Dolan, who was responsible for the crackdown on protesters at the 2008 Republican National Convention. That event also resulted in lawsuits, protester injuries and an outcry from the national press about police brutality and the preemptive nature of the police action.

PERF is more than a mere policy group. Wexler has personally represented PERF at major political events, in face-to-face dialog with police tactical commanders and leadership. That was the case at the 2008 Republican National Convention, where Wexler and Minneapolis Police Chief Dolan coordinated what is widely regarded as one of the most aggressive political crackdowns in recent American history.

Wexler spent the afternoon of October 14 observing Occupy Philadelphia with Philadelphia police commissioner Ramsey.
Speaking to the Philadelphia Tribune, Ramsey said: “They wanted to see what the Occupy protesters were doing here in Philadelphia. As we walked through their encampment, almost immediately they were texting other groups around the country – it was happening while we were there and that was very, very interesting. It’s instant communication, and it’s worldwide. We have to become more adept at using the technology. Our police department has its own active Facebook page as a way of reaching out to the community.”

“Had a great one-day conference in Philly about social media – very pertinent these days with the occupy protests ...” Wexler stated from his twitter account.

As the occupation movement grew, PERF began circulating a publication titled Managing Major Events: Best Practices from the Field. The manual – a copy of which we downloaded -- amounts to a how-to guide for policing political events, and gives special attention to policing “Anarchists” and “Eco Terrrorists” at political events.

The guide encourages the use of undercover officers and snatch squads to “grab the bad guys and remove them from the crowd.” It urges local law enforcement to use social media to map the Occupy movement.

An earlier PERF guide Police Management of Mass Demonstrations advocates the use of embedded media to control police messages, the use of undercover cops to infiltrate protest groups, the use and pitfalls of preemptive mass arrest, an examination of the use of less-than-lethal crowd control weapons, and general discussion weighing the use of force in crowd control.

The most cited evidence used to make this case is not currently reliable. The article above is from Examiner.com, which is not a reliable source of journalism. Articles are posted with relative ease and not vetted in any way, as far as I can tell. For example, you can post an article on the site in four easy steps, they insist.

Trade-show organizer Mr. Lucas added that his event isn't political. "We don't really get into asking, 'Is this in the public interest?'" he said.

Rick Ellis, Minneapolis Top News Examiner
November 16, 2011 - Like this? Subscribe to get instant updates.

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Since I  published my initial story about how several federal law enforcement agencies had been providing logistical advice to local authorities on how to handle the 'Occupy' protests, I have been attempting to get an official response from the Dept. Of Homeland Security (DHS). 
 
I've spoken to several high-ranking DHS officials on background in the last 24 hours, and they stressed several things to me. 
 
First, despite some press reports to the contrary, the only official DHS role in any 'Occupy' arrests took place in Portland. In that case, officers from Federal Protective Services (which is tasked with protecting federal buildings) assisted the Portland Police Bureau in clearing the federally-owned  Terry Shrunk Plaza. Officers from FPS did make several arrests, although it's not clear how many. ....When I tried to get a sense of how much involvement the department may have had in assisting local tactical plans, I was told DHS is not actively coordinating with local governments or police agencies on the 'Occupy' evictions.

What isn't clear to me is what is meant by "actively" coordinating. That definition leaves a lot of room for advice, both tactical and otherwise.

I sent Homeland Security officials several questions, hoping to get a clearer picture of the scope of the department's involvement in any coordination efforts between federal and local law enforcement officials.

Here are the questions I asked:

1) Can you confirm whether or not any local municipalities (either civil or law enforcement) have requested any briefings or information about problems that could arise from the 'Occupy' protests?

2) If the DHS did receive any requests, what sort of help or advice was provided?

3) Is the DHS aware of any possible threats connected with any of the 'Occupy' protests that would necessitate the involvement of any element of the agency?

4) Did DHS volunteer any information or advice to local officials concerning the 'Occupy' protests?

This is the official response I received from Matthew Chandler, DHS spokesman:

“Any decisions on how to handle specifics situations are dealt with by local authorities in that location. If a protest area is located on Federal property and has been deemed unsanitary or unsafe by the General Services Administration (GSA) or city officials, and they make a decision to evacuate participants, the Federal Protective Service (FPS) will work with those officials to develop a plan to ensure the security and safety of everyone involved."

I'm left with more questions than answers. There's a difference between making decisions and offering advice and it's still not clear whether DHS did any of the latter.
I'll continue to update this story as I get more information.



Continue reading on Examiner.com Homeland Security role in 'Occupy' crackdowns limited, says agency - Minneapolis Top News | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/top-news-in-minneapolis/homeland-security-role-occupy-crackdowns-limited-says-agency#ixzz1ewNy6iny

Occupy protesters should make themselves familiar with the USA Patriot Act. Section 802 expanded the definition of domestic terrorism to include persons who engage in acts of civil disobedience to coerce or affect the conduct of government by intimidation of the civilian population. Furthermore, the US Department of Defence training manuals, until an amendment in 2009, equated protest with "low-level terrorism". Although the DoD changed the wording two years ago, human rights lawyers and activists have lingering concerns about whether the sentiment and intent has caught up with the change.

Finally, there is the disquieting issue of excessive force at Occupy.

documents recently obtained by KALW's The Informant reveal the significant involvement of state and federal law enforcement in monitoring the various Oscar Grant protests in Oakland over the past two years. Logs obtained by The Informant indicate OPD monitored websites, including Indybay.org, anti-police brutality Yahoo! email groups, Twitter feeds, public demonstrations, flyers and meetings to gather information about potential protests. Other documents indicate FBI involvement in monitoring the Oscar Grant protests as early as January 2009. A police report shows the FBI was providing intelligence to OPD on the movements of “black bloc” anarchists in downtown Oakland on the night of January 14, 2009. In one log entry recorded by a BART police officer, OPD is reported to have shown interest in sending "mole[s] or undercover team[s]" to meetings of Oscar Grant supporters. 

My name is Michael Roberts, and I am a pilot for ExpressJet Airlines, Inc., based in Houston (that is, I still am for the time being). This morning as I attempted to pass through the security line for my commute to work I was denied access to the secured area of the terminal building at Memphis International Airport. I have passed through the same line roughly once per week for the past four and a half years without incident. Today, however, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents at this checkpoint were using one of the new Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) systems that are currently being deployed at airports across the nation. These are the controversial devices featured by the media in recent months, albeit sparingly, which enable screeners to see beneath people’s clothing to an extremely graphic and intrusive level of detail (virtual strip searching). Travelers refusing this indignity may instead be physically frisked by a government security agent until the

The short version is that Mr. Roberts was detained, interrogated by TSA and police, and then suspended from his job. The incident took place on Friday, October 15 when he was on his way to work, in uniform. I don't know the status of his case at the time of this blog post, but sounds like he may now be fired. Snip:

"I authorize any investigator, special agent, or other duly accredited representative of the authorized federal agency conducting my background investigation, to obtain any information relating to my activities from schools, residential management agents, employers, criminal justice agencies, retail business establishments, or other sources of information. This information may include, but is not limited to, my academic, residential, achievement, performance, attendance, disciplinary, employment history, and criminal history record information." [Emphasis added]. Additionally, if other releases are required for things such as medical records or tax forms, they too must be given.