The Justice Department isn’t the only agency taking aim at American liberties. The Department of Transportation has compiled secret “no fly” lists of passengers suspected of terrorist ties—or at least those critical of the administration. In one instance, two dozen members of a peace group, students chaperoned by a priest and nun, were detained en route to a teach-in thus missing their flight.The Department of Defense is piling on with its Total Information Awareness program. TIA’s goal is to stockpile as much information as possible about everyone on Earth—thereby allowing government to protect everyone from everything. New York Times columnist William Safire warned, “Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend—all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as ‘a virtual, centralized grand database.’” Columnist Ted Rall noted that the feds will even scan “veterinary records. The TIA believes that knowing if and when Fluffy got spayed —and whether your son stopped torturing Fluffy after you put him on Ritalin—will help the military stop terrorists before they strike.”

Congress passed a law seeking to rein in TIA. The Pentagon, however, is barging forward, and the congressional provision specifies that if Bush formally certifies that TIA is necessary for national security, the law is null and void.

Coming Soon: Patriot II (Sorry folks this is a little out dated but very relevant!)

In February, the Center for Public Integrity obtained and released an 86-page draft version of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act—quickly dubbed Patriot II. Notations on the Justice Department document—stamped “Confidential—Not for Distribution” on every page—showed that it had already been sent to Vice President Cheney and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo dismisses DSEA as a benign sequel, “filling in the holes” in the Patriot Act.

Section 101 of the proposed bill, titled “Individual Terrorists as Foreign Powers,” would revise the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to permit the U.S. government to label individuals who are suspected terrorists—including American citizens—as “foreign powers” for the purpose of conducting total surveillance of their activities. This alteration nullifies all Fourth Amendment rights of the target, allowing the government to tap phones, search computers, and read e-mail—even when there is no evidence that a citizen is violating any statute. If Section 101 becomes law, the more people the feds wrongfully accuse of being terrorists, the more power federal agents will receive.

Americans suspected of gathering information for a foreign power could be subject to FISA surveillance even though they were violating no law and the information gathered did not pertain to national security. The administration’s confidential explanation of proposed Section 102 notes, “Requiring the additional showing that the intelligence gathering violates the laws of the United States is both unnecessary and counterproductive, as such activities threaten the national security regardless of whether they are illegal.” But, as the ACLU noted, “This amendment would permit electronic surveillance of a local activist who was preparing a report on human rights for London-based Amnesty International, a ‘foreign political organization,’ even if the activist was not engaged in any violation of law.”

While some parts of the new bill would overturn federal court decisions, Section 106 is more visionary, seeking to negate principles established in the Nuremberg trials: that following orders is no excuse for violating the law. As proposed, it would permit federal agents illegally to wiretap and surveil and leak damaging personal information on Americans—as long as they are following orders from the president or the attorney general. The Senate COINTELPRO investigation revealed how President Johnson and top Nixon aides personally ordered federal agents to conduct illegal surveillance of political opponents and others, though neither the FBI nor LBJ was ever held accountable. This proposal is a further attempt to make federal agents legally untouchable and could encourage law-breaking at every level of the federal government.

Section 129, entitled “Strengthening Access to and Use of Information in National Security Investigations,” would empower federal agents to issue “national security letters” that compel businesses and other institutions to surrender confidential or proprietary information without a court order. Anyone hit with such a letter will be obliged to remain forever silent on the demand with disclosure punishable by up to five years in prison. The ACLU noted that this provision would “reduce judicial oversight of terrorism investigations by relegating the role of the judge to considering challenges to orders already issued, rather than ensuring such orders are drawn with due regard for the privacy and other interests of the target.” This turns the Fourth Amendment on its head by creating a presumption that the government is entitled to personal or confidential information unless the citizen or business can prove to a federal judge that the “national security letter” should not be enforced against them. But few Americans can afford the cost of litigating against the world’s largest law firm—the U.S. Justice Department —to preserve their privacy.

Secret mass arrests could be the result of Section 201. The provision notes, “Although existing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) exemptions … permit the government to protect information relating to detainees, defending this interpretation through litigation requires extensive Department of Justice resources, which would be better spent detecting and incapacitate [sic] terrorists.” In the wake of 9/11, the feds locked up over 1,200 “special interest” detainees and continually insisted that none of their names or details of their cases could be disclosed without endangering national survival, though federal courts denounced the secret arrests as “odious to democracy” or “profoundly undemocratic.” To save the Justice Department the bother of having to defend secret round-ups, the Bush administration now seeks to amend the federal statute book to imitate repressive dictatorships around the globe.

Section 312, “Appropriate Remedies with Respect to Law Enforcement Surveillance Activities,” would unleash local law enforcement to spy on Americans, nullifying almost all federal, state, and local court “consent decrees” that restrict the power of local and state police. The administration complains that such decrees result in police lacking “the ability to use the full range of investigative techniques that are lawful under the Constitution, and that are available to the FBI.” But, in every case, consent decrees were imposed after gross abuses of citizens’ rights by the police. The administration draft bill explanation declares, “All surviving decrees would have to be necessary to correct a current and ongoing violation of a Federal right, extend no further than necessary to correct the violation of the Federal right, and be narrowly drawn and the least intrusive means to correct the violation.” Historically, the Supreme Court has required the federal government to use the “least intrusive means” to achieve some policy in cases involving the First Amendment, in order to prevent any unnecessary restriction of freedom of speech. The administration now demands the “least intrusive” restrictions on government intrusions.

Section 402 would permit U.S. attorneys to prosecute Americans for aiding terrorist organizations even if they made donations to organizations that the U.S. government did not publicly label as terrorist groups. Yale Law School professor Jack Balkin said, “Give a few dollars to a Muslim charity Ashcroft thinks is a terrorist organization and you could be on the next plane out of this country.” Robert Higgs of the Independent Institution warns that the feds “can categorize the most innocent action”—such as “signing a petition”—as an act of terrorism.

Users of Pretty Good Privacy and other common encryption software could face greater perils from Section 404, which creates “a new, separate crime of using encryption technology that could add five years or more to any sentence for crimes committed with a computer,” the ACLU notes. Encryption software is routinely included on new computers and is commonly used for business transactions. The Justice Department thus seeks to treat use of encryption software the same way that the federal government treats gun possession—something sinister enough to justify routinely doubling or tripling prison sentences for people who violate other federal statutes, regardless of whether the gun was actually used.

Critics label Section 501 of the bill the “citizenship death penalty.” Under existing law, an American must state his intent to relinquish his citizenship in order to lose it. Under this provision, intent “need not be manifested in words but can be inferred from conduct,” thus empowering the Justice Department to strip Americans of their citizenship if the feds accuse them of supporting terrorism—either domestic or international. The American Immigration Lawyers Association cautions that, under this provision, “targeted [U.S. citizens] potentially could find themselves consigned to indefinite detention as undocumented immigrants in their own country.”

Shortly after the text of Patriot II surfaced, the attorney general was asked at a press conference about this expansion of federal power. He refused to confirm plans formally to propose Patriot II but did declare, “Every day we are asking each other, what can we do to be more successful in securing the freedoms of America and sustaining the liberty, the tolerance, the human dignity that America represents, and how can we do a better job in defeating the threat of terrorism.”

Despite Ashcroft’s reassurances, resistance is building. Eighty-nine cities have passed resolutions condemning the Patriot Act, and a coalition is stretching across ideological lines to oppose it. Recently the ACLU drafted a letter to Congress and found 67 organizations from the conservative Gun Owners of America to the liberal La Raza eager to sign on. They accuse Patriot II of “new and sweeping law enforcement and intelligence gathering powers, many of which are not related to terrorism, that would severely dilute, if not undermine, basic constitutional rights.” 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.

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James Bovard is the author of the forthcoming Terrorism & Tyranny: How Bush’s Crusade is Sabotaging Freedom, Justice, and Peace.
Well folks, those are just a few of the goodies that the Bush administration contributed to the decline of the American Dream.  Just ask yourself, if you care, is this America?  It’s not the America I grew up in and believed to be the greatest nation on earth.

Now we have a president/puppet who openly embraces the leveling of American status in the world. He wants us to no longer be a world power, he wants us to be completely reliant on the government for food, news, medical, and a host of other things.

What happened to government serving the people?  Look up the definition!  We now serve the government and are permitting the government to take away our rights daily!  Wake up America!  Get your heads out of your asses and see what’s being done to us!

JFK  DEATHBED CONFESSION