20.Jan.2013 - The Headlines: Guantanamo, Pentagon, NRA, USS Cole, Israel and Palestine, Millions in Poverty, Monsanto vs. the People, Drones, Threats for Bloggers, Moving Away from Religion, Weather Records, Obama Impeachment, Conspiracy Theory, Teaching Creationism, Lollapalooza Israel, Iraq, DoJ FOIA Request, more.

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Eleven Years On: Being Imprisoned at Guantanamo Worse Than Being Confined by Totalitarian State

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/01/12/eleven-years-on-being-detained-at-guantanamo-worse-than-being-imprisoned-by-totalitarian-state/#

The Pentagon as a Global NRA

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/01/14

US military judge denies defense motions in 9/11, USS Cole trials
http://jurist.org/paperchase/2013/01/us-military-judge-denies-defense-motions-in-911-uss-cole-trials.php

Not My Zion: American Jews Divided on Israel and Palestine
http://www.radioproject.org/2011/08/not-my-zion-american-jews-divided-on-israel-and-palestine/

Inequality Rages as Dwindling Wages Lock Millions in Poverty

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/01/15-2

Monsanto vs. The People

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/01/15-10

Senator Asks CIA Nominee When Drones Can Kill Americans
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33617.htm

3 Legal Threats for Bloggers and What to Do About Them

http://blogs.findlaw.com/technologist/2013/01/3-legal-threats-for-bloggers-and-what-to-do-about-them.html

More Young People Are Moving Away From Religion, But Why?
http://www.npr.org/2013/01/15/169342349/more-young-people-are-moving-away-from-religion-but-why

More Than 3,500 U.S. Weather Records Smashed in 2012

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=thousands-of-us-weather-records&WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20130116

Obama May Face Impeachment if He Uses Executive Orders for Gun Control

http://godfatherpolitics.com/8993/obama-may-face-impeachment-if-he-uses-executive-orders-for-gun-control/

The Most Widely Believed Conspiracy Theory in America Revealed in New Poll

http://www.alternet.org/most-widely-believed-conspiracy-theory-america-revealed-new-poll

As Social Issues Drive Young From Church, Leaders Try To Keep Them
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/01/18/169646736/as-social-issues-drive-young-from-church-leaders-try-to-keep-them

OVER 300 U.S. SCHOOLS ARE TEACHING CREATIONISM FUNDED BY AMERICAN TAXPAYERS
http://www.classwarfareexists.com/over-300-u-s-schools-are-teaching-creationism-funded-by-american-taxpayer/

Party’s over for Perry Farrell: Lollapalooza Israel collapses as artists said to stay away

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/partys-over-perry-farrell-lollapalooza-israel-collapses-artists-said-stay-away

Iraq: A Twenty Two Year Genocide
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33657.htm

Justice Department 'Complies' With FOIA Request For GPS Tracking Memos; Hands ACLU 111 Fully Redacted Pages

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130117/07260121714/justice-department-complies-with-foia-request-gps-tracking-memos-hands-aclu-111-fully-redacted-pages.shtml

5 Creepy New Ways for Police to Intrude on Your Rights

http://www.alternet.org/5-creepy-new-ways-police-intrude-your-rights

The Surprising Unknown History of the NRA

http://www.alternet.org/suprising-unknown-history-nra

America's Gun Crackpots: Our Homegrown al-Qaeda?
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/436-2nd-amendment-rights/15616-focus-americas-gun-crackpots-our-homegrown-al-qaeda

Convincing suicide-bombers that God says no
http://www.opendemocracy.net/adam-lankford/convincing-suicide-bombers-that-god-says-no

Newly Released FBI “Domestic Terrorism” Training on Anarchists, Environmentalists, Show COINTELPRO Tactics

Wednesday, 06 June 2012 09:31

By Will Potter, Green Is The New Red | News Analysis[SOURCE]

• 41

Newly released FBI presentations show the flawed and misleading information the government is using to train agents to identify and investigate “domestic terrorist” groups such as “black separatists,” anarchists, animal rights activists, and environmentalists.

Among the more troubling portions of the training materials are warnings of activists using the Freedom of Information Act, engaging in non-violent civil disobedience, and gathering in coffee shops.

The domestic terrorism training materials were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the ACLU. They offer additional insight into a disturbing pattern of FBI activity misrepresenting political activists as “terrorists” and manufacturing “domestic terrorism threats” where none exist, akin to the notorious COINTELPRO program of J. Edgar Hoover.

Anarchists Are “Criminals Seeking an Ideology”

In presentations on “Anarchist Extremism,” the FBI warns:

– Anarchists are “Criminals seeking an ideology to justify their activities”
– Anarchists are “Not dedicated to a particular cause”
– Green anarchists believe “individuals should ‘get back to nature’”

Their meeting locations include “college campuses, underground clubs, coffee houses/ internet cafes.” Their criminal activity includes “Sleeping Dragons” (a form of civil disobedience in which people lock arms in PVC pipes).

Anarchists are also “paranoid / security conscious,” according to the presentation. This is an interesting observation coming from the FBI, considering there have been two recent cases where the FBI played a key role in infiltrating anarchist groups in order to orchestrate alleged terrorist attacks. In the Cleveland May Day arrests, and in the Chicago NATO arrests, the FBI trumpeted the arrest of “terrorists” that agents themselves tried desperately to create.

However, not all anarchists are engaged in these types of plots, the FBI acknowledges. They use a “variety of tactics” including “civil disobedience” (such as resisting home foreclosures, creating community gardens, and many other activities not mentioned by the bureau).

The FBI also warns that anarchists may have “crossover ideologies” including animal rights extremism and environmental extremism.

Animal rights / environmental extremism

In the training presentation on these so-called “eco-terrorists,” the FBI lists lawful, First Amendment activity and low-level criminal activity (such as civil disobedience) as examples of domestic terrorism.

The FBI is particularly focused in these presentations on information gathering and what it calls a “public relations war” by activist groups. “Media is sometimes slanted in favor of activists,” the FBI says. “Activists spin the truth.”

Examples of information gathering listed by the FBI include requests for public documents under the Freedom of Information Act. In one presentation, FOIA requests are listed as examples of “University targeting.”

Elsewhere the FBI warns of “cold calls” and using “USDA Report [sic].”

The FBI also warns of activist attempts to use “false employment.” This is undoubtedly related to activists who seek employment at factory farms and vivisection labs in order to expose animal welfare abuses. As I have reported here previously, the FBI has considered terrorism charges for non-violent undercover investigators. And multiple states have been seeking tocriminalize undercover investigations as well.

As I document in Green Is the New Red, there has been a slow and relentless expansion of “terrorism” rhetoric and investigations over the last 30 years. This type of language and FBI investigation was initially confined to property crimes by the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front (groups that have caused millions of dollars in economic loss, but have never harmed a human being).

Now this already-broad terrorism classification has been expanded even further.  The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act was drafted to target anyone who causes the “loss of profits” of an animal enterprise. The FBI acknowledges this shift in “terrorism” investigations in a slide that says the new law “alleviates the use of force or violence criteria.”

Relentless Expansion of “Domestic Terrorism”

The ACLU’s Mike German has an excellent dissection of the FBI’s “black separatist” documents. German writes:

Who are “Black Separatists” and is there any evidence they pose a terrorist threat?

Internet searches of “Black Separatist terrorism,” “Black Separatist bombing,” and “Black Separatist shooting” fail to bring up any recent incidents that could be fairly described as terrorist violence. No “Black Separatist” terrorist incidents are included in the FBI’s list of “Major Terrorism Cases: Past and Present,” nor on the more comprehensive list of terrorist attacks going back to 1980, which are detailed in an FBI report entitled “Terrorism 2002-2005.” While Black nationalist groups like the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army were certainly involved in political violence back in the 1970s, they no longer exist, and the last acts of violence attributed to either group were more than two decades ago.

So why are Atlanta FBI agents now searching for black separatist threats?   Because the FBI appears to be training them to believe there is one using factually flawed materials.

The FBI is targeting “black separatists,” anarchists, animal rights activists, and environmentalists in nearly identical methodologies. And these new documents show just how little these tactics change over time and between movements.

The FBI is manufacturing these “terrorism threats” through what I would call a process of conflation. Disparate groups are being conflated, across ideological and tactical divides, and presented as a united “threat.” For instance, the FBI notes that “black separatists” are a movement that “consists of multiple groups” lacking a unified ideology, but they are lumped together because they “all share racial grievances against the U.S., most seek restitution, or governance base [sic] on religious identity or social principals [sic].”

Just as the FBI invented a new class of domestic terrorists in 2009 called “American Islamic Extremists,” the FBI long ago embraced a new class of domestic terrorists called “eco-terrorists.” A wide range of groups, from the Humane Society to the Animal Liberation Front, have been conflated into this catch-all term. This use of language is essential to the demonization of entire social movements because it aides in reshaping them as an “other.” They are not individuals with specific political grievances, they become a mass of unreasonable extremist threats.

At the same time, the FBI is conflating a wide range of tactics. People who support anarchists or “black separatists” in their words are conflated with the very small group of people who have engaged in illegal activity. That’s how the FBI is including FOIA requests and civil disobedience as example tactics in a domestic terrorism presentation. Juxtapose this with the tactics of militia extremists and white supremacists, who have murdered, lynched, bombed, assaulted government officials and created weapons of mass destruction.

To most reasonable people, such a stark disparity between these groups would raise questions about how the FBI is allocating its domestic terrorism resources. How did such misguided policies come about?

These presentations point to one possible answer to that question: The FBI creates terrorism threats by directly training agents to believe they exist.

This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license.

WILL POTTERWill Potter is the author of "Green Is the New Red: An Insider's Account of a Social Movement Under Siege," recently published by City Lights.

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FBI Agents Get Leeway to Push Privacy Bounds

By Charlie Savage, The New York Times News Service | Report

FBI Seizes Server From Progressive Internet Service Provider

By Jamie McClelland, War Is A Crime | Report

Police Handcuffing Seven-Year-Olds? The Brutality Unleashed on Kids With Disabilities in Our School Systems

By se smith, Alternet | News Analysis

US Government Refuses To Say Who's On The Intelligence Oversight Board | Techdirt

by Mike Masnick - [REPRINT]

Remember when President Obama took office and one of his first moves, on his very first day in office was to put out a memo telling the federal government to be more open and transparent in response to FOIA requests? A few quotes from that memo:

A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency. As Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, "sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants." In our democracy, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which encourages accountability through transparency, is the most prominent expression of a profound national commitment to ensuring an open Government. At the heart of that commitment is the idea that accountability is in the interest of the Government and the citizenry alike.


The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. Nondisclosure should never be based on an effort to protect the personal interests of Government officials at the expense of those they are supposed to serve. In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies (agencies) should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public.

Seems pretty straightforward and certainly sounded like a refreshing change from the ridiculously secret previous administration who hated to share anything if it could avoid it. Unfortunately, it appears that this Day One move was nothing but smoke and mirrors. The current administration has been dreadful about responding to FOIA requests.

A new lawsuit highlights just how ridiculous things have become. The EFF has sued the government after the administration refused a FOIA request to reveal who is on the Intelligence Oversight Board, which is a "presidentially appointed, civilian panel in charge of reviewing all misconduct reports for American intelligence agencies." Only problem? In three years in office President Obama has not named a single appointment to the Board. The EFF wanted to find out who's actually handling the duties of the IOB... and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) simply failed to turn over the info.

The EFF had filed a request to expedite the FOIA request with the original request on February 15th, which was denied on February 17th. They then appealed the denial on February 28th... and have heard nothing since then concerning either the appeal or the content requested about the IOB. Remember, the standard response time for a FOIA request is 20 days, and we're talking months of nothing.

What happened to "A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency"?

Is The FBI Lying To Congress About Its Abuses Of The Patriot Act?

Techdirt
[REPRINT]
by Mike Masnick


As we go through this brief extension in three of the more controversial provisions of the Patriot Act, which give law enforcement tremendous leeway in spying on people with very little oversight, there have been some hearings about those provisions. At a recent Senate Judiciary Hearing about this, FBI director Robert Mueller was asked if any of the three provisions had been found to be abused. Mueller responded, "I'm not aware of any." However, as the EFF notes, it has clear evidence of the roving wiretap being abused, which it found via some FOIA documents. Tellingly, when it requested info about Patriot Act violations, it received heavily redacted info. However, via a different FOIA request, it received other information that, when combined with the first FOIA request, reveals a clear abuse by the FBI. Separately, the EFF points out that (former) Senator Russ Feingold indicated at a hearing in 2009 that he had seen confidential evidence of abuse:

"I recall during the debate in 2005 that proponents of Section 215 argued that these authorities had never been misused. They cannot make that statement now. They have been misused. I cannot elaborate here. But I recommend that my colleagues seek more information in a classified setting."

On top of that, they point to a 2007 report (pdf) from the Office of the Inspector General at the Justice Dept, which notes two cases of the FBI abusing those 215 orders.

This raises some pretty serious questions. Is Director Mueller simply uninformed about his agency abusing these provisions? Or was he lying to Congress about those abuses? Neither case looks good, and neither suggests that we should renew those provisions.

FBI Chastised by Court for Lying About Existence of Surveillance Records

Commentary by Jennifer Lynch

An order last week from the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California has revealed the FBI lied to the court about the existence of records requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), taking the position that FOIA allows it to withhold information from the court whenever it thinks this is in the interest of national security. Using the strongest possible language, the court disagreed: “The Government cannot, under any circumstance, affirmatively mislead the Court.” Islamic Shura Council of S. Cal. v. FBI (“Shura Council I”), No. 07-1088, 3 (C.D. Cal. April 27, 2011) (emphasis added).

This case may prove relevant in EFF’s ongoing FOIA litigation against the FBI. As discussed further below, one of the issues in Shura Council was the FBI’s extensive and improper use of “outside the scope” redactions. The agency has also used these heavily in at least one of our current cases — in areas where it is highly unlikely the material blocked out is actually outside the scope of our FOIA request. (see example to the left from our case seeking records on the government’s push to expand federal surveillance laws). We’ll be writing more about that case in the coming weeks and posting the documents we received on this site soon.

Shura Council started five years ago in May 2006, after widespread reporting on the FBI’s programs targeting Muslims after September 11, 2001. At that time, several Muslim citizens and organizations in Southern California, including the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), submitted a broad joint FOIA request to the FBI seeking “[a]ny records relating or referring” to themselves, “including . . . records that document any collection of information about monitoring, surveillance, observation, questioning, interrogation, investigation and/or infiltration[.]” Shura Council I at 4.

In 2008, after the FBI produced only minimal records, the requesters filed a federal lawsuit. The FBI then searched for and located additional records for nine of the plaintiffs, but these records were heavily redacted, with much of the information withheld as “outside the scope” of the plaintiffs’ FOIA request. The FBI attested, in documents and declarations it submitted under oath to the court, that these were all the records that existed about the plaintiffs and that the materials labeled “outside the scope” were “not responsive” to the plaintiffs’ FOIA request.

After court ordered the FBI to submit full versions of the records in camera, along with a new declaration about the agency’s search, the FBI revealed for the first time that it had materially and fundamentally mislead the court in its earlier filings. The unaltered versions of the documents showed that the information the agency had withheld as “outside the scope” was actually well within the scope of the plaintiffs’ FOIA request. The government also admitted it had a large number of additional responsive documents that it hadn’t told the plaintiffs or the court about. Id. at 7-8.

If these revelations weren’t bad enough, the FBI also argued FOIA allows it to mislead the court where it believes revealing information would “compromise national security.” Id. at 9. The FBI also argued, that “its initial representations to the Court were not technically false” because although the information might have been “factually” responsive to the plaintiffs’ FOIA request, it was “legally nonresponsive.” Id. at 9, n. 4 (emphasis added).

The court noted, this “argument is indefensible,” id. at 9-10, and held, “the FOIA does not permit the government to withhold responsive information from the court.” (Id.)(upheld on appeal in Islamic Shura Council of S. Cal. v. FBI, __ F.3d __, No. 09-56035, at 4280-81 (9th Cir. Mar. 30, 2011) (“Shura Council II”).1 The court stated:

The Government argues that there are times when the interests of national security require the Government to mislead the Court. The Court strongly disagrees. The Government’s duty of honesty to the Court can never be excused, no matter what the circumstance. The Court is charged with the humbling task of defending the Constitution and ensuring that the Government does not falsely accuse people, needlessly invade their privacy or wrongfully deprive them of their liberty. The Court simply cannot perform this important task if the Government lies to it. Deception perverts justice. Truth always promotes it.

(Shura Council I at 17) (emphasis added). This is an important opinion for FOIA requesters because sometimes the only protection a FOIA requester has from the government's potentially arbitrary withholding of information is a court's in camera review of the full versions of documents. If the government were allowed to withhold information from the court, this protection would be meaningless and the role of judicial oversight in FOIA cases would be compromised.

Unfortunately for the plaintiffs in Shura Council, this seems to be a hollow victory. Although the court did not restrain itself from using the strongest possible language to criticize the government’s actions (calling the FBI’s arguments “untenable,” id. at 3, “indefensible,” id. at 10, and “not credible” id. at 17) it also held that “disclosing the number and nature of the documents the Government possesses could reasonably be expected to compromise national security.” Id. 18. Therefore it did not order the government to release the records to the plaintiffs or even to reveal how many records turned up in the second search. And on appeal, the Ninth Circuit held that neither the plaintiffs nor their attorneys had the right to see the original version of the district court’s order (filed under seal) because it contained information the FBI considered to be “national security and sensitive law enforcement information.” (Shura Council II at 4286).

It seems unlikely that, five years after the plaintiffs filed their FOIA request, the release of the information the FBI has on these individuals and organizations would truly threaten national security or an ongoing criminal investigation. None of the plaintiffs appears to have been arrested or retained in conjunction with a crime or foreign terrorist plot, so it seems more likely that this is yet another example of the government valuing secrecy over transparency.

The district court’s April 27, 2011 order after remand is here, and the Ninth Circuit opinion remanding the case is here.

1. This case has a convoluted procedural history. When the district court discovered the FBI’s lies it issued an order under seal on June 23, 2009 and told the parties it would unseal the order on July 7, 2009 unless further directed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The government immediately appealed, and the Ninth Circuit issued a stay of the district court’s ruling until it could hear the case. On March 30, 2011, the Ninth Circuit issued its opinion in Islamic Shura Council of S. Cal. v. FBI, __ F.3d __, No. 09-56035 (9th Cir. Mar. 30, 2011), vacating the district court’s sealed order and remanding to the district court to revise its order to eliminate statements the government had designated as national security and sensitive law enforcement information. On April 27, 2011, the district court issued its revised order.

Related Issues: FOIA Litigation for Accountable Government, Privacy, Transparency
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/05/fbi-chastised-court-lying-about-existence