Thurs, June 26, 2003
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030626/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/legal_war_glance_1
Key decisions on Bush administration policy in the war on terrorism.
ENEMY COMBATANTS
_Two appeals courts have ruled that the president has wartime authority to detain U.S. citizens as enemy combatants without many legal rights. One federal judge has ruled that such combatants should have access to an attorney; the government is appealing.
_The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (news - web sites) panel in San Francisco ruled that group of clergy, professors and lawyers had no legal standing to represent enemy combatants detained at the U.S. Navy (news - web sites) base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal.
_The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit panel ruled that combatants held outside the United States do not have access to federal courts.
CRIMINAL CASE
_A federal judge in Alexandria, Va. has ruled that accused Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui should have access to al-Qaida operatives held by United States as witnesses in his conspiracy trial. The Justice Department (news - web sites) is appealing the ruling.
USA PATRIOT ACT
_The Secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, reversing a lower court, held that new ability of government to share intelligence with criminal investigators and prosecutors amounts to "reasonable" surveillance that is constitutional. The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites).
IMMIGRANT DETAINEES
_ The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled that the government can close immigrant detention hearings for certain aliens deemed of special national security interest. The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal.
_The U.S. Court of Appeals for District of Columbia Circuit backed administration policy to withhold names and other details of detainees held in the Sept. 11 investigation.
TERROR FINANCING
_ Appeals courts in Chicago and Washington agreed that the president has authority to freeze assets of charitable organizations suspected of providing money to terrorists.
___
On the Net:
To find texts of court rulings:
Federal courts: http://www.uscourts.gov
Big Brother 2003
USA Today June 23, 2003
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20030623/cm_usatoday/5265307
On Wednesday, the world marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of George Orwell, whose relevance has not only endured but increased with time. The author of such classics as Animal Farm and 1984 coined ''Big Brother is watching,'' ''newspeak,'' ''doublethink,'' ''unperson'' and ''some are more equal than others.''
The TV reality show Big Brother is just one testament to Orwell's genius for popularizing the scariness of authorities that seek total control over people's lives. The TV show may be a game, but the worrisome specter Orwell described is anything but.
Writing in the 1930s and '40s, Orwell, whose real name was Eric Blair, warned about the spread of totalitarian regimes, from the communist Soviet Union under Stalin to fascist Spain under Franco. Today, his message is just as apt for a nation struggling to find the right balance between protecting U.S. citizens from terrorism and preserving their individual liberties.
As the U.S. government responds to the 9/11 terrorist attacks with broader enforcement powers, some civil libertarians, constitutional scholars and others worry that the government is taking away Americans' fundamental freedoms.
Among their ''Orwellian'' concerns:
* The Pentagon (news - web sites)'s Total Information Awareness program, renamed a less-ominous-sounding Terrorism Information Awareness program. It would let authorities use computers to search financial, phone and other records to expose terror plots.
* A proposed Transportation Security Administration screening system that could let authorities rifle through air passengers' backgrounds without their knowledge.
* A new law that allows the FBI (news - web sites) to secretly check the library records and bookstore purchases of terror suspects.
In the face of such worries, Orwell's words provide a valuable tripwire alarm for the American public. By popularizing the dangers of encroaching governmental power, today's parallels can leap out.
That's why even the best Thought Police can't easily counter Orwell's ideas. They're so much a cultural underpinning that his books are required reading in high schools and colleges. On Sunday, 1984 was No. 90 on Amazon's best-seller list, not an unusually high ranking. His books have sold more than 40 million copies in 60 languages.
The best toast to Orwell on Wednesday is to wish his ideas -- and impact -- many happy returns. Big Brother needs to remain a warning as well as a reality show.
POLICE STATE TACTICS ABANDON PRINCIPLES OF JUSTICE
Mon, June 23, 2003
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/030623/228/4hc76.html
By Cynthia Tucker
The feds said they were sorry. And, heaven knows, that's a start.
After harassing Evansville, Ind., restaurateur Tarek Albasti in the wake of 9-11 - taking him to jail, interrogating him, making his customers suspicious, and putting his name on a national "no-fly" list distributed to commercial carriers -- the FBI (news - web sites) apologized because Albasti has done nothing wrong.
As civil liberties advocates and government watchdogs look back at the powers wielded by federal agents following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, a picture emerges of a nation more than willing to abandon its principles of justice and fairness. Federal agents rounded up hundreds of Middle Eastern men and held them for weeks or months -- even after the detainees had been cleared of links to terrorism.
And, as federal agents scoured the country pleading with patriotic citizens for tips that could lead them to terror suspects, other immigrants became victims of false reports by liars, con men, personal enemies, or law-abiding Americans who were just too quick to judge people who looked different.
Last year, after a Cartersville, Ga., nurse believed she overheard three men in a restaurant plotting a terrorist attack, a stretch of Florida highway was shut down for hours while law enforcement agents located the men and searched their cars. The men, who turned out to be students, were later released and cleared. Initially described, vaguely, as "Middle Eastern-looking," all three turned out to be U.S. citizens.
Albasti, too, was the victim of a false report, a man easily victimized because he is a Middle Eastern immigrant and Muslim. Albasti and several other Evansville Muslims were shackled, jailed and photographed as perps for broadcast news reports after a tipster turned their names over to the FBI.
Worse, Albasti and three others were put on a national registry as suspected terrorists -- even though the FBI had quickly concluded they were not linked to terrorism. But as a result of the national crime notice, they found it difficult to rent apartments or get seats aboard commercial flights.
Last week, Thomas Fuentes, head of the Indianapolis FBI office, asked a federal judge to strike the names of Albasti and the others falsely accused from national crime records. And Fuentes apologized to the men. It was a long-overdue corrective that ought to help restore credibility to the federal pursuit of terrorist suspects.
It is easy enough to see how the sheer horror of the terrorist atrocities led to excesses by federal authorities. In the aftermath of the worst-ever attack on civilians on American soil, law enforcement agents and intelligence officials feared another attack might be imminent. They did whatever they believed necessary to stave off that threat.
But we've had months to calm down, to reassess, to conduct post-mortems of which investigative strategies worked and which didn't. Massive roundups of suspects based on little more than religion and skin color have not proved useful. Indeed, such tactics have made Muslim immigrants fearful and resentful -- and less likely to cooperate with terror investigations.
Still, not everybody has gotten around to admitting that mistakes were made. John Ashcroft (news - web sites), who as U.S. attorney general supervises the FBI, concedes no errors or excess. Despite a scathing report by the U.S. Justice Department (news - web sites)'s inspector general noting the mistreatment of scores of immigrants, Ashcroft wouldn't budge.
Instead, he went to Congress to ask for yet more power to harass, to detain, to secretly pry into private lives. He would turn the United States into the sort of country Americans detest.
It's time to rein in Ashcroft and his police state tactics. Those methods don't work. Besides, they're un-American.
Cynthia Tucker is editorial page editor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She can be reached by e-mail: [email protected].
Glitches repeatedly delay innocent air travelers
USA Today June 25, 2003
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20030625/cm_usatoday/5271838
On all eight flights Greg Yasinitsky booked last year, airline agents stopped him when he tried to get a boarding pass. Each time, the Pullman, Wash., music professor had to endure intensive luggage searches and pat-downs before being cleared to board. The reason: His name was ''similar to somebody's name'' on the government's terror watch list. Agents ''would get a horrified look on their face,'' he says.
Yasinitsky, 49, is one of scores of travelers who say they've done nothing wrong, but who face repeated harassment at airports because computers mistakenly flag them as being on a terror watch list. Larry Musarra, a retired Coast Guard commander from Juneau, Alaska, two sons and an uncle have been delayed from boarding 21 flights combined in the past year. A retired English teacher has also encountered delays, as have two San Francisco peace activists and various fliers named David Nelson.
None actually is being sought by authorities. But because their names are the same as, or similar to, individuals on the lists, they are continually inconvenienced by a security system whose ability to flag potential terrorists has outstripped its ability to safeguard the rights of innocent travelers.
Such problems raise concerns about plans by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to adopt a more intrusive computer-screening system. It would tap into personal data on every flier and assign each a security-risk rating. The TSA is revising the plan following an outcry in January about its potential for invading privacy. It may be unveiled next week, a TSA spokesman says.
Clearly, terror watch lists and other security measures are needed to ensure safe air travel. But before the TSA begins using a more invasive system, it needs to show that it can handle its current security lists without snaring innocent travelers.
Instead, the TSA has balked at answering valid questions about how the watch lists work and why recurrent problems have not been fixed. Among the problems:
* Mistaken identities. Despite scores of complaints from fliers mistakenly identified as potential terrorists, the TSA hasn't refined the program to prevent recurring problems. Errors result in part because software used by airlines to scan passenger lists looks for exact name matches and for names similar to those on the watch lists. While confusion over names is understandable, the TSA is responsible for providing enough information on suspects so airlines can distinguish them from innocent fliers.
* Slow fixes. Thirteen months after civil-liberties groups met with the TSA about travelers delayed or prevented from flying, the agency has come up with a procedure that is supposed to help solve the problem. Yet it is cumbersome, confusing and -- the TSA concedes -- doesn't guarantee success. The onus is on a passenger to prove his identity by sending the government three certified documents. And glitches persist: The TSA twice lost papers sent by Asif Iqbal, a Rochester, N.Y., businessman who is delayed frequently, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Victims of government mistakes deserve a simple and effective way to clear their names.
* Non-responsive tactics. Federal privacy laws provide ways for citizens to find out what data agencies hold on them and to correct errors. But the TSA has failed to respond to requests from the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites) (ACLU) asking whether two California peace activists it represents are on the no-fly list. Janet Adams and Rebecca Gordon were stopped, told they were on the list and then cleared for flight at San Francisco's airport last year. The TSA's failure to respond plays into Adams' and Gordon's fears that they may have been singled out because of their political views. The TSA told USA TODAY that security strictures prevent it from providing information on the no-fly list. Yet it hasn't even explained that to the ACLU.
The TSA argues that only a fraction of the more than 500 million fliers in the past year have been held up by its screening. Moreover, it says its new system would prevent mistakes by capturing more information on each flier, such as address and date of birth. And since the government would have full control of the screening, the TSA says it could avoid the problems created by airlines' varying software and procedures for scanning watch lists and clearing passengers.
Trusting the TSA with more data about fliers would be easier if the agency had handled its current lists with more concern for accuracy and individual rights. Mistakes that have gone uncorrected for months raise valid concerns about the mischief the TSA's new program could do in the future.
Courts Back Feds in Legal War on Terror
Thurs, June 26, 2003
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030626/ap_on_go_co/terrorism_legal_war_4
By CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The Justice Department (news - web sites) has prevailed in every major legal battle decided so far in terrorism's legal war, turning aside repeated attempts to show that the Bush administration's policies are eroding civil liberties and constitutional rights.
Attorney General John Ashcroft (news - web sites) cites at least 10 decisions he says validate the extraordinary steps his department has taken to prevent another attack like that on Sept. 11, 2001.
There have been setbacks at the district judge level, but so far all the cases that have made it through the first level of appeals have gone in favor of the government.
"I think if you look carefully there is a notable absence of successful challenges to the activities in court," Ashcroft said this week during an appearance in Nashville, Tenn. "That's because we're very careful to live within the Constitution and the statutory framework in protecting the rights of Americans."
Critics and some legal scholars say the U.S. government has a long history of overreaching in times of crisis. And those actions were also frequently backed by the courts.
President John Adams backed sedition laws in the 18th century that silenced some types of speech. During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln suspended a legal principle that allows a judge to determine whether there are grounds to keep a person in custody and, during World War II, the Supreme Court upheld the internment of thousands of Japanese-Americans.
"There is always a certain amount of judicial sympathy with governmental crackdowns in the hysteria of the moment," said John Strait, law professor at Seattle University. "Almost always, they look like very bad decisions in retrospect."
The Justice Department's string of recent legal victories have kept secret the names of hundreds detained on immigration violations; frozen assets of charities suspected of funding terrorism; allowed the use of broad new surveillance powers granted under the USA Patriot Act; and barred attorneys from representing people detained as enemy combatants.
The ultimate jury could still be out. The Supreme Court has yet to accept any key terrorism case ? it has refused to hear several ? and there have been conflicting rulings at the district court level on similar issues. The government has lost a number of cases before district judges, only to win on appeal.
The government also is appealing decisions made by federal district judges that would allow one U.S. citizen being held as an enemy combatant ? accused "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla ? access to an attorney and permit accused Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui to call as witnesses at trial al-Qaida operatives in U.S. custody.
"It is hard to read that as a ringing endorsement of government policy," said Steve Shapiro, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites).
Justice Department officials say that history, civil liberties and the Constitution are all carefully considered before each decision is made.
They say the detention of 762 foreigners who were in this country illegally as part of the Sept. 11 investigation, for example, has been unfairly portrayed as a broad Arab or Muslim roundup. Officials say each person detained was specifically targeted as part of the probe into the U.S. movements and connections of the 19 hijackers, two-thirds of them in the New York and New Jersey area.
Any comparison to the Japanese-American internments, they say, is far off base.
"All of the actions we have taken have been mindful of the problems in the past," said Justice Department spokeswoman Barbara Comstock.
Critics also question prosecutors who rely on murky charges such as providing "material support" to terrorists because they cannot prove terrorism outright without enormous difficulty.
Moussaoui has tied the government up in knots with his push for al-Qaida witnesses ? the government says allowing access would jeopardize national security ? and may eventually wind up as an enemy combatant facing a military tribunal without rights to call witnesses or have an outside lawyer.
Moussaoui won a round Thursday when a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (news - web sites) ruled that the government was premature in appealing a judge's order granting Moussaoui access via video hookup to al-Qaida operative Ramzi Binalshib. But the judges also said the case was far from finished.
This week, President Bush (news - web sites) designated Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a Qatari man living in Illinois, as an enemy combatant rather than pursue charges of lying to the FBI (news - web sites) and credit card fraud.
Unlike six members of an alleged al-Qaida "sleeper cell" near Buffalo, N.Y., and a Columbus truck driver accused of plotting to sabotage the Brooklyn Bridge, al-Marri refused to cooperate or plead guilty.
"Things have not been going the government's way," said al-Marri's attorney, Mark Berman. "He's the only one who's the subject of regular prosecution in the criminal justice system and then is plucked out of that system."
Justice Department officials say each case is decided on its own, depending on the strength of the criminal case, the willingness of defendants to cooperate and which status best provides intelligence needed to guard national security. Similar methods have been used in recent decades with great success to disrupt organized crime in the United States, Comstock said.
U.S. Law Enforcement Facing 'Terrorism' Challenge
Thurs, June 26, 2003
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030626/ts_nm/security_challenges_dc_2
NEWARK, N.J. (Reuters) - Nearly two years after the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. law enforcement faces some daunting challenges in engaging two groups seen as early sentinels in President Bush (news - web sites)'s "war on terrorism," experts say.
Despite creation of anti-terrorism task forces to coordinate efforts by federal, state and local agencies, authorities have yet to include more than a small fraction of rank-and-file police in the day-to-day search for suspects.
Broad new powers of interrogation and detention given to the Justice Department (news - web sites) under the USA Patriot Act have also alienated some members of the public, especially the U.S. Muslim community, where experts say cooperation with authorities could be critical in preventing future attacks.
"There are many things in progress. But as it took us three or four decades to get into this predicament, it's going to take us some time to get the right effect," said James Kallstrom, the former New York FBI (news - web sites) director who now advises New York Gov. George Pataki on counter-terrorism issues.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington killed about 3,000 people, Bush called on federal law enforcement to break with long-held practices of criminal investigation and make preemption their top priority.
"That's a sea-change, and everybody's trying to figure out the best way to do it," said Christopher Christie, U.S. attorney for New Jersey, which lost hundreds of residents in the destruction of the World Trade Center.
"It used to be that a crime was committed and law enforcement would go in and try to reconstruct the crime and catch the bad guy," Christie said.
POTENTIAL EMBARRASSMENT
Even with new assistance from the CIA (news - web sites), terror investigators still tend to focus on ordinary crimes such as money laundering or credit card fraud, which have been linked to Islamist militant activities.
The approach is time-consuming and can yield relatively few results. It can also expose federal authorities to ridicule when criminal probes classed internally as "terrorism" cases prove to have no links with would-be attackers.
That happened in New Jersey, where 60 out of 62 "terrorism" cases turned out to involve Middle Eastern students who had simply paid others to take their English proficiency exams.
U.S. law enforcement has also won notable public relations victories, including guilty pleas from six U.S. citizens of Yemeni descent in Buffalo, New York, to charges that they provided material support to Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s al Qaeda network.
But according to Kallstrom, no approach can expect sustained success unless the nation's estimated 700,000 local police officers and sheriffs can be marshaled into an effective counter-terrorism intelligence force.
"Chances are that state and local police are going to bump up against terrorists. The question is how do we train them so they're observing things that may be symptomatic of terrorist activity," he said.
"The task forces just do not have enough people to even begin to deal with this issue," added Kallstrom, estimating that only about 400 of New York City's 75,000 police officers currently have counter-terrorism training.
Since the earliest hours of the post-Sept. 11 era, U.S. authorities have also appealed for public cooperation in hopes of finding tips that lead to preemptive arrests.
But the public segment that could potentially provide the most help -- 4 million to 9 million American Muslims -- has been shaken by tactics that emphasize covert surveillance and the detention of suspects who often prove to have no ties with militant groups.
SUSPICION
"While American Muslims are very patriotic, work very hard to assimilate and have their children assimilate, there is this suspicion about law enforcement and federal agencies. And that was pre-9/11," said Arab-American pollster John Zogby, who tracks trends in the Muslim and Arab communities.
Potential threats to civil liberties and freedom of information recently prompted FBI director Robert Mueller to appear before the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites) and the National Press Club in an attempt to address public qualms.
But experts doubt Mueller's actions did much to alleviate concerns about the hard-line conservative attitudes of Mueller's boss, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft (news - web sites).
"One of the dilemmas the government has is that Attorney General Ashcroft is not considered to be somebody that people would have lots of confidence in on the civil liberties side," said I.M. Destler, director of the University of Maryland's Program for International Security and Economic Policy.
"But it's important that they have credibility, so that when they do walk to the edge, and maybe push over the edge for good reason, it doesn't undermine the whole operation."