Government Intrusion?
 

As per a discussion in another thread the topic of government intrusion into businesses has arisen. Sticking with that theme, I found this article today I found interesting...

Warning! Financial responsibility can lead to terrorism!

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/blog/...ponsibili.html

The short and skinny of the article is this - a nice old lad and his wife went to pay off their JC Penny credit card bill. But under some of those new secret policies the bush administration has enacted without telling anyone (the Bank Security Act), people paying off large chunks of debt on credit cards is a warning sign of illegal terrorist activity, so the couples bank accounts were frozen and the money was taken until DHS had a chance to review their accounts.

Thats right, pay off a credit card or other debt in one big lump without making the monthly payments and try to save some money, and DHS will freeze your assets because only terrorists pay off bills early. Or something like that.

Or is it because they thought maybe the terrorist was preparing for a suicide mission and, you know, wanted to clear up loose ends like that pesky JC Penny bill, because once dead you can't very well pay it and Allah frowns on a bad credit rating.

Remember, if you don't sit back and drag payments over the course of multiple years and pay all that extra interest to the banks, then the terrorists win!

I could go on and on with these, but I'm getting off topic.

Anyway, yeah, thought that was interesting and worth discussing. Good thing I have no intentions of paying any of my credit card bills anytime soon. :)

I think that by now we need to do what out forefathers wanted us to do. Overturn the government and create a new one.

Makes you wonder, is this a flag on just Credit Cards or all transactions over an amount (say $5,000)?

So does this mean Homeland Security are relying on Terrorists going out each night blowing thousands on crack and hookers before they commit their acts?

Great plan.

is this something relatively new that's being done? Because last May I paid off my truck for just over $7,000 and nobody raised any flags for me. This is after a two-year history with payments that were regularly late and/or partial. Which is one reason why i decided to just pay off the rest of the balance. I guess I just got lucky that nobody decided to question it.

They don't have an exact date of when that act was enacted. There are new ones getting 'passed' everyday that never see the news until enough people get caught up by them. Also note under these acts, until you are cleared, like the 'secret warrants', you are barred from speaking of the incidents. Kinda crazy.

'Little Russia" my parents have always said... heh

I don't think we'requite that bad, yet. But there is an ever widening gap between the classes.

At the risk of being brandedonce again some crazy liberal, this time, the comments are from Sanda Day O'Conor, republican, reagan appointed former supreme court justice.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1729396,00.html

Former top judge says US risks edging near to dictatorship

· Sandra Day O'Connor warns of rightwing attacks
· Lawyers 'must speak up' to protect judiciary


Anyway, just SOME ONE ELSES two cents :)

Once again in a 180 being done by the american government...

Report: Feds refusing FBI terror cases

http://news.**********/s/ap/20061106...huBHNlYwNtdHM-

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department increasingly has refused to prosecute
FBI cases targeting suspected terrorists over the past five years, according to private researchers who reviewed department records.

The government says the findings are inaccurate and "intellectually dishonest."

The report being released Monday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University raises questions about the quality of the FBI's investigations.

Prosecutors declined to bring charges in 131 of 150, or 87 percent, of international terrorist case referrals from the FBI between October 2005 and June 2006, according to the report. The study was based on the most recent data available from the Justice Department's executive office for U.S. attorneys.

That number marks the peak of generally steady increases from the 2001 budget year, when prosecutors rejected 33 percent of such cases from the FBI, according to the report.

The data "raise troubling questions about the bureau's investigation of criminal matters involving individuals the government has identified as international terrorists," the report said.

It noted that prosecutions in traditional FBI investigations since 2001 — including drug cases, white collar crimes and organized crimes — have decreased while the number of agents and other employees has risen.

"So with more special agents, many more intelligence analysts, and many fewer prosecutions the question must be asked: What is the FBI doing?" the report said.

*snip*

This is just brilliant. Goes to show exactly what I was saying...a year ago. The 'terror threat' is shite. Its a way of manipulating people.

Only now, we see district attoreys refusing to prosecute because of their careers. They know if they push forward with shite charges against people who have done nothing it will bite them in the arse. Now with a dem congress and real oversigth about to take off - expect less and less of this. In fact, I wouldnt be surprised if all law enforcement does a 180 as well - the cops don't want to be the ones looking heavy handed especially when they cant get any convictions.

Also expect more cases of previous civil liberties that were violtated in the previous run up to a police state to now come to light.

Of course thanks to the bush admin and their propoganda making all americans weary of any person with dark skin, we still will have less intellegent cops still doing stupid things, like this...

http://news.**********/s/ap/20061118...tudent_stunned

LOS ANGELES - An attorney who was part of a review of excessive force complaints following the Rodney King beating will investigate a UCLA police officer's use of a Taser on an Iranian-American student, the school said Friday.

...

Tabatabainejad, 23, was shocked Tuesday night after arguing with a campus police officer who was conducting a routine check of student IDs at the University of California, Los Angeles, Powell Library computer lab.

*snip*

The barney fifes of the police world will still be running amok for the next few years like Pvt. Pile in 'nam

'golly sargent is that there a-rab a terrorist?'

But like the Vietnamesse in a few decades this current wave of state sponsored racism will also ebb. The faster bush runs out of the middle east, the faster the healing can begin.

I started this thread in March, 2006. Now, I have a follow-up thats right in line with my original comments...

Gonzales, Mueller admit FBI broke law

http://news.**********/s/ap/20070310...Gw0aUIdlWs0NUE

WASHINGTON - The nation's top two law enforcement officials acknowledged Friday the
FBI broke the law to secretly pry out personal information about Americans. They apologized and vowed to prevent further illegal intrusions.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales left open the possibility of pursuing criminal charges against FBI agents or lawyers who improperly used the USA Patriot Act in pursuit of suspected terrorists and spies.

The FBI's transgressions were spelled out in a damning 126-page audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. He found that agents sometimes demanded personal data on people without official authorization, and in other cases improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances.

The audit also concluded that the FBI for three years underreported to Congress how often it used national security letters to ask businesses to turn over customer data. The letters are administrative subpoenas that do not require a judge's approval.

*snip*

Wow, who was it that said they would abuse those powers? And who said it would be after bush loses power that only then would those abuses come to light?

In a follow up to my last post on this topic...

Mueller defends Patriot Act authority

http://news.**********/s/ap/20070328...QI9auGUr6s0NUE

WASHINGTON -
FBI Director Robert Mueller struggled Tuesday to convince skeptical senators that — despite recent abuses — the FBI should retain Patriot Act authority to gather telephone, e-mail and financial records without a judge's approval.

"The statute did not cause the errors. The FBI's implementation did," the FBI chief told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

But Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt., served notice: "We're going to be re-examining the broad authorities we granted the FBI in the Patriot Act." House Judiciary committee members delivered a similar message last week.

The Senate panel's ranking Republican, Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record) of Pennsylvania, went further: "The question arises as to whether any director can handle this job and whether the bureau itself can handle the job."

Grim-faced and sometimes even looking pained, Mueller testified at the panel's second hearing into a Justice Department inspector general's report this month that revealed abuses in the FBI's use of documents called national security letters to gather data.

Reviewing headquarters files and four of 56 FBI field offices, Inspector General Glenn Fine found 48 violations of law or presidential directives during 2003-2005. He estimates there may be up to 3,000 unidentified or unreported violations throughout the FBI...


This is rich. In the course of 3 years the FBI violated American citizens rights on average of almost 10 times a day.

The FBI knowingly broke the law on average of 10 times a day.

Now the head wants to extend the powers, and now claims he plans, and I quote -

"What I did not do and should have done is put in a compliance program to be sure those procedures were followed,"

He now claims they are 'devising a compliance program' to 'audit determine the extent of the problem and to see if any agents should be disciplined.'

Wow, that makes you feel safe. Knowing they had no parameters in place to protect America from agents who knowingly broke the law, and now they are 'working' on 'some type' of way to possible find law breakers within their ranks, not that they have figured out how to do that, nor have they a system in place, but they still want to retain the powers they have so far abused on average of 70 times a week since they were given said powers.

Anyone else have a lack of confidence? It's like being in a cafeteria where 10 people die of mysterious causes related to the food every day and having the manager tell you, were not sure whats killing everyone, nor have we devised a plan on how to tell, but hey, keep eating here because at some point we will probably figure it out and get it right!

Create a new statist-government to make false promises, and when they fail to fulfill those promises, play the blame game? No thanks.

It's not the people that are the problem, it's the system. Get rid of that, and things will change drastically for the better.

Very nice cafeteria analogy, Sternn.

I long ago lost confidence in our government to do their job properly. Personally, I'm surprised the numbers of time they broke the law on a daily basis is so low. I would've estimated it as higher than that.

WTF... stupid. I am getting ready to pay off a small credit card of my husband's, but I doubt that would be enough $ to "raise eyebrows".

Even though congress stopped the data mining, twice now, the DHS/FBI have started it up, again, once again changing the name and now once again, going after Americans instead of the terrorists.

Data on Americans mined for terror risk

http://news.**********/s/ap/20070711...bi_data_mining

WASHINGTON - The FBI is gathering and sorting information about Americans to help search for potential terrorists, insurance cheats and crooked pharmacists, according to a government report obtained Tuesday.

Records about identity thefts, real estate transactions, motor vehicle accidents and complaints about Internet drug companies are being searched for common threads to aid law enforcement officials, the Justice Department said in a report to Congress on the agency's data-mining practices.

In addition, the report disclosed government plans to build a new database to assess the risk posed by people identified as potential or suspected terrorists.

The chairman of the Senate committee that oversees the Justice Department said the database was "ripe for abuse." The American Civil Liberties Union immediately derided the quality of the information that could be used to score someone as a terror threat.


You have to like how they work 'terror threat' into every answer they give about the programme, even though to date, not one terrorist has been identified. In fact, this programme, like the others the bush admin has put in place, have been used to go after Americans committing what was once considered lesser, misdemeanor crimes.

As the article states and the congressional testimonies show - they have used these resources to go after tax cheats, sports gamblers, and those who practice identity theft, and to date have yet to use these systems to go after ANY terrorists.

This goes hand in hand with the new articles on gonzales himself...

Gonzales faces new firestorm in Congress

http://news.**********/s/nm/20070710...sIihpxLdLMWM0F

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...es-knew-a.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Embattled U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales faced a new firestorm on Tuesday sparked by a report he may have misled lawmakers in 2005 about civil liberty violations by the FBI.

...The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that Gonzales assured Congress in 2005 that the FBI had not abused powers granted under the anti-terror USA Patriot Act despite having received reports of potential violations.

Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for Gonzales, told reporters he did not know whether the attorney general had read the reports sent to the president's Intelligence Oversight Board.

But Roehrkasse and other Justice Department officials denied that Gonzales had given misleading testimony. "Just because the FBI makes a referral to (the board) does not necessarily mean somebody's civil liberties has been abused," Roehrkasse said.

Gonzales has drawn fire from Congress on a number of fronts, from the administration's treatment of detainees to its warrantless domestic spying program to his controversial firing last year of nine top federal prosecutors.


This is the third time this man has been accussed of lying to congress, and to date nothing has been done. In fact, you have to love his reasoning presented by his 'spokes person' -

First excuse (the same one he used during the attorney firings debacle) - he never saw the reports.

Then the follow up excuse, if that one doesn't work - just because someone reports a violation, doesn't mean that one occured, therefore, since he had never seen a report on the 'follow up' on any of the reported violations, he never saw any wrong doing.

Talk about a full-o-shite-lawyer answer, thats laughable at best.

Then take the fact that information is being used in ways deemed illegal, and those who are supposed to be monitoring it are actively participating in the abuse and trying to slither out of the way of responsibility and put it with this article...

FBI Patriot Act Abuse Documents: What Special Project Lives in FBI HQ Room 4944?

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...triot-act.html

In March, the Justice Department's Inspector General revealed that FBI agents had sent a flurry of fake emergency letters to phone companies, asking them to turn over phone records immediately by promising that the proper papers had been filed with U.S. attorneys, though in many cases this was a complete lie. More than 60 of these letters were made public today as part of a FBI document dump in response to a government sunshine lawsuit centered on the FBI's abuse of a key Patriot Act power.

It's safe to say that there is no checks and balances here - that those in power are acting illegally, trying to cover it up, and are using their resources to go after Americans rather than the 'terrorists' they remind you every day are out there.

Much like the 'war on drugs' - where no drugs are ever arrested just people, the 'war on terror' so far has ended up with Americans in prisons - no terrorists.