Civil Liberties offense tracker

From Wiki

Being a place to document the atrocities, as they say.

Note: this is not a good place to link; it is just a temporary place to stash and comment on links to items in the news, and perhaps to start thinking about a timeline or something. But I have news and need a place to stash it, so: here goes.

From the Times in London, "US says it has right to kidnap British citizens": http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2982640.ece

Tales from the Land of Liberty - Phil Leggiere

Drones Across the USA Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have moved in the past few years from a military application to surveillance tool for ports and border patrols. In a text book example of the militarization of the “homeland” the use of surveillance drones is now being cleared for takeoff by US police departments. “One issue is going to be law enforcement using this and when, by using these drones, are they conducting a search in which they'd need probable cause or a warrant. If the drones are being used to get into private spaces and be able to view where the government cannot otherwise go, and to collect information that would not otherwise be able to collect, that's concerning to me," said Rocky Rhodes a professor of constitutional law at South Texas College of Law. "It's interesting that privacy doesn't occur or searches aren't an issue when you have a helicopter pilot over you,” Houston Police Department Assistant Chief Vickie King said of the unmanned aircraft.”

http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?ContentBlockID=9737d45c-0595-478b-8e49-f5e673c3de4c http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/546954.html

A Poverty Exception to the Fourth Amendment? San Diego County’s has decided if you’re poor you can’t afford the fourth amendment. And the US Supreme Court apparently agrees. http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7009295962

St. Paul Police Go After Journalist For Accessing Public Arrest Records Perhaps envious of places (like, I don’t know, Pakistan and Burma?) where release of information about arrests is optional.

http://soupcans.blogspot.com/2007/12/cops-want-reporters-cell-phone-records.html http://www.republican-eagle.com/ap/index.cfm?page=view&id=D8TGCNIG1

Texas Prison Authority Bans News About Jena 6 State Department of Criminal Justice fears access to news might cause riots. http://www.indypendent.org/2007/12/10/jena-six-blog/

Screening Potentially Controversial Speech in the Classroom In a suburban area outside Boston a district school board has mandated that teachers get permission from school principals before inviting any outside speaker to a classroom. The move, which came after a local teacher had a representative of Wheels of Justice, a Palestinian human rights advocacy group speak in a classroom, is being resisted by teachers and parent’s groups who contend the rule could lead to viewpoint discrimination and the suppression of their constitutional rights, as well as stymie their efforts to teach students to think critically about a variety of sensitive issues, from stem-cell research to wind farms. Similar policies have been recently been imposed in other districts throughout the state. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/12/09/speaker_policy_criticized/

Poker Raids on VFW Halls in Texas Seriously. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-121107-poker,1,7591921.story

Chain Gang Time for DUI Offenders in Arizona In the manner of the original Puritans convicts get paraded in public in pink underwear with Clean(er) and Sober T-shirts.

http://www.kold.com/Global/story.asp?S=7485000&nav=menu86_2 http://www.officer.com/online/article.jsp?siteSection=1&id=39296

College Student Suspended for Publicly Videotaping Professor Running for Congress ACLU to take case on. http://crnation.com/2007/11/29/cmu-initiates-expulsion-proceedings-against-dennis-lennox/

From the Tasering of America file

Jack Cover and William S. Burroughs, two American inventors, one of gadgets theother of literary dystopias, were both boyhood fans of Tom Swift novels. Burroughs went on to among things, the Nova Mob, Cover went on to invent the taser gun (an acronym for Tom Swift’s Electric Rifle), a tool for social control burroughs likely would have been fascinated by. Originally touted as a non-lethal alternative to the use of guns by police in dangerous potentially life-threatening situations, tasers have over the past three or four years become more and more prevalently used as a tool to intimidate, overpower, and not infrequently kill (according to Amnesty International there have been 275 deaths following taser shocks in the US since 2001) citizens, very often unarmed citizens who clearly pose no physical threat to law enforcement.

http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?lang=e&id=ENGAMR511542007

Fortunately videos of some of these incidents are obtained and disseminated, occasionally by local media, more often on the internet. Legitimate law enforcement against dangerous criminals, inadvertent use of excessive force or the harbingers of a proto-police state. You decide.

Here’s a link montage of videos of recent taserings “published” just over the past few months.

From Austin, Texas- (thanks to the Agitator), http://www.theagitator.com/

Thanks to Pro-Libertate http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/

Thanks to Tasered While Black http://taseredwhileblack.blogspot.com/

all of which regularly document cases of police abuse and excessive force.

Remember as you watch tasers are supposed to be used as a LAST RESORT to subdue dangerous criminals. http://www.statesman.com/news/mplayer/other/32386

From Utah.

Remember as you watch this cop was fully exonerated by an internal investigation of the Utah state police as acting lawfully and responsibly. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH_qVJfaYZA http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/search?q=Taser+Utah

In Portland, Oregon , according to a report in the Oregonian police officers followed a police dog onto a property during a search for a fleeing suspect. After the police dog keyed on a car, officers broke out a window. Upset residents, insisting no one had run onto their property, started to videotape the police search.

When one woman was told to stop recording, she gave the video camera to Frank Waterhouse, who walked to the edge of the property, climbed up a dirt embankment and continued to record. At one point, he yelled to his friend, "Yes, I got it all on film. They had no right to come on this property."

He says in the suit that police immediately came after him, and yelled at him "put it down." Officers moved towards him, and he said, "Don't come after me." Waterhouse said seconds later he was shot with a bean bag gun and a Taser and fell to the ground.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7vNv-DKlK8

More on the case above. http://blog.oregonlive.com/multimedia/2007/10/four_sue_police_alleging_dirty/print.htm http://superawesomevillains.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/oregon-man-tasered-for-videotaping-police-search/l

Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah's account in Salon of CIA black sites http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/12/14/bashmilah/

The story of Erla Osk Arnardottir Lillendahl, citizen of Iceland, arrested and held in shackles without food for two days at JFK because she overstayed a visa 10 years ago. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22263392/