Showing posts with label Official Incompetence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Official Incompetence. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Constitution Interpretation 'Will Have to Change' NYC Mayor Says

Bloomberg says interpretation of Constitution will 'have to change' after Boston bombing

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday the country's interpretation of the Constitution will "have to change" to allow for greater security to stave off future attacks.

"The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry," Mr. Bloomberg said during a press conference in Midtown. "But we live in a complex word where you're going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change."

Mr. Bloomberg, who has come under fire for the N.Y.P.D.'s monitoring of Muslim communities and other aggressive tactics, said the rest of the country needs to learn from the attacks.

"Look, we live in a very dangerous world. We know there are people who want to take away our freedoms. New Yorkers probably know that as much if not more than anybody else after the terrible tragedy of 9/11," he said. 

Read more: sott.net

Take notice, the people trying to take away our freedom is our own government, not the terrorists. And even if we blame the terrorists, people like Mayor Bloomberg are handing them the win, each and every time they use an act of terror as the reason to take away our freedom.








Friday, April 12, 2013

Public School Teaches Sedition

Our Constitution is already in peril, and it's little wonder why when you see the Leftist agenda being carried out in our public school systems. Nevertheless, the Constitution is still the law of the land and to call for its subversion, to teach anti-Constitutional values to young students, is nothing short of subversion of government, sedition.

The father of a 4th grade student in a Florida public school was furious to discover a crayon scrawled statement in his son's back pack. It read:

"I am willing to give up some of my Constitutional rights in order to be safer or more secure."


The paper is reported to have been written after a lawyer visited the class to discuss the Bill of Rights. The teacher and school administrators claim the student wrote the statement spontaneously, of his own free will. However, the father of the young 4th-grader maintains that such a complex political statement is beyond his son's reasoning and writing skill. He also claims that other students have corroborated his son's account that he was one of several students personally selected by the teacher to write out that specific sentence.

You can read details of this story first reported at: The Blaze

Also see:

Kids Belong to The Collective, Says MSNBC Host








Monday, April 8, 2013

Venison Poisoned to Keep Homeless From Eating It

EXCERPT:

The Shreveport-Bossier Rescue Mission (SBRM) in Louisiana has been serving specially-prepared venison, or deer meat, to hungry folks throughout the region for many years. The state's deer management program actually encourages hunters to donate their extra venison to this and other non-profit endeavors, as deer meat is high in protein, full of nutrients and best of all, clean and untainted by concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

The program has been so successful, in fact, that many state representatives routinely donate money and other resources to the deer processors that volunteer their own time and resources to prepare the meat and ensure its safety before shipping it out to local food kitchens like SBRM. What better way to salvage all that deer meat that would otherwise go to waste as a result of deer population control than to donate it to people with no other food to eat?

The Louisiana Department of Health & Hospitals (DHH), however, has a different opinion on the matter. After catching wind of the program, DHH took swift action to completely destroy it, claiming it violates state law. Even though SBRM receives absolutely no funding or support from the state, DHH basically assumed the authority to declare that serving venison to hungry people in need is off limits.

According to officials from DHH, deer meat is apparently "not permitted to be served in a shelter, restaurant or any other public eating establishment in Louisiana." So, without a second thought, the soulless agency swooped in like a vulture and demanded that the program end immediately. DHH even went so far as to declare that the 1,600 pounds of deer meat in SBRM's possession be immediately thrown into a dumpster, and have bleach poured all over it in order to ensure that nobody ate it.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/039827_government_food_charity_oppression.html#ixzz2Ptv4tRNs

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Cop Made Chief After Negligent Homicide Conviction

This sorry excuse for a police officer was convicted of negligent homicide after shooting a motorist to death. He was fired from his job, but later had his conviction expunged and has now been hired in another town as the department's chief.

“You put the uniform back on and you look at yourself in the mirror, and you think, I’m back,” he said. “It’s a good feeling.”



Just goes to show, yet again, that police can literally get away with murder, and whatever the hell else they feel like pulling.

D.A.'s Office Complicit In Brutality Coverup


Thursday, March 21, 2013

Federal Law Makes Every Single Person In America a Drug Felon


Dimethyltryptamine, or DMT is a Schedule I drug according to the Federal government and the DEA.

Schedule I drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Schedule I drugs are the most dangerous drugs of all the drug schedules with potentially severe psychological or physical dependence. -SOURCE

Because of this classification, anyone reading this article is felon. You are not only in possession of DMT, but also a user, and a manufacturer of it. You see, DMT is a naturally ocurring chemical in the brains of humans, animals, and elsewhere in nature as well. Which also makes you a distributor of Schedule I drugs if you give away free kittens, or sell your lawn clippings to your neighbor for landfill.

Check out a more in-depth article from Natural News.

Also check out our article Everything Is Illegal.




Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Boston Crime Lab Scandal Could Put 34k Felons Back On Streets

The Massachusetts legal system is reeling in the wake of a 27-count indictment against one of their leading laboratory technicians. 35-year-old drug lab worker Annie Dookhan has been accused of tampering with evidence and obstruction of justice.

The full impact of her alleged crimes may never be known, and cannot be overstated. In this day and age of scientific law-enforcement, with so much of the public convinced that laboratory work is the "holy grail" in any criminal prosecution, the integrity of those labs is the pinnacle of public trust; the very bedrock of how we have come to even define justice itself, in so many cases, in the modern era. Popular television shows reinforce this idea that laboratory evidence is irrefutable and absolute. Prosecutors are want to nurture this sentiment among jurors.

Of course, any reasonable person might consider that even in science there are errors from time to time. With DNA evidence for example, we sometimes hear the "odds" of accuracy. Sometimes as accurate as one in a hundred-thousand. Sometimes though, huge odds are defied as in the case of lab analyst Kathryn Troyer, who discovered a near-match defying 1-in-113 billion odds between two felons in the same state.

Accuracy of DNA "Matches" to Definitively Identify Suspects Questioned

What happens though, when we throw in a more human element to the science? Something that undermines even the very best science. Personally, I never really thought too much about it, but always sort of assumed that the relationships between lab staff and the legal system were kept sterile, to a large degree. I assumed that some measures were in place to ensure lab workers were not only ethically impartial, but also that systems of anonymity and lab-controls were in place to reinforce the ethical standard. I even assumed that lab work was double-checked. In other words, I foolishly believed in the system and never thought that something like this could happen. I certainly never thought I would ever see a case of this nature, of such magnitude.

Annie Dookhan began her career at the state's Jamaica Plains drug lab in 2003. In that time, she has handled evidence in more than 34,000 cases. Any convictions stemming from evidence she processed are now likely to be overturned. Worse, this has called into question the integrity of the entire lab, and countless more cases. The lab has since been shut down and numerous people have been fired or resigned, but not before the damage was done.

In June of 2011 she was caught improperly removing drugs from evidence storage in 60 different cases, but apparently her supervisors did nothing to stop her from being involved in more drug cases after that. Later that year she wrote in a private email to Norfolk Assistant ­District Attorney George ­Papachristos, “I have full access to anything and everything, one of the advantages, so some of the other chemists are resentful of me.”

The long and often quite personal email exchanges with Papachristos have been closely scrutinized and seen by many as unethical from both a professional and personal standpoint. Dookhan's marriage has been on the rocks since her husband uncovered emails back in 2009. The prosecutor has not been charged with any crime himself though, and it is not known if the flirtatious banner ever led to more than a handful of personal meetings. Nonetheless, it does show a much closer relationship than one might expect between a prosecutor, and a lab technician who is expected to be impartial. So much so, that Papachristos resigned from the DA's office.

Clearly, from her own words, impartiality was never even something she considered. She did not see her job as being a technician who processes evidence, but rather her stated goal was “getting [drug dealers] off the streets.” It should go without saying here, that this was certainly not her job as a lab technician. Nevertheless she was all too happy to do favors for prosecutors, while shunning defense attorneys even when she was required to give evidence to them. She saw herself as part of the prosecution team, as did many prosecutors themselves, with one declaring "No no no!!! I need you!!!" when Dookhan said she would not be able to testify in a case.

Dookhan is alleged to have lied on the witness stand in court about having a Master's degree in chemistry, and shot out emails giving herself grandiose job titles she simply did not have. In correspondence with various agencies she identified herself  with self-appointed titles like "special agent of operations” or "on-call terrorism supervisor." She even went so far as to create fake email conversations with a US attorney, who's name she misspelled, and forwarded to other recipients.

Assuming of course that all of these allegations are true, one has to wonder how such an obviously pathological liar could go on for so long without anyone bothering to consider that something like this might happen. Police and prosecutors were clearly willing to look the other way and even cultivate a close relationship with Dookhan, to encourage her, in order to secure easy convictions. As of yet, there are no criminal charges against anyone else aside from the lab-tech herself, but it seems clear that ethical and moral obligations were tossed aside in favor of making their jobs easier.

As a result, hundred of millions of dollars have been wasted. Entire careers have been built to be little more than sandcastles. And tens of thousands convicted felons are now poised to flood the streets of Massachusetts, then out across the country. If it was their intent to actually make the public safe, then the government certainly failed miserably in that mandate. Not only because of the threat posed by these potentially dangerous criminals being set loose upon society, but because of the threat posed by the government itself.

It may be all-too-easy to assume that all or even most of these convicts were actually guilty, but that simply does not hold up to the facts, and certainly carries no weight against the core values of our entire justice system. In the face of reasonable doubt, the presumption of innocence is paramount. Without these standards, we might just go ahead and just give the police a license to kill at will and close down the courts.

Understanding this, we must assume now that the government sent more than 34,000 innocent people to prison on the word of just one deluded lab technician. That my friends, is more dangerous than any drug dealer. Even if only in our hearts we assume that just some of these convicts were actually innocent, imagine for a moment that one of them happened to be you, your spouse, your parent or child. Imagine for a moment how many lives have been irreparably laid to waste by the lies of just one woman, and a government who did not care. A government that in fact has a vested interest in securing more convictions even if they are not justified. A government that encouraged this woman to commit her crimes against the people. A government that presumes guilt of anyone who crosses into their sights, and has even dispatched agents to threaten the hundreds of inmates who have already been exonerated.

"We tell them, 'Listen, we know what you were doing before and we're watching you.'" -Boston Police Commissioner, Edward Davis

Perhaps the most frightening aspect to all of this is that this can only be the tip of the iceberg. This woman was so clearly delusional and so easily cultivated this relationship with prosecutors, it begs the question how prevalent this sort of thing is throughout the country. Especially in labs and agencies where this sort of thing is likely done more discreetly. If there are no practical standards in place to prevent something like this from happening, how could we possibly trust that this sort of thing is not rampant? How many lab workers compromise cases for monetary gain, for romantic favors, for promotions, or to simply stroke their own ego? How many might even quietly carry on the work of a zealot in their own private war against people they see as evil? Are we supposed to ignorantly believe that this is simply an isolated incident, one bad apple, and assume that it would never happen again? Are we honestly supposed to believe that some fear of the law will prevent lab-techs from committing these sorts of crimes, when the government itself benefits from these crimes?

If convicted, will Annie Dookhan be sentenced to as much time in prison as the innocent people she put there would have done?


Here are two media stories on the case:

Indicted drug analyst Annie Dookhan’s e-mails reveal her close personal ties to prosecutors

Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Mass. Legal System In Turmoil


Also see these articles and videos:

Mexican drug lord asserts he was working for US government

Obama's Drug War

Afghan Opium Farming Flourishes Under US Protection

Man Shot Dead By Police Home Invaders

Cops Give Free Drugs To Teens For Training

Cocaine Cop Gets 3 1/2 Years

Cops Munch Pot Brownies








Friday, March 8, 2013

Cop's Arrest Jeopardizes Drug Cases

The Poughkeepsie Journal reports (abridged):

Defense attorneys for 10 people charged by the Dutchess County Drug Task Force have 30 days to file additional motions in Dutchess County Court, after a task force member involved with their cases was charged with lying to police.City of Beacon Detective Sgt. Richard Sassi Jr., 34, a Drug Task Force member, is facing a charge of third-degree falsely reporting an incident, a misdemeanor.

The attorneys will be able to file new motions that challenge the legitimacy of the evidence against their clients, ask for an additional hearing or withdraw any guilty pleas.

“The officer’s credibility is now, quite properly, the subject of intense scrutiny,” said Thomas O’Neill, who represents one of the defendants.

While a misdemeanor seems like a rather minor thing to most of us, it is important to keep in perspective that this is a police Detective Sergeant we are talking about. When a civilian is charged with a crime, police will go out of their way to scrape up every last charge on the books that can be construed in any way as being applicable, even seeking to make felony charges stick for relatively minor offenses. On the other hand, police never arrest another police officer under any circumstances, unless they are absolutely forced to, and even then will only charge the bare minimum that they must in order avoid looking outright incompetent or even criminally complicit. Usually, it will be when an officer is caught right in the middle of a crime, red-handed, that other police will be forced to arrest an officer. Or, in this case, when the officer was caught with his pants down.

The local media has been rather protective of the Sergeant, but this blogger was not so kind. Gotta love the non-corporate press when it comes to getting the real scoop. Please show your support for visiting the orginal site where the following article was posted, by clicking the link in the title.

The Detective Who Tried to Put The Moves on the Informant


Name: Detective Sgt. Richard Sassi Jr.

Known for: Litigiousness, unwanted seductions, brutality allegations. 

Fatal mistake: Ineptly seducing an informant.

The circumstances: In August 2012, Sassi, a detective sergeant in Beacon, N.Y., decided to visit one of his confidential informants. According to Sarah Bradshaw of the Poughkeepsie Journal, Sassi arrived at the informant’s apartment with beer and amorous intentions, allegedly touching her leg and fumbling with her shirt in what appears to have been an exceedingly awkward and creepy situation. (Talk about non-consensual encounters.) Sassi was interrupted when the uncomfortable informant heard a strange noise outside.
The noise turned out to be the informant’s boyfriend, who entered the apartment. A presumably nervous Sassi hid in a closet and, according to Bradshaw, here’s what happened next:
The boyfriend found Sassi in the closet, wearing only his boxers, court records said. He pushed the police officer and threw his clothes out of reach, and tried to take cellphone photographs of him. Sassi is accused of pointing his gun at the boyfriend, saying he was a police officer and the man should back up. Sassi then called 911 to report a robbery, identifying himself as “Mike Smith,” according to court records.
It wasn’t long before the authorities realized that there was no robbery, and that the mysterious “Mike Smith” was actually their colleague, Det. Sgt. Sassi. He was suspended from duty and faces a third-degree misdemeanor charge of lying to authorities, not to mention the bemused scorn of his co-workers. ‘“Our policy is a minimum of two officers have to be present when meeting with informants,”’ said Beacon’s current police chief, adding that “drinking is prohibited for on-duty officers and that sexual relations with informants ‘would not be proper.’ ” Well, it would’ve been nice to have known that at the time, you stupid chief!

Background: Where to begin? Sassi has been a Beacon police officer since 2001, and was promoted to detective in 2007, under controversial circumstances. He is the son of Beacon’s former police chief, also named Richard Sassi, who was suspended and demoted in 2006 by then-mayor Clara Lou Gould after, among other things, pursuing an internal affairs investigation against Beacon policeman Jose “Tony” Rios, who was promoted to detective ahead of his son. Mayor Gould accused Sassi Sr. of “gross insubordination” and said that his “misconduct has resulted in a complete lack of trust on all levels of City government.”

It’s not hard to understand why the younger Sassi was initially passed over for promotion. In 2007, Sassi Jr. was named in a lawsuit alleging that he and another officer beat and pepper sprayed a man during a 2002 traffic stop, then “grabbed his head and banged his face into the sidewalk.” (The city paid a $20,000 settlement in the case.) A U.S. District Court memorandum mentioned “a report by the local branch of the NAACP where unspecified ‘community members’ voiced concerns about Officer Sassi's harassment and arrogance.” And in 2006, according to Beacon City Council Member Lee Kyriacou, Officer Sassi earned $90,000 of his $150,000 salary in overtime pay.

Despite all that, Sassi filed two separate discrimination lawsuits against the City of Beacon in 2006, claiming he had been denied a promotion to detective because of the city’s unfair anti-nepotism policy. Sassi explained that, because of his father’s status, he had been “humiliated, public embarrassed [sic], subjected to per se defamation, held up to public ridicule, impaired in his professional career, damaged financially, rendered anxious and upset, and otherwise rendered sick and sore.”

"Nepotism doesn't apply here because Officer Sassi wasn't qualified enough for the job," said Kyriacou at the time, noting that, as opposed to the candidate who was ultimately promoted, "Officer Sassi has no detective training, is not bilingual, and did not get an award for heroism. The only thing that puts him above the rest is his last name.”

Good cop or bad cop?: Let’s give Det. Sgt. Sassi the benefit of the doubt here. It’s possible that he was denied a promotion because of discrimination. It’s possible that he never read the section of the cop manual that said it was inappropriate to seduce an informant. It’s possible that, back in 2002, that traffic violator really had it coming.

But it’s not likely. Bad cop.

So all in all, if drugs are so bad that we have to set up all these task forces and spend huge amounts of tax dollars on this bullshit "war on drugs" shouldn't it be a felony to compromise an investigation by committing a crime? If he is found guilty, is this cop going to reimburse the taxpayers for the millions of dollars in man-hours that went  into building these cases that are going to get tossed now because he committed a crime?



"I Can Write You a S#itload of Tickets"

This may seem like a relatively minor incident overall, but it is downright frightening when you consider the true gravity of the situation. This isn't about just another "bad apple" but rather symptomatic of the regular oppression the civilian population faces in this nation on a daily basis. This is a nation where our so-called protectors can hit someone with a car, and then blame the victim for it. Where a cop can commit a crime, and then prosecute the innocent for it.



It is all the more frightening when you realize that a simple traffic incident can spiral out of control so badly, that a person could wind up being thrown into solitary confinement and tortured for two years without ever going before a judge, simply on the word of one cop.

Man Held In Solitary For 2 Years Without Trial


Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Cop Fires Gun In NY High School Hallway by Accident

In the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy there has been a big push to put armed guards, police, even troops in our schools. Personally, I don't believe that militarizing our school and turning them into prison camps any more than they are now is really the answer. Making a uniformed target for someone looking to shoot up a school is not exactly a well thought out tactic either.

But I am no anti-gunner. I believe the solution is simple. Lift the ban on school employees from exercising their 2nd Amendment rights. There is no need to hire additional resources or enact new laws, when the 2nd Amendment has been there for us since the nation was founded. There is no reason why a person who is legally permitted to own and carry a gun should not be allowed to carry it with them to work. Teachers and staff at schools should not be barred from exercising their rights, but rather encouraged.

Now, when we see indicents like this, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that police are some sort of special superhumans that make them any more qualified than the rest of us to carry a firearm.

In this particular incident, a part-time Town of Lloyd police officer and School Resource Officer for Highland High School accidentally discharged his service weapon in a school hallway.


Print stories are viewable here and here.

Here is another example of how police are not perfect:


UPDATE:

What are the odds of two accidental discharges in a school on the same day? This story out of Manchester, Connecticut now where a SWAT officer was wounded in an unintentional shooting. 
MANCHESTER, Conn. (AP) — The campus of Manchester Community College was locked down Wednesday after a student reported seeing a man with what she believed to be a gun in his waistband, and one of the officers involved in the response was apparently injured in an accidental shooting. -SOURCE

UDPATE 2: The officer in the Highland case has resigned. He does not face any criminal charges.


Friday, February 15, 2013

Million-Dollar Motive For Cops to Kill Dorner


Loophole May Hold Up Dorner Reward

A legal loophole could prevent good Samaritans, instrumental in ending the manhunt for a fugitive ex-cop accused of killing four people, from claiming more than $1 million in reward money because Christopher Dorner died and was not captured.

Last weekend, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa pledged $1 million, sourced from private individuals, companies and unions, "for information that will lead to Mr. Dorner's capture."

The L.A. City Council followed up with its own promise of a $100,000 reward, for information "leading to the identification, apprehension and conviction of Christopher Dorner." 

But Dorner, accused of killing four people and threatening the lives of several dozen more, was never captured, apprehended or convicted. Instead, he died following a standoff with police near Big Bear, Calif., when the cabin in which he was barricaded burned down with him inside. 

The mayor's office has not yet determined if the reward could still be paid out given Dorner died. 

Full article at link:  http://news.yahoo.com/legal-loophole-could-hold-1m-dorner-reward-230004148--abc-news-topstories.html

It is disturbing that authorities are even questioning whether or not to pay out the reward. For one thing, it is a betrayal of public trust that may impact future investigations and undermine efforts to locate dangerous fugitves. Anyone with potential leads will think twice about risking their own lives, reputation, and privacy in order to share information with authorities. This move, quite simply, invalidates the purpose of offering a reward at all in cases like this.

More alarmingly though, this shows that police had a very large financial incentive to kill Dorner, rather than bring him to justice. Not to mention of course, that they already had a strong motivation to kill him as revenge for the deaths of other officers, and to silence him from speaking any further regarding corruption in the LAPD. Adding a million dollar financial incentive to kill the suspect now goes well beyond a simple question of ethics. Especially when one considers now that police burned down the cabin Dorner was holed up in.

The San Bernadino County Sheriff denies that the cabin was burned down intentionally, but given the motivations we have already seen here, that denial is quite dubious. Consider too, that we are talking about a Sheriff who allows his deputies to violate their sacred oath to uphold the Constitution, simply in order to harass a woman out for a walk, as seen here in this video. Why should we believe that those deputies would adhere to the law when the stakes are so much higher?

The denial becomes downright feeble when one listens to what was actually said by police that day at the scene. Are we to believe that they were simply incompetent, and "accidentally" burned that cabin down after they clearly voiced their intention to burn the cabin down?




Saturday, February 9, 2013

America's Own Iron Curtain: DHS Suspends Constitution at Borders

Imagine for a moment, that the old Soviet Union were buttressed right up against the United States, where Canada or Mexico are. Now imagine which side of that border would scare you more. Which side the more oppressive police-state, where rights and liberty do not exist? Sadly, more and more each and every day the United States is becoming every terrible thing we ever imagined or were ever told about what laid beyond the old communist Iron Curtain. Are we in the land of the free? Hardly.

Warrantless strip-searches of children by the TSA's agents at airports, that corrupt agency's expansion of power outside of airports, highway checkpoints, alarming scandals within the DHS hidden from the public, helicopters swooping down from the sky to molest innocent people who are just out for a walk, class warfare as the government seizes bodily fluids of the poor without a warrant, and a frightening level of public support for all of this.

What sort of freedom is this? What sort of nation greets visitors and citizens alike with direct violations of the very values it preaches to the rest of the world? Where has the 4th Amendment gone? Where is the America where I was born?

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." ~Amendment IV, Constitution for the United States of America



That was in 2009. This is now:

Not only has the government declared our borders a "Constitution-free Zone" but now also claims that zone extends 100 miles inland from the borders. This move declares that virtually the entire northeast is now under martial law.



DHS Watchdog OKs ‘Suspicionless’ Seizure of Electronic Devices Along Border

The Department of Homeland Security’s civil rights watchdog has concluded that travelers along the nation’s borders may have their electronics seized and the contents of those devices examined for any reason whatsoever — all in the name of national security.


The DHS, which secures the nation’s border, in 2009 announced that it would conduct a “Civil Liberties Impact Assessment” of its suspicionless search-and-seizure policy pertaining to electronic devices “within 120 days.” More than three years later, the DHS office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties published a two-page executive summary of its findings.


“We also conclude that imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a border search of an electronic device would be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties benefits,” the executive summary said.


The memo highlights the friction between today’s reality that electronic devices have become virtual extensions of ourselves housing everything from e-mail to instant-message chats to photos and our papers and effects — juxtaposed against the government’s stated quest for national security.

The President George W. Bush administration first announced the suspicionless, electronics search rules in 2008. The President Barack Obama administration followed up with virtually the same rules a year later. Between 2008 and 2010, 6,500 persons had their electronic devices searched along the U.S. border, according to DHS data.

According to legal precedent, the Fourth Amendment — the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures — does not apply along the border. By the way, the government contends the Fourth-Amendment-Free Zone stretches 100 miles inland from the nation’s actual border.


Civil rights groups like the American Civil Liberties Union suggest that “reasonable suspicion” should be the rule, at a minimum, despite that being a lower standard than required by the Fourth Amendment.


“There should be a reasonable, articulate reason why the search of our electronic devices could lead to evidence of a crime,” Catherine Crump, an ACLU staff attorney, said in a telephone interview. “That’s a low threshold.”


The DHS watchdog’s conclusion isn’t surprising, as the DHS is taking that position in litigation in which the ACLU is challenging the suspicionless, electronic-device searches and seizures along the nation’s borders. But that conclusion nevertheless is alarming considering it came from the DHS civil rights watchdog, which maintains its mission is “promoting respect for civil rights and civil liberties.”


“This is a civil liberties watchdog office. If it is doing its job property, it is supposed to objectively evaluate. It has the power to recommend safeguards to safeguard Americans’ rights,” Crump said. “The office has not done that and the public has the right to know why.”


Toward that goal, the ACLU on Friday filed a Freedom of Information Act request demanding to see the full report that the executive summary discusses.


Meantime, a lawsuit the ACLU brought on the issue concerns a New York man whose laptop was seized along the Canadian border in 2010 and returned 11 days later after his attorney complained.


At an Amtrak inspection point, Pascal Abidor showed his U.S. passport to a federal agent. He was ordered to move to the cafe car, where they removed his laptop from his luggage and “ordered Mr. Abidor to enter his password,” according to the lawsuit.


Agents asked him about pictures they found on his laptop, which included Hamas and Hezbollah rallies. He explained that he was earning a doctoral degree at a Canadian university on the topic of the modern history of Shiites in Lebanon.


He was handcuffed and then jailed for three hours while the authorities looked through his computer while numerous agents questioned him, according to the suit, which is pending in New York federal court.

Also check out:

Homeland Insecurity - Rise of Global Police State (Full-Length Feature Film)



Strip-Searching and Terrorizing Children (VIDEOS)

You have probably seen a few videos like this already, but here are a few archived for posterity now that filming has been prohibited by the TSA. It's bad press for the government to let you see tyranny in action, when it is presented in a negative light anyway. So now things like this will be swept under the carpet and made a routine part of our society. Just remember, the government terrorists are there for your safety.