Paranoia? Department of homeland security.

[bom-bim-bom]

Playing with fear.

Patriot Act II is coming...

http://ready.gov/



INDEX

Preparing Makes Sense. Get an Overview

Water & Food
Clean Air
First Aid Kit
Supply Checklists
Special Needs Items

Creating a Family Plan
Deciding to Stay or Go
At Work and School
In a Moving Vehicle
In a High-Rise Building

Biological Threat
Chemical Threat
Explosions

Nuclear Blast
Radiation Threat

[Don Giovanni]

Maybe too exagerated, i agree.
But not so much, anyhow.

If a departement of homeland security exists, what do you want it to do or write? Don't worry, be happy?

I think part of its mission is to prepare people in case of terroristic attack or any situation of danger or crisis (thinking to earthquake too, f.e.), even if they seem to be absurd or unlikely or weird.

And anyway I prefer teaching people about what to do in that kind of situation than complaining when everything is happened (like in Italy we are so used to) crying we could have done something we did not.

See you.

[bom-bim-bom]

They are widely useless but for spreading fear and concern.

They're not really effective.

Anyway maybe it's good to remember what "homeland security act" was about.

Published on Thursday, November 28, 2002 by the San Francisco Chronicle

Homeland Law Evokes Fears of 'Big Brother'
Government's greater powers put citizens at risk, critics say

by Marc Sandalow

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's latest effort to protect the nation against terrorist attacks is raising concern that Americans are now at greater risk of intrusion from their own government.

The legislation creating the Department of Homeland Security, signed by President Bush on Monday, contains provisions that build on law enforcement's ability to peek at e-mail, monitor credit card purchases, bank transactions and travel patterns and shield its own activities from scrutiny.

Even critics acknowledge that taken individually, each provision is just a tiny step toward transforming the federal government into "Big Brother." But coupled with a series of recent court rulings favorable to the Department of Justice and new administration initiatives, privacy advocates warn that the nation is indeed experiencing the beginnings of a real-life Orwellian nightmare.

In recent weeks:


The Pentagon confirmed the existence of the Total Information Awareness program, which will monitor passports, visas, work permits, airline tickets, rental cars, gun purchases, chemical purchases and other activities in search of potential terrorists. The program is being run by Adm. John Poindexter, President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser who was convicted in 1990 of five counts of lying to Congress in the Iran-Contra affair. (The convictions were overturned on a technicality.) Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. , said she plans to try to cut off funds for the program until Congress has a chance to review it.

A special federal appeals court ruled that the Justice Department has broad powers under the Patriot Act enacted last year to use wiretaps, read e- mails and conduct searches of suspected terrorists. Attorney General John Ashcroft called the ruling "a victory for liberty, safety and the security of the American people" and immediately stepped up the use of intelligence, saying the decision "revolutionizes our ability to investigate and prosecute terrorists" by allowing criminal investigators and intelligence officers to share information.

The Justice Department challenged a court order instructing it to release the names of hundreds of people arrested on immigration charges after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Federal attorneys argued that to make such information public would provide al Qaeda a "road map" to the government's anti-terrorism efforts.

A federal court in San Francisco rejected a challenge to the detention of about 600 war prisoners being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ruling that a group of clergy and professors have no legal standing to intervene.
"Some of these measures have nothing to do with homeland security," said Jim Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, D.C. "We continue to chip away at these protections, and we continue to move things off the books in a way that are away from scrutiny. It's a troubling step down the slippery slope."

The recent developments follow a vast expansion of the Justice Department's surveillance powers under the anti-terrorism bill passed last year, an easing of restrictions on FBI agents to infiltrate churches, mosques and political groups where terrorist activity is suspected, and the secretive detention of an estimated 1,200 foreigners with suspected links to terrorism.

The United States has a long history of restricting civil liberties during times of war, from President Abraham Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus to President Franklin Roosevelt's forced internment of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans.

Most Americans appear to have accepted the activities as a reasonable precaution at a time of high risk, polls show, with the notable exception of Arab Americans, who have been the primary targets of law enforcement.

FEARS OF UNENDING CONFLICT

However, unlike government crackdowns during the Civil War or World War II, the fight against terror is open-ended, prompting some concern that the government's new authority will last indefinitely, and ultimately affect a wider circle of Americans. And because so much of today's law enforcement activity is taking place in secret, civil libertarians warn that there are no judicial or congressional checks to make sure the power is not abused.

"There is a tremendous potential for abuse," said Elliot Mincberg, legal director for People for the American Way, a liberal interest group that monitors the administration's judicial activity. "The Department of Homeland Defense is another example of . . . providing authority to the executive branch with a lack of effective oversight and checks and balances."

Justice Department officials say the real threat to freedom is posed by the terrorists.

"At this time and place, the threat to liberty is the disorder that terrorists seek to bring about in our government," Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh said in interview earlier this year.

Dinh, who fled Vietnam as a 10-year-old child, and was the chief author of the Patriot Act, said he has seen "threats to liberty from both the lack of government, and the excessive zeal of totalitarian control."

"It is not a balance between security and liberty. It is a liberty rooted in security," he said.

"Ask yourself this: When you take your child to a ballgame, are you more afraid of government agents watching your child, or terrorists attacking the ballpark. It's as simple as that. The threat to our freedom comes from Osama bin Laden, not the U.S. government."

The Department of Homeland Security is intended to combat terrorists by knocking down bureaucratic barriers and combining 170,000 federal workers, in agencies ranging from the Immigration and Naturalization Service to the Coast Guard and Customs Service, under a single department.

Buried in the legislative details is a provision calling for the creation of something that sounds like it was taken from George Orwell's "1984": the Directorate for Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection. The agency is charged with creating a massive database that could be used to identify future terrorists or, some fear, spy on alleged domestic enemies.

LOWER THRESHOLD FOR E-MAIL

The legislation also lowers the threshold for Internet service providers to comply with government authorities who want to monitor e-mail. In the past, authorities had to show they were concerned about an "immediate danger," while under the new standard they must show only that they are acting out of a "reasonable belief" that a crime is about to occur.

As the government seeks to reduce the privacy of suspected terrorists, it also has extended its own power to shield information from the public. A provision in the legislation allows the agency to exempt itself in certain cases from Freedom of Information Act requests without any judicial review.

"Without vigilant oversight by Congress and accountability to U.S. citizens . . . there is a significant threat that this new department will abuse civil rights and infringe on civil liberties," said People for the American Way President Ralph Neas.

"Unfortunately, opportunities to attack the legitimate rights of Americans are widespread in our new reality, from harassing immigrants to the collection of massive quantities of data on all Americans, innocent and otherwise," Neas said.

[bom-bim-bom]

Paranoia 2

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...l=968793972154

Canadian in passport fiasco
Humiliated by immigration staff

JIM RANKIN
STAFF REPORTER

A Toronto woman coming home from India says she was pulled aside at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, accused of using a fake Canadian passport, denied consular assistance and threatened with jail.

In tears and desperate, Berna Cruz says she told U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) officers she didn't want to go to jail. She told them she had to get home to her two children and was expected to be at work the next day at a branch of a major Toronto bank where she works as a loan officer.

Instead of jailing her on Jan. 27, an INS officer cut the front page of Cruz's passport and filled each page with "expedited removal" stamps, rendering it useless.

She was photographed, fingerprinted, barred from re-entering the U.S. for five years and immediately "removed."

Not to Toronto, but to India, where she had just spent several weeks visiting her parents.

It took four days, and help from Canadian officials in Dubai and a Kuwaiti Airlines pilot, to get her back home.

"It was a total abuse," Cruz said in an interview with the Star. "I want to see them punished for this and bring some justice."

This week, Cruz sent a letter, along with a sworn affidavit, and the INS removal documents to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham.

The letter arrived at the Prime Minister's office yesterday, and staff had not had a chance to look into the story. But Foreign Affairs spokesperson Reynald Doiron confirmed yesterday that staff in Dubai issued Cruz an emergency passport and assisted in getting her home, via London.

"We're going to bring her case to the attention of the State Department in Washington, request an explanation on the INS refusal to grant at least one phone call to Ms Cruz, and we'll see what the American response is going to be," Doiron said last night.

A full report is also expected from a Canadian official in Dubai and will be incorporated into the query that will be sent to the State Department, said Doiron.

A spokesperson for the INS in Chicago said she needed time to look into Cruz's story but did say that officers have the authority to use expedited removals when passengers have no documents or are carrying documents that are suspected to be fraudulent or tampered with.

"We have very high-tech technology out there to detect these kinds of tampered documents," said Gail Montenegro. "Also, any individual who expresses an interest in speaking with their consular official, we grant that. We do it over the phone. We do it all day. We do it any time that request is made."

Montenegro said Cruz is welcome to file a complaint and that the INS takes complaints about officer conduct seriously.

Cruz feels she was harassed because of the colour of her skin. She says the INS officers humiliated her, and Canada, by refusing to allow her to contact Canadian authorities.

Her ordeal began shortly after her flight from India, via Kuwait, arrived in Chicago the night of Jan. 27. With about two hours to spare before her connecting flight to Toronto, she had to first clear U.S. customs and immigration.

At the counter, she says an INS officer told her the picture on her passport looked "funky." She was brought to a room where other passengers were being checked. They all seemed to be people of colour, she says. She says she noticed that a passenger from her flight who spoke Punjabi had also been pulled aside.

Cruz insisted the passport was real. INS officers, she says, said otherwise and became abusive.

Cruz was born in Trivandrum, India, and immigrated to Canada in 1994. Five years later, she became a citizen and traded in her Indian passport for a Canadian one. Her birthplace is noted in the passport, and it's the same passport, she says, the INS officers suspected was a fake.

An officer, says Cruz, suggested she had bought it in Sri Lanka and asked how much it cost her.

Cruz says an officer also asked here why her surname was not "Singh" and commented that it was clever of her to use a Spanish name. Cruz, who is separated from her husband, says she told the officers that her maiden name is Fernandez. It's not uncommon for Indian-born people to have Portuguese surnames, but the officers didn't seem to care, she says.

"They said, `You better tell the truth because we know this is not a valid Canadian passport. We'll throw you in jail,'" Cruz recalled.

An officer, she says, held the passport up to a light on the ceiling, flipped through pages and said there were "chemicals" on it that indicated it was fake.

What's odd, says Cruz, is that the passport hadn't been doubted when she was leaving Toronto, via the U.S., for India, and on previous trips to Boston, New York and Spain.

Cruz says she tried to show the officers other identification she had in her purse, but they weren't interested. "I was trying to explain to them, but they didn't want to listen to anything, they didn't want to see anything."

As many as five INS officers were involved in the questioning, said Cruz.

"They just gave me two options: end up in jail (and wait several days to speak with Canadian officials) or take the flight. I pleaded with them to get in touch with the Canadian embassy, or if I could make a call, and they said no."

She says she was hurried on to a flight destined for India, via Kuwait. The captain of the Kuwaiti Airlines flight had been handed her altered passport by American officials and, mid-flight, asked Cruz what had happened.

Her valid Indian visa was also stamped by the INS, which Cruz felt would make it difficult for her to even re-enter India.

The pilot agreed she could not go back to India with a destroyed passport and told her he would take care of the mess once on the ground in Kuwait.

"He was very, very helpful." Cruz spent three days in Kuwait City while Canadian officials at the Dubai consulate sorted out the mess and issued an emergency passport.

When Cruz didn't arrive home and missed work, her family in India and Toronto became worried and, without knowing what had happened, a family member told her boss that she was sick.

Two days later, the pilot who helped Cruz had his daughter phone Cruz's employer to tell them what had happened. But with two different stories, and no word from Cruz herself, her employer took her off payroll and assigned her desk to someone else.

The work problems have since been sorted out, although she did not want to name the bank she works for.

But Cruz says she hasn't found a way to deal with the range of emotions she's now feeling.

"It's really hard. I can't get sleep at nights," she said. "I can't really do anything. It's been a week since I really cooked for the kids."

Cruz says she wants the Prime Minister to speak out publicly about the incident in the hope other Canadian citizens do not receive similar treatment.

"It's horrible. It was humiliating," said Cruz. "What I felt was that it was total discrimination, racism."