Is the FBI Spying on You?

The ACLU has launched a nationwide effort to expose and prevent FBI spying on people and groups simply for speaking out or practicing their faith. As a first step, the ACLU and its affiliates filed Freedom of Information Act requests in more than a dozen states. Although the FBI has refused to turn over most of the files, some have been released and they confirm that the FBI and local police, working through Joint Terrorism Task Forces, are spying on political, environmental, anti-war and faith-based groups. We think the public deserves to know who is being investigated and why. We are suing the FBI and the Department of Justice to get the answers.

ACLU - FBI Spy Files

According to recent press reports, Pentagon officials have been spying on what they call "suspicious" meetings by civilian groups, including student groups opposed to the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ban on lesbian, gay and bisexual military personnel. The story, first reported by Lisa Myers and NBC News last week, noted that Pentagon investigators had records pertaining to April protests at the State University of New York at Albany and William Patterson College in New Jersey. A February protest at NYU was also listed, along with the law school's LGBT advocacy group OUTlaw, which was classified as "possibly violent" by the Pentagon. A UC-Santa Cruz "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" protest, which included a gay kiss-in, was labeled as a "credible threat" of terrorism.

Can we all agree that we've entered Bizarroworld now?

AMERICAblog: Pentagon sees G/L/B student groups as 'credible threat'

There is no room for doubt or question about whether the President has the prerogative to order surveillance without asking the FISC -- even if the FISC is a toothless organization that never turns down requests, it is a federal crime, punishable by up to five years imprisonment, to conduct electronic surveillance against US citizens without court authorization.

The FISC may be worthless at defending civil liberties, but in its arrogant disregard for even the fig leaf of the FISC, the administration has actually crossed the line into a crystal clear felony. The government could have legally conducted such wiretaps at any time, but the President chose not to do it legally.

Ours is a government of laws, not of men. That means if the President disagrees with a law or feels that it is insufficient, he still must obey it. Ignoring the law is illegal, even for the President. The President may ask Congress to change the law, but meanwhile he must follow it.

Our President has chosen to declare himself above the law, a dangerous precedent that could do great harm to our country. However, without substantial effort on the part of you, and I mean you, every person reading this, nothing much is going to happen. The rule of law will continue to decay in our country. Future Presidents will claim even greater extralegal authority, and our nation will fall into despotism. I mean that sincerely. For the sake of yourself, your children and your children's children, you cannot allow this to stand.

Call your Senators and your Congressman. Demand a full investigation, both by Congress and by a special prosecutor, of the actions of the Administration and the NSA. Say that the rule of law is all that stands between us and barbarism. Say that we live in a democracy, not a kingdom, and that our elected officials are not above the law. The President is not a King. Even the President cannot participate in a felony and get away with it. Demand that even the President must obey the law.

Tell your friends to do the same. Tell them to tell their friends to do the same. Then, call back next week and the week after and the week after that until something happens. Mark it in your calendar so you don't forget about it. Politicians have short memories, and Congress is about to recess for Christmas, so you must not allow this to be forgotten. Keep at them until something happens.

Perry

Perry Metzger on Bush Administration Spying

Make's holiday gift guide - good stuff in there.

MAKE: Blog: MAKE's Mostly Under $100 Gift Guide 2005!

After playing on many different synths and copying several designs. I decided that I had to have a minimoog...

Build Your Own Minimoog

Interesting... from the blurb -

"DOT-TUNES was conceived by a group of professional musicians who use iTunes for storing their own copyright music and recordings and who wanted to be able to easily demonstrate their work to clients and to share 'works in progress' and other original compositions with others.

Share your original iTunes tracks with everyone in your home or office.

Share your compositions with the world via any web browser.

Only with DOT-TUNES - the ultimate iTunes web server."

DOTTUNES.NET

Don't Bomb Us - I think the title says it all. I wish our media had the balls that Al-Jazeera has.

This is a story that's gained signifigant traction just about everywhere but here. I wonder why?

Don't Bomb Us - A blog by Al Jazeera Staffers

Very cool generative, fractal, rule-based and algorythmic web art.

Levitated

Drawing the distinction even further between a liberal religious believer and the Religious Right, Yoffie continued, saying that the former believe that “’family values’ requires providing health care to every child and that God cares about the 12 million children without health insurance.

“It means valuing a child with diabetes over a frozen embryo in a fertility clinic, and seeing the teaching of science as a primary social good.

And it means reserving the right for each person to prayerfully make decisions for herself about when she dies.”

And, he said, “it means believing in legal protection for gay couples,” noting that there is room for disagreement about gay marriage, “but there is no excuse for hateful rhetoric that fuels the hellfires of anti-gay bigotry.”

Yoffie accused the Religious Right of refusing to acknowledge that there are religious perspectives different from its own, and of misreading religious texts sacred to both Christians and Jews. He noted that “the Bible, both Hebrew and Christian, has far more to say about caring for the poor than about eradicating sexual sin.”

Union for Reform Judaism - Leader Criticizes Religious Right for Intolerance

Much of what Eric McLuhan says about the social effects of the Internet -- and much of what his father, Marshall McLuhan, said before him regarding the social effects of electronic media and computers -- challenge some of our most basic assumptions about the fundamentals of democratic society.

Like his father, Eric McLuhan talks about many of the social effects of new media as if they already have happened. Indeed, a fundamental premise of the McLuhan perspective is that new technologies and new media create hidden environments whose social effects are generally not seen by most people until superseded by a new medium or a new technology. Hence, what we become sharply aware of are the effects of the old media rather than the new.

Visions Nov99 - Eric McLuhan