December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

IP: Secret Courts Approve More Wiretapping
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: believer(a)telepath.com Subject: IP: Secret Courts Approve More Wiretapping Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 10:50:51 -0500 To: believer(a)telepath.com Source: Excerpted from: ---------------------------------- From: "John C. Goodman- National Center for Policy Analysis" <ncpa(a)onramp.net> National Center for Policy Analysis DAILY POLICY DIGEST Wednesday, September 30, 1998 <snip> SECRET COURTS APPROVE MORE WIRETAPPING Judges in secret federal courts are authorizing unprecedented numbers of wiretaps and clandestine searches, according to U.S. Department of Justice records. The courts were authorized by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). o During the last three years, an annual average of 760 wiretaps and searches were carried out -- a 38 percent increase from the 550 a year average for 1990 to 1994. o Since 1995, FISA courts also have authorized searches of the homes, cars, computers and other property of suspected spies. o In all, the courts have approved 11,950 applications and turned down one request. Proponents argue the surveillance reflects a stepped-up federal response to increased terrorist activity on American soil. But opponents contend that the process endangers the very liberties it seeks to protect. "There's a growing addiction to the use of secret courts as an alternative to more conventional investigative means," points out Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University. The law requires the Justice Department -- and usually the FBI or the National Security Agency -- to show the judge that the target is a foreign government or agent engaging in "clandestine intelligence gathering activities" or terrorism. Source: Richard Willing, "With Secret Courts' OK, Wiretapping on the Rise," and "Secrecy Might Be Weak Link in Taps of Suspected Spies," both USA Today, September 30, 1998. For more on Terrorism http://www.ncpa.org/pi/congress/cong9.html **************************************************************************** NATIONAL CENTER FOR POLICY ANALYSIS DALLAS, TEXAS "Making Ideas Change the World" Internet Address: http://www.ncpa.org **************************************************************************** ----------------------- NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ----------------------- ********************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address ********************************************** www.telepath.com/believer **********************************************

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IP: Chinese Govt Bans Controversial Clinton Book
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: believer(a)telepath.com Subject: IP: Chinese Govt Bans Controversial Clinton Book Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 09:16:35 -0500 To: believer(a)telepath.com Source: US Newswire http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/0929-126.txt PRIMA: Chinese Government Bans Controversial Clinton Book U.S. Newswire 29 Sep 15:06 PRIMA Publishing: Chinese Government Bans Controversial Clinton Book To: National Desk Contact: Diana Banister of Craig Shirley & Associates, 800-536-5920, pager: 703-816-9368 WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following was released today by Prima Publishing: Chinese authorities have refused to allow three publishing houses to translate a new book -- "The Clinton Syndrome, The President and the Self-Destructive Nature of Sexual Addiction" by California-based Prima Publishing. The book takes a clinical look at the life and behavior of Bill Clinton and explains why the president would risk his presidency for a sexual relationship with an intern. "We have been told that the Chinese government does not want to make a book of this kind available in China because they consider it unfavorable to President Clinton," says Robin Taylor, rights associate at Prima Publishing. "The Chinese authorities apparently don't understand why Americans treat their president just like any other person and allow citizens to write about their government leaders." In "The Clinton Syndrome," Jerome D. Levin, Ph.D., a psychotherapist, addictions specialist and professor, assesses the character of a man so driven by a sexual addiction that he would risk his presidency to fulfill a desperate need for reassurance and validation of his worth. Prima does not consider the Clinton Syndrome an "anti-Clinton" book. In fact, Dr. Levin voted for President Clinton twice and agrees with his policies. But he still believes the president is in serious need of help for a classic case of sexual addiction. "We work with foreign publishers around the world on numerous books," says Taylor. "Never have we had the subject matter of a book impede its publication in a foreign country. But I guess it's understandable when you consider the relationship between the Clinton administration and the current Chinese government." "The Clinton Syndrome," published by Prima Publishing of Rocklin, Calif., is available in bookstores nationwide. For more information or to schedule an interview with Dr. Jerome D. Levin or a Prima spokesman, please call Ciana Banister at 800-536-5920. -0- /U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/ 09/29 15:06 Copyright 1998, U.S. Newswire ----------------------- NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ----------------------- ********************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address ********************************************** www.telepath.com/believer **********************************************

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IP: Courts OK record number of wiretaps
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: believer(a)telepath.com Subject: IP: Courts OK record number of wiretaps Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 10:55:30 -0500 To: believer(a)telepath.com Source: USA Today http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncs2.htm 09/30/98- Updated 12:06 AM ET The Nation's Homepage Courts OK record number of wiretaps WASHINGTON - Federal judges operating in secret courts are authorizing unprecedented numbers of wiretaps and clandestine searches aimed at spies and terrorists operating in the USA, Justice Department records show. During the last three years, an average of 760 wiretaps and searches a year were carried out, a 38% increase from the 550 a year from 1990 to 1994. Federal judges have authorized a yearly average of 463 ordinary wiretaps since 1990 in drug, organized crime and other criminal cases. Part of the growth in surveillance is attributed to an increase in espionage and terrorist activities in the USA. "There's a greater quantity of the folks who are potentially problematic out there," says Jamie Gorelick, who as deputy attorney general from 1994 to 1997 helped review wiretap applications. Proponents say the surveillance reflects a stepped-up federal response to increased terrorist activity on American soil. Opponents argue that the process endangers the very liberties it seeks to protect. "This issue is where the rubber hits the road," says William Webster, who headed the FBI in 1978 when the law allowing the secret wiretaps was passed. "It's where we try to balance the concept of our liberty against what has to be done to protect it." The wiretaps, which are applied for by the Justice Department under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and carried out by the FBI and National Security Agency, have received their greatest use yet under President Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno. Since 1995, FISA courts also have authorized searches of the homes, cars, computers and other property of suspected spies. In its two decades, FISA courts have approved 11,950 applications and turned down one request. Generally, defense lawyers can challenge the basis for authorizing a wiretap. But supporting information for wiretaps authorized by the FISA court are sealed for national security reasons. "It legitimizes what would appear to be contrary to constitutional protections," says Steven Aftergood, privacy specialist at the Federation of American Scientists. "It's a challenge to the foundation of American liberties." Opponents also say the government is using the wiretaps to replace conventional criminal searches which must meet a higher legal standard. "There's a growing addiction to the use of the secret court as an alternative to more conventional investigative means," says Jonathan Turley, law professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The wiretaps are meant to develop intelligence, not to help make criminal cases. But the wiretap information was used to secure guilty pleas from CIA turncoats Aldrich Ames in 1994 and Harold Nicolson in 1997. By Richard Willing, USA TODAY ©COPYRIGHT 1998 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. ----------------------- NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ----------------------- ********************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address ********************************************** www.telepath.com/believer **********************************************

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IP: Big Brother Is Monitoring Us by Databases - Sept. PSR - Part 1
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: ignition-point(a)majordomo.pobox.com Subject: IP: Big Brother Is Monitoring Us by Databases - Sept. PSR - Part 1 Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 17:28:57 -0500 To: PSR(a)eagleforum.org PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY REPORT September 1998 Big Brother Is Monitoring Us by Databases The hottest issue in America today is our discovery that the Federal Government is trying to tag, track and monitor our health care records through national databases and personal identification numbers. This is a priority election issue, and every Congressional and Senatorial candidate should be ready to answer questions from his constituents. Americans are accustomed to enjoying the freedom to go about our daily lives without telling government what we are doing. The idea of having Big Brother monitor our life and activities, as forecast in George Orwell's great book 1984, is not acceptable in America. Unfortunately, the liberals, who always seek control over how we live our lives and how we spend our money, are using terrorists, criminals, illegal aliens, welfare cheats, and deadbeat dads as excuses to impose oppressive government surveillance over our private lives. It is typical of the liberals to go after law-abiding citizens rather than just the law-violators. Modern technology has made it possible to build a file on every American, and to record and track our comings and goings. Computers can now collect and store immense databases, with detailed records about individual Americans' health status and treatment, job status and applications, automobiles and driving, financial transactions, credit, banking, school and college performance, and travels within and without the country. In the novel 1984, an omnipresent Big Brother watched every citizen at home and work from a giant television screen. Databases can now accomplish the same surveillance and tracking much more efficiently. In the novel 1984, Big Brother was able to read the individual's secret diary hidden in his home. The Clinton Administration and the FBI are right now demanding the right to read our e-mail and computer files, listen in on our phone conversations, and track the whereabouts of our cell phone calls. Some of these databases are under the direct control of the government (e.g., Internal Revenue, Social Security, and the Department of Education, which has amassed 15 national databases), and some are privately owned but give access to the government. These databases convey enormous power to whoever controls them. In government hands, they are the power to control our very life, our health care, our access to a job, our financial transactions, and our entry to school and college. In private hands, these databases are immensely profitable to the companies that own them and market them for commercial purposes. The Clinton Administration, Congress, big corporations that funnel million of dollars of soft money into political coffers, and some powerful foundations have cooperated in seeking federal legislation to establish a property right in these databases. So much power and money are involved in accessing and controlling personal information that the Washington lobbyists are moving rapidly to lock in the extraordinary powers Congress has already conferred on those who build databases and to build a wall of federal protection around them. If we want to preserve American freedom, it's time to stop government access to these databases. Let's look at some of the ways that Clinton and Congress have cooperated in the building of databases that tag, track and monitor our daily lives. 1.The 1996 Kennedy-Kassebaum law (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) gives the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) the power to create "unique health care identifiers" so that government can electronically tag, track and monitor every citizen's personal medical records. The plan is that everyone must submit an identification document with a unique number in order to receive health care, or the provider will not be paid. A database containing every American's medical records, identified by a unique number, was a central feature of Clinton's defeated 1994 health care bill, but it reemerged in the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill. Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, and Bob Dole all bragged about passing this law. 2.H.R. 4250, the 1998 Patient Protection Act, passed by the House on July 24, 1998, will allow anyone who maintains personal medical records to gather, exchange and distribute them. The only condition on distribution is that the information be used for "health care operations," which is vague and meaningless. Even worse, H.R. 4250 preempts state laws that currently protect patients from unauthorized distribution of their medical records. There are several exemptions to the gathering of information that reveal the liberal bias of the drafters of this bill: The bill exempts from the gathering of medical records any information about abortions performed on minors. That provision is a sure sign of the kind of control of health care that this bill opens up. 3.The Collections of Information Antipiracy Act (which originally had another number) was added (just before House passage) to H.R. 2281, the 1998 WIPO Copyright Treaties Implementation Act and the Internet Copyright Infringement Liability Clarification Act. No one, of course, is in favor of "piracy," but this bill goes far beyond any reasonable definition of piracy. This Collections of Information bill, in effect, creates a new federal property right to own, manage and control personal information about you, including your name, address, telephone number, medical records, and "any other intangible material capable of being collected and organized in a systematic way." This bill provides a powerful incentive for corporations to build nationwide databases of the personal medical information envisioned by the Kennedy-Kassebaum law and the Patient Protection bill. This bill will encourage health care corporations to assign a unique national health identifier to each patient. The government can then simply agree to use a privately-assigned national identifier, and Clinton's longtime goal of government control of health care will be achieved. Under the Collections of Information bill, any information about you can be owned and controlled by others under protection of Federal law. Your medical chart detailing your visits to your doctor, for example, would suddenly become the federally protected property of other persons or corporations, and their rights would be protected by Federal police power. This bill creates a new Federal crime that penalizes a first offense by a fine of up to $250,000 or imprisonment for up to five years, or both, for interfering with this new property right. It even authorizes Federal judges to order seizure of property before a finding of wrongdoing. H.R. 2281 grants these new Federal rights only to private databases, and pretends to exclude the government's own efforts to collect information about citizens. But a loophole in the bill permits private firms to share their federally protected data with the government so long as the information is not collected under a specific government agency or license agreement. This loophole will encourage corporations, foundations, Washington insiders and political donors to build massive databases of citizens' medical and other personal records, and then share that data with the government. 4.The 1993 Comprehensive Child Immunization Act authorized the Department of Health and Human Services "to establish state registry systems to monitor the immunization status of all children." HHS and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have since sent hundreds of millions of dollars to states to set up these databases (often without parental knowledge or consent). The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is aggressively trying to convert these state databases into a national database of all children's medical records. The CDC is using the tracking of immunizations as a ruse to build a national patient information system. The government is already demanding that all newborns and all children who enter school be given the controversial Hepatitis B vaccine. This is just the start of government control of our health care made possible by databases of medical records. 5.The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (especially Section 656(b)) prohibits the use of state driver's licenses after Oct. 1, 2000 unless they contain Social Security numbers as the unique numeric identifier "that can be read visually or by electronic means." The act requires all driver's licenses to conform to regulations promulgated by the Secretary of Transportation, and it is clearly an attempt to convert driver's licenses into national I.D. Cards. This law also orders the Transportation Department to engage in "consultation" with the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, which has long urged using driver's licenses, with Social Security numbers and digital fingerprinting, as a de facto national ID card that would enable the government to track everyone's movements throughout North America. When Social Security was started, the government made a contract with the American people that the Social Security number would never be used for identification. Call this another broken promise. Meanwhile, many states are already trying to legislate driver's licenses that are actually a "smart card" with a magnetic strip that contains a digitized fingerprint, retina scan, DNA print, voice print, or other biometric identifiers. These smart cards will leave an electronic trail every time you use it. New Jersey's proposed smart card would even track your payment of bridge and highway tolls and loans of books from the library, as well as credit card purchases and visits to your doctor. 6.The 1996 Welfare Reform Act (the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reform Act) sets up the Directory of New Hires. All employers are now required to send the government the name, address and Social Security number of every new worker and every employee who is promoted. This will eventually be a massive database, tracking nearly every worker in America. 7.Public-private partnerships. An example of how databases and copyrights, in partnerships with the government, can be used for private gain and control over millions of people is the way the American Medical Association (AMA) worked out an exclusive contract with the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), a division of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The AMA developed and copyrighted a database of 6,000 medical procedures and treatments to use as a billing system. The AMA then contracted with HCFA to force the entire health care industry (including all doctors) to buy and use the AMA's system. A federal Court of Appeals reviewed this peculiar AMA/HCFA arrangement and, in August 1997, held that the AMA had "misused its copyright by licensing the [payment coding system] to HCFA in exchange for HCFA's agreement not to use a competing coding system." The court stated, "The plain language of the AMA's licensing agreement requires HCFA to use the AMA's copyrighted coding system and prohibits HCFA from using any other." This exclusive government-granted monopoly is worth tens of millions of dollars annually to the AMA, and it ensures the AMA's support of any Clinton health care proposal, no matter how socialistic. This type of public-private partnership, often concealed from public scrutiny, is becoming the preferred technique to advance the liberal agenda. The American people do not want their private life and activities monitored by Big Brother. Tell your Congressman and Senator to repeal all these provisions which protect the building of databases that track our daily activities. ------------------------------------ To read the entire September 98 PSR go to: http://www.eagleforum.org/psr/1998/sept98/psrsept98.html ------------------------------------ The "Dirty Dozen" . . . Here are the 12 Republicans who voted to uphold Clinton's veto of the partial-birth abortion ban. http://www.eagleforum.org/alert/98-09-22/dirty_dozen.html ------------------------------------ JOIN EAGLE FORUM! To receive the Phyllis Schlafly Report HARDCOPY -- Subscription: $20 per year Send check or money order to: Eagle Forum * P.O. Box 618 * Alton * IL 62002 ------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.eagleforum.org eagle(a)eagleforum.org Phone: 618-462-5415 Fax: 618-462-8909 --------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe to Eagle E-mail please e-mail eagle(a)eagleforum.org with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line ----------------------------------------------------- ********************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address ********************************************** www.telepath.com/believer **********************************************

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IP: Navy investigating GSU computer hacker
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: believer(a)telepath.com Subject: IP: Navy investigating GSU computer hacker Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 12:42:56 -0500 To: believer(a)telepath.com Source: Savannah Morning News http://www.savannahmorningnews.com/smn/stories/093098/LOCgsuhacker.html U.S. Navy investigating GSU computer hacker University computer was used to break into a government computer. By Jenel Williams Few Savannah Morning News Someone used a Georgia Southern University writing and linguistics department classroom computer to break into government files and the U.S. Navy wants to know why. The Naval Criminal Investigation Office is looking into a computer hacking case at Georgia Southern University, according to Bryan Stamper, special agent in charge at the Jacksonville, Fla., office. John Glacier, assistant director for technical support at Georgia Southern, said the school was recently asked to find out which of its computers was used to access computer files from a government agency. "We believe it was from our model classroom during a scheduled classtime," Glacier said. He tracked the school's computer records and discovered that someone used a computer in the writing and linguistics department's model classroom to hack into a government computer while a class was in session. "They ran a file transfer protocol program, which allows you to download files and gain access to someone else's computer," Glacier said. Details about the Navy's investigation will be made available at a later date. Computer hacking can carry serious federal penalties, according to Federal Bureau of Investigations Special Agent William Kirkconnell. An innocent infiltration may not merit any punishment, but using a computer to steal classified government information could be considered espionage, he said. "It depends on what agency was affected, whether it was done maliciously and whether the information was used for criminal purposes," he said. Glacier said he does not know who used the campus computer to break into government files or how much information was accessed. "They wouldn't say if files were downloaded or uploaded," Glacier said, referring to bringing information into the GSU computer or taking information from the GSU computer and sending it to another one. "They haven't questioned any students." Although he doesn't know the culprit's motivation, Glacier said these types of incidents often occur among bright, curious students. "College-age students want to apply the knowledge they have gained about computers," he said. "What they've learned in high school and college intuitively generates curiosity and they want a challenge." Last year, in a similar incident, Glacier said a hacker tried to hide some computer mischief by calling a Georgia Southern computer and linking up to computers from the Philippines to the Midwest before breaking into government files. "It alarms me that we would be used that way, but it occurs around the world and it's not too hard to use computers this way," Glacier said. Higher education reporter Jenel Williams Few can be reached at 652-0325. Web posted Wednesday, September 30, 1998 ----------------------- NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ----------------------- ********************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address ********************************************** www.telepath.com/believer **********************************************

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IP: The Great Superterrorism Scare
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: believer(a)telepath.com Subject: IP: The Great Superterrorism Scare Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 09:03:50 -0500 To: believer(a)telepath.com Forwarded: ---------------------- Subject: The Great Superterrorism Scare From: RoadsEnd(a)AOL.COM - Sept. 29, 1998 (Thanks for all your research) http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2807/ The Great Superterrorism Scare http://www.jya.com/superterror.htm 28 September 1998 - Source: Foreign Policy, Fall, 1998, pp. 110-124. Thanks to the author and Foreign Policy. http://www.foreignpolicy.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Great Superterrorism Scare - http://www.jya.com/superterror.htm by Ehud Sprinzak EHUD SPRINZAK is professor of political science at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. This article was written under the auspices of the United States Institute of Peace where he spent the last year as a senior scholar with the Jennings Randolph program. Last March, representatives from more than a dozen U.S. federal agencies gathered at the White House for a secret simulation to test their readiness to confront a new kind of terrorism. Details of the scenario unfolded a month later on the front page of the New York Times: Without warning, thousands across the American Southwest fall deathly ill. Hospitals struggle to rush trained and immunized medical personnel into crisis areas. Panic spreads as vaccines and antibiotics run short--and then run out. The killer is a hybrid of smallpox and the deadly Marburg virus, genetically engineered and let loose by terrorists to infect hundreds of thousands along the Mexican-American border. This apocalyptic tale represents Washington's newest nightmare: the threat of a massive terrorist attack with chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. Three recent events seem to have convinced the policymaking elite and the general public that a disaster is imminent: the 1995 nerve gas attack on a crowded Tokyo subway station by the Japanese millenarian cult Aum Shinrikyo; the disclosure of alarming new information about the former Soviet Union's massive biowarfare program; and disturbing discoveries about the extent of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's hidden chemical and biological arsenals. Defense Secretary William Cohen summed up well the prevailing mood surrounding mass-destruction terrorism: "The question is no longer if this will happen, but when." Such dire forecasts may make for gripping press briefings, movies, and bestsellers, but they do not necessarily make for good policy. As an unprecedented fear of mass-destruction terrorism spreads throughout the American security establishment, governments worldwide are devoting more attention to the threat. But as horrifying as this prospect may be, the relatively low risks of such an event do not justify the high costs now being contemplated to defend against it. Not only are many of the countermeasures likely to be ineffective, but the level of rhetoric and funding devoted to fighting superterrorism may actually advance a potential superterrorist's broader goals: sapping the resources of the state and creating a climate of panic and fear that can amplify the impact of any terrorist act. CAPABILITIES AND CHAOS Since the Clinton administration issued its Presidential Decision Directive on terrorism in June 1995, U.S. federal, state, and local governments have heightened their efforts to prevent or respond to a terrorist attack involving weapons of mass destruction. A report issued in December 1997 by the National Defense Panel, a commission of experts created by congressional mandate, calls upon the army to shift its priorities and prepare to confront dire domestic threats. The National Guard and the U.S. Army Reserve must be ready, for example, to "train local authorities in chemical- and biological-weapons detection, defense, and decontamination; assist in casualty treatment and evacuation; quarantine, if necessary, affected areas and people; and assist in restoration of infrastructure and services." In May, the Department of Defense announced plans to train National Guard and reserve elements in every region of the country to carry out these directives. In his 1998 State of the Union address, President Bill Clinton promised to address the dangers of biological weapons obtained by "outlaw states, terrorists, and organized criminals." Indeed, the president's budget for 1999, pending congressional approval, devotes hundreds of millions of dollars to superterrorism response and recovery programs, including large decontamination units, stockpiles of vaccines and antibiotics, improved means of detecting chemical and biological agents and analyzing disease outbreaks, and training for special intervention forces. The FBI, Pentagon, State Department, and U.S. Health and Human Services Department will benefit from these funds, as will a plethora of new interagency bodies established to coordinate these efforts. Local governments are also joining in the campaign. Last April, New York City officials began monitoring emergency room care in search of illness patterns that might indicate a biological or chemical attack had occurred. The city also brokered deals with drug companies and hospitals to ensure an adequate supply of medicine in the event of such an attack. Atlanta, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington are developing similar programs with state and local funds. If the proliferation of counterterrorism programs continues at its present pace, and if the U.S. army is indeed redeployed to the home front, as suggested by the National Defense Panel, the bill for these preparations could add up to tens of billions of dollars in the coming decades. Why have terrorism specialists and top government officials become so obsessed with the prospect that terrorists, foreign or homegrown, will soon attempt to bring about an unprecedented disaster in the United States? A close examination of their rhetoric reveals two underlying assumptions: The Capabilities Proposition. According to this logic, anyone with access to modem biochemical technology and a college science education could produce enough chemical or biological agents in his or her basement to devastate the population of London, Tokyo, or Washington. The raw materials are readily available from medical suppliers, germ banks, university labs, chemical-fertilizer stores, and even ordinary pharmacies. Most policy today proceeds from this assumption. The Chaos Proposition. The post-Cold War world swarms with shadowy extremist groups, religious fanatics, and assorted crazies eager to launch a major attack on the civilized world--preferably on U.S. territory. Walter Laqueur, terrorism's leading historian, recently wrote that "scanning the contemporary scene, one encounters a bewildering multiplicity of terrorist and potentially terrorist groups and sects." Senator Richard Lugar agrees: "fanatics, small disaffected groups and subnational factions who hold various grievances against governments, or against society, all have increasing access to, and knowledge about the construction of, weapons of mass destruction.... Such individuals are not likely to he deterred . . . by the classical threat of overwhelming retaliation." There is, however, a problem with this two-part logic. Although the capabilities proposition is largely valid--albeit for the limited number of terrorists who can overcome production and handling risks and develop an efficient means of dispersal--the chaos proposition is utterly false. Despite the lurid rhetoric, a massive terrorist attack with nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons is hardly inevitable. It is not even likely. Thirty years of field research have taught observers of terrorism a most important lesson: Terrorists wish to convince us that they are capable of striking from anywhere at anytime, but there really is no chaos. In fact, terrorism involves predictable behavior, and the vast majority of terrorist organizations can be identified well in advance. Most terrorists possess political objectives, whether Basque independence, Kashmiri separatism, or Palestinian Marxism. Neither crazy nor stupid, they strive to gain sympathy from a large audience and wish to live after carrying out any terrorist act to benefit from it politically. As terrorism expert Brian Jenkins has remarked, terrorists want lots of people watching, not lots of people dead. Furthermore, no terrorist becomes a terrorist overnight. A lengthy trajectory of radicalization and low-level violence precedes the killing of civilians. A terrorist becomes mentally ready to use lethal weapons against civilians only over time and only after he or she has managed to dehumanize the enemy. From the Baader-Meinhoff group in Germany and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka to Hamas and Hizballah in the Middle East, these features are universal. Finally, with rare exceptions--such as the Unabomber--terrorism is a group phenomenon. Radical organizations are vulnerable to early detection through their disseminated ideologies, lesser illegal activities, and public statements of intent. Some even publish their own World Wide Web sites. Since the 1960s, the vast majority of terrorist groups have made clear their aggressive intentions long before following through with violence. We can draw three broad conclusions from these findings. First, terrorists who threaten to kill thousands of civilians are aware that their chances for political and physical survival are exceedingly slim. Their prospects for winning public sympathy are even slimmer. Second, terrorists take time to become dangerous, particularly to harden themselves sufficiently to use weapons of mass destruction. Third, the number of potential suspects is significantly less than doomsayers would have us believe. Ample early warning signs should make effective interdiction of potential superterrorists easier than today's overheated rhetoric suggests. THE WORLD'S MOST WANTED Who, then, is most likely to attempt a superterrorist attack? Historical evidence and today's best field research suggest three potential profiles: * Religious millenarian cults, such as Japan's Aum Shinrikyo, that possess a sense of immense persecution and messianic frenzy and hold faith in salvation via Armageddon. Most known religious cults do not belong here. Millenarian cults generally seclude themselves and wait for salvation; they do not strike out against others. Those groups that do take action more often fit the mold of California's Heaven's Gate, or France's Order of the Solar Temple, seeking salvation through group suicide rather than massive violence against outsiders. * Brutalized groups that either burn with revenge following a genocide against their nation or face the prospect of imminent destruction without any hope for collective recovery. The combination of unrestrained anger and total powerlessness may lead such groups to believe that their only option is to exact a horrendous price for their loss. "The Avengers," a group of 50 young Jews who fought the Nazis as partisans during World War II, exemplifies the case. Organized in Poland in 1945, the small organization planned to poison the water supply of four German cities to avenge the Holocaust. Technical problems foiled their plan, but a small contingent still succeeded in poisoning the food of more than 2,000 former SS storm troopers held in prison near Nuremberg. * Small terrorist cells or socially deranged groups whose alienated members despise society, lack realistic political goals, and may miscalculate the consequences of developing and using chemical or biological agents. Although such groups, or even individual "loners," cannot be totally dismissed, it is doubtful that they will possess the technical capabilities to produce mass destruction. Groups such as Hamas, Hizballah, and Islamic Jihad, which so many Americans love to revile--and fear--do not make the list of potential superterrorists. These organizations and their state sponsors may loathe the Great Satan, but they also wish to survive and prosper politically. Their leaders, most of whom are smarter than the Western media implies, understand that a Hiroshima-like disaster would effectively mean the end of their movements. Only two groups have come close to producing a superterrorism catastrophe: Aum Shinrikyo and the white supremacist and millenarian American Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord, whose chemical-weapons stockpile was seized by the FBI in 1985 as they prepared to hasten the coming of the Messiah by poisoning the water supplies of several U.S. cities. Only Aum Shinrikyo fully developed both the capabilities and the intent to take tens of thousands of lives. However, this case is significant not only because the group epitomizes the kind of organizations that may resort to superterrorism in the future, but also because Aum's fate illustrates how groups of this nature can be identified and their efforts preempted. Although it comes as no comfort to the 12 people who died in Aum Shinrikyo's attack, the cult's act of notoriety represents first and foremost a colossal Japanese security blunder. Until Japanese police arrested its leaders in May 1995, Aum Shinrikyo had neither gone underground nor concealed its intentions. Cult leader Shoko Asahara had written since the mid-1980s of an impending cosmic cataclysm. By 1995, when Russian authorities curtailed the cult's activities in that country, Aum Shinrikyo had established a significant presence in the former Soviet Union, accessed the vibrant Russian black market to obtain various materials, and procured the formulae for chemical agents. In Japan, Asahara methodically recruited chemical engineers, physicists, and biologists who conducted extensive chemical and biological experiments in their lab and on the Japanese public. Between 1990 and 1994, the cult tried six times--unsuccessfully--to execute biological-weapons attacks, first with botulism and then with anthrax. In June 1994, still a year before the subway gas attack that brought them world recognition, two sect members released sarin gas near the judicial building in the city of Matsumoto, killing seven people and injuring 150, including three judges. In the years preceding the Tokyo attack, at least one major news source provided indications of Aum Shinrikyo's proclivity toward violence. In October 1989, the Sunday Mainichi magazine began a seven-part series on the cult that showed it regularly practiced a severe form of coercion on members and recruits. Following the November 1989 disappearance of a lawyer, along with his family, who was pursuing criminal action against the cult on behalf of former members, the magazine published a follow-up article. Because of Japan's hypersensitivity to religious freedom, lack of chemical- and biological-terrorism precedents, and low-quality domestic intelligence, the authorities failed to prevent the Tokyo attack despite these ample warning signs. ANATOMY OF AN OBSESSION lf a close examination reveals that the chances of a successful superterrorist attack are minimal, why are so many people so worried? There are three major explanations: Sloppy Thinking Most people fail to distinguish among the four different types of terrorism: mass-casualty terrorism, state-sponsored chemical- or biological-weapons (CBW) terrorism, small-scale chemical or biological terrorist attacks, and superterrorism. Pan Am 103, Oklahoma City, and the World Trade Center are all examples of conventional terrorism designed to kill a large number of civilians. The threat that a "rogue state," a country hostile to the West, will provide terrorist groups with the funds and expertise to launch a chemical or biological attack falls into another category: state-sponsored CBW terrorism. The use of chemical or biological weapons for a small-scale terrorist attack is a third distinct category. Superterrorism--the strategic use of chemical or biological agents to bring about a major disaster with death tolls ranging in the tens or hundreds of thousands--must be distinguished from all of these as a separate threat. Today's prophets of doom blur the lines between these four distinct categories of terrorism. The world, according to their logic, is increasingly saturated with weapons of mass destruction and with terrorists seeking to use them, a volatile combination that will inevitably let the superterrorism genie out of the bottle. Never mind that the only place where these different types of terrorism are lumped together is on television talk shows and in sensationalist headlines. In truth, the four types of terrorism are causally unrelated. Neither Saddam Hussein's hidden bombs nor Russia's massive stockpiles of pathogens necessarily bring a superterrorist attack on the West any closer. Nor do the mass-casualty crimes of Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City or the World Trade Center bombing. The issue is not CBW quantities or capabilities but rather group mentality and psychological motivations. In the final analysis, only a rare, extremist mindset completely devoid of political and moral considerations will consider launching such an attack. Vested Interests The threat of superterrorism is likely to make a few defense contractors very rich and a larger number of specialists moderately rich as well as famous. Last year, Canadian-based Dycor Industrial Research Ltd. unveiled the CB Sentry, a commercially available monitoring system designed to detect contaminants in the air, including poison gas. Dycor announced plans to market the system for environmental and antiterrorist applications. As founder and president Hank Mottl explained in a press conference, "Dycor is sitting on the threshold of a multi-billion dollar world market." In August, a New York Times story on the Clinton administration's plans to stockpile vaccines around the country for civilian protection noted that two members of a scientific advisory panel that endorsed the plan potentially stood to gain financially from its implementation. William Crowe, former chair of the joint chiefs of staff, is also bullish on the counterterrorism market. He is on the board of an investment firm that recently purchased Michigan Biologic Products Institute, the sole maker of an anthrax vaccine. The lab has already secured a Pentagon contract and expects buyers from around the world to follow suit. As for the expected bonanza for terrorism specialists, consultant Larry Johnson remarked last year to U.S. News & World Report, "It's the latest gravy train." Within the U.S. government, National Security Council experts, newly created army and police intervention forces, an assortment of energy and public-health units and officials, and a significant number of new Department of Defense agencies specializing in unconventional terrorism will benefit from the counterterrorism obsession and megabudgets in the years ahead. According to a September 1997 report by the General Accounting office, more than 40 federal agencies have been involved already in combating terrorism. It may yet be premature to announce the rise of a new "military-scientific-industrial complex," but some promoters of the superterrorism scare seem to present themselves as part of a coordinated effort to save civilization from the greatest threat of the twenty-first century. Morbid Fascination Suspense writers, publishers, television networks, and sensationalist journalists have already cashed in on the superterrorism craze. Clinton aides told the New York Times that the president was so alarmed by journalist Richard Preston's depiction of a superterrorist attack in his novel The Cobra Event that he passed the book to intelligence analysts and House Speaker Newt Gingrich for review. But even as media outlets spin the new frenzy out of personal and financial interests, they also respond to the deep psychological needs of a huge audience. People love to be horrified. In the end, however, the tax-paying public is likely to be the biggest loser of the present scare campaign. All terrorists--even those who would never consider a CBW attack--benefit from such heightened attention and fear. COUNTERTERRORISM ON A SHOESTRING There is, in fact, a growing interest in chemical and biological weapons among terrorist and insurgent organizations worldwide for small-scale, tactical attacks. As far back as 1975, the Symbionese Liberation Army obtained instructions on the development of germ warfare agents to enhance their "guerrilla" actions. More recently, in 1995, four members of the Minnesota Patriots Council, an antitax group that rejected all forms of authority higher than the state level, were convicted of possession of a biological agent for use as a weapon. Prosecutors contended that the men conspired to murder various federal and county officials with a supply of the lethal toxin ricin they had developed with the aid of an instruction kit purchased through a right-wing publication. The flourishing mystique of chemical and biological weapons suggests that angry and alienated groups are likely to manipulate them for conventional political purposes. And indeed, the number of CBW threats investigated by the FBI is increasing steadily. But the use of such weapons merely to enhance conventional terrorism should not prove excessively costly to counter. The debate boils down to money. If the probability of a large-scale attack is extremely small, fewer financial resources should be committed to recovering from it. Money should be allocated instead to early warning systems and preemption of tactical chemical and biological terrorism. The security package below stresses low-cost intelligence, consequence management and research, and a no-cost, prudent counterterrorism policy. Although tailored to the United States, this program could form the basis for policy in other countries as well: * International deterrence. The potential use of chemical and biological weapons for enhanced conventional terrorism, and the limited risk of escalation to superterrorism, call for a reexamination of the existing U.S. deterrence doctrine--especially of the evidence required for retaliation against states that sponsor terrorism. The United States must relay a stern, yet discreet message to states that continue to support terrorist organizations or that disregard the presence of loosely affiliated terrorists within their territory: They bear direct and full responsibility for any future CBW attack on American targets by the organizations they sponsor or shelter. They must know that any use of weapons of mass destruction by their clients against the United States will constitute just cause for massive retaliation against their countries, whether or not evidence proves for certain that they ordered the attack. * Domestic deterrence. There is no question that the potential use of chemical and biological weapons for low-level domestic terrorism adds a new and dangerous dimension to conventional terrorism. There is consequently an urgent need to create a culture of domestic deterrence against the nonscientific use of chemical and biological agents. The most important task must be accomplished through legislation. Congress should tighten existing legislation against domestic production and distribution of biological, chemical, and radiological agents and devices. The Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996 enlarged the federal criminal code to include within its scope a prohibition on any attempts, threats, and conspiracies to acquire or use biological agents, chemical agents, and toxins. It also further redefined the terms "biological agent" and "toxin" to cover a number of products that may be bioengineered into threatening agents. However, the legislation still includes the onerous burden of proving that these agents were developed for use as weapons. Take the case of Larry Wayne Harris, an Ohio man arrested in January by the FBI for procuring anthrax cultures from an unknown source. Harris successfully defended his innocence by insisting that he obtained the anthrax spores merely to experiment with vaccines. He required no special permit or license to procure toxins that could be developed into deadly agents. The FBI and local law enforcement agencies should be given the requisite authority to enforce existing laws as well as to act in cases of clear and present CBW danger, even if the groups involved have not yet shown criminal intent. The regulations regarding who is allowed to purchase potentially threatening agents should also be strengthened. A campaign of public education detailing the dangers and illegality of nonscientific experimentation in chemical and biological agents would also be productive. This effort should include, for example, clear and stringent university policies regulating the use of school laboratories and a responsible public ad campaign explaining the serious nature of this crime. A clear presentation of the new threat as another type of conventional terrorism would alert the public to groups and individuals who experiment illegitimately with chemical and biological substances and would reduce CBW terrorism hysteria. * Better Intelligence. As is currently the case, the intelligence community should naturally assume the most significant role in any productive campaign to stop chemical and biological terrorism. However, new early warning CBW indicators that focus on radical group behavior are urgently needed. Analysts should be able to reduce substantially the risk of a CBW attack if they monitor group radicalization as expressed in its rhetoric, extralegal operations, low-level violence, growing sense of collective paranoia, and early experimentation with chemical or biological substances. Proper CBW intelligence must be freed from the burden of proving criminal intent. * Smart and compact consequence management teams. The threat of conventional CBW terrorism requires neither massive preparations nor large intervention forces. It calls for neither costly new technologies nor a growing number of interagency coordinating bodies. The decision to form and train joint-response teams in major U.S. cities, prompted by the 1995 Presidential Decision Directive on terrorism, will be productive if the teams are kept within proper proportions. The ideal team would be streamlined so as to minimize the interagency rivalry that has tended to make these teams grow in size and complexity. In addition to FBI agents, specially trained local police, detection and decontamination experts, and public-health specialists, these compact units should include psychologists and public-relations experts trained in reducing public hysteria. * Psychopolitical research. The most neglected means of countering CBW terrorism is psychopolitical research. Terrorism scholars and U.S. intelligence agencies have thus far failed to discern the psychological mechanisms that may compel terrorists to contemplate seriously the use of weapons of mass destruction. Systematic group and individual profiling for predictive purposes is almost unknown. Whether in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, or the United States, numerous former terrorists and members of radical organizations are believed to have considered and rejected the use of weapons of mass destruction. To help us understand better the considerations involved in the use or non-use of chemical and biological weapons, well-trained psychologists and terrorism researchers should conduct a three-year, low-cost, comprehensive project of interviewing these former radicals. * Reducing unnecessary superterrorism rhetoric. Although there is no way to censor the discussion of mass-destruction terrorism, President Clinton, his secretaries, elected politicians at all levels, responsible government officials, writers, and journalists must tone down the rhetoric feeding today's superterrorism frenzy. There is neither empirical evidence nor logical support for the growing belief that a new "postmodem" age of terrorism is about to dawn, an era afflicted by a large number of anonymous mass murderers toting chemical and biological weapons. The true threat of superterrorism will not likely come in the form of a Hiroshima-like disaster but rather as a widespread panic caused by a relatively small CBW incident involving a few dozen fatalities. Terrorism, we must remember, is not about killing. It is a form of psychological warfare in which the killing of a small number of people convinces the rest of us that we are next in line. Rumors, anxiety, and hysteria created by such inevitable incidents may lead to panic-stricken evacuations of entire neighborhoods, even cities, and may produce many indirect fatalities. It may also lead to irresistible demands to fortify the entire United States against future chemical and biological attacks, however absurd the cost. Americans should remember the calls made in the 1950s to build shelters, conduct country-wide drills, and alert the entire nation for a first-strike nuclear attack. A return to the duck-and-cover absurdities of that time is likely to be as ineffective and debilitating now as it was then. Although the threat of chemical and biological terrorism should be taken seriously, the public must know that the risk of a major catastrophe is extremely minimal. The fear of CBW terrorism is contagious: Other countries are already showing increased interest in protecting themselves against superterrorism. A restrained and measured American response to the new threat may have a sobering effect on CBW mania worldwide. Setting the FBI Free When members of the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo went shopping in the United States, they were not looking for cheap jeans or compact discs. They were out to secure key ingredients for a budding chemical-weapons program--and they went unnoticed. Today, more FBI agents than ever are working the counterterrorism beat: double the number that would-be superterrorists had to contend with just a few years ago. But is the FBI really better equipped now than it was then to discover and preempt such terrorist activity in its earliest stages? FBI counterterrorism policy is predicated on guidelines issued in 1983 hy then-U.S. attorney general William French Smith: The FBI can open a full investigation into a potential act of terrorism only "when facts or circumstances reasonably indicate that two or more persons are engaged in activities that involve force or violence and a violation of the criminal laws of the United States." Short of launching a full investigation, the FBI may open a preliminary inquiry if it learns from any source that a crime might be committed and determines that the allegation "requires some further scrutiny." This ambiguous phrasing allows the FBI a reasonable degree of latitude in investigating potential terrorist activity. However, without a lead--whether an anonymous tip or a public news report--FBI agents can do little to gather intelligence on known or potential terrorists. Agents cannot even download information from World Wide Web sites or clip newspapers to track fringe elements. The FBI responds to leads; it does not ferret out potential threats. Indeed, in an interview with the Center for National Security Studies, one former FBI official griped, "You have to wait until you have blood on the street before the Bureau can act." CIA analysts in charge of investigating foreign terrorist threats comb extensive databanks on individuals and groups hostile to the United States. American citizens are constitutionally protected against this sort of intrusion. A 1995 presidential initiative intended to increase the FBI's authority to plant wiretaps, deport illegal aliens suspected of terrorism, and expand the role of the military in certain kinds of cases was blocked by Congress. Critics have argued that the costs of such constraints on law enforcement may he dangerously high--reconsidering them would be one of the most effective (and perhaps least expensive) remedies against superterrorism. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- WANT TO KNOW MORE? Brian Jenkins first makes his well-known argument that terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead, in "Will Terrorists Go Nuclear?" (Orbis, Autumn 1985). More recently, Jenkins provides a reasoned analysis of weapons-of-mass-destruction (WMD) terrorism in the aftermath of the Tokyo subway attack in "The Limits of Terror: Constraints on the Escalation of Violence" (Harvard International Review, Summer 1995). For a counter argument, see Robert Kupperman's "A Dangerous Future: The Destructive Potential of Criminal Arsenals" in the same issue. Ron Purver reviews the literature on superterrorism and weighs the opportunities for, and constraints on, terrorists considering a WMD attack in "Chemical and Biological Terrorism: New Threat to Public Safety?" (Conflict Studies, December 1996/January 1997). Jerrold Post and Ehud Sprinzak stress the psychopolitical considerations inhibiting potential WMD terrorists in "Why Haven't Terrorists Used Weapons of Mass Destruction?" (Armed Forces Journal, April 1998). For a solid compilation of essays on superterrorism, see Brad Roberts, ed., Terrorism with Chemical and Biological Weapons: Calibrating Risks and Responses (Alexandria: Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute, 1997). Walter Laqueur surveys the history of terrorism and finds an alarming number of barbarians at the gate in "Postmodern Terrorism" (Foreign Affairs, September/October 1996). John Deutch takes a counterintuitive look at the subject in "Think Again: Terrorism" (FOREIGN POLICY, Fall 1997). Finally, David Kaplan provides the best available study of Aum Shinrikyo in his excellent book The Cult at the End of the World: The Terrifying Story of the Aum Doomsday Cult, from the Subways of Tokyo to the Nuclear Arsenals of Russia (New York: Crown Publishers, 1996). The World Wide Web provides a number of resources for superterrorism research. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Nonproliferation Project and the Henry L. Stimson Center provide regular coverage of nuclear-, chemical-, and biological-weapons issues, including terrorism. The Federation of American Scientists publishes a wealth of government documents as well as excellent news and analysis pertaining to weapons of mass destruction. And the State Department's "Patterns of Global Terrorism" provides one-stop shopping for information on some of the world's more notorious organizations. For links to these and other Web sites, as well as a comprehensive index of related articles, access http://www.foreignpolicy.com. [End] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Also see: Money Laundering -The BCCI Mystery Continues Rose Attorney Hillary Rodham represented a Stephens subsidiary, the Systematics bank-data processing firm. http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ Judicial Watch's RICO case against Clinton http://www.worldnetdaily.com/exclusiv/980929_judicial_watchs_cas.html Clinton's secret war games http://www.worldnetdaily.com/exclusiv/980929.exbre_clintons_secr.html The War On Truth http://www.worldnetdaily.com/smith/980929.comcs.html Here you can examine the fairness of the UN climate change treaty.... http://www.climatefacts.org/ Bilderberg Conferences http://www.tlio.demon.co.uk/1998.htm "....no conspiracy can survive expose'...." ----------------------- NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ----------------------- ********************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address ********************************************** www.telepath.com/believer **********************************************

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IP: FW: Release: seizing money
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: "mcdonald" <mcdonalds(a)airnet.net> Subject: IP: FW: Release: seizing money Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 07:15:31 -0500 To: ignition-point(a)majordomo.pobox.com -----Original Message----- From: beasley(a)ro.com [mailto:beasley@ro.com] Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 1998 11:06 PM To: mcdonalds(a)airnet.net Cc: gs924jfj(a)mon-cre.net; patriot(a)vallnet.com; Jeff.Ballard(a)vmic.com Subject: FWD: Release: seizing money From: announce(a)lp.org Subject: Release: seizing money Sender: announce-request(a)lp.org Reply-To: announce(a)lp.org To: announce(a)lp.org (Libertarian Party announcements) X-Mailer: mailout v1.26 released with lsendfix 1.8 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- ======================================= NEWS FROM THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY 2600 Virginia Avenue, NW, Suite 100 Washington DC 20037 ======================================= For release: September 29, 1998 ======================================= For additional information: George Getz, Press Secretary Phone: (202) 333-0008 Ext. 222 E-Mail: 76214.3676(a)Compuserve.com ======================================= New bill will allow police to "steal cash" from travelers, warns Libertarian Party WASHINGTON, DC -- It may soon be a crime to get on a plane or drive down the highway in America with too much money, the Libertarian Party warned today. That's because a bill before the Senate Judiciary Committee would allow police to assume that anyone traveling with more than $10,000 in cash in so-called "drug transit areas" is a drug dealer -- and confiscate all their money. "Tourists and business travelers, take note: You may soon have to fear being mugged by your own government," warned Steve Dasbach, Libertarian Party national director. "Your government wants the power to label you a criminal and seize all your money with no proof that you've committed a crime. In other words, your government is about to give police a license to steal." The bill in question -- the Drug Currency Forfeitures Act -- is sponsored by Senators Max Cleland (D-GA) and Charles Grassley (R-IA). The senators say their bill is designed to "hit drug dealers where it hurts the most: In the wallet." The bill allows police to seize cash from any American traveling through a drug transit area -- defined as an airport, highway, or port of entry -- and would force citizens to go to court to try to get the money back. "Accusations without proof? Punishments without trials? Welcome to America in 1998," said Dasbach. "With this bill, two U.S. Senators want to gut the Constitution -- and strip away fundamental rights like the presumption of innocence and the right to carry money without having to explain your actions to the government." One of the most repugnant provisions of the bill, Dasbach said, is that people who want their money back will face a "rebuttable presumption" of guilt. In other words, they most prove they are innocent. "Senator Cleland complained that courts frequently throw out money-laundering cases for lack of evidence, so his innovative solution was to stop requiring evidence -- and simply allow police to steal your money," Dasbach said. "Instead of the government proving that you are guilty, you must prove that you are innocent." But why would anyone carry around $10,000 in cash, if they're not a drug dealer? "It's none of the government's business -- period," Dasbach said. "The idea that any American should have to explain to the police where their money came from is offensive, and the idea that the police can pocket your money if they don't like your answers is downright criminal." In previous well-documented cases, he noted, the government has seized money from a business traveler who had planned major cash purchases for his company, and from a foreign-born American who was bringing cash to relatives in another country. In both cases, the courts ruled that the seizure was improper, and the victims got most of their money back from the government. This bill would reverse those kinds of cases, Dasbach predicted, by essentially creating a new type of crime: Driving While Rich and Flying While Affluent -- all in the name of the War on Drugs. "What the Drug Currency Forfeitures Act really shows is that once again, the War on Drugs has become an all-purpose excuse for a War on Your Rights, such as the right to a fair trial and the right to get on an airplane or drive down the highway without having to explain yourself to a policeman," Dasbach said. "If Americans don't put a stop to this, the politicians will not only steal all our money -- they will also steal all our Constitutional rights." -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBNhFZS9CSe1KnQG7RAQFoYAP9FWTe+KnZxM3QD0X9Ds7I3AgxpNWh3FL5 DRuXH4dzjg+WC/bVZen8eQV8C3ki+/EjHyv56x42W7cv3/PIXUqmoaO1F9a+3Snd cEfE9g264XqRkkxybJ+FCi5AEhnGDzlHnkFPzzYgAwjjsKR1D8LZbsMEys2FxIMH cQrBmpX9FNU= =vDqn -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- The Libertarian Party http://www.lp.org/ 2600 Virginia Ave. NW, Suite 100 voice: 202-333-0008 Washington DC 20037 fax: 202-333-0072 ********************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address ********************************************** www.telepath.com/believer **********************************************

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IP: Attn Should Turn to 'Buying of Congress'
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: believer(a)telepath.com Subject: IP: Attn Should Turn to 'Buying of Congress' Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 09:17:32 -0500 To: believer(a)telepath.com Source: US Newswire http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/0929-125.txt Author: Attention Should Turn to 'Buying of Congress' U.S. Newswire 29 Sep 14:54 Nation's Attention Should Turn to 'Buying of Congress' Says Author Charles Lewis To: National and Assignment Desks Contact: Marie Elena Martinez of Avon Books, 212-261-6903 News Advisory: "America's citizens have been so distracted by the barrage of commentary, testimony and endless supposition about the President Clinton/Monica Lewinsky saga that Capitol Hill lawmakers have had a reprieve from even the limited amount of scrutiny that normally surrounds their activities," says Charles Lewis, whose THE BUYING OF THE CONGRESS: How Special Interests Have Stolen Your Right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, written with The Center For Public Integrity, has just been published. He points out that while the nation focuses on whether or not President Clinton should be impeached, no one is scrutinizing the acts of grand larceny committed by Congress every day. "The attention being paid to the current scandal means that nobody's minding the store, and the store -- Congress -- needs minding," says Lewis pointing to the ever-increasing influence of big-money special interests and the impact this has on people's lives every single day. Just a few of the detrimental results of Congress's love affair with special interests, as detailed in THE BUYING OF THE CONGRESS, are: little or no action on Social Security, the continued threat to life from e-coli contamination and other poisoned foods, the loss of full health benefits, the number of people who must hold two jobs to make ends meet, the enormous drop in the percentage of federal tax revenue paid by corporations, and low voter turnout. "We've found that members of Congress moonlight for themselves and their wealthy patrons more than they work for us," says Lewis who then enumerates "employers" as varied as Lockheed-Martin, Ameritech, the National Right to Life PAC, and the National Rifle Association. Among the people who are most vocal in their condemnation of President Clinton during this tumultuous time are several whose career patrons are publicly identified for the first time in THE BUYING OF THE CONGRESS, including Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA), and Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-MO). "With the elections just six weeks away, we can't afford to overlook Congress's own misdeeds," says Lewis. ------ FOR INTERVIEWS OR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION CONTACT: Marie Elena Martinez, 212/261-6903 -0- /U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/ 09/29 14:54 Copyright 1998, U.S. Newswire ----------------------- NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ----------------------- ********************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address ********************************************** www.telepath.com/believer **********************************************

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IP: Secrecy might be weak link in wiretaps
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: believer(a)telepath.com Subject: IP: Secrecy might be weak link in wiretaps Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 10:57:09 -0500 To: believer(a)telepath.com Source: USA Today http://www.usatoday.com/news/nds1.htm 09/29/98- Updated 11:55 PM ET The Nation's Homepage Secrecy might be weak link in wiretaps ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Intelligence officials increasingly rely on wiretaps authorized by a secret federal court to keep track of foreign spies and potential terrorists. But an espionage trial set to begin in federal court here next Tuesday highlights what even the secret court's supporters admit is its weakness: The court's secrecy can make it very difficult for defendants caught on the wiretaps to defend themselves. "If my client had been wiretapped based on (an ordinary federal) warrant, you can bet I'd be all over it," says Richard Sauber, a Washington, D.C., lawyer defending accused spy Kurt Stand. "But this isn't an ordinary warrant. Under law I can't find out what the wiretap was based on, whether the information was flawed, whether the judge was correct to authorize it. There's a fundamental issue of fairness here," Sauber says. Ironically, fairness was cited as the issue in 1978, when the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) created a special secret court for authorizing wiretaps on suspected spies. The FISA court was created by Congress as a check against the power of presidents, who until then had authorized wiretaps and warrantless searches on their own say so in the interest of national security. The law requires the Justice Department, and usually the FBI or the National Security Agency, to show a judge that the target is a foreign government or agent engaging in "clandestine intelligence gathering activities" or terrorism. "The spirit of the thing is to hold the (wiretap requests) to a high legal standard," says William Webster, director of the FBI when FISA was passed. "That's a large departure from the way things had been done." Now, investigators prepare a written request and run it by Justice Department lawyers. Justice certifies that the tap's primary purpose is to gather intelligence, though information gleaned can be used in criminal cases. The request then is presented to one of seven FISA judges, who are U.S. district court judges appointed by the chief justice to authorize intelligence wiretaps. Many of the requests are heard in a soundproof sixth-floor conference room in the Justice Department's main headquarters. The target of the search is not represented. Says David Banisar, researcher for the Electronic Privacy Information Center: "There are mistakes made in ordinary warrant processes, from getting the wrong address to not having probable cause, and they can be corrected when lawyers attack the warrant. " "That can't happen here," he says. "We'll never know how many mistakes are made because the (secret) court's proceeding isn't public." By Richard Willing, USA TODAY ©COPYRIGHT 1998 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. ----------------------- NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ----------------------- ********************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address ********************************************** www.telepath.com/believer **********************************************

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[FP] FW: NID Repeal Possible
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: "ScanThisNews" <mcdonalds(a)airnet.net> Subject: [FP] FW: NID Repeal Possible Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 20:59:21 -0500 To: "Scan This News Recipients List" <scan(a)efga.org> ====================================================================== SCAN THIS NEWS 9/29/98 [Forwarded message follows] ======================================================================= -----Original Message----- From: Patrick Poole Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 1998 To: 'iRESIST'; 'Scott McDonald' Subject: NID Repeal Possible A source inside Dick Armey's office today said that it is probable that there will be a national ID repeal provision in the Omnibus appropriations bill this year. We need to continue to "remind" the House leadership (Gingrich, Armey, DeLay) that this is a non-negotiable issue over the next week. Armey and DeLay are friends of ours on this issue, but Gingrich will do only what the political winds tell him. Patrick Poole Free Congress Foundation Patrick S. Poole, Deputy Director (mailto:ppoole@fcref.org) phone: 202-546-3000 fax: 202-544-2819 http://www.freecongress.org/ [End of forwarded message] ======================================================================= [Good link to contact your congress-critters:] http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ ======================================================================= Call your Congress person every day toll-free! [Haven't checked these numbers to see if they are still good.] You may phone the U. S. Capitol switchboard at any of the following numbers, when they answer, ask for your Senator or Representative's office. If you don't know the name of your Senator or Representative, tell the operator where you live and she will connect you to the proper office. (800)972-3524 (800)522-6721 (888)723-5246 ======================================================================= [Here's another number:] The Unions have set up a toll-free number so individuals can call Congress. If you have to call a congressional office, use the following number: 1-888-723-5246. Each phone call may cost the unions between $4.00-$10.00. Use it if you're on the hill or off the hill. Give the number to 15 of your closest friends and have them call their congressman's office just to say "hi". Calling this number puts you directly through to the congressional operator. [Haven't checked it either.] ======================================================================= Don't believe anything you read on the Net unless: 1) you can confirm it with another source, and/or 2) it is consistent with what you already know to be true. ======================================================================= Reply to: <fingerprint(a)networkusa.org> ======================================================================= To subscribe to the free Scan This News newsletter, send a message to <majordomo(a)efga.org> and type "subscribe scan" in the BODY. Or, to be removed type "unsubscribe scan" in the message BODY. For additional instructions see www.efga.org/about/maillist.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------- "Scan This News" is Sponsored by S.C.A.N. Host of the "FIGHT THE FINGERPRINT!" web page: www.networkusa.org/fingerprint.shtml =======================================================================

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