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New and worse secrecy and immunity claims from the Obama DOJ |
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Glenn Greenwald of Salon
When Congress immunized telecoms last August for their illegal participation in Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program, Senate Democratic apologists for telecom immunity repeatedly justified that action by pointing out that Bush officials who broke the law were not immunized -- only the telecoms. Here, for instance, is how Sen. Jay Rockefeller justified telecom immunity in a Washington Post Op-Ed:
Second, lawsuits against the government can go forward. There is little doubt that the government was operating in, at best, a legal gray area. If administration officials abused their power or improperly violated the privacy of innocent people, they must be held accountable. That is exactly why we rejected the White House's year-long push for blanket immunity covering government officials.
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Sleep Scientists: Research Twisted to Justify Torture |
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Noah Shachtman of Wired
In a 2005 memo, Bush administration lawyers argued that it was okay for CIA interrogators to keep terror suspects awake for seven and a half days straight -- because "even very extended sleep deprivation does not cause physical pain." The attorneys backed up the claim by citing the work of a number of leading university researchers on sleep. Now, those professors are saying that their work was horribly misused.
"To claim that 180 hours [of sleep deprivation] is safe in these respects, is nonsense." Dr. James Horne, with the Loughborough University Sleep Research Centre, tells the Obsidian Wings blog. "Prolonged stress with sleep deprivation will lead to a physiological exhaustion of the body’s defense mechanisms, physical collapse, and with the potential for various ensuing illnesses." |
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The Tortured Path |
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Hunter of Daily Kos
I can only fathom that we are supposed to beg.
I think we are supposed to get down on our knees, even grovel for it, and beg that our nation act in accordance with its own laws, with international laws, and with basic decency. We among the more expendable classes are supposed to write passionate editorials; we are supposed to form grass roots movements; we are supposed to make the usual dozens of phone calls, and be ashamed, and debase ourselves -- and then, perhaps, if we are very lucky, and if beg enough and with the right arguments and place enough pressure in the right, most uncomfortable spots, then our own government will relent, and our laws will be followed, and investigations conducted, and if warranted, those responsible will be prosecuted. And we will finally as a nation, at long last, reject torture in practice as well as in words. |
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Scholars Reject Obama's Stance on Warrantless Cell-Phone Records |
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David Kravets of Wired
The Obama administration's position that the government can force mobile carriers to hand over cellphone tower location information on their customers without a warrant is wrong, two legal scholars say.
"Because CSLI acquisition is hidden, indiscriminate and intrusive, and because it reveals information over a period of time, it should be subject to the highest level of Fourth Amendment oversight (the same procedures used for wiretapping and video surveillance)," the scholars wrote late Friday. |
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It's Time to Drop the 'Expectation of Privacy' Test |
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Commentary by Bruce Schneier on Wired
In the United States, the concept of "expectation of privacy" matters because it's the constitutional test, based on the Fourth Amendment, that governs when and how the government can invade your privacy.
Based on the 1967 Katz v. United States Supreme Court decision, this test actually has two parts. First, the government's action can't contravene an individual's subjective expectation of privacy; and second, that expectation of privacy must be one that society in general recognizes as reasonable. That second part isn't based on anything like polling data; it is more of a normative idea of what level of privacy people should be allowed to expect, given the competing importance of personal privacy on one hand and the government's interest in public safety on the other.
The problem is, in today's information society, that definition test will rapidly leave us with no privacy at all.
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