You say Police State, I say potato. Either way let's discuss surveillance and government overreach.

If Congress really cared they would have cut NSA's budget already. It is all political theater while the machine keeps chugging along.

Judge: “NSA exceeded the scope of authorized acquisition continuously” [ArsTechnica]

New declassifed documents show legal arguments over bulk metadata collection.

Yet another Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) judge has blasted United States intelligence officials for disregarding the court’s guidelines for domestic surveillance of American e-mail metadata traffic, a program that ran for around a decade before ending in 2011.

“[National Security Agency’s] record of compliance with these rules has been poor,” wrote Judge John D. Bates in a 117-page opinion (PDF) whose date was redacted. The opinion is just one of a series of documents released and declassified late Monday evening by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

I'm a dirty skimmer so maybe this wasn't covered before, but this is undoubtedly one of the worst examples of police overreach I've ever had the mispleasure to hear about. Word of warning, don't read this while you're eating something:

A New Mexico man is suing police for allegedly "subjecting him to multiple digital penetrations and three enemas," among other "shockingly invasive medical procedures" -- all on an invalid warrant, all without finding any drugs -- his lawyers claim.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/06/justic...

So next time you get pulled over, relax or you too could end up enduring many hours of probing.

Because all police departments are the same? Why don't we have 100,000 cases of this a year, then?

plavonica wrote:

This one is sort of frightening. My car came with "hidden" compartments. Typically they can be used for unsightly stereo components or to store emergency gear like jumper cables and such.

Ohio passed a law in 2012 making it a felony to alter a vehicle to add a secret compartment with the “intent” of using it to conceal drugs for trafficking.
Jayhawker wrote:
plavonica wrote:

This one is sort of frightening. My car came with "hidden" compartments. Typically they can be used for unsightly stereo components or to store emergency gear like jumper cables and such.

Ohio passed a law in 2012 making it a felony to alter a vehicle to add a secret compartment with the “intent” of using it to conceal drugs for trafficking.

According to that article, it's basically illegal in Ohio to drive a car with a hidden compartment if you have prior felony drug trafficking charges. So never mind if a person has reformed and paid his or her dues to society, but wants to hide the car stereo in an older vehicle. As the ACLU pointed out in the article, there's no viable reason to focus on the container when trafficking itself is already a felony.

WipEout wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:
plavonica wrote:

This one is sort of frightening. My car came with "hidden" compartments. Typically they can be used for unsightly stereo components or to store emergency gear like jumper cables and such.

Ohio passed a law in 2012 making it a felony to alter a vehicle to add a secret compartment with the “intent” of using it to conceal drugs for trafficking.

According to that article, it's basically illegal in Ohio to drive a car with a hidden compartment if you have prior felony drug trafficking charges. So never mind if a person has reformed and paid his or her dues to society, but wants to hide the car stereo in an older vehicle. As the ACLU pointed out in the article, there's no viable reason to focus on the container when trafficking itself is already a felony.

There are other rights felons never regain, so I don't find this to be completely unreasonable. Of course, the entire war on drugs is unreasonable, so there is that.

In news of government overreach of a more local nature:

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/21/v-fullstory/3769823/in-miami-gardens-store-video-catches.html

Black man arrested dozens of times for trespassing...
...at a convenience store...
...where he works.

House intel bill adds $75 million to NSA budget to stop future Snowdens

See? They're fixing the problem. The leaks.

Make no mistake: the US government has declared us all to be its adversaries. This has been stated explicitly in NSA documentation, and it's being expressed in an utterly clear way here as well.

We are the enemy. You are the adversary.

plavonica wrote:

More policing shenanigans.

And here is the kicker.....

New Mexico is one of those "Tort Reform" states with sovereign immunity laws.

http://www.cozen.com/admin/files/pub...

So "so sorry about your rectum, but no suing".

Paleocon wrote:
plavonica wrote:

More policing shenanigans.

And here is the kicker.....

New Mexico is one of those "Tort Reform" states with sovereign immunity laws.

http://www.cozen.com/admin/files/pub...

So "so sorry about your rectum, but no suing".

That would only bar some causes of action (and even then exceptions may kick in), it also wouldn't apply to Federal constitutional claims (e.g., the section 1983 action that is included in the original complaint).

deftly wrote:

In news of government overreach of a more local nature:

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/21/v-fullstory/3769823/in-miami-gardens-store-video-catches.html

Black man arrested dozens of times for trespassing...
...at a convenience store...
...where he works.

I grew up near there. Doesn't surprise me at all. If this guy did anything to try and change the situation in his favor, he would be dead.

If it's a police state for the least of us, it's a police state for all of us.

It's important to remember that we don't get to define 'least'. The police do.

The ACLU had a good point in that article about Miami Gardens. The city is setting itself up to go bankrupt paying out damages and possibly face further problems from the feds.

Honestly I hope they end up bankrupt with all officers involved including the chief in federal prison.

Ha. That'll be the day. Remember that Miami is where cops unlock the thumb retention on their holsters for the service pistols when someone asks how to file a complaint against police. They didn't want to file a complaint, just wanted to ask how.

Robear wrote:

Because all police departments are the same? Why don't we have 100,000 cases of this a year, then?

Because you never know if you're going to get Officer Friendly or some Deputy who thinks he's Jack Bauer and you live within the jurisdiction of Magistrate Rubberstamp.

Edwin wrote:

Ha. That'll be the day. Remember that Miami is where cops unlock the thumb retention on their holsters for the service pistols when someone asks how to file a complaint against police. They didn't want to file a complaint, just wanted to ask how.

Yeah I know. But I have this recurring dream where the feds come in and arrest the entire department at gunpoint, complete with FBI swat teams storming the police station, and judges who throw the book at excessive force, etc.

I am a bad person.

Ha! The FBI actually being useful in Miami? Forgive me for being jaded with their history of corruption in Miami and f*cking things up in Latin America.

In other news.

DOJ concluded it can't prosecute Assange without also prosecuting news orgs & journalists, according to US officials.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...

Probably won't stop them from trying to arrest him anyways.

Edwin... I was thinking of someone from outside the area..... stop wrecking my dream.

I have a dream, that one day this nations good cops will rise up and arrest the bad cops and live up to it's creed that "no man is above the law"...

Ok, so, it's happening, exactly as I said it would:

Top-Secret Document Reveals NSA Spied On Porn Habits As Part Of Plan To Discredit 'Radicalizers'

WASHINGTON -- The National Security Agency has been gathering records of online sexual activity and evidence of visits to pornographic websites as part of a proposed plan to harm the reputations of those whom the agency believes are radicalizing others through incendiary speeches, according to a top-secret NSA document. The document, provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, identifies six targets, all Muslims, as “exemplars” of how “personal vulnerabilities” can be learned through electronic surveillance, and then exploited to undermine a target's credibility, reputation and authority.

No future Martin Luther King Juniors will be allowed in this country. If you threaten the status quo, they will use their archives of everything you've done to destroy you.

If you think they're not going to use this on politicians, especially the ones that vote on the NSA's budget, you're hopelessly naive.

These people are literally taking over the country. They directly and knowingly lie to secret courts, to public courts, and to Congress.... they can't be overseen, because they work in secret, lie about what they're doing, and then use the results of their secret spying as blackmail.

Democracy cannot survive in this climate. Only a sham democracy can exist.

And it's important to remind folks, yet again, remember Eliot Spitzer.

I guess this is par for the course now.

http://intellihub.com/2013/11/28/s-c...

I honestly don't think the officer commenting in that article actually knows what a breach of privacy means. He seems to think that if they grab data but 'don't care about it' no breach has occurred.

I think this 'logic' would be very foreign to the people who wrote those sections of the constitution.

As the story notes, however, the targets are not necessarily terrorists. The term the NSA uses for them is "radicalizes," and if you're thinking of fiery orators urging people to strap on dynamite vests, know that the NSA chart accompanying the story includes one target who is a "well known media celebrity," and whose offense is arguing that "the U.S. perpetrated the 9/11 attacks."

So, being a 9/11 Truther is now enough to get you targeted by the NSA for social destruction.

This is the slow death of the Republic we're looking at. This is absolutely, utterly, an existential threat to any concept of liberty in America.

Source:

The NSA's Porn-Surveillance Program: Not Safe for Democracy.

Note that you should also think very, very carefully about Julian Assange in this context.

Boston PD threatened my friend with prison for posting their publicly available phone number.

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2013/1...

It's a good thing they dropped the charges, but they should never have been filed in the first place. Intimidation indeed.

Edwin you know Miller? Tell him he ROCKS.

Also I really have no respect for the BPD. Some of the surrounding areas are decent but BPD still has some serious racial issues not to mention these free speech problems. I think maybe after the force gets to a certain size the police all get brain worms and everything goes sideways.