Monday, October 27, 2014

DESTRUCTION OF OUR RIGHTS



DESTRUCTION OF OUR CIVIL RIGHTS…



  The Bill of Rights is the collective name for the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. These amendments guarantee a number of personal freedoms, limit the government's power in judicial and other proceedings, and reserve some powers to the states and the public. Originally the amendments applied only to the federal government, however, most were subsequently applied to the government of each state by way of the Fourteenth Amendment, through a process known as incorporation. The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United State Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. The amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws, and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. 








  The Posse Comitatus Act is the United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385, original at 20 Stat. 152) that was passed on June 18, 1878, after the end of Reconstruction and was updated in 1981. Its intent (in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807) was to limit the powers of Federal Government in using federal military personal to enforce the state laws.




  Martial law is usually imposed temporarily when the government or civilian authorities fail to function effectively (e.g., maintain order and security, or provide essential services). In full-scale martial law, the highest-ranking military officer would take over, or be installed, as the military governor or as head of the government, thus removing all power from the previous executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government
  Operation Garden Plot, also known as The Department of Defense Civil Disturbance Plan (18 USC 1385 Posse Comitatus Act), is a general US Army and National Guard plan to respond to major domestic civil disturbances within the United States. The plan was developed in response to the civil disorders of the 1960s and is now under the control of the U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM). It provides Federal military and law enforcement assistance to local governments during times of major civil disturbances.
  The Garden Plot plan—drafted after the Watts, Newark, and Detroit riots—captures the acrimonious times when the document was drawn up. The section outlining the Army's perception of the "situation" in America certainly insinuates an establishment that was afraid of the disenfranchised. The Plot warns against "racial unrest," as well as "anti-draft" and "anti-Vietnam" elements."
  Garden Plot was last activated (as Noble Eagle) to provide military assistance to civil authorities following the 9-11-01 attacks on the United States. The Pentagon also activated it to restore order during the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. Under Homeland Security restructuring, it has been suggested that similar models be followed.
  Executive Order 12148 was an executive order enacted by President Jimmy Carter on July 20, 1979 to transfer and reassign duties to the newly formed agency, known as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), created by Executive Order 12127. The order combined several federal agencies tasked with emergency preparedness and civil defense spread across the executive departments into a unified entity that was established as an independent agency, free of Cabinet interference, with authority as the lead federal agency in a presidentially-declared disaster.

  The agency's place within the governmental structure was changed on March 1, 2003, when FEMA became part of the Department of Homeland Security's Emergency Preparedness and Response Directorate.

  Rex 84, short for Readiness Exercise 1984, was a classified "scenario and drill" developed by the United States federal government to suspend the United States Constitution, declare martial law, place military commanders in charge of state and local governments, and detain large numbers of American citizens who are deemed to be "national security threats", in the event that the President declares a "State of National Emergency". The plan states, events causing such a declaration would be widespread U.S. opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad, such as if the United States were to directly invade Central America. To combat what the government perceived as "subversive activities", the plan also authorized the military to direct ordered movements of civilian populations at state and regional levels.



  Rex 84 was written by Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who was both National Security Council White House Aide, and NSC liaison to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and John Brinkerhoff, the deputy director of "national preparedness" programs for the FEMA. They patterned the plan on a 1970 report written by FEMA chief Louis Giuffrida, at the Army War College, which proposed the detention of up to 21 million "American Negroes", if there were a black militant uprising in the United States. Existence of a master military contingency plan (of which REX-84 was a part), "Garden Plot" and a similar earlier exercise, "Lantern Spike", were originally revealed by journalist Ron Ridenhour, who summarized his findings in an article in CounterSpy.



  The USA PATRIOT Act is an Act of Congress that was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001. The title of the act is a ten-letter backronym (USA PATRIOT) that stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001.
  On May 26, 2011, President Barack Obama signed the PATRIOT Sunsets Extension Act of 2011, a four-year extension of three key provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act roving wiretaps, searches of business records (the "library records provision"), and conducting surveillance of "lone wolves"—individuals suspected of terrorist-related activities not linked to terrorist groups.
 The Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 was draft legislation written by US Department of Justice during the George W. Bush administration, under the tenure of United States Attorney General John Ashcroft. The Center for Public Integrity obtained a copy of the draft marked "confidential" on February 7, 2003 and posted it on its Web site along with commentary. It was sometimes called Patriot II, after the USA PATRIOT Act, which was enacted in 2001. It was never introduced to the United States Congress.
  The draft version of the bill would have expanded the powers of the United States federal government while simultaneously curtailing judicial review of these powers. Members of the United States Congress said that they had not seen the drafts, though the documents obtained by the CPI indicated that Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Dennis Hastert and Vice President Dick Cheney had received copies.
Provisions of the draft version included:
  • Removal of court-ordered prohibitions against police agencies spying on domestic groups.
  • The FBI would be granted powers to conduct searches and surveillance based on intelligence gathered in foreign countries without first obtaining a court order.
  • Creation of a DNA database of suspected terrorist
  • Prohibition of any public disclosure of the names of alleged terrorists including those who have been arrested.
  • Exemptions from civil liability for people and businesses who voluntarily turn private information over to the government.
  • Criminalization of the use of encryption to conceal incriminating communications.
  • Automatic denial of bail for persons accused of terrorism-related crimes, reversing the ordinary common law burden of proof principle. Persons charged with terrorists acts would be required to demonstrate why they should be released on bail rather than the government being required to demonstrate why they should be held.
  • Expansion of the list of crimes eligible for the death penalty
  • The Environmental Protection Agency would be prevented from releasing "worst-case scenario" information to the public about chemical plants.
  • United States citizen whom the government finds to be either members of, or providing material support to, terrorist groups could have their citizenship revoked and be deported to foreign countries.
  Some provisions of this act have been tacked onto other bills such as the Senate Spending bill and subsequently passed.
  The American Civil Liberties Union and the Bill of Rights Defense Committee have all been vocal opponents of the PATRIOT Act of 2001, the proposed (as of 2003) PATRIOT 2 Act, and other associated legislation made in response to the threat of domestic terrorism that it believes violates either the letter and/or the spirit of the U.S. Bill of Rights.
  On January 31, 2006 the Center for Public Integrity published a story on its website that claimed that this proposed legislation undercut the Bush administration's legal rationale of its NSA wiretapping program.
  The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive (National Security Presidential Directive NSPD 51/Homeland Security Presidential Directive HSPD-20, sometimes called simply "Executive Directive 51" for short), created and signed by President George W. Bush on May 4, 2007, is a Presidential Directive which claims power to execute procedures for continually of the federal government in the event of a "catastrophic emergency". Such an emergency is construed as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions."
  The unclassified portion of the directive was posted on the White House website on May 9, 2007, without any further announcement or press briefings
ADVISE (Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement) is a research and development program within the United States Department of Homeland Security Threat and Vulnerability Testing and Assessment (TVTA) portfolio. It is reported to be developing a massive data mining system, which would collect and analyze data on everyone in the United States and perform a "threat analysis" of them. The data can be everything from financial records, phone records, emails, blog entries, website searches, and any other electronic information that can be put into a computer system. The information is then analyzed, and used to monitor social threats such as community-forming, terrorism, political organizing, or crime. ADVISE possess the ability to store one quadrillion data entities.
  The exact scope and degree of completion of the program is unclear. ADVISE is in the 2004-2006 Federal DHS Budget as a component of the $47 million TVTA program.
  The program was officially scrapped in September 2007 after the agency's internal Inspector General found that pilot testing of the system had been performed using data on real people without required privacy safeguards in place.

ECHELON, originally a code-name, is now used in global media and in popular culture to describe a signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection and analysis network. software controlling the collection and distribution of civilian telecommunications traffic conveyed using communication satellites, with the collection being undertaken by ground stations located in the footprint of the downlink leg a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications. software system which controls the download and dissemination of the intercept of commercial satellite trunk communications. ECHELON was capable of interception and content inspection of telephone calls, fax, e-mail and other data traffic globally through the interception of communication bearers including satellite transmission, public switched telephone networks (which once carried most Internet traffic) and microwave links. 

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