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TAE Articles and Commentary -
TAE Commentary and Articles
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Written by Ivan Eland
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Wednesday, 21 March 2012 |
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NYPD Should Leave Muslims Alone
March 21, 2012
Ivan Eland
Attorney General Eric Holder is to be lauded for looking into the constitutionality of the New York City Police Department’s wholesale snooping into the lives of people based purely on their Muslim faith. Because Holder is a busy man, he could save a lot of time by just pulling out the U.S. Constitution and reading it. Unfortunately, in the hysteria after 9/11, the executive branch, Congress, and the courts have allowed police agencies—federal, state, and local—to conduct extraconstitutional surveillance, search, and seizure. These actions have muddled what spying should be considered clearly unconstitutional. The New York City police conducted widespread warrantless spying and created of police files on Muslim individuals, businesses, mosques, and campus groups without any probable cause that crimes had been committed. And this snooping went outside the police department’s jurisdiction into Long Island, New Jersey, and Connecticut. The police even sent an undercover agent on a whitewater-rafting trip by students. One would think for Holder’s review that this case would be open and shut, but the courts have allowed the executive branch to fearmonger its way into warrantless surveillance and searches as a way of life in the post-9/11 world. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution states: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause [that a crime has been committed], supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
This amendment was applied to localities and states by the 14th Amendment, which states, No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or prosperity, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
The New York City police did not get warrants from the courts to spy on people merely because they are Muslims, since they could not have gotten them; as the Constitution says, probable cause of a crime being committed is needed for any judge to issue such warrants. So the police did the spying without warrants. However, the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizures—that is, those without judicial warrants—does not have a “national security” exemption. Furthermore, the Fourth Amendment requires that surveillance or searches have warrants stating the specific place related to a crime that can be searched; that is, no general warrants to search everything, as the British troops did during the bad old colonial days, were allowed. Yet spying on people, businesses, mosques, and campus groups just because they are Muslim smacks of a general, and thus unconstitutional, search. Finally, the 14th Amendment clearly gives equal protection under the laws to all people, no matter their religion or politics. Selecting people for surveillance just because they are Muslim is a flagrant violation of this provision—much as it was when political activists (Vietnam War protesters and civil rights proponents) were spied on in the 1960s and 1970s. So objecting to this provision sticks up not only for the rights of Muslims, but for the rights of all Americans. The timeworn excuse for bad police behavior—that if people, in this case Muslims, aren’t doing anything wrong, they shouldn’t mind the government snooping into their business—just doesn’t fly. People do have a right to privacy, the authorities can and do often make mistakes in arresting innocent people as a result of such unconstitutional snooping, and when people know the police are watching, it may chill their lawful activities. For example, Muslims in New Jersey have become reluctant to join Islam-based groups, pray at mosques, or patronize Muslim restaurants or businesses for fear of being observed by police or being a victim of guilt by association. And not only is widespread spying on the Muslim community unconstitutional, it is also counterproductive for security. Alienating the Muslim community by such over-the-top snooping induces suspicion of the police and a circling of the wagons against them. As a result, the Islamic community, which can best point out the rare extremist plot in its midst, will be more reluctant to report suspicious behavior to the police. Thus, as usual, no real conflict exists between upholding constitutional rights and making people secure, but you would never know it hearing the fearmongering by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the New York City Police Department in defending this atrocious, authoritarian, and un-American domestic spying.
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Advocacy and Letters -
Letters to Government Agencies Signed by TMA
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Written by Coalition
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Tuesday, 20 March 2012 |
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March 20, 2012
RE: Coalition Opposes Any Efforts to Force Compliance with Real ID
Dear Representatives
We the undersigned organizations write today to express our opposition to any effort by Congress or the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to force states to comply with the Real ID Act of 2005. Real ID was passed as a rider to a bill funding military expenditures and tsunami relief. It gave states three years to comply with restrictive federal licensing standards, create a national database of drivers’ license information and build huge databases of individual birth certificates and other personal information. All of this would have cost billions – a cost borne almost exclusively by the states.
Instead of compliance, Real ID faced widespread opposition. Groups from across the political spectrum opposed it. Supporters of fiscal conservatism and federalism decried it as an unfunded mandate that trampled on the Tenth Amendment. Civil rights and civil liberties groups worried that the Act lacked sufficient protections and might increase racial discrimination. Defenders of religious freedom described its negative impact on the Amish and other religious denominations. Consumer groups feared it would result in an expansive and cumbersome new bureaucracy. Advocates against domestic violence believed it would expose personal information about survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.
In addition, many of those same groups rejected Real ID as a national ID. They believed it would facilitate tracking of data on individuals and bring government into the very center of every citizen’s life. It would be a de facto government permission slip needed by everyone in order to travel. As happened with Social Security cards decades ago, use of such ID cards would then quickly spread and be used for other purposes – from work to voting to gun ownership.
States rejected Real ID because of its high cost – initially estimated by DHS at $23 billion. States were concerned that the Act would force them to change their entire licensing issuance process to conform to a one-size-fits-all federal mandate. At the same time the states were also making great strides in improving drivers’ license security and were rightly concerned that Real ID would interfere with or overturn many of these efforts. Twenty five states, either through a statute or legislative resolution, rejected the Act or said they would not comply with Real ID.1 Fifteen of those states actually passed laws prohibiting compliance with Real ID.
As a result of this widespread opposition, Real ID has stalled. DHS cannot mandate compliance because implementing its sole penalty under the statute – barring the use of non-compliant licenses for boarding airplanes – would bring air travel to a halt. Nor has Congress acted to fund the legislation. It has provided only $200 million for Real ID compliance, a fraction of the amount needed to comply with the law.
Given this reality, any additional Real ID compliance efforts by DHS or Congress would harm individual liberty and waste precious taxpayer resources. The undersigned organizations urge you oppose any efforts to attempt to force compliance with Real ID.
Sincerely,
American Civil Liberties Union
American Library Association
Asian Law Caucus, member of Asian American Center for Advancing Justice
Bob Barr, Former Member of Congress and Chairman of Liberty Guard
Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights
Constitutional Alliance
Consumer Action
Consumer Federation of America
Consumer Watchdog
Center for Democracy & Technology
Defending Dissent Foundation
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.
5-11 Campaign
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Electronic Privacy Information Center
Floridians Against REAL ID
Hispanic Leadership Fund
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
Liberty Coalition
The Multiracial Activist
Patient Privacy Rights
Privacy Activism
Privacy Times
Robert Ellis Smith, Publisher, PRIVACY JOURNAL
The Rutherford Institute
TakeBackWashington.org
Taxpayers Protection Alliance
World Privacy Forum
Footnotes: 1 The states are Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia and Washington. |
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TMA Articles and Commentary -
TMA Commentary and Essays
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Written by Wade Henderson
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Thursday, 08 March 2012 |
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Selma to Montgomery March Marks a New Phase for the Civil and Human Rights Movement By Wade Henderson  This week’s 47th commemoration of the Bloody Sunday March of 1965 marks a new phase in the civil rights movement. It represents a turning point for people from all backgrounds, who are joining together, not only to remember our shared past, but also to fight for a shared future. It’s a moment of recognition from all sides that, though our nation has progressed since 1965, we are not yet finished with the struggle to include everyone in the fullness that American life has to offer.
Until recently, efforts to undermine civil and human rights had taken a subtler approach than in times past. The targets have diversified, the rhetoric has evolved. The deadly violence that once denied people their most basic rights – to vote, to attend public schools, to climb the economic ladder, and to march – has today been masked by a more genteel language, and replaced with a more systemic type of discrimination. Yet the efforts are still pernicious. But Alabama’s H.B. 56, by targeting Latinos and immigrant populations for harassment and arrest, has resurrected the dark days of fearmongering and racism. Under this law, anyone who "looks foreign" is a target of a law that will be enforced by racial profiling. Meanwhile, across the country, voter suppression laws are making it increasingly harder for people of all backgrounds – particularly minorities – to participate in the democratic process. The violence surrounding the first march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 was a climactic event for our nation and led to the introduction and passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It cost the lives of men like Jimmie Lee Johnson, an African-American protester who was murdered while protecting his mother, and Reverend James Reeb, a White minister from Boston who was savagely beaten to death and denied treatment by Selma’s public hospital. But they did not die in vain. Days later, President Johnson’s speech a joint session of Congress summed up the importance of fighting these injustices saying ‘‘their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.” Now is the time to repeal the most recent spate of oppressive and backward-looking laws, which seek to revive the “legacy of bigotry and injustice” that President Johnson said we would overcome. H.B. 56 has kept children from attending school, stopped mothers and fathers from working, and isolated families who live in fear of being profiled or harassed. Voter suppression has once again returned in the form of narrowed voter windows, burdensome voter ID laws, and restrictions on registration. Today’s repressive laws in Alabama and elsewhere recall the sins of the past. And this week, individuals of conscience from every background revive the spirit of Dr. King, Jimmie Lee Jones, Reverend Reeb, and countless others who were bold enough to stand up against naked bigotry when their lives were at stake. Bigotry can’t be tweaked, it cannot hide behind evolved rhetoric or a genteel denial of freedom, and it cannot be allowed to metastasize within an America that’s as good as its ideals. And so we all will continue to march – together. Wade Henderson is the president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights |
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 15 April 2012 )
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TMA Articles and Commentary -
TMA Editorials by James A. Landrith, Jr.
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Written by James A. Landrith
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Thursday, 16 February 2012 |
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Jeanne Sager, writing for cafemom on Cops Go Overboard in 'Protecting' Black Girl From Her White Grandfather : Picture this: you're walking down the street, and you spot a middle-aged white man strolling down the sidewalk. Beside him is a black girl, about 5 years old, bouncing and chattering on as 5-year-olds do. Now for the pop quiz portion of our day: would you A) smile and keep walking, or B) call the cops? Unfortunately for Scott Henson, a blogger from Austin, Texas, people in his 'hood believe "B" is the proper response. For the second time in five years, the grandpa was recently detained by police for doing what grandfathers do: hanging out with his granddaughterTy. So much for progress, huh, America?
It gets worse, when you read Scott's blog about his experience: As soon as we crossed the street, just two blocks from my house as the crow flies, the police car that just passed us hit its lights and wheeled around, with five others appearing almost immediately, all with lights flashing. The officers got out with tasers drawn demanding I raise my hands and step away from the child. I complied, and they roughly cuffed me, jerking my arms up behind me needlessly. Meanwhile, Ty edged up the hill away from the officers, crying. One of them called out in a comforting tone that they weren't there to hurt her, but another officer blew up any good will that might have garnered by brusquely snatching her up and scuttling her off to the back seat of one of the police cars. (By this time more cars had joined them; they maxxed out at 9 or 10 police vehicles.)
This is a very clear example of parenting while male and with a multiracial child. I remember a female transit piglet at O'Hare stopping me with my multiracial son and demanding I show her ID and defend my right to be his father - with her hand on her holster, of course. Meanwhile, several women with children and no husbands in tow walked right by us without concern or harassment. Hmmm. According to several of the commenters on the cafemom article, people like me are expected to just suck it for the safety of the children. Of course, I am a horrible person for taking exception to some authoritarian monoracial person assuming I could not be the father of a biracial child. By the way, the female cop I was refering to earlier wasn't white, in case that was what you were thinking. Racism is ugly folks, stop perpetuating it with your apologia and cop worship. The abilty to give birth doesn't make you a "good mom", nor does it grant you some form of ultimate and unassailable intuition. You are not a "good mom" when you defend and promote harassment of interracial families based on what SOME other men have done at other times and places. It makes you an unrepetent racist and a sexist bigot who happens to have been blessed with the biological ability to give birth. Do people really think that traumatizing children by harassing or arresting their grandparents for having a different phenotype makes the child safer or leads to a healthier perspective in the long run? Motherhood does not excuse racist and sexist bigotry. Get the fuck over yourselves and gain a little humanity. James Landrith
Founder and Publisher
The Multiracial Activist
http://www.multiracial.com |
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