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Friday, March 3, 2006

don’t pay off your credit cards: you might be a terrorist

unlike eastern europe during the cold war, you don’t even have to have [or not have] papers to be suspicious. in modern america, just paying off your credit cards can flag you as a potential terrorist…

Pay too much and you could raise the alarm [ scrips-howard news service, 2006.02.28]

if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified.

apparently, the department of homeland security (the same people that can’t figure out that hurricanes are dangerous?) has determined that the payment habits of every american is subject to review.

no arrests (that we know of…) but every american with a financial record is subject, so this gets threat level orange:

update this incident brought to you by sections 351 and 352 of the usa patriot act.

posted by roj at 5:50 pm  

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

check your bumperstickers: you might be a terrorist

idaho crackdown on federal-employee terrorists…

Red State, Meet Police State [boise weekly, 2006.2.15]

“Bottom line: My rights are very dear to me. I served my country to defend them, ” he says. “And one of the things I was defending was free speech. It’s the First Amendment for a reason–not the last, not the middle. The first.”

no arrests made, just trouble for people who have anti-bush-administration opinions.

posted by roj at 5:38 am  

Tuesday, March 8, 2005

don’t draw zombies, you might be a terrorist

somehow, when i first came across this story, i didn’t have time or inclination to post about it (apparently), so i’m making up for lost time today with the news that today is court day.

so, to briefly review. despite a rich tradition of zombie writing in kentucky (“Soon, Kirkman was writing outlandish tales about zombies, androids, senior citizen mercenaries and superhero families.”), one particular high school student was arrested on terrorism charges for his zombie story, which happened to include a school or somesuch. more from the register,

clearly, the zombie threat is taken seriously in kentucky.

more news from wkyt, winchester sun and the lexington herald-leader.

in case we need a little review about the difference between fiction and reality, perhaps this recent post can shed some light.

posted by roj at 11:13 am  

Sunday, February 13, 2005

check your camera [5], you might be a terrorist

today’s story of photo-terrorists comes from the west coast, specifically san francisco, via boingboing.

it seems that the well-intentioned individuals tasked with saving us from the terrorists have lost sight of the rules that operate in this society. or at least, are supposed to operate in this society.

When I refused to stop, they tried to cite me but couldn’t find any relevant code, regulation or law to cite me. Enlisting the aid of the SFPD and BART Police officers also yielded now [sic] results. No citation was issued.

of course, i’m not catching all the photo-terrorist stories in my space, but when one creeps up to the level where it gets my attention, it’s worth a moment of yours as well.

posted by roj at 11:44 am  

Monday, November 15, 2004

check your camera [4], you might be a terrorist

following the breadcrumbs across the internet from my last post, i found yet another that escaped my attention here

security issues indeed.

america. and the world. are safer.

posted by roj at 11:38 pm  

Monday, November 15, 2004

check your camera [3], you might be a terrorist

the story is here

posted by roj at 9:16 pm  

Friday, October 1, 2004

check your folksinger: he might be a terrorist

a little late with this, but it fits in the series….

among the ranks of people so dangerous that they cannot be allowed to board airplanes, yet so innocent they cannot be detained even with the sweeping provisions of the usa patriot act, we find one yusuf islam (cat stevens).

i guess this puts mr. islam on the same freedom train as senator edward kennedy (d-ma) and congressman john lewis (d-ga). troublemakers, every one of them.

posted by roj at 12:31 am  

Saturday, September 4, 2004

check your makeup: you might be a terrorist

Makeup Bag Prompts Airport Bomb Scare [ap via abc news, september 3, 2004]

“Sometimes cosmetics … have chemicals in them that might be construed as explosives by the bomb dogs,” [southwest airlines spokesperson Maria] Fermin said.

posted by roj at 1:43 am  

Friday, September 3, 2004

the sleeper cell that wasn’t

in today’s “you might be a terrorist” story, you might actually not be a terrorist, but that might not keep you out of detention and/or prison you unless the prosecutors change their minds and decide to do the right thing. this is the trial that went wrong – the one that you’re not hearing about – because the kobe trial is more fun.

The U.S. Justice Department has asked a federal judge in Detroit to toss out the convictions of three Middle Eastern men caught in a roundup of hundreds of Arab immigrants after the Sept. 11 attacks and charged with supporting terrorism and document fraud.

you may remember the arrest and prosecution of this “detroit terror cell” in the days and months following september 11. scooped up in the sweeping detentions of arab-americans, this group of people was captured on september 17th. lauded as an early victory in the war on terrorism (inasmuch as you can actually have a war on a method), we nailed the terrorists in our midst. we locked them up and even had a “star witness” willing to help make the case. by june of 2003, the department of justice had secured convictions for three of the four defendants, on charges ranging from “conspiracy to provide material support for terrorism” to “document fraud.”

the problem is that the case was vapor.

and in the process, our department of justice, the federal agency tasked with enforcing the laws of the united states of america, compromised those laws and legal principles in its quest for political victories, and at the cost of human lives.

sure, that’s a pretty bold statement from a lowly citizen of this country, but the ashcroft justice department has done more damage to this country than a dozen planes could do to a dozen skyscrapers. dead people are tragic, the economic damage is huge, but the survivors go on, damage is fixed. it’s simply much more difficult to restore principles and ideals that have been violated. the united states was held up in the world as a beacon of justice and principle. now, we know better.

making hay

attorney general john ashcroft stepped up to the lectern to proclaim success and progress in the war on terror, violating the judge’s gag order for the case, and violating standards he is, supposedly, charged with enforcing.

Ashcroft mouths off, ignores gag order [capitol hill blue, april 19, 2004]

Justice Department spokeswoman Barbara Comstock said Friday that Ashcroft made the comments during a wide-ranging news conference and “certainly had no intent to contravene the judge’s wishes regarding publicity.”

which explains why the name of the witness, with commentary, is available here on the doj website in the “prepared remarks” of a press conference. worse, the prepared remarks have a note, “The Attorney General often deviates from prepared remarks.” ashcroft does deviate a bit in this case, and you can see some of that deviation over at the cnn transcript of the event.

His testimony has been of value, substantial value in that respect. Such cooperation is a critical tool in our war against terrorism, and those who may be contemplating terrorist activity are aware of the fact that there are others who had been involved in the terrorist network who are cooperating and providing information.

emphasized above, the “deviation” from the prepared statement. of course hmimssa’s testimony was of substantial value – it’s about all they had to make terrorism charges stick. but, stick they did, and we apparently got what might be called “wrongful convictions” out of the detroit sleeper cell case.

it turns out that the government’s “star witness” is a self-described scam artist. that evidence was withheld from the defense, and that misleading testimony was solicited from witnesses in order to score the convictions.

withholding evidence

a few months ago, there was news related to this case, when word got out that las vegas had been cased by terrorists.

DOJ Superiors Accused of Hindering Terror Prosecutors [ap, via new york lawyer, august 10, 2004

Behind the scenes of the first major terror trial after Sept. 11, frontline prosecutors complained bitterly they had not received needed help from the Justice Department and were prevented from introducing some of their most dramatic evidence in the courtroom, internal memos show.

so just a month ago, there was news about withholding evidence that would strengthen the case against these so-called terrorists, but the statement filed by the department of justice shows the flip side:

Judge throws out terror convictions [ap via usa today, september 1, 2004]

“In its best light, the record would show that the prosecution committed a pattern of mistakes and oversights that deprived the defendants of discoverable evidence (including impeachment material) and created a record filled with misleading inferences that such material did not exist,” Justice told the court.

“Misleading testimony was elicited that created the false impression that there was initial consensus that the drawing depicted the Queen Alia Hospital and that photos could not be taken due to diplomatic red tape,” Justice conceded.

these are the weapons our great justice department brings to bear againt the terrible threat of international terrorism? that’s the best we can do?

well, that leaves us with….

no reasonable prospect of winning

Excerpts from Justice Department’s 60-page memo [detroit free press, september 1, 2004]

As fully explained in the detailed memorandum of law, the government has concluded that there is no reasonable possibility that it could endure further hearings and emerge with the convictions intact. In its best light, the record would show that the prosecution committed a pattern of mistakes and oversights that deprived the defendants of discoverable evidence (including impeachment material) and created a record filled with misleading inferences that such material did not exist. Accordingly, the government believes that it should not prolong the resolution of this matter pursuing hearings it has no reasonable prospect of winning.

which, come to think of it, is something that the president mentioned recently too, albeit in a broader context.

fortunately, since i started preparing this post, it seems that the media has picked up on the story to some extent. the official word is that the terror convictions are thrown out (when i began this, the news was that the department of justice had requested that they be thrown out), and the so-called detroit sleeper cell terrorists will be prosecuted for document fraud instead.

so, do i feel safer now? either there was a real detroit sleeper cell planning terrorist attacks, and my justice department screwed up the prosecution so badly that they’ll be out on the streets in a few years, or there wasn’t a real detroit sleeper cell, in which case my justice department spun its wheels trying to make terrorist charges stick where no terrorists exist.

no, i do not feel safer now.

posted by roj at 4:45 am  

Sunday, August 29, 2004

check your chalk: you might be a terrorist

covered well, all over the web and [hopefully] major media, the magical chalk-matrix message printing bicycle has been impounded and its owner/operator was detained on unspecified charges.

Kinberg cooperated fully with the officers as he was being handcuffed, only asking, “can I ask what I’m being arrested for?” to which no one provided an answer. As of 11:00 PM Saturday evening, he was still in custody without being charged with anything

wired had a description of the effort back on august 2nd. both the new york post and the detroit news mentioned kinberg on august 15th, and the village voice also has some [ironically post-arrest] news.

i didn’t jump on this as fast as some others, partially because i wanted to see if charges would develop – and they apparently have. joshua is apparently charged with vandalism and/or criminal mischief. i’m not sure what the difference is in new york.

there’s a first-person account with joshua kinberg as guest blogger at the hardblogger site at msnbc. we like first-person information when it is available.

now for some editorial commentary: it seems to me like the fbi scare tatics and infiltration of dangerous anti-bush organizations resulted in some solid intelligence that mr. kinberg intended to do unusual anti-bush things during the rnc in new york. obviously given a high priority in the counter-dissent effort, the arrest and impounding of the mechanisms of protest seem to be carefully arranged to avoid their actual use during the rnc. the bad news is that the news of stopping this particular form of protest is likely to make it into a feeding frenzy for big media and blogs alike. what would’ve been a “cute geek moment” in an otherwise very busy news cycle could, one might hope, turn into a rallying point for the half of america that bush doesn’t see.

what’s disturbing here is that mr. kinberg was arrested after producing identification at an officer’s request, and, apparently on a pre-emptive basis. surely, he would’ve used his magic chalk-spraying bicycle machine to vandalize and cause mischief all over manhattan, had he not been arrested. that was his plan, and our loyal protectors thwarted it effectively. surely a triumph for safety in new york. america. is. safer.

lesson to future protesters: don’t go on the record until after you get a chance to use your magic protest widget.

my own investigation into this potential terrorist reveals that this plan has been in the works for a year. evidence also suggests that he has co-conspirators at the parsons school of design. not only did they encourage this highly american activity, but they awarded this dissenter a masters degree, in part, for his work.

i expect more interesting things to appear at bikes against bush.

in the meantime, expect things on this list get shut down as well, unless the civil authrorities in new york realize they made a big mistake with this one.

posted by roj at 11:14 pm  
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