"The German word Gleichschaltung is used in a political sense to describe the process by which the Nazi regime successively established a system of totalitarian control over the individual, and tight coordination over all aspects of society and commerce."
-Wiki: Gleichschaltung

It Can't Happen Here!

• 2009/11/24: AlterNet: Feeling Nervous? 3,000 Behavior Detection Officers Will Be Watching You at the Airport This Thanksgiving
• 2009/11/18: SlashDot: Chicago's Camera Network Is Everywhere
• 2009/11/15: LA Times: TSA is secretly watching you
  Covert officers at 161 U.S. airports, including LAX, look for suspicious behaviors. The program has led to arrests on charges of drug trafficking, among others. To identify dangerous people, the Transportation Security Administration stations behavior-detection officers at 161 U.S. airports, including ones in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Los Angeles.
• 2009/11/14: PeakEnergy: Britain presses on with Big Brother telecoms database
• 2009/11/10: Telegraph(UK): State to 'spy' on every phone call, email and web search
  Every phone call, text message, email and website visit made by private citizens is to be stored for a year and will be available for monitoring by government bodies.
• 2009/11/10: CBS: Justice Dept. Asked For News Site's Visitor Lists
• 2009/11/11: ZeroHedge: More Attacks On Online Free Speech? Justice Department Subpoenas Site's Visitors IP Addresses
• 2009/11/11: BBC: Six-year limit on DNA of innocent
  The DNA of most innocent people arrested in England and Wales will no longer be held for more than six years, the Home Office has confirmed. But police may be allowed to keep DNA from those arrested for terrorism, even if they are freed or found not guilty. It comes after the European Court of Human Rights ruled last year that the National DNA Database was illegal. Ministers say the package of proposed reforms will protect privacy - but also allow police to use DNA to solve crime.
• 2009/11/11: AlterNet: Feds Wanted Private Data on All Visitors to Liberal News Site [Indymedia.us]
• 2009/11/09: BBC: UK surveillance plan to go ahead
  The Home Office says it will push ahead with plans to ask communications firms to monitor all internet use.
• 2009/11/03: Wired:DR: U.S. Needs Hit Squads, ‘Manhunting Agency’: Spec Ops Report
  [...] A recent report from the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations University argues that the CIA didn’t go far enough (.pdf). Instead, it suggests the American government should set up something like a "National Manhunting Agency" to go after jihadists, drug dealers, pirates and other enemies of the state.
• 2009/11/02: CCurrents: FBI Has 400,000 People On Terrorism "Watch List"
• 2009/11/02: SoS: The FBI and Wiretaps [DCSNet]
• 2009/10/29: NatureTGB: UK still pushing to keep innocents’ details on DNA database
• 2009/10/21: DerSpiegel: Technology Boost for Orwell -- EU to Monitor Deviant Behavior in Fight against Terrorism
  The European Union is funding ambitious programs aimed at monitoring human behavior in an effort to identify deviance and pick out potential terrorists. The implications for privacy are myriad.
• 2009/10/24: AlterNet: Presidential Power Has Gone Way Too Far
• 2009/10/24: AlterNet: After the Billionaires Plundered Alabama Town, Troops Were Called in ... Illegally
• 2009/10/23: SlashDot: Dutch Gov't Has No Idea How To Delete Tapped Calls
• 2009/10/16: ACLU: Court Rules Government Can Continue To Suppress Detainee Statements Describing Torture And Abuse -- Transcripts Of Combatant Status Review Trials Essential To Accountability For Torture, Says ACLU
• 2009/10/13: Guardian(UK): How super-injunctions are used to gag investigative reporting
  The Guardian has been served with at least 12 notices of injunctions that could not be reported so far this year
• 2009/10/05: AlterNet: Why Is the Military Infringing on Obama's Decison-Making Turf?
• 2009/10/05: NYT: Surveillance Will Expand To Midtown, Mayor Says
  A network of private and public surveillance cameras, license plate readers and weapons sensors already established in Lower Manhattan as an electronic bulwark against terrorist attacks will soon expand to a large patch of Midtown Manhattan, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said Sunday as they announced the allocation of $24 million in Homeland Security grants toward the effort. Mr. Bloomberg said the expanded monitoring network would cover the areas between 30th and 60th Streets, from the Hudson to the East River. "We cannot afford to be complacent," he said, noting that Midtown includes landmarks like Grand Central Terminal, the Empire State Building and the United Nations. Like the system downtown, the expanded surveillance network would feed streams of data for analysis to a coordination center at 55 Broadway. Mr. Bloomberg, who made the announcement at the center with Mr. Kelly, said work on the Midtown system would begin next year and be completed in 2011.
• 2009/10/02: CBC: Laptop searches fair game for border agents
  The arrest of a Catholic bishop on child-pornography charges highlights the power of Canadian border agents to see not just your passport, but the contents of your laptop computer. Between them, the Canada Border Services Agency and the RCMP enforce dozens of statutes -- the border agency at various ports and crossings, the Mounties in areas that fall between ports of entry. The Customs Act gives Canada's border officers authority to examine people's personal baggage and goods whether they are arriving or departing from Canada, including scrutiny of electronic devices.
• 2009/10/02: SlashDot: Corporations Now Have a Right To "Personal Privacy"
• 2009/09/30: PLB: Since when does a legal entity have "privacy" rights?
• 2009/09/29: CCurrents: The U.S. Creeps Closer To A Police State
• 2009/09/30: Times(UK): Gore Vidal: ‘We’ll have a dictatorship soon in the US’
  The grand old man of letters Gore Vidal claims America is ‘rotting away’ -- and don’t expect Barack Obama to save it
• 2009/09/30: SlashDot: Scientists Decry "Horrifying" UK Border Test Plan
• 2009/09/09: OLJ: Why the U.S. is not a democracy
• 2009/09/03: AlterNet: Eisenhower's Forgotten Warning and the Threat of Authoritarian Currents in Our Politics
• 2009/08/28: AlterNet: Will Biometric Passports Lead to a State of Constant Surveillance?
• 2009/08/24: HuffPo: Common Sense 2009
  The American government -- which we once called our government -- has been taken over by Wall Street, the mega-corporations and the super-rich. They are the ones who decide our fate. It is this group of powerful elites, the people President Franklin D. Roosevelt called "economic royalists," who choose our elected officials -- indeed, our very form of government. Both Democrats and Republicans dance to the tune of their corporate masters. In America, corporations do not control the government. In America, corporations are the government. This was never more obvious than with the Wall Street bailout, whereby the very corporations that caused the collapse of our economy were rewarded with taxpayer dollars. So arrogant, so smug were they that, without a moment's hesitation, they took our money -- yours and mine -- to pay their executives multimillion-dollar bonuses, something they continue doing to this very day. They have no shame. They don't care what you and I think about them. Henry Kissinger refers to us as "useless eaters."
• 2009/08/21: CanWest: Canada plans to share fingerprint database with U.K., Australia
  Calling asylum seekers a "vulnerable group," Canada's privacy commissioner expressed concern Friday about a new government plan to share fingerprint information with Britain and Australia to combat immigration fraud. The three-country agreement was announced Friday with little fanfare, with Canada and the two countries providing assurances that no one's privacy would be violated and that no database for the prints would be created. A lawyers' group in Australia also raised privacy concerns about the plan, which the United States and New Zealand were expected to join later on.
• 2009/08/20: OLJ: Americans: Serfs ruled by oligarchs
  Americans think that they have "freedom and democracy" and that politicians are held accountable by elections. The fact of the matter is that the US is ruled by powerful interest groups who control politicians with campaign contributions. Our real rulers are an oligarchy of financial and military/security interests and AIPAC, which influences US foreign policy for the benefit of Israel. Have a look at economic policy. It is being run for the benefit of large financial concerns, such as Goldman Sachs.
• 2009/08/11: OurFuture: Fascist America II: The Last Turnoff
• 2009/08/14: AlterNet: 7 Ways We Can Fight Back Against the Rising Fascist Threat
• 2009/08/07: AlterNet: Is the U.S. on the Brink of Fascism?
• 2009/07/30: BBC: UK's national ID card unveiled
• 2009/07/28: TruthDig: America the Great ... Police State by Gore Vidal
• 2009/07/29: DerSpiegel: Big Brother Is Watching Your Blackberry -- How Wired Gadgets Encroach on Privacy
  With every high-tech gadget we buy, we give up a little more privacy. Many devices today are in constant communication with their manufacturer. And it's not just consumers who are losing their rights -- the technology gives authoritarian states whole new ways of keeping tabs on individuals.
• 2009/07/27: WSWS: The specter of a police state -- Bush administration considered using military to arrest "Lackawanna Six"
• 2009/07/16: Guardian(UK): Secret evidence imperils the core values of British justice
• 2009/07/13: Guardian(UK): The US army's enemy within
  Struggling to recruit for its foreign wars, the US military has quietly dropped prohibitions against enlisting neo-Nazis
• 2009/07/03: CBC: Obama's internet monitoring plan moves forward -- Proposal for defending against cyber attacks worries privacy experts
• 2009/07/01: FTimes: Policy retreat over identity cards
  Alan Johnson, home secretary, has ruled out making ID cards compulsory for UK citizens, signalling a significant retreat by the government on its flagship £4.8bn national scheme. In his first big policy announcement, Mr Johnson said: "Holding an identity card should be a personal choice for British citizens ... just as it is now to obtain a passport." As a result, pilots and airside workers at Manchester and London City airports will not have to carry the cards in a test scheme, to which unions objected strongly.
• 2009/06/30: BBC: Climbdown on compulsory ID cards
  Home Secretary Alan Johnson has dropped plans to make ID cards compulsory for pilots and airside workers at Manchester and London City airports. The cards were due to be trialled there - sparking trade union anger. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said that the reverse in policy was "an absurd fudge" and "symbolic of a government in chaos". But Mr Johnson said the ID card scheme was still very much alive - despite Tory and Lib Dem calls to scrap it. He said the national roll-out of a voluntary scheme was being speeded-up - with London to get them a year early in 2010...
• 2009/06/26: CBC: Secret police wiretaps fly under the radar -- Warrant-less eavesdropping prompts questions over privacy
  [...] CBC News has learned that McMynn's case is just one of at least 267 cases between 2000 and 2008 where major police forces across the country used warrant-less wiretaps. The information was obtained through freedom of information and access to information requests. Some forces -- including Toronto, London and Winnipeg -- released only partial information, citing secrecy provisions in the Criminal Code, and the Quebec provincial police never responded. "There might be a lot more instances in which it is being used and that's what's troubling," says James Stribopoulos, a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto. "I think people would be alarmed to know, there are no checks on the exercise of that power."
• 2009/06/27: WaPo: White House Weighs Order on Detention -- Officials: Move Would Reassert Power To Hold Terror Suspects Indefinitely
• 2009/06/27: TPMM: Report: Obama Admin Drafts Memo To Detain Terror Suspects Indefinitely
• 2009/06/26: RawStory: White House drafts executive order to allow indefinite detentions
• 2009/06/25: AlterNet: Big Business Is Aiding the Internet Crackdown in Iran and China -- Will the Technology Be Used on Americans Next?
• 2009/06/24: Rabble: Free speech vs. surveillance in the digital age
• 2009/06/20: CBC: Electronic snooping bill a 'data grab': privacy advocates
• 2009/06/19: LeDaro: Stephen Harper: The completion of police state
• 2009/06/18: BBC: First trial without jury approved
  The Court of Appeal has ruled that a criminal trial can take place at Crown Court without a jury for the first time in England and Wales. The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, made legal history by agreeing to allow the trial to be heard by a judge alone. It is the first time the power has been used since it came into force in 2007.
• 2009/06/10: CCTimes: Defense Department sees protests as terrorism
• 2009/06/18: CBC: ISPs must help police snoop on internet under new bill
• 2009/06/18: CanWest: Feds to give cops Internet-snooping powers
  Police will be given new powers to eavesdrop on Internet-based communications as part of a contentious government bill, to be announced Thursday, which Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan has said is needed to modernize surveillance laws crafted during "the era of the rotary phone." The proposed legislation would force Internet service providers to allow law enforcement to tap into their systems to obtain information about users and their digital conversations. Police have lobbied for a new law for almost 10 years, saying that they need to access "Internet safe havens" for gangsters, sexual predators and terrorists. "This is really not about the warrantless tracking of Canadians' Internet use," said Clayton Pecknold, of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.
• 2009/06/18: Guardian(UK): America accused of spying on millions of emails
• 2009/06/17: NYT: E-Mail Surveillance Renews Concerns in Congress
  The National Security Agency is facing renewed scrutiny over the extent of its domestic surveillance program, with critics in Congress saying its recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged...
• 2009/06/07: LVRJ: Subpoena seeks names -- and lots more -- of Web posters
  Free speech should be practiced only by those who are ready to deal with the consequences, which just might include a knock on the door by a friendly federal investigator wanting to know if you posted an anonymous comment on a Web site. Were you advocating violence or confessing to breaking the federal tax laws?
  This is not a hypothetical.
  On May 26 the Review-Journal published an article about an ongoing federal tax evasion trial. The primary defendant, Las Vegan Robert Kahre, stands accused of tax fraud for using the rather inventive argument that he could pay people in U.S. minted gold and silver coins based on their precious metal value but for tax purposes use their face value, which is many times less.
  The story was posted on our Web site. When last I checked nearly 100 comments were appended to it, running the gamut from the lucid to the ludicrous.
  This past week the newspaper was served with a grand jury subpoena from the U.S. attorney's office demanding that we turn over all records pertaining to those postings, including "full name, date of birth, physical address, gender, ZIP code, password prompts, security questions, telephone numbers and other identifiers ... the IP address," et (kitchen sink) cetera.
• 2009/06/10: CBC: Furor grows over secret background checks on potential jurors
• 2009/06/10: G&M: Ottawa to seek biometric data on visitors
  The incoming head of Canada's spy agency says new rules requiring digital fingerprints and photos at foreign visa offices will be extended to every visitor from any country in the world -- including close European allies such as France and Britain. Speaking in his current position as deputy minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Richard Fadden said the use of such biometric data will be phased in over time, starting with countries considered to pose higher security risks. The plan is to phase in the rules between 2011 and 2013 for countries whose nationals require a visa for travel, work or study in Canada. But Mr. Fadden revealed yesterday that the longer-term plan will extend the rules to citizens of the nearly 60 countries who travel to Canada relatively hassle-free through exemptions from the visa process.
• 2009/06/04: NYT: Telecoms Win Dismissal of Wiretap Suits
  A federal judge on Wednesday threw out more than three dozen lawsuits claiming that the nation’s major telecommunications companies had illegally assisted in the wiretapping without warrants program approved by President George W. Bush after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker of Federal District Court in Northern California said that although consumer and privacy groups raised important constitutional issues in their claims, Congress had left no doubt about its “unequivocal intention” when it passed a measure last summer giving immunity to phone carriers in the wiretapping program. The ruling represents a major victory not only for AT&T and other carriers, which faced potential damages of billions of dollars if they lost the cases, but also for intelligence officials in Washington who had fought assertively in their defense. Officials from both the Bush and the Obama administrations maintained that the cooperation of the phone companies has been vital to national security and that penalizing them for their participation would jeopardize important surveillance operations. Lawyers for the plaintiffs, led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy and civil liberties group, said they would appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
• 2009/05/23: BBC: Camera grid to log number plates
  A national network of cameras and computers automatically logging car number plates will be in place within months, the BBC has learned. Thousands of Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras are already operating on Britain's roads. Police forces across England, Wales and Scotland will soon be able to share the information on one central computer. Officers say it is a useful tool in fighting crime, but critics say the network is secretive and unregulated. Kent's Chief Constable, Michael Fuller, commented: "We've seen an increase of some 40% of arrests since we've been using this technology. "I'm very confident that we're using it properly and responsibly, and that innocent people have nothing to fear from the way we use it."
• 2009/05/22: WSWS: The Obama-Cheney "debate" and the threat of dictatorship in America
• 2009/05/14: Guardian(UK): America's growing surveillance state
  The Obama administration isn't just watching rightwing extremists. It's watching us all -- and we should all be concerned
• 2009/05/07: ChicagoTrib: Wisconsin court upholds GPS tracking by police
• 2009/05/10: SlashDot: Warrantless GPS Tracking Is Legal, Says WI Court
• 2009/04/27: CBC: U.K. backs down from email, phone database
• 2009/04/27: SlashDot: UK Government To Monitor All Internet Use
• 2009/04/24: SwissInfo: Expert warns e-passports are open to abuse
  Plans for a new passport have sparked debate over the inclusion of an electronic chip containing biometric details, and the creation of a central fingerprint database. Peter Heinzmann, a professor of internet technologies and applications at Rapperswil Technical College outside Zurich, tells swissinfo of the risks posed by the project. Supporters, including the government and a majority in parliament, argue a European single border treaty, known as the Schengen accord, obliges Switzerland to introduce biometric passports by March next year.
• 2009/04/24: PeakEnergy: Congress Seeks "Kill Switch" For Internet
• 2009/04/24: AlterNet: U.S. Cities Increasing Use of Armed Mercenaries to Replace Police
• 2009/04/23: SlashDot: Germany Institutes Censorship Infrastructure
• 2009/04/19: NYT: F.B.I. and States Vastly Expand DNA Databases
  Law enforcement officials are vastly expanding their collection of DNA to include millions more people who have been arrested or detained but not yet convicted. The move, intended to help solve more crimes, is raising concerns about the privacy of petty offenders and people who are presumed innocent. Until now, the federal government genetically tracked only convicts. But starting this month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will join 15 states that collect DNA samples from those awaiting trial and will collect DNA from detained immigrants -- the vanguard of a growing class of genetic registrants. The F.B.I., with a DNA database of 6.7 million profiles, expects to accelerate its growth rate from 80,000 new entries a year to 1.2 million by 2012 -- a 17-fold increase. F.B.I. officials say they expect DNA processing backlogs -- which now stand at more than 500,000 cases -- to increase.
• 2009/04/14: NewScientist: Eyeball spy turns the tables on Big Brother
• 2009/04/09: PeakEnergy: UK launches massive program to archive every email
• 2009/04/09: WpgSun: Your trash is open to cops
  The Supreme Court of Canada says a former national team swimmer had no right to privacy when he put out garbage that included evidence of a home-based ecstasy lab. The high court ruled 7-0 that Russell Patrick abandoned his privacy rights when he put the four bags out for collection alongside a public alleyway in Calgary. "The police did not breach (Patrick’s) right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure," Justice Ian Binnie wrote on behalf of the court. "He abandoned his privacy interest when he placed his garbage for collection at the rear of his property where it was accessible to any passing member of the public. ... His conduct was incompatible with any reasonable expectation of confidentiality." The police did not have to step onto Patrick’s property to retrieve the bags, Binnie noted, but "they did have to reach through the airspace over his property line." The case was considered a key test on whether garbage is constitutionally protected, like homes and telephone conversations.
• 2009/04/06: BBC: Net firms start storing user data
  Details of user e-mails and net phone calls will be stored by internet service providers (ISPs) from Monday under an EU directive. The plans were drawn up in the wake of the London bombings in 2005. ISPs and telecoms firms have resisted the proposals while some countries in the EU are contesting the directive. Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, said it was a "crazy directive" with potentially dangerous repercussions for citizens. All ISPs in the European Union will have to store the records for a year. An EU directive which requires telecoms firms to hold on to telephone records for 12 months is already in force. The data stored does not include the content of e-mails or a recording of a net phone call, but is used to determine connections between individuals. Authorities can get access to the stored records with a warrant.
• 2009/04/05: KDenninger: The Constitution Dies - To Thunderous Applause
• 2009/03/30: IndexResearch: Will Economic Crisis Lead To A Police State World?
• 2009/03/26: AlterNet: FBI Director Pushes to Renew PATRIOT Act Surveillance Powers
• 2009/03/26: OLJ: Tracked by spies and informers
  The February 26 revelation in the Los Angeles Times that FBI domestic intelligence informant and ex-convict Craig Monteilh and others were paid handsomely to spy on Muslim Americans in their houses of worship in Southern California should come as no surprise. Such domestic intelligence gathering has a history in the United States. The annals of modern domestic surveillance in America are contained in the massive 1976 Church Committee Reports of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The reports, drafted by the Senate in the wake of the Watergate scandal, should have ended domestic intelligence abuses, but in the post-9/11 climate, their warnings and descriptions of crimes against liberty go unheeded.
• 2009/03/25: SlashDot: German Police Raid Homes of Wikileaks.de Domain Owner
• 2009/03/23: SMH: Secret searches spreading too far
  This week, the upper house of State Parliament is expected to consider a law to allow police to enter in secret and search the homes of those suspected of committing crimes. The bill was pushed through the lower house this month and, assuming it passes, will allow general duties police to use covert search warrants to investigate a range of ordinary criminal offences, which can be heard by a jury and are punishable by seven or more years in prison. Not only suspected offenders and those suspected of helping them are covered - so are the neighbours.
• 2009/03/23: SMH: Protest at secret search powers
  The stealth with which the NSW Government has sought to give police the power to search people's homes secretly has angered lawyers and civil libertarians. Lawyers and human rights defenders representing six groups have written to the Premier, Nathan Rees, demanding to know why they were not consulted on the plan to extend already "unnecessary" police powers. The NSW Attorney-General introduced legislation to Parliament this month that would allow police to search the homes of people not suspected of any crime, but whose homes adjoined those of people who are. The laws build on state terrorism legislation in 2002.
• 2009/03/17: PeakEnergy: Banned hyperlinks could cost you $11,000 a day
• 2009/03/16: WikiLeaks: Australia secretly censors Wikileaks press release and Danish Internet censorship list
• 2008/12/23: WikiLeaks: Denmark: 3863 sites on censorship list, Feb 2008
• 2009/03/17: SMH: Banned hyperlinks could cost you $11,000 a day
  The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks.
• 2009/03/17: SlashDot: Wikileaks Pages Added To Australian Internet Blacklist
• 2009/02/12: Guardian(UK): Documenting dissent is under attack
  From Monday, you could be arrested for taking and publishing a photograph of someone in intelligence, the police or armed forces As reported in the Guardian today, Monday is the enforcement date for section 76 of the Counter Terrorism Act 2008, and as a photojournalist who documents political dissent on the streets -- and sometimes fields -- of Britain, I'm worried about how this legislation is going to affect my job. Terror legislation has been increasingly used by this government, and sometimes brutally enforced by the police, to criminalise not only those who protest but also those who dare to give the oxygen of publicity to such dissent. From Monday it will be an offence to elicit or attempt to elicit information about an individual who is or has been a member of the armed forces, intelligence services, or a police officer in Great Britain -- it's been an offence in Northern Ireland since 2000. It will also be an offence to publish such information.
• 2009/03/13: OLJ: Rome Diary, March 2009: Fascist times in the land where lemon trees bloom
• 2009/03/13: OLJ: Eyes wide shut: A look at British news censorship
• 2009/03/12: OLJ: What’s law got to do with it?
  In an article titled, Memos Provide Blueprint for Police State, Marjorie Cohn, sets out clearly the role of two key figures in the drafting of a set of memoranda that overturned the most basic protections American citizens had against arbitrary state harassment and violence, effectively turning the U.S. into a police state. [...] But the one striking feature that jumps out of this whole affair is the ease with which a series of memos made it ‘legal’ for the U.S. armed forces and security agencies to torture people, spy on citizens, rendition people to third countries to be tortured, and to even suspend freedom of speech and assembly; as tens of thousands of American demonstrators wishing to use their public spaces to assemble and practice their free speech rights can tell you. So, we must ask: What is law? And is the U.S. a country based on laws?
• 2009/03/06: RawStory: Harpers editor: America had a dictator for eight years
• 2009/03/07: TI:CF: (cartoon - Roberts) Still nothing to fear...
• 2009/03/04: RawStory: Turley: Bush terror memos are 'very definition of tyranny'
• 2009/03/03: Harpers: George W. Bush’s Disposable Constitution
  Yesterday the Obama Administration released a series of nine previously secret legal opinions crafted by the Office of Legal Counsel to enhance the presidential powers of George W. Bush. Perhaps the most astonishing of these memos was one crafted by University of California at Berkeley law professor John Yoo. He concluded that in wartime, the President was freed from the constraints of the Bill of Rights with respect to anything he chose to label as a counterterrorism operations inside the United States.
• 2009/03/06: RawStory: Harpers editor: America had a dictator for eight years
• 2009/03/04: DVoice: War Comes Home to Britain
  Freedom is being lost in Britain. The land of Magna Carta is now the land of secret gagging orders, secret trials and imprisonment. The government will soon know about every phone call, every e-mail, every text message. Police can willfully shoot to death an innocent man, lie and expect to get away with it. Whole communities now fear the state. The foreign secretary routinely covers up allegations of torture; the justice secretary routinely prevents the release of critical cabinet minutes taken when Iraq was illegally invaded. The litany is cursory; there is much more.
• 2009/03/06: OLJ: Memos provide blueprint for police state by Prof. Marjorie Cohn
  Seven newly released memos from the Bush Justice Department reveal a concerted strategy to cloak the president with power to override the Constitution. The memos provide 'legal' rationales for the president to suspend freedom of speech and press; order warrantless searches and seizures, including wiretaps of U.S. citizens; lock up U.S. citizens indefinitely in the United States without criminal charges; send suspected terrorists to other countries where they will likely be tortured; and unilaterally abrogate treaties. According to the reasoning in the memos, Congress has no role to check and balance the executive. That is the definition of a police state.
• 2009/03/05: DailyTelegraph(UK): Police will have power to secretly search homes
  Police will be allowed to secretly search suspects' homes and remotely access their home computers for a month under the most draconian covert operation laws the state has seen. And no one will know, because of a provision allowing investigators to keep those being spied on in the dark for up to three years.
• 2009/03/04: ABC(Au): NSW to allow secret searches, hacking
  New South Wales Police are being given sweeping new powers to search people's homes and hack into their computers for up to three years without their knowledge. The State Government admits police have already used the measures, even though the Supreme Court ruled the practices unlawful in 2006. The Government says new legislation, to be introduced into Parliament today, will ensure police evidence collected using the practices will hold up in court.
• 2009/03/05: SlashDot: Australian Police Given Covert Search and Hacking Powers
• 2009/03/05: DemNow: Lawmakers Debate Establishing "Truth Commission" on Bush Admin Torture, Rendition and Domestic Spying
  [...]
  JUAN GONZALEZ: And your assessment of these latest memos that the Justice Department has released, in terms of the further proof that they show possible criminal actions?
  MICHAEL RATNER: I’m glad you said that, Juan, "further proof," because, you know, we’ve known a lot of this from the beginning. You know, I remember, actually, six weeks after 9/11 writing an article called "Moving Toward a Police State (Or Have We Arrived?)" And we’ve certainly seen the effects of these memos. We’ve seen the military arrest Jose Padilla in the United States. We’ve seen them do that to al-Marri. We’ve seen torture. We’ve seen secret sites. We’ve seen warrantless wiretapping.
  But what we see in these memos -- and I recommend them to everybody, because you read these, you are seeing essentially the legal underpinnings of a police state or a dictatorship of the president. There’s no doubt about it. That’s what it is, and it’s not theoretical. These were the actual building blocks of what we had in this country for eight years, in which—and the one you mentioned when we opened, Juan, that what happened here was one of these memos said the military could operate in the United States, and operate in the United States despite the Posse Comitatus law, which prohibits the military from operating in the United States. And when it operates -- this is really extraordinary -- they can arrest and detain -- "arrest" is not the right word -- kidnap anyone they want and send them to a detention place anywhere in the world without any kind of law.
  And then, on top of that, they can disregard the First Amendment. So this conversation we’re having right now, they could say, "Well, this is harmful to the national security of the United States" -- that’s what these memos say -- "this type of conversation is harmful, and we can ban this conversation." And then they could put the military at the door to the firehouse and come in and say the Fourth Amendment, the one that protects us against unlawful searches, that the military could walk in here, search all of us and see if we have anything they don’t like on us. So, no First Amendment, no Fourth Amendment, no Fifth Amendment -- essentially, the end of the Constitution and 225 years of constitutional history. In the face of this, this kind of memo, we’re seeing Leahy say, "Let’s see what kind of mistakes were made."
• 2009/03/02: SlashDot: UK Government Wants To Bypass Data Protection Act
  "Clause 152 of the Coroners and Justice Bill, currently being debated by the UK Parliament, would allow any Minister by order to take from anywhere any information gathered for one purpose, and use it for any other purpose..."
• 2009/02/26: SlashDot: US District Court Says Defendant Must Provide Decrypted Data
• 2009/02/24: Telegraph(UK): Remote-controlled planes could spy on British homes
  Police could soon use unmanned spyplanes like those used to track enemy troops in Iraq and Afghanistan for surveillance operations on British homes.
• 2009/02/21: SunTimes: Surveillance cams help fight crime, city says -- Goal is to have them on every corner
  Mayor Daley has argued that security and terrorism won’t be an issue if his Olympic dreams come true because, by 2016, there will be a surveillance camera on every street corner in Chicago.
• 2009/02/13: Cryptome: Clear and Roving Danger
• 2009/02/16: CBC: No bobby pictures please, we're British -- New law could stop tourists, media photographers from snapping police
• 2009/02/16: WpgFP: Britain's newest anti-terror law: Don't take pictures of cops
• 2009/02/15: S&M: Towards a police state
• 2009/02/08: BBC: Government plans travel database
  The government is compiling a database to track and store the international travel records of millions of Britons. Computerised records of all 250 million journeys made by individuals in and out of the UK each year will be kept for up to 10 years. The government says the database is essential in the fight against crime, illegal immigration and terrorism. But opposition MPs and privacy campaigners fear it is a significant step towards a surveillance society. The intelligence centre will store names, addresses, telephone numbers, seat reservations, travel itineraries and credit card details of travellers.
• 2009/01/31: CanWest: Growth of surveillance in Canada is 'undeniable' -- Study finds initial resistance has waned
  At least 14 Canadian municipalities are using surveillance cameras to monitor people in public spaces, and another 16 are considering them or have considered them, according to the first independent study of video surveillance in Canada. Though publicly run "open-street cameras" attract the most attention, they make up a relatively small percentage of all camera surveillance, says the first phase of a report by the Surveillance Camera Awareness Network (SCAN). Private closed-circuit (CCTV) cameras in convenience stores, malls and banks, along with cameras on buses, subways, taxis and in airports, are far more numerous and increasingly common, say the SCAN researchers, a group of academics operating under the banner of the Surveillance Project at Queen's University in Kingston. The use of surveillance cameras has exploded worldwide, especially since the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
• 2009/01/23: Wired:27B/6: NSA Whistleblower: Wiretaps Were Combined with Credit Card Records of U.S. Citizens
• 2009/01/26: Wired:27B/6: NSA Whistleblower: Grill the CEOs on Illegal Spying
• 2009/01/29: SlashDot: More Claims From NSA Whistleblower Russell Tice
• 2009/01/21: RawStory: Whistleblower: NSA spied on everyone, targeted journalists
• 2009/01/22: EFF: Whistleblower Reveals New Abuses of Wiretapping Power
• 2009/01/22: ThinkP: Former NSA Analyst [Russell Tice]: NSA ‘Monitored All Communications’ Of Americans, Targeted Journalists
• 2009/01/16: APOV: Advent Of Authoritarian State = Incompetence + Lies + Ignorance
• 2009/01/15: ThinkP: FISA court expected to rule that President can wiretap without a court order
• 2009/01/16: NYT: Intelligence Court [FISA Court of Review] Rules [NSA] Wiretapping Power Legal
• 2009/01/15: SlashDot: Wiretapping Program Ruled Legal
• 2009/01/15: SlashDot: Collateral Damage as UK Censors Internet Archive
• 2009/01/04: Times(UK): Police set to step up hacking of home PCs
• 2009/01/04: SlashDot: UK Police To Step Up Hacking of Home PCs
• 2009/01/03: SlashDot: India Sleepwalks Into a Surveillance Society
• 2009/01/01: TechFrag: Futuristic Security Checkpoints Know What You Do Before You Do It
• 2008/12/27: CBC: Film-style ratings needed for websites: British minister
• 2008/12/21: GulfTimes: Big Brother Google?
• 2008/12/12: EmpireBurlesque: Rotted From the Head: Senate Lays Bare Bush Torture System -- But So What?
• 2008/12/19: OLJ: Cheney admits detainee torture role
• 2008/12/15: NewsWeek: Now We Know What the Battle Was About
  [...] Two knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that the clash erupted over a part of Bush's espionage program that had nothing to do with the wiretapping of individual suspects. Rather, Comey and others threatened to resign because of the vast and indiscriminate collection of communications data. These sources, who asked not to be named discussing intelligence matters, describe a system in which the National Security Agency, with cooperation from some of the country's largest telecommunications companies, was able to vacuum up the records of calls and e-mails of tens of millions of average Americans between September 2001 and March 2004.
• 2008/12/15: ThinkP: Newsweek confirms massive data mining effort triggered warrantless wiretapping showdown
• 2008/12/12: Guardian(UK): Ex-MI5 chief 'astonished' at how many [792] organisations use anti-terror law
• 2008/12/07: ConstVigil: Interactive project on the fourteen steps to fascism, eh? Updated with new links
• 2008/12/05: CBC: Human rights court says U.K. DNA database violates rights
• 2008/12/04: CCurrents: Censorship In America?
• 2008/12/01: BBC: EU to search out cyber criminals
  Remote searches of suspect computers will form part of an EU plan to tackle hi-tech crime. The five-year action plan will take steps to combat the growth in cyber theft and the machines used to spread spam and other malicious programs. It will also encourage better sharing of data among European police forces to track down and prosecute criminals. Europol will co-ordinate the investigative work and also issue alerts about cyber crime sprees.
• 2008/12/02: SkashDot: European Police Plan to Remote-Search Hard Drives
• 2008/12/01: TPR: Pentagon Training 20,000 Soldiers to Work Inside U.S. By 2011
• 2008/12/01: WaPo: Pentagon to Detail Troops to Bolster Domestic Security
  The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.
• 2008/11/29: PeakEnergy: Making The Internet Illegal In Italy
• 2008/11/13: HeraldSun: Australian web filter to block 10,000 internet sites
• 2008/11/10: Cryptogon: British Government Seeks Unprecedented Powers to Censor the Media
• 2008/11/11: OLJ: Britain's digital surveillance: Hiding from Her Majesty's "black boxes"
• 2008/11/07: SlashDot: UK Outlines Plan For Internet Black Boxes
• 2008/10/30: HeraldSun: Australia to implement mandatory internet censorship
• 2008/10/26: CCurrents: Rep. Sherman Feels Heat For Reporting On Threat Of Martial Law
• 2008/10/24: CCurrents: Is America Fascist?
• 2008/10/25: BBC: Testing times -- Australia prepares national firewall to police net use
• 2008/10/22: AntiWar: What Happens in a Police State...
• 2008/10/20: CBC: Ontario's enhanced ID cards will be 'privacy nightmare': critics
• 2008/10/20: WaPo: DARPA Contract Description Hints at Advanced Video Spying
  Real-time streaming video of Iraqi and Afghan battle areas taken from thousands of feet in the air can follow actions of people on the ground as they dig, shake hands, exchange objects and kiss each other goodbye. The video is sent from unmanned and manned aircraft to intelligence analysts at ground stations in the United States and abroad. They watch video in real time of people getting in and out of cars, loading trunks, dropping things or picking them up. They can even see vehicles accelerate, slow down, move together or make U-turns. "The dynamics of an urban insurgency have resulted in a rapid increase in the number of activities visible in the video field of view," according to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Although the exploits of the Predator, the Global Hawk and other airborne collectors of information have been widely publicized, there are few authoritative descriptions of what they can see on the ground. But some insights into the capabilities of the Predator and other aircraft can be drawn from a DARPA paper that describes the tasks of a contractor that will develop a method of indexing and rapidly finding video from archived aerial surveillance tapes collected over past years.
• 2008/10/13: CWorld: No opt-out of [Australian] filtered Internet -- Policy to be set after trial
• 2008/10/20: Register: Interpol proposes world face-recognition database
• 2008/10/20: SlashDot: Interpol Pushing World Facial Recognition Database
• 2008/10/17: SlashDot: China To Photograph All Internet Cafe Customers
• 2008/10/15: Guardian(UK): Criminalising dissent -- US states are spying on political activists and classifying them as terrorists in order to stifle protest
• 2008/10/15: BBC: Giant database plan 'Orwellian'
  Proposals for a central database of all mobile phone and internet traffic have been condemned as "Orwellian". Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said the police and security services needed new powers to keep up with technology. And she promised that the content of conversations would not be stored, just times and dates of messages and calls. But the Lib Dems slammed the idea as "incompatible with a free country", while the Tories called on the government to justify its plans. Details of the times, dates, duration and locations of mobile phone calls, numbers called, website visited and addresses e-mailed are already stored by telecoms companies for 12 months under a voluntary agreement. The data can be accessed by the police and security services on request - but the government plans to take control of the process in order to comply with an EU directive and make it easier for investigators to do their job. Information will be kept for two years by law and may be held centrally on a searchable database. Without increasing their capacity to store data, the police and security services would have to consider a "massive expansion of surveillance," Ms Smith said in a speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research earlier.
• 2008/10/15: PeakEnergy: UK Storm over Big Brother database
• 2008/10/08: EmpireBurlesque: The Orwellosphere: Anglo-American Drive to 'Total Security State' Rolls On
• 2008/10/11: SlashDot: UK Government Says More Spying Needed
• 2008/10/09: SoS: Nonviolent Activists Are Now Terrorists
• 2008/10/08: WaPo: Maryland Police Put Activists' Names On Terror Lists -- Surveillance's Reach Revealed
• 2008/10/08: CCurrents: A Futile Bailout As Darkness Falls On America
  America has become a pretty discouraging place. Americans, for the most part, will never know what happened to them, because they no longer have a free and responsible press. They have Big Brother’s press.
• 2008/10/06: CCurrents: America ! Be Truly Afraid
• 2008/10/05: Times(UK): [UK] Government will spy on every call and e-mail
• 2008/10/03: CDreams: Ike: The Silent Storm
  [...] In the dark of the night 45, 000 homes were destroyed and millions of residents lost electricity, water, and roofs. Then Ike turned north, leaving hundreds of thousands more Americans without power in a 200 mile wide swath from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes. [...] The Media was not allowed to film people being rescued from rooftops in Texas. They were prohibited from flying over the small towns and beaches isolated by flooding and decimated by the hurricane. Local press raged about the conditions, then fell silent in a game of play-nice hoping to be allowed at least limited access. Not once did the national press report this suspension of the first amendment. The sound of black hawk helicopters could be heard for miles.
• 2008/10/02: WSWS: The Wall Street bailout and the threat of dictatorship
• 2008/09/29: CCurrents: Welcome To America's Nightmare
• 2008/09/30: PeakEnergy: Big Brother Is Watching Your Car
• 2008/09/30: AntiWar: It Can Happen Here! [Israeli fascism]
• 2008/09/27: WP: Jim Marrs On The Rise Of The Fourth Reich
• 2008/09/25: BBC: Foreign national ID card unveiled
  The first identity cards from the government's controversial national scheme are due to be revealed. The biometric card will be issued from November, initially to non-EU students and marriage visa holders. The design - containing a picture and digitally-stored fingerprints - is a pre-cursor to the proposed national identity card scheme. Critics say the roll-out to some immigrants is a "softening up" exercise to win over a sceptical general public.
• 2008/09/24: PeakEnergy: Interesting Comment --- on the commencement of active military operations in the Northcom region
• 2008/09/22: PeakEnergy: A Permanent Security Force For NorthCom
  The Army Times reports that the US army has commenced security operations in Northcom - an unstable country teetering on the edge of financial collapse - Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1. Luckily the local intelligence services have gathered a huge list - well over 1 million names now - of potential troublemakers for them to keep an eye on. Whatever happened to that "Posse Comitatus" thing anyway?
• 2008/09/17: SlashDot: National Car Tracking System Proposed For US
• 2008/09/17: Guardian(UK): US elections 2008 -- Democrats ask court to defend right to vote -- Republicans 'exploit mortgage crisis to disqualify opponents'
• 2008/09/15: Guardian(UK): Fears over privacy as police expand surveillance project -- Database to hold details of millions of journeys for five years
• 2008/09/12: NakedCapitalism: Michigan (And Maybe Ohio): Lose Your Home, Lose Your Vote
• 2008/09/11: Guardian(UK): Sarkozy orders review after outcry over police database [Edvige]
• 2008/09/09: DailyIndia: Sarkozy faces opposition over new intelligence spy system
  French President Nicolas Sarkozy faced an embarrassing split in his Cabinet on Monday over a computer system that the new French internal intelligence service will use to spy on the private lives of millions of law-abiding citizens.Defence Minister Herv Morin broke government ranks to side with a growing revolt against Edvige, an acronym for a police database that will store personal details including opinions, the social circle and even sexual preferences of more or less anyone who interests the State.Edvige, which is also a woman's name, was created by decree in July to store data on anyone aged 13 or above who is "likely to breach public order". "Sarkozy's Big Sister", as it has been dubbed, will also track anyone active in politics or trade unions and in a significant role in business, the media, entertainment or social or religious institutions. Listed people will have limited rights to consult their files.
• 2008/09/08: CNet: Widespread cell phone location snooping by NSA?
• 2008/08/30: RawStory: Bush quietly seeks to make war powers permanent, by declaring indefinite state of war
• 2008/09/02: CCurrents: Looking At America's Police Stat
• 2008/09/01: CCurrents: The Slow Death Of Democracy And The Rise Of The Corporate Hydra
• 2008/09/01: AlterNet: RNC Raids Have Been Targeting Video Activists
• 2008/08/31: SlashDot: In MN, Massive Police Raids On Suspected Protestors
• 2008/08/30: WSWS: Britain: Labour government proposes huge increase in state surveillance
• 2008/08/27: PeakEnergy: The unblinking universal eye
• 2008/08/25: WSWS: Bush administration widens domestic spy agency powers
• 2008/08/23: NewScientist: Surveillance made easy
• 2008/08/20: Google:AP: Senators: FBI rules could target innocent people
• 2008/08/22: NYT: A New Rush to Spy
  There is apparently no limit to the Bush administration’s desire to invade Americans’ privacy in the name of national security. According to members of Congress, Attorney General Michael Mukasey is preparing to give the F.B.I. broad new authority to investigate Americans -- without any clear basis for suspicion that they are committing a crime. Opening the door to sweeping investigations of this kind would be an invitation to the government to spy on people based on their race, religion or political activities. Before Mr. Mukasey goes any further, Congress should insist that the guidelines be fully vetted, and it should make certain that they do not pose a further threat to Americans’ civil liberties.
• 2008/08/20: NYT: New Guidelines Would Give F.B.I. Broader Powers
• 2008/08/21: SwampPolitics: Mukasey to delay approval of FBI regs
• 2008/08/22: SlashDot: As of October, FBI To Allow Warrantless Investigations
• 2008/08/22: Rabble: My American border story
• 2008/08/20: WaPo: Citizens' U.S. Border Crossings Tracked -- Data From Checkpoints To Be Kept for 15 Years
  The federal government has been using its system of border checkpoints to greatly expand a database on travelers entering the country by collecting information on all U.S. citizens crossing by land, compiling data that will be stored for 15 years and may be used in criminal and intelligence investigations. Officials say the Border Crossing Information system, disclosed last month by the Department of Homeland Security in a Federal Register notice, is part of a broader effort to guard against terrorist threats. It also reflects the growing number of government systems containing personal information on Americans that can be shared for a broad range of law enforcement and intelligence purposes, some of which are exempt from some Privacy Act protections. While international air passenger data has long been captured this way, Customs and Border Protection agents only this year began to log the arrivals of all U.S. citizens across land borders, through which about three-quarters of border entries occur. The volume of people entering the country by land prevented compiling such a database until recently. But the advent of machine-readable identification documents, which the government mandates eventually for everyone crossing the border, has made gathering the information more feasible. By June, all travelers crossing land borders will need to present a machine-readable document, such as a passport or a driver's license with a radio frequency identification chip.
• 2008/08/16: WaPo: U.S. May Ease Police Spy Rules - More Federal Intelligence Changes Planned
  The Justice Department has proposed a new domestic spying measure that would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years. The proposed changes would revise the federal government's rules for police intelligence-gathering for the first time since 1993 and would apply to any of the nation's 18,000 state and local police agencies that receive roughly $1.6 billion each year in federal grants. Quietly unveiled late last month, the proposal is part of a flurry of domestic intelligence changes issued and planned by the Bush administration in its waning months. They include a recent executive order that guides the reorganization of federal spy agencies and a pending Justice Department overhaul of FBI procedures for gathering intelligence and investigating terrorism cases within U.S. borders.
• 2008/08/13: SlashDot: UK Gov't Proposes Massive Internet Snooping, Data Storage
• 2008/08/13: SlashDot: Police Secretly Planting GPS Devices On Cars
• 2008/08/08: GRC: Has America become Fascist?
• 2008/08/03: SlashDot: Israel Moves Toward a National Biometric Database
• 2008/08/03: SlashDot: FBI Seizes Library Computers Without Warrant
• 2008/08/03: NYT: Feel the Eyes Upon You
• 2008/07/31: CBC: Sask. introducing high-tech ID for U.S. border crossings
  [...] Special driver's licences that can be used instead of passports at land border crossings will be introduced by June. Beginning June 1, the U.S government will require all visitors to prove their citizenship at the border. People who fly to the U.S. will still need passports. [...] SGI [Saskatchewan Government Insurance] spokeswoman Sherry Wolf said the new cards will have security features, including an embedded radio frequency identification chip. "There'll also be some form of biometrics, probably a facial recognition technology, as well as what's called a machine-readable zone which is consistent with the passport," she said.
• 2008/07/31: SlashDot: Citizens Spy On Big Brother
• 2008/07/29: EUO: US to screen foreign air passengers
  Washington is set to electronically collect data on all European visitors who currently enjoy visa-free travel to the United States. An online registration system, first kicking-in on a voluntary basis, will ask for a number of personal data, including on health. The Electronic System of Travel Authorisation (ESTA) - presented by US Department of Homeland Security representative Jackie Bednarz on Monday (28 July) - is designed to track high-risk passengers and will be officially launched on 1 August. The procedure will become mandatory only on 12 January 2009, with all passengers from visa vaiwer programme countries - including children - required to receive an authorisation to travel before they board a US-bound airplane or vessel.
• 2008/07/22: BBC: [UK] 'Spying' requests exceed 500,000
  More than 500,000 official "spying" requests for private communications data such as telephone records were made last year, a report says. Police, security services and other public bodies made requests for billing details and other information. Interception of Communications Commissioner Sir Paul Kennedy said 1,707 of these had been from councils. A separate report criticises local authorities for using powers to target minor offences such as fly-tipping. [...] Figures show public bodies made 519,260 requests to "communications providers" such as phone and internet firms for information in 2007. Under available powers, they can see details such as itemised phone bills and website records. But they are not allowed to monitor conversations. The total number of requests for last year - amounting to more than 1,400 a day - compared with an average of fewer than 350,000 a year in the previous two years.
• 2008/07/22: OLJ: The plan is to get everyone microchipped
• 2008/07/21: AntiWar: Court Confirms President's Dictatorial Powers
  Wake up, America! On July 15, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled by 5 votes to 4 in the case of Al-Marri v. Pucciarelli [.pdf] that the president can arrest U.S. citizens and legal residents inside the United States and imprison them indefinitely, without charge or trial, based solely on his assertion that they are "enemy combatants." Have a little think about it, and you'll see that the Fourth Circuit judges have just endorsed dictatorial powers.
• 2008/07/18: ArsTechnica: A big wishlist for a scary, secret anticounterfeiting pact [ACTA]
• 2008/07/14: CCurrents: Sami Al-Arian: From Exoneration To Criminal Indictment
• 2008/07/16: BoomanTrib: Deeply Disturbing
  The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (one level below the Supreme Court) has just ruled that Bush was granted the unlimited power by Congress to detain indefinitely anyone in the United States (you, me, your teenage son or daughter, anyone at all) merely be declaring them an enemy combatant. In a split 5-4 decision the Fourth Circuit also held that said enemy combatant was permitted to "challenge" that detention, but failed to elaborate on what form that challenge should take.
• 2008/07/14: ACLU: Terrorist Watch List Hits One Million Names
• 2008/07/14: at-Largely: 1 Million "terrorists"
• 2008/07/11: CO: The New Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
  [...] Future presidents can learn a lot from all this -- do exactly what the Bush Administration did! If the law holds you back, don't first go to Congress and try to work something out. Secretly violate that law, and then when you get caught, staunchly demand that Congress change the law to your liking and then immunize any company that might have illegally cooperated with you. That's the lesson. You spit in Congress's face, and they'll give you what you want.
• 2008/07/11: OLJ: FISA ‘compromise’ completes transformation of US into full police state
• 2008/07/11: Independent: The Bipartisan Surveillance State
• 2008/07/10: HuffPo: The Unitary Executive Congress
• 2008/07/07: SlashDot: Ray Gun Puts Voices Inside Your Head
• 2008/07/05: EconView: [Mikhail] Gorbachev: Will the US Become an Empire or a Democracy?
• 2008/07/04: SlashDot: Bavarian Police Can Legally Place Trojans On PCs
• 2008/07/03: TP:WonkRoom: Proposed Race Profiling Program Will Provide ‘False Sense Of Security’
• 2008/07/02: Google:AP: Race profiling eyed for terror probes
• 2008/07/01: SoS: Kill Switches and Remote Control
• 2008/06/30: SlashDot: FBI's New Eye Scan Database Raising Eyebrows
• 2008/06/30: Guardian(UK): New pact would give EU citizens' data to US
• 2008/06/26: Wired:SM: I've Seen the Future, and It Has a Kill Switch
• 2008/06/27: PeakEnergy: Five Myths About the New Wiretapping Law
• 2008/06/23: BBC: Sweden approves wiretapping law - Sweden's parliament passes new laws on surveillance, labelled Europe's most far-reaching eavesdropping plan
• 2008/06/18: WikiLeaks: How to train death squads and quash revolutions from San Salvador to Iraq
• 2008/06/18: SlashDot: Wikileaks Gets Hold of Counterinsurgency Manual
  "The document, which has been verified, is official US Special Forces doctrine. It directly advocates training paramilitaries, pervasive surveillance, censorship, press control and restrictions on labor unions & political parties. It directly advocates warrantless searches, detainment without charge and the suspension of habeas corpus. It directly advocates bribery, employing terrorists, false flag operations and concealing human rights abuses from journalists. And it directly advocates the extensive use of 'psychological operations' (propaganda) to make these and other 'population & resource control' measures more palatable."
• 2008/06/13: OLJ: "Big Brother" presidential directive: "Biometrics for Identification and Screening to Enhance National Security"
• 2008/06/12: BBC: Opponents of 42 days to fight on
  Opponents have vowed to fight on after the government narrowly won a vote to extend the time limit for holding terror suspects without charge. The plan to extend the detention limit to 42 days got through the Commons with a majority of nine MPs.
• 2008/06/11: BBC: Prime Minister Gordon Brown has narrowly won a House of Commons vote on extending the maximum time police can hold terror suspects to 42 days
• 2008/06/09: FAS:SN: Presidential Directive Orders Sharing of Biometric Data
• 2008/06/09: FAS:SN: House Bill Embraces Controlled Unclassified Info
• 2008/06/04: EmpireBurlesque: Main Core Blues: Stranger in a Strange Land
• 2008/06/05: WaPo: D.C. Police to Check Drivers In Violence-Plagued Trinidad
  D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier announced a military-style checkpoint yesterday to stop cars this weekend in a Northeast Washington neighborhood inundated by gun violence, saying it will help keep criminals out of the area. Starting on Saturday, officers will check drivers' identification and ask whether they have a "legitimate purpose" to be in the Trinidad area, such as going to a doctor or church or visiting friends or relatives. If not, the drivers will be turned away.
• 2008/06/05: APOV: Authoritarian Fascism - Bush Style
• 2008/06/02: TLC: Police State 2.0
• 2008/05/30: SlashDot: Prototype EU Airplane Spy Cams Watch For Facecrime
• 2008/05/27: CCurrents: Fascism:The Night Of Broken Glass In Rome
• 2008/05/23: OM: Fingerprint Registry in Housing Bill!!!
  Section 605 (a):
  BACKGROUND CHECKS."In connection with an application to any State for licensing and registration as a State-licensed loan originator, the applicant shall, at minimum, furnish to the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry information concerning the applicant?s identity, including" (1) fingerprints for submission to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and any governmental agency or entity authorized to receive such information.
• 2008/05/23: BoomanTrib: Are You One of the 8 Million?
• 2008/05/22: RS: China's All-Seeing Eye
  With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.
• 2008/05/22: SlashDot: US Firms Read Employee E-mail On a Massive Scale
• 2008/05/20: ThinkP: Govt. May Have Massive Surveillance Program For Use In "National Emergency," 8 Million "Potential Suspects"
• 2008/05/20: BBC: Criticism for 'UK database' plan
  Plans for a super-database containing the details of all phone calls and e-mails sent in the UK have been heavily criticised by experts. The government is considering the changes as part of its ongoing fight against serious crime and terrorism.
• 2008/05/20: Times(UK): "Big Brother" database for phones and e-mails
  A massive government database holding details of every phone call, e-mail and time spent on the internet by the public is being planned as part of the fight against crime and terrorism. Internet service providers (ISPs) and telecoms companies would hand over the records to the Home Office under plans put forward by officials. The information would be held for at least 12 months and the police and security services would be able to access it if given permission from the courts. The proposal will raise further alarm about a “Big Brother” society, as it follows plans for vast databases for the ID cards scheme and NHS patients.
• 2008/05/14: OLJ: It is definitely fascism when it happens to you
• 2008/05/14: SlashDot: 85% of Chinese Citizens Like Internet Censorship
• 2008/05/12: TWM: Surveillance State Update...
• 2008/04/29: GovExec: Roots of surveillance standoff go back decades
• 2008/05/08: OLJ: Executive or imperial branch?
• 2008/05/08: OLJ: The winds of Fascism blowing across Europe
• Wiki: Continuity of Operations Plan aka Continuity of Government Plan
• 2008/04/27: NYT: Letters Give C.I.A. Tactics a Legal Rationale
  The Justice Department has told Congress that American intelligence operatives attempting to thwart terrorist attacks can legally use interrogation methods that might otherwise be prohibited under international law
• 2008/04/23: Iconoclast: Transcript: FBI director on surveillance of 'illegal' Internet activity
• 2008/04/24: ArsTechnica: FBI wants to move hunt for criminals into Internet backbone
• 2008/04/25: SlashDot: FBI Wants Authority To Filter Net Backbone
• 2008/04/25: Guardian(UK): Face scans for air passengers to begin in UK this summer - Officials say automatic screening more accurate than checks by humans
• 2008/04/22: WaPo: U.S. to Insist That Travel Industry Get Fingerprints
• 2008/04/20: WpgFP: Canadians could face order for DNA at border
• 2008/04/19: ICH: U.S. to Expand Collection Of Crime Suspects' DNA - Policy Adds People Arrested but Not Convicted
• 2008/04/17: SlashDot: AU Government Demands Universal Wiretapping
• 2008/04/16: Yahoo: Feds to collect DNA from every person they arrest
• 2008/04/17: SlashDot: DHS to Begin Collecting DNA of Anyone Arrested
• 2008/04/15: CDreams: Fascism Is Creepy
• 2008/04/15: SoS: More RIPA Creep
• 2008/04/16: ThinkP: Chertoff Says Fingerprints Aren't "Personal Data"
• 2008/04/16: AngryBear: Martial law declared for... 'other condition'
• 2008/04/15: PeakEnergy: You're Being Spied On For Your Own Good
• 2008/04/11: Jurist: Top White House officials approved harsh interrogation methods: reports
• 2008/04/12: WSWS: Top Bush aides directed torture from the White House
• 2008/04/12: WaPo: Administration Set to Use New [satellite] Spy Program in U.S. - Congressional Critics Want More Assurances of Legality
• 2008/04/07: SoS: Internet Censorship
• 2008/04/08: AntiWar: The Emerging Surveillance State by Rep. Ron Paul
• 2008/04/04: WaPo: Administration Asserted a Terror Exception on Search and Seizure
  The Justice Department concluded in October 2001 that military operations combating terrorism inside the United States are not limited by Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, in one of several secret memos containing new and controversial assertions of presidential power. [...] The memo was written by John C. Yoo, then a deputy in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, who also wrote or co-wrote many of the key legal opinions that asserted an expansive view of presidential power in the Bush administration's early years. [...] The Justice Department has dropped 22 out of 24 cases of alleged detainee abuse by civilian employees and contractors referred by the CIA and the Defense Department. A U.S. official said the Yoo memo's legal arguments that interrogators are exempt from such criminal liability could have been part of the reason why those cases were dropped.
• 2008/04/05: WaPo: Every Click You Make -- Internet Providers Quietly Test Expanded Tracking of Web Use to Target Advertising
• 2008/04/05: SlashDot: ISPs Using "Deep Packet Inspection" on 100,000 Users
• 2008/03/31: CPunch: Congress, the Bush Adminstration and Continuity of Government Planning - The Showdown
• 2008/04/02: BBC: US interrogation memo made public
  The Pentagon has declassified a legal memo from March 2003 which approved the use of harsh interrogation techniques for terror suspects held abroad. The US Justice Department memo, since overruled, said President George W Bush's war-time authority superseded international laws on interrogation. It gave legal justification for aggressive methods, so long as interrogators did not intend torture. Its release follows a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.
• 2008/03/31: SoS: N-DEx National Intelligence System
• 2008/03/06: WaPo: National Dragnet Is a Click Away - Authorities to Gain Fast and Expansive Access to Records
• 2008/03/26: SoS: NSA's Domestic Spying - essentially the same as Total Information Awareness
• 2008/03/26: StageLeft: 1984 (Again, and Again, and Again)
• 2008/03/23: BBC: Heathrow fingerprint plan probed
  Plans to fingerprint passengers at Heathrow's new Terminal 5 are being probed by the data protection watchdog. The Information Commissioner's Office warned airport operator BAA it may be in breach of the Data Protection Act.
• 2008/03/20: 27B/6: Feds Tout New Domestic Intelligence Centers; Press Stays Home
• 2008/03/18: SoS: The Continuing Slide Towards Thoughtcrime
• 2008/03/17: SoS: Camera that Sees Under Clothes
• 2008/03/17: Guardian(UK): Precious liberty
  As civil liberties come under ever greater pressure, it's time we exposed the old lie that says the innocent have nothing to fear [...] The creation or adoption of instruments of control, surveillance, and eavesdropping, along with laws and powers to detain, proscribe, silence and punish in areas of thought and activity which were once not subject to such interference, is like loading a gun: we put the loaded gun in the hands of a benign and concerned government wishing to protect us from terrorism, illegal immigration and organised crime, then they pass the gun to the next generation of government, and they in turn to the next ... and so unpredictably into the future, in the hope that things will always be such, and times such, and people such, that benignity can and will reign all the way, with the ordinary citizen still functionally free and secure throughout.
  History teaches a painfully different lesson about such naive hopes. If one would try to protect oneself against things going wrong, do not create instruments that could all too easily go wrong in the wrong hands - and very, very wrong at that.
• 2008/03/12: DerSpiegel: The world from Berlin - 'The Hallmarks of a Totalitarian State'
  Germany's high court has declared laws enabling British-style total surveillance of drivers illegal. Privacy advocates and commentators applaud the ruling, but they ask if the court is trying to stop the laws from snowballing into a police state -- or just water them down.
• 2008/03/12: CanWest: Gomery: Canada on road to 'one-man government' - Sponsorship inquiry boss worried about concentration of power in PMO
• 2008/03/11: PhysOrg: New camera brings about vast improvement for surveillance
• 2008/03/11: PeakEnergy: NSA Domestic Spying Grows: Agency Sweeps Up Data
• 2008/03/11: 27B/6: Report: NSA's Warrantless Spying Resurrects Banned 'Total Information Awareness' Project
• 2008/03/10: TPMM: The surveillance program the Bush Administration has assembled
• 2008/03/08: SlashDot: Japan IDs All Its Citizens
• 2008/03/07: SlashDot: British Airport Will Require Fingerprints From Domestic Passengers
• 2008/03/06: WaPo: National Dragnet Is a Click Away - Authorities to Gain Fast and Expansive Access to Records
• 2008/03/07: SlashDot: National "Dragnet" Connecting at State, Local Level
• 2008/03/06: Telegraph(UK): ID database will be 'universal' by 2017
• 2008/03/05: Register: US.gov disappears European-owned Cuba websites - Blacklists never lie
• 2007/12/17: GRC: Police State America - A Look Back and Ahead
• 2008/03/01: SlashDot: Japan Seeking to Govern Top News Web Sites
• 2008/02/27: at-Largely: ACLU: U.S. Terror List Now Exceeds 900,000 Names
• 2008/02/25: SlashDot: An Epidemic of Snooping
• 2008/02/23: PhysOrg: Malaysian bloggers warned being monitored: report
  A Malaysian government minister has accused bloggers, who have been writing avidly on upcoming elections, of being cowards and warned they are being monitored, a report said Friday
• 2008/02/19: CCurrents: Not If -- When - A review of actions taken by this Administration that point to a possible declaration of martial law
• 2008/02/19: OLJ: Failed fascist states
  When Hermann Hesse warned of the rise of fascism in Germany he was rejected by a majority of the population. The truth is that most people were experiencing firsthand the benefits of fascist ideology. Today we look at that part of our global history with shame, asking ourselves how something like Auschwitz could be allowed to happen. The problem is that while we identify it in our past, we are reluctant to acknowledge it happening in our present. During the rise of the short-lived Nazi empire, criticizing Hitler and his party to the average German civilian would have undoubtedly received strong rejection. Today the same holds true to critics of the mighty ‘democratic’ empire, built by the U.S. with the submissive support of its ‘client states.’
• 2008/02/18: OLJ: Concentration camps in America: The consequences of 40 years of fear
• 2008/02/18: FairUse: The invasion of America - Creeping intrusions against our privacy rights are an assault on the Constitution
• 2008/02/14: G&M: No need for RCMP to keep files secret, privacy czar says
  More than half the files in the RCMP's secret data banks should not be there, the federal Privacy Commissioner said yesterday in a report that is likely to renew calls for an overhaul of the national police force. An audit by the commissioner's office found that tens of thousands of files in the RCMP's two "exempt" banks - which are designed to hold the most sensitive national security and criminal intelligence information - should not be secret, and many should have been removed years ago. "These finds are particularly concerning given that, with few exceptions, the audit was conducted on randomly selected files already examined by the RCMP as part of an internal review," Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said in a news release accompanying the report. Ms. Stoddart said the large number of files kept secret was not only unjustifiable, but illegal.
• 2008/02/12: Google:AP: Domestic Access to Spy Imagery Expands
• 2008/02/13: SlashDot: US Set to Use Spy Satellites on US Citizens
• 2008/02/13: EUO: EU unveils plans for biometric border controls
• 2008/02/13: BBC: EU plans biometric border checks
  Visitors to the EU could face digital fingerprinting at airports under plans to beef up border security, EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini has said. He said travellers from outside the EU could face a biometric test as part of their visa while those not needing a permit would be checked on arrival. There are also plans to improve border surveillance and land and sea patrols.
• 2008/02/11: WSWS: Britain: Labour government minister bugged by police
• 2008/02/10: PeakEnergy: Orwell's Cuttlefish
• InfraGard - Public Private Partnership -Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
• 2008/02/08: AlterNet: FBI Deputizes Private Contractors With Extraordinary Powers, Including 'Shoot to Kill'
• 2008/02/09: Guardian(UK): Behind the Great Firewall
  210 million Chinese have web access and any day now China will have more users than the US. But instead of spreading freedom, the net has been tamed by Beijing's iron grip
• 2008/02/08: People's Daily: China removes 200 million "harmful" pieces of online information
• 2008/02/06: WpgFP: Keep driver info in Canada, feds told - High-tech licences spark privacy fears
  Personal information about Canadian drivers must stay in the country as plans are developed to introduce high-tech driver's licences in Canada that will be accepted as identification at United States border crossings, Canada's privacy commissioners said Tuesday. The commissioners issued a statement calling on Ottawa and provincial and territorial governments participating in the so-called enhanced driver's licence programs to ensure the personal information of participating drivers stays in Canada. The commissioners also said they continue to voice their opposition to any plans to introduce national identity cards and systems.
• 2008/02/06: BradBlog: Diebold Voting Machine Key Copied From Photo At Company's Own Online Store!"
• 2008/02/06: SlashDot: Master Diebold Key Copied From Web Site
• 2008/02/05: ThinkP: Bush Administration Plans To Install Black Box Sensors On Private-Sector Computer Networks
• 2008/02/05: OLJ: The Weimar Republic
• 2008/02/04: CNN: FBI wants palm prints, eye scans, tattoo mapping
  FBI expected to award $1 billion contract to help collect data on people - Privacy advocate says it's the first step toward a "surveillance society" - FBI says it's needed to help track terrorists and other criminals - Palm prints and optical eye scans likely to become more common
• 2008/01/30: News(Au): [Australian Federal Police chief Mick] Keelty calls for media terror blackout
• 2008/01/31: SlashDot: Australian Police Chief Seeks Terror Reporting Ban
• 2008/01/30: TWM: Signing Statement Frenzy...George Bush's signing statement frenzy has now reached epic proportions...
• 2008/01/29: CCurrents: Traffic Jam On The Highway To Hell
• 2008/01/29: ThinkP: Bush Issues Signing Statement On Defense Act, Waiving Ban On Permanent Bases In Iraq
• 2008/01/29: FindLaw: Terrorism and Speech
  Restrictions of all sorts have multiplied in the heightened security environment of the last six-and-a-half years, so it should be no surprise that, around the world, legal restrictions on speech have tightened. Since 2001, there has been a clear trend toward prohibiting speech perceived as supporting terrorism, and toward barring the dissemination of materials--including books, videos, and other forms of written and graphic communication--that are believed to be of use for terrorist activity.
• 2008/01/28: AntiWar: American Liberty Teetering on Edge of Abyss
• 2008/01/25: Guardian(UK): Face recognition technique aids security - and lookalike searches
• 2008/01/22: TGBeaver: "Server in the Sky" is the FBI's proposed database sharing of biometric information...
• 2008/01/17: CCurrents: Institutionalized Spying On Americans
• 2008/01/12: JTurley: Your Papers Please: The United States Adopts a National ID Card And Abandons Priniciples
• 2008/01/17: GRC: Institutionalized Spying on Americans - Homeland Security's National Applications Office (NAO)
• 2008/01/16: Slate: Has AT&T Lost Its Mind? A baffling proposal to filter the Internet
• 2008/01/17: CNet: Should AT&T police the Internet?
  AT&T has said it is testing filtering technology that will look for copyrighted material. But should the company be acting as Internet cop?
• 2008/01/17: SlashDot: AT&T's Plan to Play Internet Cop
• 2008/01/15: CBC: U.S. seeks support for international security database
• 2008/01/16: NZHerald: NZ may join FBI-led global database to fight crime, terror
• 2008/01/15: PhysOrg: UK Considers Role in US Terror Database
• 2008/01/15: NZHerald: Injected chip plan to track offenders
  Britain is planning to implant "machine-readable" microchips - like those used on pets - under the skin of thousands of offenders as part of an expansion of electronic tagging. Because of concerns about the security of existing tagging systems and prison overcrowding, the British Ministry of Justice is investigating the use of satellite and radio-wave technology to monitor criminals. But, instead of being contained in bracelets worn around the ankle, the tiny chips would be surgically inserted under the skin of offenders in the community, to help enforce home curfews. The "radio frequency identification" tags, as long as two grains of rice, can carry information about individuals, including identities, address and offending record.
• 2008/01/15: SlashDot: 'War on Terror' Allies Form Information Consortium
• 2008/01/15: Guardian(UK): FBI wants instant access to British identity data - Americans seek international database to carry iris, palm and finger prints
• 2008/01/11: SlashDot: National ID Cards Mandated in the US, If You're Under 50
• 2008/01/11: CNN: New rules on licenses pit states against feds
  Tighter rules aimed at bolstering security, but foes say they go too far - States will need to seek waiver if they need more time to comply - Civil liberties organizations have argued against rules' impact - Cost of program was reduced in effort to garner states' support
• 2008/01/11: PeakEnergy: Australia To Get Censored Internet
• 2008/01/07: NewScientist: US and UK rival China for government surveillance
• 2008/01/05: CCurrents: An Iron Fist In A Velvet Glove
• 2008/01/04: PRWatch: Somebody's Watching You
• 2008/01/04: FPB: Big Brother is watching you

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." -Sinclair Lewis

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Last modified November 27, 2009