mrneoluddite/activism

From the page: "The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), born after the Watergate scandal, establishes how the government can secretly eavesdrop on Americans in their own country in intelligence investigations. It was originally passed to allow the government to collect foreign intelligence information involving communications with "agents of foreign powers."

Today, however, the federal government is exploiting this once-narrow exception to make an end-run around the Constitution. The USA Patriot Act, passed by Congress in 2001 and re-authorized in 2006, expanded FISA to allow the government to obtain the personal records of ordinary Americans from libraries and Internet Service Providers, even when they have no connection to terrorism. Recent amendments in the Protect America Act now authorize the government to use FISA to get around the constitutional requirement that it show a judge that it has probable cause of involvement with a foreign country or terror group before it eavesdrops on a communication."

For some strange reason I'm feeling rather cynical about the US Gov't today.

From the page: "While recognising the US' right to gather anti-terror intelligence, Human Rights Watch argued that the secret incommunicado detention of suspects violated the "most basic principles" of a free society.

"Those guilty of serious crimes must be brought to justice before fair trials," said Brody. "If the United States embraces the torture and 'disappearance' of its opponents, it abandons its ideals and international obligations and becomes a lesser nation."

Calling on the US to bring all detainees, wherever they are being held, under the protection of the law, the report demanded that the International Committee of the Red Cross be given unrestricted access to all those held pursuant to anti-terrorist operations."

From the page: "an occasional journal crammed with reports and analysis from the world-wide ecological frontlines. These are the voices not of outsiders, journalists or academics, but of those involved in the struggles themselves. In these times of concrete alienation these voices shine hope from movements that take action to defend nature, create revolution and re-wild humanity."

AARP and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) have teamed up to collect and preserve personal accounts of America's struggle to fulfill the promise of equality for all.