The FBI has been interviewing Arabs and Muslims as part of a plan to thwart anticipated pre-election day terror attacks. The ACLU filed suit this week to stop the interviews.

The ACLU suit, filed Thursday, is seeking internal documents under the Freedom of Information Act to find out whether the government is protecting the constitutional rights of the subjects of its unannounced interviews at homes, workplaces and mosques. "We are trying to get much greater sunshine over these activities," said ACLU attorney John Crew.

The F.B.I. says the interviews are voluntary, but how many people feel free to say "no comment" when the F.B.I. shows up at your door unannounced?

The ACLU wants to know how the FBI selects these interviewees.

by TChris

TalkLeft commented yesterday that the TSA has plenty of money to party even as it fails to fund the inspection of cargo entering our nation's ports and airports. The TSA's misplaced priorities are made evident by a brief report that its Inspector General released yesterday.

Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin began the review of customs and border protection procedures at the request of House Democrats after ABC News twice successfully shipped about 15 pounds of depleted uranium into the country in cargo containers.

"Improvements are needed in the inspection process to ensure that weapons of mass destruction or other implements of terror do not gain access to the U.S. through oceangoing cargo containers," according to the four-page report made public yesterday.

Rep. Jim Turner complains that Ervin's short report lacked a "key recommendation" for correcting the problems. Here's one: spend less money on parties and self-promotion and more on homeland security.

by TChris

Florida's National Guard patrolled Florida's airport terminals for a few months after 9/11. Now the National Guard troops have received "warning orders" advising them that they may return to that duty later this month.

"Several law-enforcement officials said there is no specific threat to Florida." So why return the troops to the airports after nearly a three year absence? A cynic might suspect that the administration is trying to scare voters, or that it wants to create the illusion that the government is working to protect voters from a specific threat.

by TChris

The Transportation Security Agency can't find the money to screen air cargo (pdf) for explosives, but it managed to spend almost a half million dollars on a party to celebrate ... itself.

Awards were presented to 543 Transportation Security Administration employees and 30 organizations, including a "lifetime achievement award" for one worker with the 2-year-old agency. ... The investigation by the Homeland Security Department's inspector general, Clark Kent Ervin, also found the TSA gave its senior executives bonuses averaging $16,000, higher than at any other federal government agency, and failed to provide adequate justification in more than a third of the 88 cases examined.

Party on, Tom Ridge.

Last year Attorney General John Ashcroft embarked on a three week tour of the country to promote the Patiot Act, followed by a one week Liberty Tour. How much did he spend bringing the Administrations' propoganda to those beyond the beltway? According to the GAO, more than $200,000.

Rep. John Conyers asked for the accounting. Now that it's in, he is asking for an investigation.

The law maker accused Ashcroft (pdf) of violating federal laws that prohibit the executive branch from conducting "propaganda" or legislative lobbying with public money.

The Justice Department responded:

Russia's reaction to the massacre in Breslan:

Moscow schoolchildren will soon have to wear military-style dog tags and carry special "passports" as part of a security drive in the wake of Beslan.

Mr Popov, head of the Moscow city assembly's security and legislation committee, said children would wear the dog tags round their necks and carry the passports in their pockets, which would bear their fingerprints and other personal data.

The passport will give the child's name, address, telephone number, blood group and details of any allergies to medicines, he said.

Do you think Bush would oppose such measures here?

by TChris

After a court rejected the Bush administration's frivolous attempts to keep information about its "no fly" list secret, the TSA and FBI released records in response to an ACLU lawsuit on behalf of peace activists who suspect that they were included on the list because they exercised their right to political expression. The documents confirm that large numbers of innocent travelers are inconvenienced because their names are similar to the ten or twenty thousand names on the list.

[T]he phonetic coding systems tend to ensnare people who have similar-sounding names, even though a human being could tell the difference. Earlier this month, for example, Rep. Donald E. Young (R-Alaska), said he was flagged on the "watch list" when the airline computer system mistook him for a man on the list named Donald Lee Young.

Senator Kennedy had the same problem. At one point, airlines were stopping thirty passengers a day who had names that were similar to a terror suspect's.

Just as we thought....the terror alert that went out yesterday about schools was bogus. [link via AmericaBlog]

If you have that uneasy feeling you're being watched between now and Election Day, you may be correct. Attorney General John Ashcroft has issued a sweeping 60 day directive authorizing federal agents from a variety of agencies--DEA, FBI, BATF and the U.S. Marshal's service--to begin surveillance of potential terrorism suspects.

Right on schedule.

AP: "The Education Department has advised school leaders nationwide to watch for people spying on their buildings or buses to help detect any possibility of terrorism like the deadly school siege in Russia. The warning follows an analysis by the FBI and the Homeland Security Department of the siege that killed nearly 340 people, many of them students, in the city of Beslan last month. 'The horror of this attack may have created significant anxiety in our own country among parents, students, faculty staff and other community members,'

Deputy Education Secretary Eugene Hickok said in a letter to schools and education groups ... The Education Department sent its letter by e-mail Wednesday to school police, state school officers, school boards, groups representing principals and many other organizations." (emphasis added)

First off, this isn't new and it's been debunked.Why trot it out now? Here's Why.

[links via Ezra at Pandagon and Pandagon commenters.]

Wrongfully arrested and detained Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield sued Attorney General John Ashcroft today.

The Portland lawyer who was wrongly arrested by FBI agents on suspicion of involvement in Spain's worst terrorist attack filed a lawsuit Monday against the U.S. government, claiming he was singled out because of his Muslim faith.

Brandon Mayfield, a 38-year-old convert to Islam, is accusing the FBI, John Ashcroft and the Department of Justice of violating his civil liberties by wiretapping his Oregon home and filing misleading affidavits to justify his two-week imprisonment, according to court documents filed Monday....Mayfield is seeking unspecified damages as well as a ruling that key provisions of the U.S. Patriot Act are unconstitutional.

Our coverage of the Mayfield case is accessible here .

This may get ugly. The Department of Justice is charging that a New York Times reporter, Philip Shenon, warned a Islamic charity group under investigation for funding terrorist-related activity of an impending raid on its offices. To prove the allegation, DOJ is seeking telephone and email records of reporters Philip Shenon and Judith Miller for the 20 days after 9/11.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago charged in court papers that Shenon blew the cover on the Dec. 14, 2001, raid of the Global Relief Foundation — the first charges of their kind under broad new investigatory powers given to the feds under the Patriot Act. "It has been conclusively established that Global Relief Foundation learned of the search from reporter Philip Shenon of The New York Times," Fitzgerald said in an Aug. 7, 2002, letter to the Times' legal department.

The Times denies the allegation and is mightily resisting the subpoena. The paper sued in federal court yesterday to stop DOJ from getting access to the records saying the turnover would reveal the identity of confidential sources.

The lawsuit said the scope of the government's demand for telephone records meant that the records would expose the identities of dozens of confidential sources used by the reporters for an array of articles about Sept. 11, the government's handling of continued threats from al-Qaida and the war in Iraq.