USA Patriot Act: Providing Security or a Noose?

Featuring Harvey Eisenberg, Assistant US Attorney for the District of Maryland, and David Rocah, Staff Attorney ACLU of Maryland.

Free & open to the public.

07:00 PM at Buechner Hall Alumnae/i House at Goucher College.

If you plan to be there, feel free to SMS me.

My notes from the event:

Disappointing turnout. Cooridnated by Veterans for Peace, said that they publicized this event as much as they could. There was a Patriot Act thing at the University of Maryland Baltimore last night so a lot of people might be burnt out. Looks like I may be the only person who isn't over 40 years old. The organizer was a bit flustered about the low turnout as the clock turned across 7:00pm. Decided to have a nice little roundtable discussion.

Org was Founded by Veterans who were annoyed during the Reagan administration about the behavior in Central America. Wanted to express that there is a larger issue, now a nationwide organization and just opened a chapter in the Maryland area a couple of months ago and are trying to be more active in the area. They are trying to do more things in the area and have been engaging in larger and more popular things like the March for peace in DC recently.

Let a few more people arrive. The speaker from the ACLU has yet to arrive.

ACLU:

Not about USAPA alone but the larger crcl issues.

• Dual justice systems
• Government secrecy
• Systematic discrimination
• Torture via 3p
• Surveillance - TIPS/TIA
• no-fly list - CAPPS II

Existence and nature of the threat to US & citz.
How do you respond, how do you apply your principles
Don't doubt good intentions of everyone involved

Silvergate:

Fed pros. for 29 years.
Maryland since 1967
Not an ideologue or cynic
Government is people

Similar times of stress and danger in the past
Danger and perception of the danger
Some chatter may be rhetoric, but there's a lot of stuff he sees that makes his perspective different

Personal note: Always somber tone from the government people at events like these

ACLU:

Evolution of department policies over the years

Peter Mullan introduces himself:

Recently retired DOJ analyst, 40 years
Church committee that created a wall b/n intel and FBI.
Daniel Patrick Moinihan's "Secrecy" on the overclass of info

Tie into USAPA-- secret warrants and the FISA warrants
Were beginning to take the wraps off of things and declass info
Trending of closed govt and interest of keeping things quiet
We don't know how many people want to hurt us
OBL's fatwa document -- you are doing something that he doesn't like and if you stop I'll stop.
He can't issue it as a cleric, small set of the community accepts it

Infidels out of holy land
Infiltration of our society into theirs
IPO, Free Trade, etc.

People there:

Ellen Barfield, national VP wanted a Baltimore chapter
Millie Carol
Joe Morton, prof at Goucher
Henry Carol
Max Obuszewski
Brian Whittey, reporter with the AP
Meredith Curtis

Max asks some questions:

Secret Service set up a protest zone on Monument street
Procs don't go after govt?
Specific cases about criminals re UN and NSA spying on

Silvergate:

Ethical obligation to not discuss something I don't know anything about
Not really his cases

ACLU:

Mechanism is not to say when people are prosecuted, but that's a civil suit
ACLU is doing a lot of this
Going to International treaty bodies
United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention

Discussion of Sec 412

7 day detention and periodic 6 month review in para 1: ``Sec. 236A. <> (a) Detention of Terrorist

Post 9/11 detentions are a sensitive issue
Bureau of Prisons guards under investigation

On my question on the cr/cl pendulum:

Silvergate:

Personal note: Inspiring to think that Federalism is coming back
Expiration may happen as well with
Trifecta, political question. Right now, all branches are on board.
Look at constitutional history for pendulum swing
Palmer raids
Lincoln and Habeas corpus

Unrelated random news links of the day:

• Academy of Art University: Free speech chickenshits
• Putting 40,000 Readers, One by One, on a Cover
• Sorry our President is an idiot
• Tribute to Goatse
• Baltimore man found burned outside hospital
• Auditory Processing Disorder in Children
• Auditory Processing Disorder in Children
• The Onion Taken For Real
• DoubleClick refines its evil
• Thoughts on Bush's Press Conference
• American Express C&D's Brad Templeton
• U.S. Intelligence Slow to See Terror Threat Grow, Report Says
• Microsoft Releases Flurry of 'Critical' Patches
• Britney Spears Wants A Reality Show
• More Soldiers Die in Iraq
• Girl survives crash on sports drinks
• CAPPS II: Myths and Facts
• April 12, 1994, First Spam
• Ashcroft denies taking little interest in terrorism
• Longo discusses DNA sampling in rapist search
• Scalia learned his lesson from erasure
• Justice Scalia apologizes to American reporter
• Panel says Bush saw repeated warnings
• St. Petersburg Democratic club ad says 'pull trigger' on Rumsfeld
• Shooting in Philly Courtroom
• Mizzou may discipline student in blood drive
• Baboons retool their culture
• Verizon to add DSL fees

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