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malsperanzaVarious people have been posting today about a recent case in which the FBI used the Patriot Act to conduct a search of the owner of a Stargate fan website, in pursuit of criminal copyright-infringement charges.
This gives me the opportunity to pimp an organization that needs and deserves your support: the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC). It's a small outfit that spends most of its resources helping individuals--often school librarians and authors--who run afoul of the Powers That Be and find themselves facing criminal charges for putting a book in the hands of a kid, or painting a painting in the wrong town.
Go to their website National Coalition Against Censorship and join.
They have a good newsletter, whose most recent issue, on the Patriot Act, lists a number of other recent egregious uses of it by government agencies to investigate individuals or institutions where no charge of terrorism is involved, including a horrible case in which an artist was arrested and his house raided after he called the police when his wife died suddenly (of natural causes).
I said in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wayfairer's LJ: In a way, I welcome these outrageous uses of the PA where no possible terrorism claim can be supported, because they are so visibly egregious that they may make the overturning of it easier. Depending, of course, on who wins in November, both White House and Congress.
But frankly, to me two recommendations of the 9/11 Commission are even more sinister than the Patriot Act:
1) The establishment of a domestic CIA (augmenting or replacing the FBI)
2) Removing oversight of intelligence agencies from Congress and giving it to the White House, with a cabinet-level "Intelligence Czar"--politically appointed and partisan--at the top. Is this not the most blatant and dangerous power grab the Executive Branch has tried in years? Is Congress really willing to let the entire intelligence infrastructure pass out of its oversight and into the hands of the president? Mind-boggling. You'd think they were all too young to remember J. Edgar Hoover and the KGB.
OK, that's the PSA for today.
This gives me the opportunity to pimp an organization that needs and deserves your support: the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC). It's a small outfit that spends most of its resources helping individuals--often school librarians and authors--who run afoul of the Powers That Be and find themselves facing criminal charges for putting a book in the hands of a kid, or painting a painting in the wrong town.
Go to their website National Coalition Against Censorship and join.
They have a good newsletter, whose most recent issue, on the Patriot Act, lists a number of other recent egregious uses of it by government agencies to investigate individuals or institutions where no charge of terrorism is involved, including a horrible case in which an artist was arrested and his house raided after he called the police when his wife died suddenly (of natural causes).
I said in
wayfairer's LJ: In a way, I welcome these outrageous uses of the PA where no possible terrorism claim can be supported, because they are so visibly egregious that they may make the overturning of it easier. Depending, of course, on who wins in November, both White House and Congress. But frankly, to me two recommendations of the 9/11 Commission are even more sinister than the Patriot Act:
1) The establishment of a domestic CIA (augmenting or replacing the FBI)
2) Removing oversight of intelligence agencies from Congress and giving it to the White House, with a cabinet-level "Intelligence Czar"--politically appointed and partisan--at the top. Is this not the most blatant and dangerous power grab the Executive Branch has tried in years? Is Congress really willing to let the entire intelligence infrastructure pass out of its oversight and into the hands of the president? Mind-boggling. You'd think they were all too young to remember J. Edgar Hoover and the KGB.
OK, that's the PSA for today.
