FOX NEWS– President Barack Obama has signed a one-year extension of several provisions in the nation’s main counterterrorism law, the Patriot Act. Provisions in the measure would have expired on Sunday without Obama’s signature Saturday. The act, which was adopted in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, expands the government’s ability to monitor Americans in the name … Read More
civil liberties
Is Obama’s Civil Liberties Record Understandable?
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November 27. 2009 SALON– Earlier this week, Kevin Drum said that “nine times out of ten” Obama’s policies are “pretty much what [he] expected” but that “the biggest one-time-out-of-ten where he’s not doing what [he] expected is in the area of detainee and civil liberties issues.” Similarly, Andrew Sullivan cited “accountability for war crimes and civil rights” as among the very few issues … Read More
Spying Goes Up as Terror Cases Diminish
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LA TIMES— The number of Americans being secretly wiretapped or having their financial and other records reviewed by the government has continued to increase as officials aggressively use powers approved after the Sept. 11 attacks. But the number of terrorism prosecutions ending up in court — one measure of the effectiveness of such sleuthing — has continued to decline, in … Read More
New Airport Body Scanners Break Child Porn Laws
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THE GUARDIAN– The rapid introduction of full body scanners at British airports threatens to breach child protection laws which ban the creation of indecent images of children, the Guardian has learned. Privacy campaigners claim the images created by the machines are so graphic they amount to “virtual strip-searching” and have called for safeguards to protect the privacy of passengers involved. … Read More
