Month: January 2014

Just a guess: Navy public affairs officer Robin Patterson, who
was in charge of responding to this Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) request, probably didn’t mean to send his strategy memo
about to how to dodge various aspects of the query for photos,
memos, and emails to the reporter who filed the request. (Click to
enlarge.)

Some choice excerpts: 

Again another “fish expedition” -just because they are media
doesn’t mean that the memos would shed light on specific government
activities….

DON2014F-0387: this one is specific enough that we may be able
to deny. However, I want to talk with the FBI, as they may have
“all emails during that time, in their possession.”…

Some of the requesters have already filed appeals – so the
administrative files need to be kept up-to-date.

None of this is particularly egregious, actually. It just shows
the generally oppositional and mildly grumpy attitude that is
typical of government responses to FOIA requests. And how valuable
Gmail’s Undo
Send button can be.

Via
Scott MacFarlane’s Twitter.

On Monday
January 13, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argument in a
major case testing the scope of presidential power. At issue is
President Barack Obama’s controversial use of the recess
appointments power to bypass the Senate confirmation process and
add three new members to the National Labor Relations Board. Obama
did not make those appointments when the Senate was technically in
recess, but did so instead when the Senate was in session. The
president has received the support of some conservatives, but also
gets strong support from a leading liberal organization, the
Constitutional Accountability Center. That’s surprising, writes
Damon Root, because it stands in such marked contrast to previous
progressive interpretations of the Recess Appointments Clause, most
notably that of Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. In
2003, Kennedy filed his own friend of the court brief when the
federal courts heard a similar case dealing with President
Bush.

View this article.

With a
book just published about the incident, the New York
Times
revisists the 1971 burglary of an FBI office in Media,
Pennsylvania—a politically fueled act committed in an age when the
Edward
Snowdens of the world often had to work with lockpicks and
crowbars instead of thumbdrives. The eight burglars made off with a
treasure trove of information about the FBI’s surveillance of
domestic political organizations. They also unearthed the first
hints that led to later revelations about COINTELPRO—the federal
government’s effort, as
documented by Reason’s own Jesse Walker, to infiltrate and
discredit groups deemed subversive or simply inconvenient. All of
this might just be thrilling history if Snowden’s recent actions
hadn’t made clear that little changes when it comes to governments
spying on their own people.

Mark Mazzetti
writes for the Times:

After packing the documents into suitcases, the burglars piled
into getaway cars and rendezvoused at a farmhouse to sort through
what they had stolen. To their relief, they soon discovered that
the bulk of it was hard evidence of the F.B.I.’s spying on
political groups. Identifying themselves as the Citizens’
Commission to Investigate the F.B.I., the burglars sent select
documents to several newspaper reporters. Two weeks after the
burglary, Ms. Medsger wrote the first article based on the files,
after the Nixon administration tried unsuccessfully to get The Post
to return the documents.

Other news organizations that had received the documents,
including The New York Times, followed with their own reports.

Ms. Medsger’s article cited what was perhaps the most damning
document from the cache, a 1970 memorandum that offered a glimpse
into Hoover’s obsession with snuffing out dissent. The document
urged agents to step up their interviews of antiwar activists and
members of dissident student groups.

“It will enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles and will
further serve to get the point across there is an F.B.I. agent
behind every mailbox,” the message from F.B.I. headquarters said.
Another document, signed by Hoover himself, revealed widespread
F.B.I. surveillance of black student groups on college
campuses.

But the document that would have the biggest impact on reining
in the F.B.I.’s domestic spying activities was an internal routing
slip, dated 1968, bearing a mysterious word: Cointelpro.

Walker details COINTELPRO in an
excerpt from his book, the
The United States of Paranoia:

Under COINTELPRO, FBI agents infiltrated political groups and
spread rumors that loyal members were the real infiltrators. They
tried to get targets fired from their jobs, and they tried to break
up the targets’ marriages. They published deliberately inflammatory
literature in the names of the organizations they wanted to
discredit, and they drove wedges between groups that might
otherwise be allied.

So the federal government wasn’t merely spying on groups that
disagree with the powers that be—itself a chilling assault on
freedom of thought and speech—it actively sought to sabotage
opposition. The modern FBI itself confesses that COINTELPRO
was “rightfully criticized by Congress and the American people for
abridging first amendment rights.”

But domestic surveillance continues on an expanded scale, we
know, in part because of the massive data released by Edward
Snowden, and also because of the increased inquiry and scrutiny
directed at other government agencies as a result. We’ve learned
that the FBI
continues its surveillance activites, expanding its powers
(sometimes unilaterally) and shares information with agencies
including the NSA. The DEA, in concert with local police agencies,

engages in domestic phone surveillance that may dwarf the
official spy agency’s efforts.

Sen. Rand Paul responded to news of such domestic snooping,
writing:

Each new agency scandal or revelation-whether the IRS, DOJ, NSA,
or now, the DEA-paints a picture of a domestic and national
security apparatus run amuck. Our longstanding tradition of
balancing liberty against security is now threatened by an emerging
Washington mentality in which no liberty is protected
against the greater need for security.

Memories of the Media, Pennsylvania, break-in, and what was
learned from the FBI documents seized at that time, remind us that
the national security state isn’t just here to help. It’s not
benign. The state spies on its own subjects for its own reasons,
and those reasons often involve retaining power. The information it
gathers becomes a potent weapon against anybody labeled an enemy,
for whatever reason.

Mazzetti of the Times writes that the Media burglars
who have come forward “felt a kinship toward Mr. Snowden, whose
revelations about N.S.A. spying they see as a bookend to their own
disclosures so long ago.” That kinship is very real, unfortunately,
because the security state has experienced very little in the way
of reform between the two sets of revelations.

The Los Angeles Times
reported late Jan. 6 that LA Sheriff Lee Baca would aannounce
his retirement Tuesday, a month after 18 Los Angeles
Sheriff’s Department (LASD) officials were charged with federal
crimes
ranging from excessive force used on jail inmates and visitors to
hiding an FBI informant from his handlers. The announcement is
expected at a 10am press conference. From the
LA Times this morning:

The news of Baca’s decision to step down has stunned people
inside and outside the Sheriff’s Department. He was locked in a
tough reelection battle amid several scandals that beset the
department.

Baca, 71, told top officials in county government late
Monday that he believes stepping down would help the department
recover after several years of tumult and criticism,
according to sources familiar with the conversations.

“This scandal has been developing over the years. It’s not as if
these indictments came down in a vacuum,” said Legal
Director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern
California (ACLU-SC), Peter Eliasberg to Reason TV in
Dec. 2013. “When you have 18 that are federally
indicted. That’s a major, major problem.”

For more on problems in the L.A. County Jail system watch,
LA County
Jail Officers Charged with Federal Crimes; Jail monitors
Respond:

Baca also
faced criticism over hiring numerous problem officers in
2010 that had histories of misconduct at other law enforcement
agencies, had solicited prostitutes, falsified police records and
unlawfully discharged firearms. LASD admitted to hiring at least 80
problem officers but still may not be able to fire them because
they
hired them knowing they had problems.

For more on the LASD and misconduct in the department,
read and watch LA
County Sheriff’s Hassle Photographer, Trample Constitution, Get
Lauded by Bosses:

Last October, after a
survey found
that 58 percent of Americans want to legalize marijuana, anti-pot
activist Kevin Sabet
said the results must be wrong, because it was inconceivable
that so many people disagreed with him, and whoever heard of this
“Gallup Poll,” anyway? Just kidding. Sabet actually said Gallup’s
sample was too small, although it was just as big as the samples
used in two other surveys that he deemed more trustworthy (possibly
because they put support for legalization below 50 percent). Now
CNN
reports that in its latest poll 55 percent of respondents said
marijuana should be legal, while 44 percent said it should not. CNN
notes that the results “are similar to [those of] a Gallup poll
conducted in October.”

Sabet also complained that Gallup “asked about marijuana use,
not sales and production.“ CNN asked about
distribution as well as consumption, and 54 percent of respondents
said “the
sale of marijuana should be made legal.“ As I

pointed out last fall, other recent polls likewise have found
majority support for legalizing the marijuana business. Apparently
Americans are not as terrified as Sabet thinks they should be by
the prospect of “Big
Marijuana.”

While it’s true that some recent polls do not find majority
support for legalization, the overall trend is unmistakable:

According to the CNN poll and numbers from General Social Survey
polling, support for legalizing marijuana has steadily soared over
the past quarter century—from 16% in 1987 to 26% in 1996, 34% in
2002, and 43% two years ago.

Gallup has
found a similar increase:

Public support for legalization more than doubled in the 1970s,
growing to 28%. It then plateaued during the 1980s and 1990s before
inching steadily higher since 2000, reaching 50% in 2011.

Consistent with this trend, polls typically find an inverse
correlation between age and support for legalization. Here is the
age breakdown in the CNN poll:

Two-thirds of those 18 to 34 said marijuana should be legal,
with 64% of those 34 to 49 in agreement.

Half of those 50 to 64 believe marijuana should be legal, but
that number dropped to 39% for those age 65 and older.

Maybe the Gallup and CNN numbers exaggerate support for
legalization. Perhaps the 50 percent threshold won’t really be
crossed until next year or the year after. But one thing is clear:
Sabet is losing.