Stories of Police State Toronto

USA Reports

Archive:
- A16 -  Police Abuse in Washington at the anti IMF Demonstrations - April 2000
- Police Abuse at World Trade Org Demo in Seattle -  Dec/99
- Internet Liberty Computers & Web Issues
- Global News(Mainline News)
- JUSTRITT News! -  newsletter for Rittenhouse:
- CopWatch charter online archive
- CopWatch central website
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At the LA Times -  March 10, 2002
- Brand USA By NAOMI KLEIN,
    America's attempt to market itself abroad using advertising principles is destined to  fail.
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At Wired - Mar.11.2002
-  Spying: The American Way of Life?
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At the Nation – Feb.2002
- A Prayer for America by US Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich
- Better Safe...? (racial profiling) Diary of a Mad Law Professor by Patricia J. Williams
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ACLU News - Jan.26.2002
- Oppose Attempts to Allow Unchecked Domestic Spying!
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At Mainline News - Jan.24.2002
- The Bushes, the CIA and the Bin Ladens
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At Counterpunch - Jan.24.2002
- Former Beirut Hostage Speaks Out on the Guantanamo Prisoners
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At Fair.org - Jan.24.2002
- ABC Omits U.S. From Human Rights Report
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The Detailed Conspiracy Theories on 9/11 - Jan.2002
- Several files detailing the strange facts and possible conspiracies in regards to Sept.11.2001
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CIA and Corporate America By Steve Kangas  - Dec.2001
http://www.korpios.org/resurgent/L-overclass.html
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ACLU Opposes Bush's Military Tribunals - Nov.18.2001
- Courts would try  non-citizens Charged with Terrorism
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At Mainline – Oct.28.2001
- Gestapo Approved: House OKs New Police Powers
- The New McCarthyism: Woman in Black, Kofi Annan
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US Anti-Terrorism Legislation Passes - Oct.24.2001
troubling  provisions would:
- Allow information obtained during criminal investigations to be distributed to the CIA, INS, Secret Service, military and others without judicial review.
- Authorize expanded use of covert searches for any criminal investigation, thus allowing the government to enter your home, office or other private place and conduct a search, take photographs, and download your computer files without notifying you until later.
- Expand the definition of terrorism in such a way that could potentially allow the government  to levy heavy penalties for relatively minor offenses, including political protests. Permit authorities to indefinitely detain non-citizens without meaningful judicial review.
- Minimize judicial supervision of law enforcement wiretap authority.
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IMC NEWS BLAST | Monday, August 20, 2001
THE UNITED STATES’ PRISON-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX by Indymedia News Blast Team
- read a compilation of notices, stories and opinions
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At Other Media - July/2001
-Free trade', rape and murder
-Human rights abuses with small arms: Illustrative cases from Amnesty International
-USA - Civil Rights Groups Fight Eviction of Battered Women Under "Zero Tolerance" Housing Policy
-Mother Jones Goes to Prison - The Real Price of Prisons
-Political Prisoners at the United Nations
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USA: first federal execution since 1963 -- a retrograde step
* News Release Issued by the International Secretariat of Amnesty International *
11 June 2001
AMR 51/081/2001
101/01
   By executing the first federal death row prisoner in nearly four decades, the USA has allowed vengeance to triumph over justice and distanced itself yet further from the aspirations of the international community, Amnesty International said today in the aftermath of Timothy McVeigh's execution.
     The organization deeply regrets this failure of human rights leadership at the highest levels of government in the USA.
     "President George W. Bush's record on the death penalty is well-known across the world," Amnesty International said, recalling the 152 state executions that took place during his five-year governorship of Texas -- many of them in violation of international standards.
     "By refusing to step in and impose a moratorium on federal executions, he has further damaged his and his country's reputation," Amnesty International said.
     The case of Timothy McVeigh presented the government with the opportunity to announce to the widest possible audience that it would no longer support a policy that allows the murderer to set society's moral tone by imitating what it seeks to condemn.
     "Instead, the US government has put its official stamp of approval on this policy; killing, it says, is an appropriate
response to killing -- the very reasoning said to lie behind the appalling carnage in Oklahoma City on 19 April 1995."
     "The level of public scrutiny in the McVeigh case has merely served to highlight the relative silence accompanying the 716 other non-federal executions carried out in the USA since 1977," Amnesty International said, drawing attention to the planned execution of another federal prisoner, Juan Raul Garza, scheduled for next Tuesday.
     "With the Garza case,  the US government's attitude to its international obligations will be once again in the spotlight," Amnesty International said. The organization stressed how the US government has so far failed  to explain
satisfactorily the widespread geographic and racial disparities in federal capital sentencing -- issues of direct relevance to the Garza case -- and how the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has called for the execution to be halted, saying it will violate international law because of unfair trial issues.
     "The international community must redouble its efforts to persuade the US Government to impose a moratorium on federal executions as a first step towards leading its country to abolition," Amnesty International said.
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Spirited Free Mumia Demonstration  in Toronto – May.12.2001
- read a full report with photos
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Summit of the Americas - April 20.2001

--- Read a new fiction horror tale on Police Brutality (The Brutality Zone).
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US Executions a Fatal Attraction  - Feb.24.00 -  With three executions in Texas and Florida in the past 24 hours, and a fourth scheduled this evening in Texas, the brothers Bush -- Governors of the two states -- are allowing the USA to stray further from international standards, and deepening the damage to US claims to be a progressive force for human rights, Amnesty International said today.
   Texas accounts for eight of the 17 US executions so far in the new century, and 207 of the 615 since 1977. Yesterday morning, Florida executed its first prisoner by lethal injection under a bill signed into law in January by Governor Jeb Bush. A second man was put to death this morning.
  The State of Florida leads the country in the number of wrongfully convicted death row prisoners released since 1973, yet Governor Jeb Bush enacted measures in January to speed up executions there. On 31 January, in contrast, the pro-death penalty Republican Governor of Illinois imposed a moratorium on executions in his state because of its "shameful" record of sentencing the innocent to death.
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Vigils of Protest Greet America's 2  Millionth Prisoner on February 15th - 12 Feb 2000
"Two Million is Too Many", say Drug Policy and Justice Reformers
http://www.november.org/twomilliontoomany.html
WASHINGTON, DC- Vigils of protest in over 30 cities will greet the day crime experts predict our nation will incarcerate more than 2 million people. The Justice Policy Institute reported last December that America's prison and jail population would top 2 million on February 15th, 2000.
With less than 5% of the world's population, the U.S. has one-quarter of the world's prisoners. It has also been noted that the rapid expansion of the U.S.  Prison Industrial Complex has been fueled by the war on drugs. In the federal system, 60% of the prisoners are drug law violators with no violent criminal history.
"Two million is too many," says Nora Callahan, Director of the November Coalition, a national reform group calling for alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent drug offenders. "In thirty four cities we will call on state and federal governments to stop breaking up  families and destroying our communities. Prison is not the solution to every social problem," says Callahan.
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Echelon Rising - Jan.27.00  - For the first time references to a project Echelon have been found in declassified National Security Agency documents. Jeffrey Richelson, a researcher for the National Security Archives, has found that Echelon -- the name of an alleged international project for intercepting all forms of electronic communication -- does exist. The documents indicate that it may not have the illicit scope and nature held by some of the more extreme conspiracy theories regarding Echelon. Intelligence watchdogs suspect that national agencies worldwide like the NSA  are intercepting and handing off private communications among citizens to each other. One of the documents ties a program called Echelon with the Sugar Grove Naval installation.
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New Treaty Bans Children in Combat - story at human rights watch.
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Groups Challenge FBI Wiretap Standards, Say FCC Decision Threatens Communications Privacy - Story at the ACLU News.
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USA - The Economics of the New Brutality by Daniel HoSang - After years of police reform, why does police brutality still seem to begetting worse in communities of color? Organizer Daniel HoSang reports.
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X-rated airlines - Jan.12.00 - Airport's new X-rated X-rays expose your naked body through your clothes
WASHINGTON, DC -- The next time you go to an airport, your privacy may be invaded by "X-rated X-rays" -- new, high-tech scanners that reveal every curve of your naked body right through your clothes, the Libertarian Party warned today.
   The machines, called the BodySearch, are already in operation at JFK Airport in New York and five other major airports around the country, and will be installed in every large airport in the USA by June.
"You can be exposed like a Playboy playmate by these new voyeur-vision devices -- even when you are fully clothed," warned Steve Dasbach, Libertarian Party national director. "With the  BodySearch device, airport officials can eyeball your intimate body parts as casually as they X-ray the contents of your suitcase.
   "And since airport officials don't need a search warrant to use these X-rated X-rays, everyone from your teenage daughter to your grandmother can be technologically stripped stark naked -- in stark violation of their right to privacy."
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USA Inmates at 2 Million - Jan/00 -   On Jan. 1, 1900, there were 57,070 people locked up in local, state, and federal jails and prisons in the United States. That was 122 inmates for every 100,000 Americans. There are now 1,982,084 adults in US jails and prisons. That is 725 inmates for every 100,000 Americans.
Before the year 2000 is two months old, America's prison population will reach 2 million. ''Our incarceration binge is America's real Y2K problem,'' said Jason Ziedenberg, coauthor of a study published this month by the Washington-based Justice Policy Institute. ''As we approach 2 million prisoners in 2000, we have to find alternatives to incarceration to solve America's social problems.''
The cost of housing inmates will soon exceed $40 billion a year, the study found, and state governments invariably are spending more on prisons and jails than on colleges and universities.
''As we enter the new millennium, the ascendance of prisons as our decade's major public works project and social program is a sad legacy,'' said Vincent Schiraldi, director of the institute, in the report titled ''The Punishing Decade: Prison and Jail Estimates at the Millennium.''
By prescribing  a fixed minimum jail time to be imposed upon conviction of a crime, the laws prohibit judges from considering extenuating circumstances. The laws have been extended to such offenses as possession of marijuana plants and have brought the imprisonment of an inordinate number of first-time, nonviolent offenders, according to judges and others who decry the trend.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist, whose record in a quarter-century on the Supreme Court is anything but soft on crime, has been among the critics. ''These mandatory minimums impose unduly harsh punishment for first-time offenders and have led to an inordinate increase in the prison population,'' he told Congress this year.
Researchers say any correlation between incarceration and crime ratesremains elusive. Contrasting New York and California, the study found that between 1992 and 1997, New York state's murder rate fell 54.5 percent while its prison population grew by 30 inmates a week. At the same time, California was adding 270 inmates each week but its murder rate fell by 28 percent.
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USA - Prisons and Social Control: Who goes to prison?
   In 1994, one in three black men between the ages of 20–29 were in prison, jail, on probation or on parole. In 1995, 47% of state and federal inmates were black, the largest group behind bars. Black men were 7 times more likely than white men to be in prison.
   In 1993, Asians, Pacific Islanders, American Indians, and Alaskan natives made up 2% of prison population. Native Americans are 10 times more likely than whites to be imprisoned.
   Latinos are the fastest growing group behind bars. Between 1985 and 1995, Latinos jumped from 10% of all state and federal inmates to 18%.
   In 1993, whites made up 74% of the general population, but only 36% of federal and state prison inmates.
   In 1970 there were 5,600 women in federal and state prisons. By 1996, there were 75,000. 60% of that population are black and Latina.
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Giuliani Steps On the Homeless
From: ARTISTpres@aol.com
By Robert Lederman
He's against raising the minimum wage. He wants to kick people out of the City's repulsive homeless shelters and take away their children if they refuse to work full time in exchange for a few feet of space in which to lie down. He cuts funds to drug programs forcing addicts to live in the streets. His pandering to real estate interests decimated New York's low income housing and Single Room Occupancy hotels where many homeless once resided. His ongoing war on vendors, an occupation which once supported many of the Cityís thousands of homeless, made panhandling and sleeping on the street their final resort. Now he wants the NYPD to arrest New Yorkers simply for being homeless. Adolf Crueliani strikes again.
   Anyone who thinks this is about making the streets safe from crazy people doesn't understand Giuliani. What's at risk is not our safety (more innocent New Yorkers are killed by the NYPD than by deranged homeless people) but the illusion that this Mayor made the streets safe. Whatís at risk is the sky high commercial rents on socially sterilized all-white Madison Avenue. Whatís at risk is his false image in the upcoming Senate race.
Read more at
http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html
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FBI relies upon witch's authority to define cultic behavior - Nov/99 - Inflammatory, guilt-by association aspersions are cast upon Christians within the FBI's Project Megiddo report.
   On Tuesday, November 2, 1999 the FBI released its report on potential domestic terrorism in the United States in anticipation of possible domestic disruptions at the end of the year. The Project Megiddo report begins with the statement:
 "Many extremist individuals and groups place some significance on  the next millennium, and as such it will present challenges to law enforcement at many levels. The significance is based primarily upon either religious beliefs relating to the Apocalypse or political beliefs relating to the New World Order (NWO) conspiracy theory. The challenge is how well law enforcement will prepare and respond."
   The report is replete with inferences that anyone who believes the events which the Bible describes as taking place at the time of Christ's return will be "apocalyptic" in nature, and anyone who believes these events could take place during their own lifetime, is a potential terrorist and a potential threat to the country's security.
   The authority cited for this FBI study is B.A. Robinson. He is credited as author of "Factors Commonly Found in Doomsday Cults." The PM report says that Robinson's material gives law enforcement a method to identify "traits that provide a framework for analyzing cults." The following web page link is included in footnote 43:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/cultsign.htm.
   Robinson's web page, entitled "Common Signs of Destructive Cults," is really little more than an index page with hotlinks to extreme anti-Christian pages.
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Corporate Watch - FEATURE: The Prison Industry: Capitalist Punishment
http://www.corpwatch.org/feature/prisons
Did you know:
· Corporations like Starbucks, TWA, Microsoft, Victoria's Secret and Boeing all use prison labor.
· Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest private jailer, was dubbed "the theme stock of the 90's" by one investment firm.
· There are currently more than 1.7 million prisoners in the United States--more than in any industrialized country.
· 70% of US prisoners are people of color.
Corporate Watch's new feature looks at the expanding "prison industrial complex" in the United States and the increasingly intertwined relationship between private corporations and the criminal justice system. We highlight writings by prisoners including:
· An original column by death row journalist, Mumia Abu-Jamal, entitled "Privatizing Pain." . . .
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Stay of execution for American Political Prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal - Oct/99 -  U.S. District Judge William Yohn Jr. has granted a stay 13 days after Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge signed Abu-Jamal's death warrant scheduling his execution for Dec. 2, according to a statement from Leonard Weinglass, the lead attorney for Abu-Jamal's defense team.
   Abu-Jamal's lawyers filed a habeas corpus petition in U.S. District Court after the death warrant was signed in an attempt to get their client a new trial. They have argued his original trial in 1982 violated his constitutional rights because he was denied the right to represent himself and also was barred from the courtroom for nearly half of the proceedings.
   Mumia Abu-Jamal was convicted of killing police officer Daniel Faulkner in Philadelphia in December 1981. Abu-Jamal was found lying on the ground near Faulkner with a gunshot wound from Faulkner's gun. A .38-caliber gun registered to Abu-Jamal was found next to him with five empty shell casings. Witnesses came forward in recent years who saw someone else shoot Faulkner and flee the scene.
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USA - Feeding the culture of violence: 5 more US executions scheduled this week
from Amnesty International - Oct/99
Last week was National Non-Violence Week in the USA. This week, five men are scheduled to be executed in five states -- bringing the year's total to 86.
   "A week after US society focussed its attention on tackling the culture of violence, US leaders are set to reaffirm their faith in the brutal message that killing is an appropriate response to killing", Amnesty International said. "That message is a part of the problem, not the solution."
   Last week's activities included a two-day "Voices Against Violence" conference in Washington DC, bringing together teenagers, members of Congress and others to find answers to youth violence. In stark contrast, two weeks earlier, the US Solicitor General filed a brief in the Supreme Court urging it not to consider whether the USA should stop executing people for crimes committed when they were children, a practice in which the US far and away leads the world.
   "How can the USA's insistence on its right to kill child offenders, in the face of international law and a global consensus that such executions are wrong, help to teach young people the value of life, law and respect for human rights?" Amnesty International asked.
   Presidential Candidates are setting a poor example in regards to executions. In Texas: On Thursday, Domingo Cantu is scheduled to become the 105th prisoner to be executed under the governorship of George W. Bush, brother of the Florida governor. The Texas governor is campaigning for the US Presidency on a platform of "compassionate conservatism". Amnesty International continues to question how that slogan squares with his record on the death penalty.
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Mumia Death Warrant an Act of Torture - Oct/99 -  Yesterday's signing of a death warrant for the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal on 2 December by Governor Ridge of Pennsylvania is an attempt to gain what he perceives to be a political advantage, Amnesty International said today.
Read the full details and get the Mumia story and links.
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Prison Workers Under Attack for Organizing In Missouri - Oct/99
Missouri Prisoners Labor Union (MPLU)/ National Prisoner Labor
   The surge of the prison industry has given the corporations a captive labor force, from which cheap labor can be had, to produce everything from clothing to packaging software to phone banking for politicians. In this highly controlled environment, workers who are incarcerated are paid pennies
on the dollar that workers on the outside receive, after the "costs" of their incarceration are deducted from their paychecks. The result often works out to about 15 cents an hour, with no safety protection (in spite of OSHA regulations), and abuse doled out to anyone who complains.
   Prison laborers, fed up with abuse from guards, and determined to improve working conditions inside the walls, organized the Missouri Prisoners Labor Union (MPLU) in the Crossroad Correctional Center in Cameron, Missouri. Even though the supreme court has rule that slaves of the state have no legal protections under the National Labor Relations Act, the MPLU was formed as a natural response to repression inside the cages. Needless to say the "screws" were not pleased, and have embarked on a good old fashioned "union busting campaign", prison style. In spite of explicit court rulings that prisoners *do* have rights to free speech under the First Amendment, prison workers are, in effect, being denied these fundamental human rights for trying to better themselves and their living and working conditions.
   Jerome White-Bey, the president of the MPLU, has made it clear that he does not intend to back down, and as a result, was thrown into solitary confinement, the "hole",and transferred into another facility where he remains in the hole.  MPLU Board members, Michael Clark-El, Allen X, and Mark Moore-El, have also been transferred out of the Crossroads facility in response to organizing for better conditions inside the prison. Jerome White-Bey is being denied access to his personal property, from legal documents to his toothbrush, in retaliation for his further refusal to succumb to threats and abuse; he is asking for help from all brother and sisters outside the walls.
   We, the members of the National Prison Labor Rights Association/IWW support committee are calling upon all workers, unions, prison support groups, and anyone else to support the members and leadership of the MPLU by contacting the Department of Corrections, and demanding that Jerome White-Bey is released from solitary confinement, that his property is returned to him, and that the First Amendment rights of all prisoners will be respected.
Here are the addresses:
Dora B. Schriro, Ed. D., Director
mocorxns@mail.state.mo.us
P.O. Box 236
Jefferson City, Mo. 65102
573-751-2389
TDD 573-751-5984
Fax 573-751-4099

Tim Kniest, Public Information Officer
Jefferson City Correctional   Center
(C-4 and C-5 male)
P.O. Box 597
Jefferson City, Mo. 65102
573-751-3224
David Dormire,
Superintendent

Please write to Jerome White-Bey, and let him know that you are out there
for him. He can be reached at:

Jerome White-Bey #37479
Jefferson City Correctional Center
PO Box 900 (5C-W-106)
Jefferson City, MO 65102
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At the ACLU Newsroom -
* ACLU of GA Says School Strip Search  Ruling Ignores Students' Rights
* Michigan ACLU Seeks Halt to Nation's First Mandatory Welfare Drug Testing Program
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Media Covers up for Police after Cheerleaders, School Band and Crowd Pepper Sprayed in Denver, Colorado
Wed, 29 Sep 1999
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USA - Brutal LAPD Frames Victims - Sept/99 - Throughout its history the Los Angeles Police Department has been an army of occupation that uses systematic racist terror against the African American, Latino and other oppressed nationalities. On a regular basis, the police gun down innocent Black people. Just recently, cops killed a homeless African American woman here.
   Latino youth are systematically lined up in public and searched, and police helicopters constantly patrol and harass neighborhoods\buzzing over houses in maneuvers that recall the war in Vietnam.
   Currently a corruption probe involving the FBI has already uncovered two incidents, one of which a judge referred to as attempted murder on the part of the police and subsequent frame-ups by the LAPD Rampart Division. The evidence is coming from an ex-LAPD officer convicted of stealing drugs who is cooperating with authorities to get a lighter sentence.
   Framed and paralyzed - Javier Francisco Ovando has been sitting in a wheelchair in jail for the past three years, paralyzed from multiple gunshot wounds he received in 1996 from two police officers. One of these cops, convicted of stealing eight pounds of cocaine, now admits that he and his partner shot Ovando point-blank in the head while he was handcuffed, then framed him for assaulting police.
Ex-LAPD officer Rafael Perez is doing the talking now to save his skin. He has implicated many in the Rampart Division, including his former partner Nino Durden. Durden was relieved of duty last month concerning the planting of drugs on suspects and making false arrests.
Already, 12 officers implicated in the probe have been relieved of duty or fired.
   In the second high profile case police detectives are now investigating the possible cover-up of another unjustified shooting by the Rampart Division officers. That shooting killed one man and left another wounded and framed for assault on police with a deadly weapon. There were nine officers present at this shooting, and the LA Times reported that at least five of them, including the sergeant, were relieved of duty this week. One of those involved was already fired earlier this year in connection with a beating of a handcuffed informant.
   The 12 LAPD officers being investigated are suspected of actively participating in drug dealing. And, investigators are admitting that more cops may be involved.
For more information, Workers World,
http://www.workers.org
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New Website link - History of Police corruption in the USA -http://www.acsp.uic.edu/copi/copi07.shtml
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USA - police brutality rules - Sept/99 - A new Amnesty International report Race, Rights and Police Brutality,  shows that over-aggressive tactics, including unjustified police shootings, excessive use of force, misuse of police dogs and harassment, continue across the country with alarming regularity.
Ethnic and other groups - like the mentally ill, homeless, gay or transgendered individuals \are particularly affected. In most recent cases of unjustified police shootings, for example, the victims have been African American or other minorities, and some were children:
   California -- August 1999. In an early morning narcotics raid, a SWAT team burst into the home of a Mexican immigrant family and shot dead an unarmed elderly man, Mario Paz, in his bedroom. He was reportedly shot twice in the back. No drugs were found in the raid and a different name to that of the residents was on the search warrant.
   New Jersey -- June 1999. An unarmed African American was shot dead in New Jersey, after he tried to manoeuvre his car out of the way of two police cars which had boxed him in after a car chase. The officers fired 27 shots at his vehicle, and a female passenger was wounded on her leg. The case -- which remains under investigation-- is the latest in a series of questionable police shootings of unarmed motorists in New Jersey.
   Illinois - June 1999. La Tanya Haggerty, a 19-year-old black girl, was shot dead when officers mistook the cell-phone in her hand for a gun.
   "Race and police brutality are inextricably linked in the USA, but there are further problems," points out Angela Wright, Amnesty International researcher on the USA. "The mentally ill, the homeless and gay people are often harassed or subjected to undue force by police in some areas."
Further cases include:
- Miami -- May 1999. Lewis Rivera, a homeless man eating in a shopping mall was chased by five or six police officers who, according to witnesses, sprayed him with pepper spray, kicked him, threw him to the ground and bound his hands and feet before dragging him to a police car. He died less than an hour later in a police cell.
- New York City -- November 1998. Two police officers responding to an emergency medical assistance call in the Bronx are alleged to have attacked transsexual JoLea Lamor. According to witnesses, the officers verbally abused her and pushed her against the wall after discovering that she was a transsexual. A large number of officers entered her apartment and maced family members.
    Police internal investigations into shootings or other use of force remain for the most part shrouded in secrecy, and all too often police officers involved in questionable shootings or use of excessive force are exonerated by criminal or administrative inquiries or receive a token punishment.
   Dozens of cases similar to those above occur annually in the USA, causing devastating loss to the families and costly payouts by cities in civil lawsuits.
   The Amnesty International report offers 15 key recommendations to the federal government and local and state authorities to combat police abuse, including incorporation of international human rights standards into police codes of conduct and training, improving police accountability, and the collection of reliable national data on deaths in custody and police shootings -- information which is disturbingly lacking in the USA.
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International Protest Against Global Internet Censorship Plans- Sept/99
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New York Report - Artist Arrested at One Police Plaza Protest -Sept/99
http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html
   Artist/activist Robert Lederman was arrested outside One Police Plaza today (9/2/99) as he wrote "Giuliani = Police State" in chalk on the sidewalk. Approximately 25 police officials, including attorneys from the NYPD legal division, were present in addition to a group of artist demonstrators. The demonstration was held in order to protest the shooting on Monday of Gidone Busch.
   This is Lederman's 39th arrest for protesting against the Mayor and his eighth arrest on the charge of Defacement of Public Property with chalk. All of the chalking arrests involved writing "Giuliani = Police State" during protests.
   These arrests are a blatant example of selective enforcement and false arrest, Giuliani style. On residential streets and outside schools in every borough, children draw on the street with chalk each day. None have ever been arrested. The only people arrested in NYC for using chalk just happen to have written anti-Giuliani slogans during protests. No more perfect example of selective enforcement and content-based censorship of speech could be imagined.
   So far this week the police have shot and killed two men under very questionable circumstances. Unfortunately, these unjustified deaths are not unique. The use of excessive force by the police is an almost daily occurrence in New York City.  During the Giuliani administration, being a minority, or homeless, or mentally disturbed, or a protester or simply being a street vendor makes one a criminal. As the Mayor's so-called quality of life campaign has unfolded, more and more people have found themselves involved in confrontations with the police who increasingly, treat all New Yorkers as criminals. In that kind of political climate, such unjustified police shootings are inevitable. Under this administration, the lives of many New Yorkers are seen as having little or no value.
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National Security Agency has Access to Windows Users - Sept/99 - Special access codes for use by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) have been secretly built into ALL VERSIONS OF THE WINDOWS OPERATING SYSTEM.
   The driver ADVAPI.DLL, which enables and controls a range of security functions including the Microsoft Cryptographic API (MS-CAPI), contains two different keys. One is used by Microsoft to control the cryptographic functions enabled in Windows. A North Carolina security company has come up with conclusive evidence that the second key belongs to the NSA. Andrew Fernandez, chief scientist with Cryptonym of Morrisville, North Carolina found the labels for the two keys. One was called "KEY." The other was called "NSAKEY."
   The key allows NSA to open up anyone's and everyone's Windows computer to intelligence gathering techniques. It is tremendously easier for the NSA to load unauthorized security services on all copies of Microsoft Windows, and once these security services are loaded, they can effectively compromise your entire operating system".
   The NSA key is contained inside all versions of Windows from Windows 95 OSR2 onward.
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FBI Gets Cell Phone Taps - Aug/99 - The FCC gave a rubber stamp Friday to technical standards that will enable the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) to be enforced by the FBI.
The standards, which are to be implemented by 30 June, 2000, will allow police to track cellular phone users. Law enforcement must first obtain a court order showing probable cause of criminal activity.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center challenged the law, along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union.
The FCC nodded to privacy watchdogs by allowing the police to only trace a cellular phone at the beginning and end of a cell call. The location information only extends as far as the cell site, or cell phone tower, closest to the phone. Such towers can be between one city block and several miles apart.
Privacy advocates scored a small victory because Internet telephony would not be subject to CALEA regulations.
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Mayor Giuliani To Eliminate Freedom of Assembly in NYC Parks
* Aug /99  This message from Robert Lederman, the artist leading protest against Mayor Giuliani in New York reveals just what may be in store for the Toronto Megacity. In New York they are now organizing to fight the complete takeover of the parks by corporations and the entertainment industry. Freedom of Assembly is being abolished. As this begins to happen in Toronto, people will begin to understand why magazines like Now, that rely on the entertainment industry, have dropped support for activists.
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US Telephone Companies Toss Out Customer Privacy - Aug/99 - The FCC will appeal a court ruling that could enable phone companies to use information about customers for marketing purposes without their permission.
   The decision by the three-judge panel 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals - which rejected privacy regulations adopted by the Federal Communications
Commission last year - would remove important protections to consumer privacy. In a 2-1 ruling published last week, the panel vacated the FCC restrictions, saying they wrongly interfered with the phone companies' First Amendment right to free speech.
   Information such as calls made to a doctor or to a help-group - and the frequency of such calls - could become fodder for marketers to target their goods. When people make calls or pages, the companies providing them service end up with personal information including who, when and for how long the call lasted. They can also tell how much their customers spent for service.
   Privacy groups have expressed concern that the decision could set a precedent for privacy protections in other areas, such as the Internet.
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Cyberspace Electronic Security Act: A police licence for home invasion
   The US Justice Department wants to make it easy for law enforcement authorities to get search warrants to secretly enter homes or offices and disable security on personal computers. In a request to Capitol Hill, Justice officials will ask lawmakers to authorize covert action in response to the growing use of programs that encrypt computer files, making them inaccessible to anyone who does not have a special code or key.
   Legislation drafted by the department, called the Cyberspace Electronic Security Act, would enable investigators to get a sealed warrant signed by a judge permitting them to enter private property, search through computers for passwords and install devices that override encryption programs.
    The proposal is the latest in an intense, years-long debate between the government and computer users who want to protect their privacy by encrypting documents.
   The idea has alarmed civil libertarians and members of Congress. "They have taken the cyberspace issue and are using it as justification for invading the home," said James Dempsey, senior staff counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology, an advocacy group in the District that tracks privacy issues.
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USA - Medical Confidentiality in USA under Broad-based Assault - July/99 - "Patient control over their own medical information is being attacked from every direction. This places the very integrity of our health care system in jeopardy," says Twila Brase, R.N., president of Citizens' Council on Health Care, a Minnesota health care policy group.
   The public is totally unaware of what is at stake. Information is power. In the hands of those seeking evidence, profit, or research grants, individuals could lose access to medical care, experience discrimination, find themselves under unwarranted legal investigation, or become unwitting and unwilling human research subjects.
Brase cites four specific concerns:
* The Financial Services Act currently being debated in Conference Committee would grant banks, insurance companies, and credit card corporations authority to share medical records, leaving Americans vulnerable to financial and insurance discrimination.
* The Health Information Confidentiality Act, debated without consensus in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, provides no protection, instead giving unprecedented authority to access medical records without consent. To label this bill with the word 'confidentiality' is deceptive. The bill is a federal license to intrude.
* The August 21, 1999 Congressional deadline for medical privacy legislation has been cut short because Congress' last day before a month-long vacation is August 7, 1999.
* HIPAA's Administrative Mandate: If Congress does not act by August 21, 1999 to protect medical records, the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act requires DHHS Secretary Donna Shalala to create privacy standards through administrative rule by February 2000. Sec. Shalala is no champion of confidentiality. She calls disclosure of health information without explicit patient consent necessary for the common good.
Citizens' Council on Health Care
http://www.cchc-mn.org
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USA - Big Brother FBI Fingerprint System  - Aug/99 - The FBI's new automated fingerprint recognition system (IAFIS) is now online. According to other news releases on this subject, the goal is to eventually have electronic fingerprint readers installed in almost all police patrol cars around the country. Then, whenever a person is pulled over on a routine traffic stop the person's fingerprint will be scanned-in to verify their identification and to check them against the national database of wanted persons with outstanding warrants.
What will happen, however, on the occasions where a "negative" response is returned: "If no match is found, the ... IAFIS creates a new fingerprint entry ... ." It appears that the system will be used to not only check suspects against the wanted list, but to also expand the database through the use of data collected from every "suspect."
The massive new computer system that will enable agents to conduct 62,000 fingerprint checks a day and return completed searches to local police departments in less than two hours. The new system, called the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or IAFIS, will also be able to process fingerprint checks for job applicants and security clearances in about 24 hours. That process now takes three to four months.
IAFIS actually consists of three separate components. The first component includes a national computer network for state crime labs to transmit fingerprint images to the FBI.
The second component, which makes up the heart of IAFIS, actually analyzes the prints and looks for a match in the FBI's fingerprint library.
If no match is found, the third component of IAFIS creates a new fingerprint entry for the suspect. Right now, the FBI receives about 5,000 fingerprints a day that are not found in the database.
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Corporate Stink in FBI Case Against Hacker - July/99 -  2600 The Hacker Quarterly has published the letters sent to the FBI that were used to help calculate "damages" caused by hacker Kevin Mitnick. The letters were the main reasons why Kevin was able to be held without bail for so long.
   No mention of any of these "losses" was ever made to any of the  stockholders of these companies, which is required by law. It increasingly appears that Mitnick has been locked away indefinitely for just pissing off powerful corporations and the FBI. The FBI also stinks in this case as it may have prodded these companies into giving inflated figures. Corporations aiding the FBI in this case of persecution include NEC America, Sun Microsystems, Novell and Fujitsu.
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USA - Federal Intrusion Detection Network
-- New Plan for Computer Monitoring System may lead to Police State Abuse - July/99 --
   The Clinton Administration has developed a plan for an extensive computer monitoring system, overseen by the FBI to protect the nation's crucial data networks from intruders.
   The plan has already raised concerns from civil liberties groups. A draft prepared by officials at the National Security Council calls for a sophisticated software system to monitor activities on nonmilitary Government networks and a separate system to track networks used in crucial industries like banking, telecommunications and transportation. The effort is intended to alert law enforcement officials to attacks that might cripple Government operations or the nation's economy.
   Critics of the proposed system say it could become a building block for a surveillance infrastructure with great potential for misuse. Such a network of monitoring programs could itself be open to security breaches, giving a vast window into government and corporate computer systems.
   The security plan would have networks of thousands of software monitoring programs constantly tracking computer activities looking for indications of computer network intrusions and other illegal acts. The plan calls for the creation of a Federal Intrusion Detection Network, or Fidnet, and specifies that the data it collects will be gathered at the National Infrastructure Protection Center, an interagency task force housed at the FBI.
   The plan strikes at the heart of a growing controversy over how to protect the nation's computer systems while also protecting civil liberties -- particularly since it would put a new and powerful tool into the hands of the F.B.I.
   Increasingly, data flowing over the Internet is becoming a vital tool for law enforcement, and civil liberties experts said law enforcement agencies would be under great temptation to expand the use of the information in pursuit of suspected criminals.
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USA - July/99 - New government computer may decide you're a terrorist next time you fly
   The FAA wants to let a computer decide if you're a terrorist the next time you fly -- a scheme that could turn flying into a nightmare for thousands of innocent Americans.
   "Are you ready to fly the paranoid skies -- and let security agents question you, inspect your luggage, and possibly strip-search you if a government computer decides you fit the profile of a dangerous terrorist?" asked Steve Dasbach of the Libertarian Party. "Unless we stop it in time, that's what could happen when the government's new Computer Assisted Passenger Screening (CAPS) program goes online."
   Scheduled to be launched on January 1, 2000, the CAPS program will use a computer program and information in the airlines' computerized flight reservation system to identify possible "terrorists." Experts speculate that traveling alone, buying your ticket at the last minute, visiting unapproved foreign countries, or frequent travel could get you tagged as a possible terrorist. Passengers could also be picked at random. If you fit the "terrorist profile," security agents could pull you out of line, search your luggage, interrogate you about your travel plans, tag your luggage with bright orange labels, or escort you onto the plane. In a worst-case scenario, you could be x-rayed, strip-searched, or subjected to a body cavity search.
   To contact the FAA, e-mail: 9-NPRM-CMTS@faa.gov.
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Giuliani Rehearses His Troops for Year 2000 Corporate Police State by Robert Lederman
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