Privacy Violations: TSA's New Full-Body Screening Procedures Too "Transparent"?

Privacy and individual rights advocates claim that the Transportation Security Administration has been less than candid about the possible abuse of intrusive airport full-body scanners:

Pushback against the deployment at airports of digital image scanners that show people's naked images through their clothes is gaining steam, bolstered by the Electronic Privacy Information Center's publication of government documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security papers suggest the Transportation Security Administration overstated the privacy protections travelers subjected to the scanners would have.

Contrary to TSA's claims, the controversial backscatter scanners are able to store and send images, according to the documents EPIC obtained. There are 10 variable privacy settings on the device, which presumably can be dialed up or down at the point of operation with the required access code.

The Land of Opportunity, Not Amnesty

As a public service, here’s a message for those on both sides of the political aisle who get a tingle up their legs when they think about granting amnesty to illegal aliens: Secure the border first.

Americans are perhaps the most welcoming, generous people on earth, but before comprehensive immigration "reform" can be considered, the country needs comprehensive border security reform.

And although most of the current chaos is going on at the southern border, the northern border needs to be locked down as well.

It's hard to believe that in this polarized political climate, the Democrats (and some Republicans) are serious about pushing for amnesty in 2010, unless they feel that ACORN, SEIU, and corrupt Secretaries of State will give them a firewall of fraudulent votes in the November congressional elections no matter how far their overreach.

But the bottom line is that with massive unemployment, and terrorists trying to penetrate our (porous) borders by any means necessary, this is perhaps the worst of all possible times to even consider this kind of legislation.

One thing that the political and media class don't seem to understand is that Americans generally favor legal immigration. As we do strong border enforcement.

In fact, it is the legal immigrant with the entrepreneurial drive that is achieving success everywhere you look, unlike the many of us who grew up here and who can barely get up from the coach in the family room during the commercials. The American economy and culture have been greatly enriched by law-abiding immigrants who come here to work and add value to our society.

Simply put, it is illegal immigration that everyday Americans oppose. It is also absurd to assume that political parties have to favor amnesty as a way to pander to presumed monolithic voters among certain groups. In general, the American people across the board oppose amnesty for lawbreakers in the same way that most Americans oppose Socialized medicine. Both run counter to the American way. The opposition to amnesty stems from the fact in part that it violates our sense of fair play and respect for the rule of law--how can we allow those who broke the law to jump ahead in line of those who followed the required procedures? Moreover, Americans don't want to send social service agencies and the criminal justice system farther into bankruptcy then they already are.

With that in mind, we're not too far removed from the Christmas season. During the holidays, A Christmas Story, the hilarious and beloved send-up of the works of radio raconteur Jean Shepherd, goes into heavy television rotation. Sadly, Bob Clark, the director, and his son, were killed by an illegal alien drunk driver in April 2007. The tragic circumstances that befell Clark and his son have unfortunately been replicated throughout the country.

American has plenty of American citizens who drive drunk or commit violent crimes, as your local police blotter or the TV show Cops (or its newest guilty-pleasure analog, Campus PD) reveals. Why would we need to import more non-citizen felons --regardless of their country of origin--into our society?

And it's not just a matter of crime prevention, but of national security. For example, it's been widely reported that Hezbollah has established a foothold in South America. And a few years ago, the San Antonio Express-News published a four-part series about the increasing number of persons from Middle Eastern countries coming across the Mexican border "who have come to America with darker pursuits than escaping war or starting a new life."

An October 2009 article in the London Telegraph suggests the UK Labor Party opened the floodgates to immigration (both legal and illegal) for cynical political reasons that they previously kept under wraps: "The huge increases in migrants over the last decade were partly due to a politically motivated attempt by ministers to radically change the country and 'rub the Right's nose in diversity', according to Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett." Hasn't London, in recent years, become a hotbed of extremist activity in part owing to lax immigration policies?

Getting back to the northern border, the narrator in the 1941 film 49th Parallel intones that the U.S.-Canadian border is the only [then] undefended frontier in the world. By coincidence, we just happened to watch the DVD, which is about six shipwrecked German sailors on the lam in Canada after the RCAF sinks their U-boat (and all their other fellow enemy combatants with it) in Hudson's Bay.

The movie, which despite its continuity and production flaws and other issues, is considered a classic, was originally commissioned by the British government as an anti-isolationist propaganda piece to sway American public opinion in favor of joining the Allies against the Nazis. If you get a chance to see it, you'll realize that the film is much more nuanced than that.

Anyway, Spoiler warning: As the film concludes, the last remaining fugitive, the fanatical Nazi Lt. Hirth (in a compelling performance by British actor Eric Portman) hops aboard a freight train bound for the states. When the train crosses into U.S. territory in the Niagara Falls area, the fugitive officer demands to be taken to the German embassy under the law (the U.S. was neutral at the time). The by-the-book customs officers at first agree to comply. However, a Canadian solider played by Raymond Massey who had been overpowered by Hirth tries to convince the customs officers to send the train back. Here's his pitch: Since each item of freight has to be listed on the manifest, and since neither the Nazi officer or Massey's character appear on the manifest, the train car must be returned to sender--where the fugitive Nazi will obviously be immediately arrested as a war criminal. To this, the Nazi officer, who has murdered numerous innocent Canadian citizens during the manhunt, says "I protest. You can't do this. It is illegal." The Massey character prevails, however, and customs returns the train car to Canada. [Disclaimer: As the film fades out, the Massey character begins to administer some "rough justice" to the officer, which admittedly would be considered detainee abuse by today's standards, and we of course do not condone this type of behavior.] Today, the enemy officer would been immediately Mirandized so he could clam up assuming he wasn't given immediate refugee status, assigned a court-appointed ACLU lawyer for a civil trial, and sent for immediate anger management counseling.

Again according to the London Telegraph, the Christmas day Northwest Airlines bomber was singing like a canary until his civilian lawyer advised him to remain silent.

Christmas Day Bomber Lawyers Up, Quiets Down

The London Telegraph claims that the Obama administration really blew it by charging the Northwest Airlines underwear bomber in civilian court:

The chance to secure crucial information about al-Qaeda operations in Yemen was lost because the Obama administration decided to charge and prosecute Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as an ordinary criminal, critics say. He is said to have reduced his co-operation with FBI interrogators on the advice of his government-appointed defence counsel.

The potential significance became chillingly clear this weekend when it was reported that shortly after his detention, he boasted that 20 more young Muslim men were being prepared for similar murderous missions in the Yemen.

The lawyer for the 23-year-old Nigerian entered a formal not guilty plea on Friday to charges that he tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on December 25 – even though he reportedly admitted earlier that he was trained and supplied with the explosives sewn into his underwear by al-Qaeda in the Arab state.

"He was singing like a canary, then we charged him in civilian proceedings, he got a lawyer and shut up," Slade Gorton, a member of the 9/11 Commission that investigated the Sept 2001 terror attacks on the US, told The Sunday Telegraph.

"I find it incomprehensible that this administration is treating terrorism as a law enforcement issue. The president has finally said that we are at war with al-Qaeda. Well, if this is a war, then Abdulmutallab should be treated as a combatant not a criminal."

Christmas Day Bomber Pleads Not Guilty

The lawyered-up underwear bomber pleads not guilty in his initial court appearance in Detroit federal court:

Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, the man charged with trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane on December 25, pleaded not guilty Friday to six federal charges.

Wearing a white T-shirt, too-long khaki pants that were rolled up several times at the ankles and blue sneakers, the 23-year-old Nigerian national walked slowly into the federal courtroom, ankles shackled and in apparent pain after having suffered second- and third-degree burns in the flight.

Asked by the judge whether he was taking any medication, he replied he was taking painkillers but that he understood the six charges he faced.

AbdulMutallab faces the following charges according to the federal indictment from the office of Barbara L. McQuade, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan:

• attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction
• attempted murder within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States
  
• willful attempt to destroy and wreck an aircraft within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States
• willfully placing a destructive device in, upon and in proximity to an aircraft within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States which was likely to endanger the safety of such aircraft, and
• two counts of possession of a firearm/destructive in furtherance of a crime of violence

In a move that will make us all safer, the U.S. State Department announced on January 5 that it had revoked AbdulMutallab's visa.

Detainees Like The Accommodations At Club Gitmo

Congressman Peter King once said that the only scandal at the Guantanamo Bay prison is that the detainees are treated too well. In an article about the "new pessimism" that the Gauntanamo Bay prison will ever be closed, Newsweek suggests that the detainees agree:

But the final irony is that many of the detainees may not even want to be transferred to Thomson and could conceivably even raise their own legal roadblocks to allow them to stay at Gitmo.

Marc Falkoff [a lawyer who represents some of the Yemeni detainees at Gitmo] notes that many of his clients, while they clearly want to go home, are at least being held under Geneva Convention conditions in Guantánamo. At Thomson, he notes, the plans call for them to be thrown into the equivalent of a "supermax" security prison under near-lockdown conditions.

"As far as our clients are concerned, it's probably preferable for them to remain at Guantánamo," he says.

Separately, Bloomberg.com reports more recidivism from released Gitmo detainees:

As many as one in five former Guantanamo Bay detainees are suspected of or confirmed to have engaged in terrorist activity after their release, U.S. officials said, citing the latest government statistics.

The 20 percent rate is an increase over the 14 percent of former inmates that an April Pentagon report said were thought to have joined terrorist efforts, said the officials, who requested anonymity. The officials didn’t provide the numbers on which the 20 percent is based.

D.C. Circuit Validates Indefinite Detention For Enemy Combatants

The detainee lobby loses another round in court, this time a habeas corpus petition on behalf of Ghaleb Nassar Al-Bihani, apparently a cook for the Taliban who carried a weapon but never fired it in combat:

A federal appeals court Tuesday endorsed the government's sweeping authority to detain terrorism suspects whom it can link to al-Qaeda, the Taliban and affiliated groups.

The ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld a lower court's decision in 2008 that the government may continue to detain a Yemeni, an admitted cook for a group allied with the Taliban. The prisoner, Ghaleb Nassar al-Bihani, has been held at the U.S. military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2002.

The decision would make it more difficult for some detainees to win release through federal lawsuits challenging their confinements because it so strongly backs the government's authority, legal experts said.

"This is a big win for the government," said Robert Chesney, a national security law professor at the University of Texas.

Two of the judges on the three-judge panel were George W. Bush appointees: Janice Rogers Brown and Brett Kavanaugh. "Viewed in full, the facts show Al-Bihani was part of and supported a group—prior to and after September 11—that was affiliated with Al Qaeda and Taliban forces and engaged in hostilities against a U.S. Coalition partner. Al-Bihani, therefore, falls squarely within the scope of the President’s statutory detention powers," the court wrote.

Court Denies Moussaoui Appeal

9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui is staying in jail for the duration:

A federal appeals court on Monday upheld the conviction and life prison term of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted in a U.S. court in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit rejected an effort by Moussaoui's lawyers to send the case back to federal court in Alexandria, where he pleaded guilty in 2005 to an al-Qaeda conspiracy to crash planes into U.S. buildings that led to the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. After a two-month sentencing trial in Alexandria, Moussaoui was sentenced to life in prison.

Attorneys for Moussaoui had told the Richmond-based court that he should be retried or resentenced because he was deprived of his constitutional rights. The Justice Department argued that the proceedings were fair.

Writing at NationalReviewOnline, former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy says the U.S. dodged a bullet in the court ruling, and only because of the defendant's guilty plea:

...if [Moussaoui] had not surprised everyone by pleading guilty, if he had instead insisted on proceeding with his trial (not just the penalty phase but the guilt phase), the case might well have ended disastrously.

...The appellate court notes that Moussaoui claims it was error for the trial judge to interfere with his unqualified right to represent himself; "to have personal, pretrial access to classified, exculpatory evidence"; and to be able to summon witnesses like co-conspirator Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for trial testimony. The Fourth Circuit acknowledges that all these claims have merit, but the court finds that Moussaoui, by pleading guilty, waived any claim of prejudice...Even more alarming, the Fourth Circuit concedes that its waiver rationale is inconsistent with a decision by the Ninth Circuit on which Moussaoui relies — i.e., if the Fourth Circuit had followed the Ninth Circuit, there's a good chance it would have had to agree that, regardless of the guilty plea, Moussaoui's convictions should be reversed.

The Fourth Circuit also reminds us that the trial judge initially struck the death penalty from the case because the government refused to give Moussaoui access to the al-Qaeda prisoner witnesses. The Fourth Circuit reversed the judge at the time, but on the condition that it would be open to revisiting that conclusion if the government failed to provide Moussaoui with all the classified exculpatory information to which he was entitled. At that critical moment, Moussaoui decided to plead guilty. That is, we never found out what would have happened if Moussaoui had insisted on a trial at which he'd have access to all these witnesses and other national-defense information. The guilty-plea is deemed to have waived any claim by Moussaoui that he was denied the information to which he was entitled.

In the next case — like, say, KSM's civilian trial — the defendants will be smart enough not to plead guilty. They will insist on getting every piece of intelligence they're entitled to. And the prosecutors will look at this ruling on Moussaoui's appeal and realize they'd better give it to them or risk having the case thrown out. That's what the law-enforcement approach buys you.

Now that the Christmas Day Northwest Airlines underwear bomber has lawyered up, what similar legal mischief can we expect by his defense lawyers?