Kerim's Lifelog

Go read this Glenn Greenwald post and this followup from Nick Baumann about Gulet Mohamed, an American citizen who was recently arrested in Kuwait, brutally tortured (I think it's OK to use the word since it's someone else's police we're talking about), and then put on a no-fly list so he can't return to America. This is not the first time this has happened, and if you're really worried about an increasingly tyrannical government, this is the kind of thing to worry about. If a crime has been committed, then let him come home and charge him. If not, then he's an American citizen, and no American government should be allowed to unilaterally strand its own citizens overseas. This whole affair is revolting.

    

This is just excellent news:

The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.

The administration wants to add just four words — "electronic communication transactional records" — to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge's approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user's browser history. It does not include, the lawyers hasten to point out, the "content" of e-mail or other Internet communication.

I forget. How many NSLs do the FBI and other federal agencies already send out every year? 30,000? 50,000? What's it up to now? Whatever it is, I guess it's still not enough. That business of getting approval from a judge is just so annoying, after all.

You know, if I'd wanted Dick Cheney as president I would have just voted for him.

     

This kind of stuff has become so commonplace in the post-9/11 world that we hardly even notice it anymore, but the case of Yahya Wehelie is really just outrageous beyond belief. Keep in mind as you read that he's a U.S. citizen born and raised in Virginia:

For six weeks, Mr. Wehelie has been in limbo in [Cairo]. He and his parents say he has no radical views, despises Al Qaeda and merely wants to get home to complete his education and get a job. But after many hours of questioning by F.B.I. agents, he remains on the no-fly list. When he offered to fly home handcuffed and flanked by air marshals, Mr. Wehelie said, F.B.I. agents turned him down.

....“For many of these Americans, placement on the no-fly list effectively amounts to banishment from their country,” said Ben Wizner, a senior staff attorney with the A.C.L.U. He called such treatment “both unfair and unconstitutional.” An F.B.I. spokesman, Michael P. Kortan, said that as a matter of policy, the bureau did not comment on who was on a watch list. But he said the recent plots showed the need “to remain vigilant and thoroughly investigate every lead.”

“In conducting such investigations,” Mr. Kortan said, “the F.B.I. is always careful to protect the civil rights and privacy concerns of all Americans, including individuals in minority and ethnic communities.”

....The no-fly list gives the American authorities greater leverage in assessing travelers who are under suspicion, because to reverse the flying ban many are willing to undergo hours of questioning.

But sometimes the questioning concludes neither with criminal charges nor with permission to fly. The Transportation Security Administration has a procedure allowing people to challenge their watch list status in cases of mistaken identity or name mix-up, but Mr. Wehelie does not fit those categories.

This is an abomination, pure and simple. There's not the slightest question that it would be possible to allow Wehelie to fly home safely even if he were Osama bin Laden's minister of defense. The government of the United States should be allowed to search him and his luggage with abandon if they have reason to suspect him of illegal activity, and they have every right to question him for the same reason. But the right to keep him from flying home? No. That doesn't just skirt the line of what the American government should be allowed to do, it blows right by it and makes a mockery of the constitution and every smarmy bureaucrat who pretends to support it while snickering behind their hands about "carefully protecting the civil rights and privacy concerns of all Americans." How on earth can Barack Obama stand by and continue to allow stuff like this to happen?

     

Marc Ambinder wrote about John McCain and Joe Lieberman's "Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010" a couple of weeks ago, but I missed it. It's basically designed to allow us to detain enemy belligerents indefinitely if they meet certain criteria:

The bill asks the President to determine criteria for designating an individual as a "high-value detainee" if he/she: (1) poses a threat of an attack on civilians or civilian facilities within the U.S. or U.S. facilities abroad; (2) poses a threat to U.S. military personnel or U.S. military facilities; (3) potential intelligence value; (4) is a member of al Qaeda or a terrorist group affiliated with al Qaeda or (5) such other matters as the President considers appropriate. The President must submit the regulations and guidance to the appropriate committees of Congress no later than 60 days after enactment.

The bill applies to U.S. citizens as well as foreign nationals, and the determination of whether someone is "high value" is made by the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Team and confirmed by the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General. Glenn Greenwald provides his usual mild-mannered commentary:

It's probably the single most extremist, tyrannical and dangerous bill introduced in the Senate in the last several decades, far beyond the horrific, habeas-abolishing Military Commissions Act. It literally empowers the President to imprison anyone he wants in his sole discretion by simply decreeing them a Terrorist suspect — including American citizens arrested on U.S. soil. The bill requires that all such individuals be placed in military custody, and explicitly says that they "may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners," which everyone expects to last decades, at least. It's basically a bill designed to formally authorize what the Bush administration did to American citizen Jose Padilla — arrest him on U.S. soil and imprison him for years in military custody with no charges.

Well, sometimes mild-mannered commentary is just what the doctor ordered. This sounds every bit as bad as Glenn says it is. Basically, it reminds me of the Alien and Sedition Acts, which we've long since decided was not exactly a shining bright spot in our nation's history.

My hope is that the reason this bill has gotten so little attention is that no one thinks it has any chance of passage. Unfortunately, given the current mood of the country and the obvious angst of centrist Democrats about attacks on their terrorism-fighting credentials, that hardly seems plausible. Of course it has a chance of passage. This is well worth keeping an eye on.