Tales From Your Police State: Federal Courts Slap Down DHS Claims to Right to Warrantless Searches of Electronic Devices

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4th amendment, department of homeland security, dhs, immigration, ninth circuit court, police state, unlawful search and seizure

It’s not often I find much to applaud coming out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (See an interview with one of the better justices here.), but here’s a hell of a good ruling:

U.S. customs officials must have a reasonable justification before snatching your laptop at the border and scanning through all your files for incriminating data, a federal appeals court ruled today.

The mere act of entering the country is not reasonable suspicion enough for you to not be “…secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures…” guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. Additionally, this means their ludicrous claim to be able to extend this unconstitutional policy to anyone within 100 miles of the border, are rendered null and void.

Just in case you’re confused Ms. Napolitano (and it seems likely, having some mutual acquaintances), here’s the very clear primary law regarding searches in the United States (emphasis mine):

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Tales From Your Police State: Top Border Patrol Checkpoint Refusals

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4th amendment, 5th amendment, border patrol, department of homeland security, dhs, immigration checkpoints, police state

No, you are not required to answer their questions regarding your travels or your citizenship away from the borde checkpoints. No, they may not search your car without a warrant or probable cause (being a pain in the ass..? Not probable cause.) Unless they are detaining or arresting you, you are not required to pull the vehicle over to secondary or exit the craft. No, you are not required to aid a law enforcement officer in any way that might remotely implicate you in a crime (particularly one they invent.)

A big problem is that these checkpoints are 20-40 miles inside the border. Citizens, obviously, live inside that border and might have to commute through the checkpoint. They have no right to impede your free travel.

This applies to more than the immigration stops:

 

 

Tales From Your Police State: DHS Purchases 2700 MRAPs…I Feel So Safe

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armored car, department of homeland security, law enforcement-industrial complex, mrap, police state

The Department of Homeland Security has purchased 2700 Mine Resistant Armor Protected Vehicles (MRAP), seen here:

The MRAP was developed for combat in Iraq, where improvised explosive devices were a common danger. Now the MRAP will be operating in US streets with federal law enforcement.

Feel safe yet?

The first question that leaps to mind: What the hell do you need with an armored personnel vehicle that is mine-resistant? Has there been a spate of mine-related incidents the government media hasn’t told us about? When was the last time a “search and rescue vehicle” (see the labeling on the craft) in the States required armor and gun ports?

Here’s your local Federal goon explaining how super-awesome the MRAP is:

One of the reasons for these purchases are an attempt by the government cronies of the military industry to keep the money train flowing as the war in Iraq ended and Afghanistan mission is increasingly unpopular. The crossover between military and law enforcement brings not just military equipment, but military thinking to policing.

Note the verbiage: tank commander. Yes, I know that’s what he’s called in the military. These are cops. They don’t have a beat, they have an AO (area of operations.) Observer, sure, that sounds reasonable, but tank commander and AO tell you the mindset of the men employing these vehicles — they are soldiers at war. On you.

And now their masters want you to turn in your guns…

Tales From Your Police State: Range Targets With Pregnant Women, Kids to Desensitize Police

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2nd amendment, department of homeland security, law enforcement target inc, no hesitation targets, police brutality, police state

This has been popping up in a few places, but I’m not about to start using InfoWars s a reliable source…Reason magazine, however, has jumped in. It seems the Department of Homeland Security has been specifically asking for range targets from Law Enforcement Target, Inc. that depict various civilian archetypes for police to practice on. The obvious reason you would have target like those below are to desensitize police to killing folks that don’t fit the standard “bad guy” profile…

These “No More Hesitation” targets are (which are no longer showing on the website as of this writing) are ”designed to give officers the experience of dealing with deadly force shooting scenarios with subjects that are not the norm during training…” or in real terms,  to prepare the shooter to fire on targets that would ordinarily require a few seconds’ consideration. These “scenarios” could easily be put in their real life context — you’re an officer in the course of your duty, but your duty requires you to enter a house without a warrant. You announce yourself while breaking down the door (pretty standard nowadays) to find an old woman in her kitchen who has no idea who the hell you are or why you’re there. She just hears yelling men with guns.

If you hesitate and she hesitates, no one gets killed. But because an officer’s life is now more important that the woman, or the old man in his den, or the pregnant woman in her nursery, you just let fly. Maybe you’re in plainclothes and aggress a young mother on a playground who thinks you’re a psycho pretending to be a cop to get her kid, or a college kid that couldn’t reach her rape whistle or call box in time…instead of dial the machismo down to, say, six, now you feel prepare to end somebody’s life, instead of using the six pounds of shit in your head.

Gee, I wonder why so many people suddenly feel the need to have guns…

UPDATE: Here’s LET’s Facebook page. Get the impression people aren’t too impressed?

 

Tales From Your Police State: DHS Claims Right to Search Your Electronic Devices Up To 100 Miles From Border

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border security, department of homeland security, government corruption, police state

Wired has a good story on this monstrous abuse of power by the Department of Homeland Security: Travelers along the nation’s borders (and by this DHS means up to 100 miles inside the border) are risking having their electronic seized and the contents examined without a warrant. The DHS’s ironically-named “Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties” declared that,

We also conclude that imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a border search of an electronic device would be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties benefits…

Really? Making officers have to reasonable suspicion of a crime is harmful to their operations and doesn’t impact our civil right against illegal search and seizure. So now DHS officers do not have to obey the central, primary law of the nation — the Constitution they swore to uphold, no less — because it would be inconvenient to them.

When police convenience and police safety (as with the recent Dorner mess) become paramount to the rights and safety of the people they are hired by to protect them what do we call this..?

Oh, yes. A police state.

The memo highlights the friction between today’s reality that electronic devices have become virtual extensions of ourselves housing everything from e-mail to instant-message chats to photos and our papers and effects — juxtaposed against the government’s stated quest for national security.

So where does this convenience end? You phone? Your bag? Your car, which in New Mexico is an extension of your house? Your body? When does police convenience end and my right to be safe in my papers and property begin?

When George W Bush stated this mess in 2008, it was a death knell for civil liberties, and Barack Obama has made these incursions into our privacy worse with his signing of the NDAA in 2012, as well as his increasingly imperial view of his powers to legislate through executie order. It is time for Americans to strongly push back on these abuses of power by the administration and the bureaucracy.

Currently, the ACLU is demanding FOIA access to the department’s use of this policy and The Constitutional Project has a paper detailing the dangers of this policy. Familiarize yourself with the situation, write/call/badger your congresspeople. Let them know you are free people and demand your constitutional rights.

Don’t think it can happen you you..?

Do not submit.

Tales From Your Police State: Preparing For Fictional Disasters

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department of homeland security, government corruption, government incompetence, police state

The Department of Homeland Security, an bureau so fraught with fraud, abuse of power, internecine fighting, and idiocy that the agencies under its aegis perennially poll as having the worst morale, is on the job, preparing to protect you from…zombies?

Admittedly, zombies are a film allegory for the collapse of society under the weight of the mindless hordes that seek to [throw in your pet strawman]…but throwing $35 billion at stopping the apocalypse seems a bit theatrical.

One thing that may save us, if the federal government ever does decide to try and bite the hand that feeds it, is that it is run by morons.

Why Is the DHS Buying Up So Much Ammo?

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Ammunition, conspiracy theories, department of homeland security, government corruption, second amendment

…and a lot of it not even calibers that the Feds use, but does include most of the common calibers. And The Examiner informs us it’s all the cheap plinking crap (the stuff you buy in bulk so you don’t bankrupt yourself practicing.) Maybe they’re training their officers. Conspiracy theorists seem to think its the prelude to martial law, as the feds are also buying up combat armor in droves.

Writes Mike Adams, “The U.S. government clearly sees the writing on the wall. What lays ahead for America is a day of unbearable reckoning. The financial collapse will wipe out savings accounts, pensions, investment funds and equities of the working class, all across the nation. Imagine bank accounts being reset to zero, “bank holidays” enforced at gunpoint. That will unleash a wave of violent protests, social chaos and even talk of revolution. The government will almost certainly respond with a declaration of Martial Law, the rolling out of highway checkpoints, and before long, the use of live ammo on unruly protesters.”

I do agree there a nefarious purpose, but not quite what the conspiracy folks think. The goal is to create an artificial shortage in the ammunition market and choke gun owners’ supply of bullets to forestall public response to the mismanagement of the country without having to resort to law, executive orders, or anything legally binding. That the DHS is already redacting information regarding the purchases is, however, doubly suspicious.

 

Here’s the Hundred Words Not To Use Online If You Don’t Want to Be Spied On

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data mining, department of homeland security, national security, national security administration, online monitoring

From The Daily Mail:

So don’t talk about the weather…or Tamiflu if you’re sick. Hopefully you didn’t have a “breech” baby or get samonella, or show initiative at work instead of looking at clouds.

Now if the spooks are having a look at this page: You need better data mining software.