Tag: police state

Supreme Court Expands Government Secrecy Powers in Torture-Related Case

The US Supreme Court ruled recently on the government’s use of the state secrets doctrine in an opinion that will make it easier for intelligence agencies to evade accountability in future individual rights cases. In US v. Zubaydah, government torture policy and state secrets converge. A torture victim requested information related to his treatment at a CIA “black site,” and the government blocked that request, citing national security interests. Seven members of the Court joined parts of an opinion siding with the government, with only Justices Sotomayor and Gorsuch dissenting. The case has implications for other torture-related cases and for government accountability more broadly as it expands state secrecy powers based on a doctrine that was already overbroad, and suspect in its origins.

The Zubaydah case is procedurally unusual. Abu Zubaydah is currently detained at Guantanamo, but the history of his confinement and treatment at numerous sites over the past two decades is well known. The government has admitted to waterboarding him and subjecting him to other forms of torture, and the 2014 Senate Report on Torture refers specifically to Zubaydah at numerous points. Moreover, former President Obama conceded that Zubaydah was tortured. In the course of seeking a tribunal that would hear his claims, Zubaydah asked the Polish government to investigate criminally the interrogations that took place at a CIA black site in Poland, Stare Kiejkuty. Since much of the supporting evidence was located in the United States, Zubaydah had to petition a US District Court for an order compelling its production. Federal law allows for such a petition, but when it was filed, the US government objected, citing the state secrets doctrine. The case worked its way up to the Supreme Court and the Court ruled for the first time in years on the scope and application of the doctrine.

The state secrets privilege (SSP) is an evidentiary doctrine originating in the 1953 case of US v. Reynolds, a Cold War-era dispute involving the crash of a military aircraft. In Reynolds, the victims’ families sought information about the crash, specifically survivors’ statements and an accident report. The government objected, claiming that revealing this information would endanger national security. The Supreme Court agreed, and their ruling gave birth to the SSP, which expanded in use over the ensuing seven decades. In short, the ruling says that the government is entitled to withhold information, in the course of litigation, where there is a “danger that compulsion of the evidence will expose military matters which, in the interest of national security, should not be divulged.” But the potential for such a broadly stated secrecy power to be abused is self-evident and was so even in the Reynolds case itself. As Louis Fisher has shown, the information withheld in Reynolds surfaced on the Internet in the 1990s and was quite mundane, containing not military secrets but evidence of government negligence instead.

Courts have applied the SSP to thwart discovery of evidence in a case where a twelve-year-old boy came under CIA scrutiny for writing letters overseas, where government workers sought information about deadly chemicals to which they had been exposed (so they could get treatment for their illness), and where the victim in an earlier torture case sought relief. But some questions had not been settled. Could the very subject matter of a case be a state secret, so that no discovery requests could even be made? Could trial courts order production of alleged secret evidence in chambers so a judge could view it before ruling on the SSP? And most centrally relevant to Zubaydah’s case, could the SSP apply to information already in the public domain (in other words, to non-secrets)?

It is this last question – whether the SSP applies to already-known information – that the Court took on in its recent opinion. The existence of Stare Kiejkuty is well-known, described in various sources. And the witnesses whose testimony Zubaydah sought to procure had already testified in similar proceedings. James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were government contractors – psychologists specializing in family therapy who developed coercive interrogation protocols and then supervised their use by the CIA on-site. One of them even wrote a book about his exploits, and both had already testified about their interrogation work in other cases, such as the trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

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The Top 10 Creepiest & Most Dystopian Things Pushed By The World Economic Forum

When one talks about the “global elite”, one usually refers to a small group of wealthy and powerful individuals who operate beyond national borders. Through various organizations, these non-elected individuals gather in semi-secrecy to decide policies they want to see applied on a global level.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is smack dab in the middle of it all. Indeed, through its annual Davos meetings, the WEF attempts to legitimize and normalize its influence on the world’s democratic nations by having a panel of world leaders attending and speaking at the event.

A simple look at the list of attendees at these meetings reveals the organization’s incredible reach and influence. The biggest names in media, politics, business, science, technology, and finance are represented at the WEF.

According to mass media, the Davos meetings gather people to discuss issues such as “inequality, climate change, and international cooperation”. This simplistic description appears to be custom-made to cause the average citizen to yawn in boredom. But topics at the WEF go much further than “inequality”.

Throughout the years, people at the WEF have said some highly disturbing things, none of which garnered proper media attention. In fact, when one pieces together the topics championed by the WEF, an overarching theme emerges: The total control of humanity using media, science, and technology while reshaping democracies to form a global government.

If this sounds like a far-fetched conspiracy theory, keep reading. Here are the 10 most dystopian things that are being pushed by the WEF right now. This list sorted is in no particular order. Because they’re all equally crazy.

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Woman Tells Cops She Can’t Get on the Ground Because She’s Pregnant, Cops Put 5 Rounds In Her

When a mother of three was travelling through Kansas City, Missouri last week, pulling off the highway to get her children some ice cream, she never imagined that she and her children would witness police shoot an unarmed pregnant woman. Unfortunately, however, that’s exactly what happened according to Shé Danja.

Shé Danja, who declined to give her last name out of fear of police retaliation, pulled out her phone and recorded the incident as it unfolded and the video appears to show that 26-year-old Leonna Hale was unarmed when she was shot 5 times by Kansas City police officers.

Immediately after they shot her, police claimed that a “gun was recovered at the scene.” However, Hale did not appear to be holding it and according to the eye witness, Hale told police there was a gun in the vehicle which was far away from Hale when she was shot.

The incident unfolded on Friday May 27 when police say they were looking for a carjacking suspect. According to police, they found a vehicle matching the description of the stolen vehicle located at the Family Dollar on 6th street.

When police approached the vehicle, the male driver exited the car and took off running while Hale stayed back. Hale then complied with police and got out of the car like she was asked to do.

According to the Kansas City Star, who interviewed Shé Danja, “The cops told the woman to get on the ground, but the woman informed them that she was pregnant, and so she couldn’t get down on the ground.” Then police asked her to get down multiple times, which she still couldn’t. The woman then informed police that there was a gun in the vehicle.

The woman began moving back toward a fence of the parking lot. Numerous officers approached and drew their weapons. “She did not pull out a weapon on them,” Shé Danja said. “She did not even have a stick in her hand.” The woman ran three steps away from officers, Shé Danja said, and police shot five times.

“One, two, three, four, five. I remember it because it didn’t stop. They shot five times,” Shé Danja told the Star. “I remember seeing her hit the ground and I froze,” she said. She also asked police numerous times why they shot the woman, but officers refused to answer.

Shé Danja was then forced away from the scene by one of the responding officers, despite telling him that her son was still in the store.

As the video shows, Hale is seen lying on the ground as the blood starts to leak through her shirt. Instead of medical aid, police move in to handcuff her. According to police, she was eventually taken to the hospital with life threatening injuries and remains in critical but stable condition. The condition of her unborn child is unknown.

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Canada’s broadcasting regulator confirms proposed online censorship bill will apply to user-generated content

During a hearing on Canada’s attempt to regulate what users can say on the internet, Bill C-11 (The Online Streaming Act), the head of Canada’s broadcasting and telecommunications regulator again confirmed that the far-reaching regulations will apply to user-generated content.

Ever since the bill was announced, critics have been warning that it empowers the Canadian government to censor the content users post to social media platforms by forcing these platforms to abide by content rules set by Canada’s broadcasting and telecommunications regulator – the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).

These fears were confirmed by CRTC Chairman Ian Scott earlier this month when he acknowledged that Bill C-11 would apply to user-generated content. And in an appearance at Tuesday’s Canadian Heritage committee hearing, Scott reaffirmed that Bill C-11 allows the CRTC to regulate “user uploaded content.”

CRTC General Counsel and Deputy Executive Director Rachelle Frenette subsequently attempted to downplay the CRTC powers under Bill C-11 by insisting that the regulations apply to platforms, not users. However, she admitted that the CRTC could “issue rules with respect to discoverability.”

Dr. Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, noted (link) that Frenette’s admission is “entirely consistent with the concerns of digital creators, namely that platforms will be required to develop outcomes that result in some content being prioritized in the name of discoverability.”

The critics of Bill C-11 include politicians, creators, and even pro-censorship Big Tech platforms.

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Gov’t to Steal Elderly Man’s House Over $573K They Fined Him for Working on Car in His Back Yard

Dan Alstatt is a retired 83-year-old from California who may spend the rest of his life “homeless and penniless” because government claims what you can and can’t do with your own property. Alstatt never harmed anyone, nor did he destroy or other wise harm anyone else’s property, but these facts are irrelevant to the state who claims Alstatt owes them $573,000 for using his private property the way he wanted.

Alstatt worked on old cars in his own yard and according to the city of Sacramento, this is illegal. When Alstatt disputed the city’s claim, the city then told Alstatt he owed them money. Now, Alstatt is worried that the state will come and seize his home because he cannot afford to pay the ridiculously high fines.

According to an article in the SacBee, Alstatt’s nightmare began in 2014 when he brought a van into his backyard to fix them — a code enforcement penalty — according to the local government.

He also had at least five other vehicles on the property, some of which he inherited when his brother died, he said. A neighbor complained, and the city cited him, claiming all the vehicles appeared to be inoperable. It also issued violations for other backyard items — car parts, generators, propane tanks and fruit that had fallen off his orange and grapefruit trees. Altstatt has since removed the inoperable vehicles and other items.

To be clear, none of the vehicles could be seen as they were in his back yard behind a privacy fence and the front of Alstatt’s home is well kept and maintained. Absolutely no one is being harmed or was ever harmed by Alstatt working on vehicles but the state still pursued the case.

Despite the fact that Alstatt has since removed all the “violations,” the city still claims he owes them over a half million dollars. He appealed their fines but lost that appeal this month.

Alstatt argued that the fines totaling over a half million dollars were “excessive” and violate his Eighth Amendment right to be free from “excessive fines imposed.” The city claimed that Alstatt’s accusations of excessive fines for working on vehicles in his own back yard were “unfounded and unsupported.”

Alstatt also accused the city of using code enforcement as a predatory means to collect revenue which will render him “homeless and penniless.” The city also claimed this was unfounded.

Imagine the type of mental gymnastics it takes for a city code enforcer to think that fining a retiree $573,000 for working on a van in his back yard is not “excessive” or “predatory.”

Nevertheless, the court took Alstatt’s claims, threw them out, and used them as an opportunity to mock him in their dismissal of his appeal.

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SWAT Team Deployed to Cop’s House After He Threatened a Mass Shooting Against Fellow Officers

Anyone who can apply logic and reason knows that banning guns in the United States will have the sole effect of disarming law abiding citizens while keeping guns in the hands of criminals and cops. There are hundreds of millions of guns on the streets, 3D printed guns get better every day, and enough ammo already made to start a war. The cat is out of the bag and this is a massive wrench in the gear of the anti-gun folks as it renders their entire argument moot.

But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that all guns are pulled from the streets. Somehow, using magic, the state is able to disarm every single citizen and no one has guns any longer. What then? Well now, only the state has guns.

Never mind the fact that this would now make it impossible to resist any future tyrannical regimes but it also ensures that cops — with a history of horrific criminal violence in this country — would be the only ones with guns.

While this seems to be the goal of the anti-gun movement — who aren’t anti-gun at all, they are just pro-gun centralization in the hands of the state — the implications would be frightening. Though statists often think that government is this infallible tool that can be wielded like a magic wand to bend society in their utopian direction, the fact is that government is made up of humans — many of whom are evil and corrupt.

To highlight the problem of only the cops having guns, and how this wouldn’t stop mass shootings, we can look at a case this week from Nephi, Utah. A Saratoga Springs police officer was taken into custody this week after threatening to kill a former supervisor and anyone else who got in his way.

Sgt. Spencer Cannon with the Utah County Sheriff’s Office said deputies were contacted by the Saratoga Springs Police Department regarding the threats around 5:30 p.m. Monday. A statewide bulletin was issued for Saratoga police officer Jared Chuchran, 42, detailing his specific threats to kill the Saratoga Springs assistant police chief and “hurt any officer who gets in his way,” said Cannon.

A SWAT team was then dispatched Chuchran’s home but nobody was there. Police would later use cellphone tracking technology and found Chuchran holed up at a camp ground 40 miles away in his pickup truck full of weapons.

Because Chuchran was a cop, some of his fellow cops were sent in to negotiate and he was taken into custody without violence. He’s since been placed in a mental health facility.

“Anyone making threats to kill somebody is also an indication they may be a threat to themself,” Cannon said, according to Gerhardt Daily.

According to KSL, Saratoga Springs police confirmed Tuesday that Chuchran was an officer with the department for over 10 years but has not been employed by the city for several months. Police declined to comment on the circumstances surrounding Chuchran’s departure from the department and referred all other questions to the Utah County Sheriff’s Office, which is handling the threats investigation.

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