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U.S. Goverment Responds to EFF's Indymedia Motion
bergwitz writes "In a response to EFF's motion to unseal, the U.S. government claims that Indymedia hard drives were seized as part of an international "criminal terrorism investigation," and thus the U.S. District Court's gag order should be upheld." This will help refresh your memory.
Get the photos of the swiss cops here with this torrent
it was nothing about terrorists, just people taking pics of cops that were trying to intimidate activists.
If the government needs something I have in a bank safe deposit box, they go and serve the bank with a warrant. If they need my employee records, they serve my employer with a warrant.
/. blurb). The EFF has no standing. However, even if Indymedia sues, doesn't mean records will be unsealed. There are plenty of cases where revealing specifics will screw an investigation, and in those cases the judge generally keeps the records sealed. They are unsealed at trial, when the case is dropped, or if it drags on for too long.
A warrant is just a legal declaration that allows law enforcement to etner a place they may not normally enter or seize something they may not normally seize. Law enforcement can't just come and take a computer randomly from a company or person. They have to get a warrant from a judge to do so. However the warrant is to enter the premises or seize the goods, so it is presented to the persons concerned. They don't go, present it to you, and ask you to go get the goods, then maybe alter them, before you hand them over.
Also, Indymedia has standing to sue, they didn't however, the EFF did and that was part of the judges ruling (read more than the
Nothing has changed in an information society, except that we'll probably see more seizing of computers to get at data used in criminal activities. It's no different than if you had a physical book with your accounting of illegal activities in storage or at a bank. They'd serve the place that physically had the book to get it. They aren't going to serve you and hope that you give it to them unaltered and intact.
And you don't in criminal cases. Sorry, but law enforcement can't, and won't, tell you why in a case like this. That's the whole point of having it sealed in the first place. They told the judge, who then decided it was appropriate to keep it sealed. That's how it works, and how it has worked. Real common to see that sort of thing in, say, organized crime busts.
However some people seem a little confused. Sealed isn't a permenant sort of thing here. Just during the investigation. It'll be unsealed either when charges are brought, or when the investigation ends. It'll also be unsealed if the prosecution is dragging it's feet and it gets challenged successfully.
However, in cases like this, you just have to wait. If you really care don't have the typical American week long attention span and actually keep an eye on it. Then in several months when something happens, look in to the reasoning, and if it's bad, challenge it.
However you cannot in fairness (or legally) tell them "You have to tell me beforehand why it's sealed" because that ruins the point. It's just like someone telling you they need to keep something secret (like a supprise party for you on a certian date), and you demanding to know what it is. Well if they told you, that would defeat the point, now wouldn't it?
> Honestly, has CNN ever said anything good
c ab inet/index.html
m l (government PSYOPS agents working at CNN)
l (CNN says that a focus on civilian casualties would be "perverse")
h tm l
> about Bush?
Well, the headlining article is about Bush, so lets pull it up, shall we?
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/10/bush.
Why, wouldn't you know it - it's a big long piece of praise for Bush's appointment for Attorney General, consistantly calling him a "moderate". Of course, this ignores Gonzales's heavy hand in the Patriot Act, secret trials, tribunals, et al.
Not good enough? Lets take a FAIR look:
http://www.fair.org/activism/cnn-psyops.ht
http://www.fair.org/activism/cnn-aljazeera.html (CNN to Al-Jazeera: Don't report civilian deaths)
http://www.fair.org/activism/cnn-casualties.htm
http://www.fair.org/activism/dobbs-annan.html (CNN attacks Annan for saying that the Iraq war was illegal, something that most international law scholars agree with)
http://www.fair.org/extra/0303/reliability.html (probably one of the more telling - they covered Reliable Sources for 1 year. The results? Media insiders were 76%. Right-leaning guests outnumbered left-leaning guests 2:1. Laura Ingraham came on almost as half as often as all left-leaning guests put together. White guests were 194 to 9, worse than Fox's Special Report. Male guests outnumbered female 155 to 48 (over 3 to 1). Not a single public interest group appeared during the entire year.)
http://www.fair.org/reports/fox-cnn-guest-list.
(Comparing Fox's "Special Report" to CNN's "Wolf Blitzer Reports" - CNN had 38 Republicans and 29 Democrats; Fox had only *6* Democrats)
I could keep going with dozens more. CNN is slightly right of center from a US perspective, which makes it solidly to the right on a global scale. In fact, it's interesting to compare CNN's coverage with CNN International. To market to an international audience, they had to make their right-wing coverage more liberal - so, while the US CNN showed the toppling of Saddam's statue all day with a waving red, white, and blue background, CNNi showed a split screen: on one side, the statue falling. On the other, images of the Iraqi wounded and dead, including Ali Ismaeel Abbas.
(BTW, if anyone wants to attack this, you can't get away with just attacking FAIR: you need to attack *the content*).
That's it, Mr. Giraffe, get all the marmalade.
Yeah, they had to change it from "Still Better Than Saddam" after this happened. ;)
That's it, Mr. Giraffe, get all the marmalade.
Iraq had nothing to do with 911
And that is the answer that we were not given before the invasion.
but it did have ties to those that supported Al Qaeda.
Fewer ties than Saudi Arabia. Did we invade there? How about Iran?
If ties to al Qaeda was the litmus test, then we still struck the wrong place.
Learn to love Alaska
... dude. Read the goddamn article. That's what the GOVERNMENT is saying. It's not anything out of the ordinary or unexpected. It's up to a court to decide the validity of the response.
Christ.. is it just me or does Slashdot actively make people dumber?
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Wolf Blitzer followed up by asking why Perle was accusing Hersh of being a terrorist. Instead of calling it a misquote, Perle said "he sets out to do damage".
Perle was Reagan's assistant secretary of defense. Until February 2004 he chaired the advisory Defense Policy Board.
You are missing some very crucial facts here.
.
Saddam used chemical weapons against the Kurds in 1983, our government knew this, and yet we still sent Donald Rumsfeld over there to shake his hand and make nice because he was fighting against Iran. You know that infamous picture of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Hussein and smiling? Understand that at that very moment Saddam was using chemical weapons on Kurds and Donald Rumsfeld knew it
Seven years later, Operation Desert Storm was launched in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, a reason which is completely unrelated to the previous use of chemical weapons. Your argument that this invasion means we could not have supported Saddam during his attacks on the Kurds is baseless and ignorant. Have a nice day.
The enemies of Democracy are
Really? Iraqis are allowed to protest?
Oh, well, they're allowed to protest as long as there aren't any Coalition troops within firing range.Additionally, if you would take a look at Iraq under Saddam Hussein, you'd see that although the people had zero political liberty, they were afforded much more civil liberty. If they spoke out against him, they disappeared in the night, but they could also buy alcohol and the women didn't have to wear veils. If you look at Iraq now, you'll see bars and alcohol-vendors closing down, and women in some areas are afraid to go about without veils, for fear of fundamentalist retribution. Sure, Saddam's gone, and it is my hope that good will still come of that in the future (obviously, I'd rather have the veils and no beer than a brutal tyrant), but there's no denying it's a mess there right now, and this trend towards radical fundamentalism should be troubling.
I understand your point, though. We aren't yet doing as poorly in the civil liberties area as we have in the past; I just don't think that's an excuse to ignore what's going on. Something that is less wrong than a very wrong thing is still wrong.
Look at the facts:
Also:
So, in reality, Haliburton may have been trading with the "axis of evil" Just like Prescott Bush did!
--jeff
ipv6 is my vpn
Hello?
He was the _leader_ of Hamas at the time of his assasination. He was _killing_ people. He was _ordering_ the deaths of more civlians through suicide bombings, and openly admitted and challenged Israel to it.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1989, and later on released in 1997 - following which we went back and started a spate of attacks on civilians through suicide bombings. The Hellfire missile hit him and all the people who were killed were his aides and his bodyguards.
Yeah, it's sad that Israel has lowered itself to the level of the militants whom they're up against, but when peace does not work, what is it that we could do against people who would not go against the word of "God".
Ask yourself this: even if a man is guilty, is it right to kill him without trial, without provocation, without immediate threat, and at the cost of innocent lives?
He was guilty, a terrorist who was leading a terrorist group at the time of assasination, who was a threat and would have ordered more, had he been alive. And oh, there were no innocent casualties - the only people who were killed in the vicinity were his aides and bodyguards.
If Osama were out there and we could kill him, do you expect us to stay our hands because we've not had his trial?
William Calley was charged, and convicted, but got "house arrest" for a few years. His actions were apparently condoned by your then-president, who set him loose. They were just gooks, after all.
http://www.vietnam-war.info