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Little Red Book Draws Government Attention
narcolepticjim writes "An unnamed Dartmouth student was visited by Homeland Security for requesting a copy of Mao Zedong's Little Red Book for a class project." From the article: "The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said."
but he had to fill out a form because he was requesting an inter-library loan. I don't know how your school works, if the loan department can psychically detect what you want to request and save you the trouble of filling at a form or whatever, but obviously his school works the old-fashioned way.
Not that this excuses the utterly retarded HomeSec nonsense, of course.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/work s/red-book/
coral
http://www.marxists.org.nyud.net:8090/reference/ar chive/mao/works/download/red-book.pdf
There are way too many US colleges that routinely violate the privacy of their students and expose them to identity theft by using their Social Security Number as a student ID number, because it's ostensibly unique and they sometimes also need it if the student's an employee or has a government loan. Fortunately neither school I attended did that, but it's extremely common. Similarly, many US states use the SSN as a driver's license number, and all of them collect the SSN in keep it in their databases. And many medical insurance companies use SSNs as a customer ID number (HIPAA's changing that a bit, but Medicare's still based on SSNs so they usually need it anyway.) And too many companies use SSNs as an employee ID. It's appalling, but get used to it.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I got paid a visit for reading material that was hardly "subversive" -- it was published by the U.S. military! Read all about it here and here... I was reading the literature on a plane, to be sure, but a home visit from the feds seemed way over the top. To their credit, however, the Marshals seemed to be nice enough and they didn't seem to think I was a threat to national security, and I haven't been bothered since the visit to my house. Though I wonder whether there are now federal files on me, and whether I'm being looked at funny at the airport.
This illegal spying and stuff has been going on since before bush was in office. Actually it isn't illegal either but that another story.
We have always had agreements with other countries to spy and tap phone conversations. If something interesting is found they alert the proper authorities. This was automated around 1997 and now key words are caught and automated recording takes place. Typically, our agreements with the other countries allow them to collect the data on US citizens while we collect on their citizens. This gives the appearance of the government not having to deal with the constitution.
This project is commonly refereed to as Echelon Here is a tad bit more info on it
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authorized spying and searches in terrorist/national security and other related matters regardless of the nationality or location of the person(s) being spied on. Originally this act intended for a court consisting of around 11 members to approve the actions. This court regularly reports to congress. Unfortunately (fortunately depending on your outlook), in 1979, President Carter decided that under certain circumstances could allow government officials to bypass these procedures. This was probably a reaction to the hostage crisis during his term. President Clinton expanded this a little in '95. Bush using the processes from these executive orders changed the policy being used to take advantage of them. Unlike Carter and Clinton, his provision were made into law by provisions in the patriot act.. Your probably right in that these executive orders go against the constitution but until they are successfully challenged, they are law and therefore legal. (That doesn't mean it rite though.)
As for the ban on torture loophole? I think you are misreading somethign here. All this deal did was say that interrogators accused of using improper methods could offer as a defense that they were acting on orders that a reasonable person would believe to be lawful. This doesn't mean that i could order you to starve a person until they talk and you would get away with it. What it does say is that if an order is lawful to a reasonable person you can use that as a defense. This means if i order you to wake the prisoner at different time in the night to disrupt thier sleeping habits and confuse them, as long as a reasonable person wouldn't consider that torture, you wouldn't get in trouble. Imunity isn't even mentioned either. This is a purposed bill too, it hasn't made it's way into law and needs to be cleared with debate before it becomes law.
I know it is fun to bash Bush and the current administration. People always do it when thier party isn't in control. Lets be honest here and bash him for stuff that needs to be bashed. Saying we can toruture people even though existing law says we cannot is stretching the truth a bit. This doen't mean it hasn't happend and if it did, those resoncible should be presecuted. Saying ilegal wire taps or ilegal spying isn't being truthfull either. The facilities that made it possible were put in place well before bush or his cronies came to power. Under current law, regular law enforcment have to get permision from a judge (well except for patriot act provisions). But we can see were government officials aren't held to that law unnder certain circumstances. Is it right that government officials can spy on it's citizens without going thru the regular chanels? Probably not but that doesn't mean it is not legal.
In case anyone is wondering, executive
The professor mentioned in the story (Dr. Brian Glyn Williams) took the time to answer these points. I'm pasting it verbatim here.
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Dear Bill,
Delighte to hear from you and I hope my response is of service. If you could post it I would be most grateful.
I am one of the professors mentioned in your 'conspiracy theory response' (Dr. Brian Glyn Williams)With all due respect I wanted to add a few comments. A. The incident with our Univ. of Massachusetts history student happened several weeks ago, I was asked to comment on President Bush's sweeping surveillance activities only yesterday. I cited this incident as an example of the White House policies' very real applications and how they trickle down to the university level. My description of the incident was in response to an inquiry from a reporter at the Standard Times, New Bedford who called requesting a commentary and I thought it was appropriate. B. There are several key sections omitted in the version here in the USA of the Little Red Book and we are proud of our student trying to search out the original. This is exactly the sort of primary document research that makes for good history!
C. I have tenure and I do not know how you came to the assumption that I do not, my web page brianglynwilliams.com clearly states that I am Associate Professor of History. But I do appreciate your reference to the field work I do in Afghanistan and Central Asia in trying to understand the roots of jihadism and terrorism. It is precisely this sort of cutting edge research and teaching I hope to protect. One must go to the original sources to get the facts, wether it be jihadi webpages or Mao's Little Red Book. I am hardly a liberal firebrand, I just want to carry out my research unfettered by the fear of investigation and encourage the same in my students. D. I know this student well. He is the real thing, he is mature, honest, reliable, hard-working and genuinely interested in getting to the truth on issues, i.e. he is everything we train our students to be. The fact that Dr. Bob Pontriband who is by the way a passionate educator who seeks to instill just this sort of above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty research in his students also vouches for him lends two voices to his defense. I sincerely hope that your questions are meant to be the sort of critical inquiry we expect from our students and not some reflexive attempt to de-legitimize our reporting of what it is frankly a rather disturbing act of surveillance that does not seem to be an example of productive, preemptive counter terrorism. Sincerely,
Dr. Brian Glyn Williams
Associate Professor of History
University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth