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Citizenfour Director Sues To Find Out Why She Was Detained Every Time She Flew
An anonymous reader writes: Since the 2006 release of My Country, My Country, Laura Poitras has left and re-entered the U.S. roughly 40 times. Virtually every time during that six-year-period that she has returned to the U.S., her plane has been met by DHS agents who stand at the airplane door or tarmac and inspect the passports of every de-planing passenger until they find her (on the handful of occasions where they did not meet her at the plane, agents were called when she arrived at immigration). Each time, they detain her, and then interrogate her at length about where she went and with whom she met or spoke. They have exhibited a particular interest in finding out for whom she works.
So... Don't question the state, or you will be harrassed? Everything is fine just as it is? Great country you have there!
So you not only didn't RTFA or even TFS, you couldn't even bother to read the FIRST SENTENCE of the summary. And yet you think you're competent to have an opinion on the matter. That takes a special kind of stupid.
Replace US with USSR and DHS with FSB and I wouldn't have blinked twice at it - par for the course. And increasingly so for the USA, apparently.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Can we get someone to explain how its OK for the IRS to harass people hoping to change policy but it's bad for DHS to harass people hoping to change policy?
Or do you all still feel that "since they weren't charged, it wasn't really a problem?"
(If you do, you might want to ask a person of color about traffic stops some time.)
It turns out that keeping the authorities under control is hard to do.
And how is your Democrat President working out?
* Guantanamo (Still open).
* Afghan (Still going).
* Iraq (Complete disaster with the war "ended" when all the military leaders said don't).
* Prisoner swap (One Deserter for multiple enemy Leaders).
* Racism (Fires stoked daily to keep the miscreants mad at each other instead of facing the real issues... but #BlacklivesMatter(Unless killed by other blacks) and #RacistFlagsMustGo(except for Black Power flags)).
* Economy (out of recession... with record # on welfare, foodstamps, out of the working pool, stagnant wages).
* War on Women (Pays his female staff less than male counterparts... same as 'Liary.)
* Illegal Immigration (Who cares about some white woman dead? lets go visit a jail where another criminal can become The Presidents Son)
But sure... blame it on the Republicans. That dam Bush. He'll still kill us all.
It's not about not being able to make an educated guess she'd bet on, but getting the official reason. At that point, it's possible to make a case that the reason is unconstitutional.
That's really what all of this is about: Government action without oversight, and it's hard to sue to change that without proof of harm. She has proof of harm right there: All she needs now is a target to use that hammer against.
Pretty sure there's a freedom of association clause in the Constitution.
Don't be daft. This is the unelected bureaucracy. The statist government drones with little to no oversite from elected officials. If you vote for democrats, you're voting for this just as much as if you voted republican. The D vs R thing is a dog a pony show that keeps people like you distracted.
By that logic, ever defense attorney - even public defenders, should be treated to equal or greater scrutiny as they primarily associate with people believed to be guilty - and go the extra mile to convince the public and the powers that be that they are NOT guilty.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
I can't point to any specific right or law that would make that true.
You don't need a law to make that true - The constitution makes that the truth by default.
In the absence of a constitutional amendment giving them the power to deny a legal US citizen entry to the US, they can't deny a legal US citizen entry to the US. Simple as that, really.
That said, they can basically make her return with none of her possessions ("Sorry, you might have... uh... fruit fly eggs on your clothes, take 'em off"), and only after enjoying a nice deep cavity search, so...
If fewer people had your attitude and pressed for change, things would change. That's the only way they change.
With a still amazingly unequal (and inaccessible) health care system, large wealth differences and general lack of social security, I wouldn't call USA "socialist" by any means. Leaning towards totalitarian, certainly. But without the socialist things like equality (seems like the super-rich are more catered for). Note that I mostly compare with the "socialist" North European countries. The USSR sure called themselves "socialist" too, and was a very non-agreeable place to live in ...
(not a socialist myself)
Y'know, you could've sprinkled a few extra facts into the summary, such as the connection to Snowden.
But I guess that's what you get when you accept submissions wihch are just copy-pasted partial paragraphs from the article - and the paragraph itself is a quote, within the article, from 2012.
Keep up the shitty work, editors!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
This person is actually a little more important than a defense attorney. It's her job to tell people what their government is doing. And by all accounts (except the government) she's doing an excellent job.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Laura Poitras was detained by the US every time she flew. How is a journalist, traveling by herself, in the "wrong place at the wrong time"?
Remember, every time she was detained, she was just detained and then eventually let go after being hassled. If the government has evidence that she's committed a crime, they would have charged her. Instead, they're just harassing a journalist who has embarrassed them.
If you want to say that embarrassing the government should be a crime, then that's a whole different discussion.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Additionally, judging by their reaction she must be doing an excellent job.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
The press in its various forms (blogs, newspapers and some filmmakers) are the defense attorneys of a free country. The Founding fathers wrote at length how the press and freedom of speech on its own was one of the major impediments to a government sinking into corruption & totalitarianism.
"The last right we shall mention regards the freedom of the press. The importance of this consists, besides the advancement of truth, science, morality, and arts in general, in its diffusion of liberal sentiments on the administration of Government, its ready communication of thoughts between subjects, and its consequential promotion of union among them, whereby oppressive officers are shamed or intimidated into more honourable and just modes of conducting affairs."
Continental Congress, 1774
This woman isn't some random person hanging out with "scum", she's an award winning documentary filmmaker. She also helped create the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Unfortunately the press has to hang out with various groups of morally/legally questionable people in order to get to what is important, most of those people reside in our various halls of government.
A simple trip to wikipedia would have give you that definition. Or the nazi's 25 point plan. And yes, I realize that much modern rhetoric paints fascists as ultra-right wing, but what fascists actually did in the 20s-40s where about heavy governmental control and social programs, and a lot of the rhetoric was about the evil international corporate and banking interests (usually with jewish controlled thrown in for good measure). Any corporation that told the fascists to stick it found themselves nationalized in no short time.
It DID ! When it was still called Romneycare !
It only became evil when a democrat implemented this republican plan, thought up by the Heartland Institute and first instituted by a republican governor (who would run for president against Obama a few years later) and even then it pretty much only became evil because the democrat who did it turned out to be a black guy.
It's also exactly why all the REAL liberals are hoping against hope for Sanders to be the surprize swing-vote.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *