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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.
Because she claims to have been involved in the transport or concealment of documents that were removed from the custody of US intelligence organizations
I am not really all that surprised by the outcome, frankly she seems to be blowing smoke if she is surprised as well
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Do we even need to ask?
You don't go on the tour. Russia tour you.
...does she have the right answers? IE:
1. I am an American citizen, and I have the right to enter my country.
2. I plead the fifth.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
...are pretty much zip, because he knows if he does so, he'll be the next one to find himself mysteriously assigned a 400/400 threat rating.
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.)
Oh...I would like to hear the other side. One that will defend this action. One that will say it's no where near those other nation states, that harass their citizens.
Waiting.
Laura Poitras is known as the Oscar-winning director of the Ed Snowden documentary CITIZENFOUR, and with it, one of the reporters who helped break Snowden's story in the first place. Pre-Snowden, she was a not-as-widely-known-but-still-celebrated documentary filmmaker, who also got some attention after her future colleague Glenn Greenwald wrote an article about how she was detained at the border every time she flew into the country (which was frequently, as she had made a documentary, My Country, My Country, concerning the Iraq War, along with The Oath, which reported on two Yemenis who had worked with Osama bin Laden).
You rub elbows with enemies of the state, you live in Berlin and you're wondering why you're detained? Get a fucking grip!
You should also count yourself lucky that you're not getting a full body cavity search with that treatment by DHS and Customs. I'm not a lover of the DHS but in this case sorry lady you can be detained or you can just stay the hell out of the US.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Just in case she's a he as in Snowden.
Take a walk on the wild side!
And the colored girls go...dup, dedup,
She has said and done things that They did not like - so she is now An Interesting Person.
As such, They'll do anything They legally (as They interpret it) can to remind her of what she's done.
And as many tax-dollars as are necessary will be spent for that purpose.
Oh...I would like to hear the other side. One that will defend this action. One that will say it's no where near those other nation states, that harass their citizens.
Waiting.
Never fear, cold fjord is here! With Astroturf Superpower!
I get the same treatment every time I cross international borders into the US. As I'm a permanent resident, they threaten to take my visa and deport me. I get interrogated, questioned about everything and anything, delayed, miss flights, miss connecting flights and then have to fend for myself - and I'll tell ya, it's pretty creepy when you realize basic questioning has turned into an interrogation when they start using cyclical questioning and questions intended to trick you up. You have no idea when they'll let you go - they don't have to tell you - you just land in a lawless zone - I called my consulate from my mobile phone as I was walking with ICE once and they told me that even for British Nationals - really the only ally the US has these days (five eyes be damned) - things are pretty bad once you're "in the system" and that all you can do is limit the amount of travel you do and to always, if possible because you aren't guaranteed any outside communication, but if you can, let someone on the outside know what's happened in case you drop off the radar - because that happens too.
I'm just thankful I'm white - not to be racist - but because if I was brown and worshiped the wrong god I'd be totally f'd!
you have everything to fear about your rights being taken away. It's pathetic the harassment she's going through by our government because of a wire she sent to a "suspected Sunni."
It's simple: She's an American citizen. Don't answer a goddamned question. They can't deny her entry into the country, since she's a US citizen.
If she's saying so much as "hello" to these chuckleheads at this point, she's an idiot.
Hell, I get detained every time I fly because I had the audacity to ask for a damage report form when one of their "professionals" broke my glasses while inspecting them.
It doesn't take much to get you on the "mess with this person" list.
Anyone who protested too loudly or made their objections to political policy too visible was a potential security threat. While the criteria for applying threat levels and additional detainment to political dissenters remains undisclosed (or classified), anyone who actually participated in protests was witness to the feeling that we could be self-selecting into second-class citizenship for the rest of our lives.
This was especially effective at motivating self-censorship, as it was clear that the majority who were unaffected (because they remained silent, if not supportive of Bush-era policy) were also generally unsympathetic to those subject to additional security checks/detainment.
Translation: Bad things are great when they happen to people I don't like.
Okay, sure. The US is nowhere near those other nation states that harass their citizens. It's a matter of degree, and the degree is pretty significant. It's easy to find an interested group and then compare and contrast the complaints against various repressive regimes.
Sorry for not answering your question, but your statement, "Since they weren't charged, it wasn't really a problem" actually gets to the heart of what's happening here and was worth commenting on.
There is a legal gray area here, though one of a different sort. Cops cannot legally stop and detain "suspicious people" just because they look suspicious. But they do it all the time, because no one will take the time to sue for an unlawful Terry Stop. It's unpractical; the unlawful action may be a demoralizing inconvenience, but that's better than getting yourself involved in a lawsuit.
But in this circumstance, the DHS can detain anyone they want. The gray area here is that the individual is being detained in an international zone. Until one passes through customs, he/she is not legally on U.S. soil and U.S. law does not apply. The DHS is technically welcome to detain her, you, and any other U.S. Citizen for as long as they want. My wife personally went through it on one occasion and sat in a locked room for about two hours before they mysteriously just let her go. She asked why she was held and got the "We're not at liberty to say" line in return.
this post up. going tO continue, FreeBSD is already simple solution
http://dailycaller.com/2015/06...
Another blatant case of government employees trying to get even with people they don't agree with.
Don't you go bringing facts into this argument. All that matters is that it is a US bashfest, and bringing actual facts like what happens when people tick off China and wind up having their organs sold off to the highest bidder is just beside the point.
By definition, the US is the worst country, the most repressive in the world, and in history. Can't have facts refuting that, shall we, as anyone who tries will just get a valid insulting reply back...and because this is about the US sucking, ad hominem and tu quoque are perfectly acceptable as extensions of argument.
Works for me. How many criminals are you associated with, through family relationships, work, sports/hobbies, education, church, etc?
Please step through the red door, Comrade, where my freinds and I can get acquainted with you.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Willkommen auf er neuen nationalsozialistischen USA
more cowbell
If you can be reasonably certain that your laptop will be seized and searched then you might as well have some fun.
1) Get a brand new hard disk.
2) Load OS and common software.
3) Apply full disk encryption if possible supported by hardware TPM.
4) Fill disk with pointless and uninteresting files (kitten videos, boring sales brochures for catering equipment, vast datasheets for common microprocessors etc etc).
5) Generate a little script which goes through and encrypts each file with a different randomly generated key (obviously run scipt from external media which you don't take with you).
6) For added fun, install a publicly available unencrypted movie (perhaps one you have made if you happen to be a film maker, otherwise something like Dumbo) and then use steganography to hide something inoccuous in it (e.g. the complete works of Shakespear).
7) Don't expect to ever get the laptop back.
Obviously this will take a fair bit of work, but that will be nothing compared with the huge effort expended by your tormentors in trying to work out what it all means!!
in other news, US-based organization says USA #1
The administration is still not sure if Snowden got the N.S.A. files on Obama's birth and those clumsy Hawaiian "documents". (Ask yourself for any good reason that the leader of the country would black out the number on a supposed birth certificate. The only thing that makes sense is he doesn't want it matching thecertificate of anyone else, or coming after someone born in the last minutes of the year. And after the "this is the only certificate there is" nonsense, there was the second, different, birth certificate. Don't even respond about that unless you looked at it on the whitehouse.gov website and saw how obviously (and poorly) it was Photoshopped.) They sure don't want those N.S.A. documents snuck back in the country and would like to have any information to track down the patriot who got them and the files. As far as anyone knows the files are not on Snowden's person but rather hidden where someone like this person can access them if the administration manages to assassinate Snowden.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
http://www.xkcd.com/538/
It's well known that Putin funds both far-right and far-left extremists to increase social divisions in the West. Cuba has also funded or blackmailed American activists before. Anyone notice how Alex Jones hates the US military, for someone who calls himself a conservative patriot?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
40 detentions by DHS and Laura still travels with her camera full of pictures, her notebooks full of notes and likely a cellphone full of contacts. Please! Someone tell Laura about the Cloud.
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.
Come on, folks, let's cheer with the AC "We're number one better than China! We're number one better than China!"
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I've yet to see anything from O'Keefe that would suggest he's a conspiracy nut.
The guy who got famous by dressing up as a pimp to fabricate proof that a housing organization for the poor was involved in a conspiracy to promote underage prostitution?
The same guy who broke into a senators office, to wiretap her phones, to prove that she wasn't "listening" to her constituents?
And the same guy who recently lost a libel lawsuit against that same senator, claiming that she implied he committed a felony. (His plea bargain reduced the charges to a misdemeanor instead of being a felony)
The same guy who filmed himself illegally entering the country, smuggling people and material, to prove that ISIS terrorists are also sneaking across? And then after publishing video of himself smuggling, is outraged that Customs agents see him as a potential smuggler?
Everything he does suggests he's a conspiracy nut..
but why she kept coming back?
[placeholder for linkage to evidence that the UK is harassing not only its own citizens by abducting the children and selling them for profit on a seller's market, they're doing it to citizens of other countries as well].
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Hassling her a few hours is just an inconvenience. But the No Fly list is a real weapon. How is she going to make her unpatriotic films if she cannot go anywhere! There ain't no getting off the No Fly list, even if you were put on by mistake. That would teach her and her ilk.
Think about what it is like to be a DHS agent. You have attended countless meetings detailing just how much threat we are under. You *know* it is true. You work hard to keep Americans safe. And then someone like Poitras comes along. Scum of the earth.
Not that hard to figure out this one: Material support of terrorism. She can stay trapped in Germany. Belongs in Gitmo.
nsa/cia/fbi behave like gestapo, human rights are ignored, opinion is ignored, muslims are prosecuted or put into concentration camps like guantanamo or will be immediately killed by drones, including civillians, "the world is us" , "we are right", " no us-americans are affected" etc etc.
and this is just the stuff everybody can already see and notice.
For the record, there actually was never a civil war where one side fought for the right to own white people under the banner of a "black power" flag. Also, there is not to this day (nor was there ever) a state that still flies that flag of white oppression.
For the record. the Civil War was not about one side fighting for the right to own black people under the banner of a "white power" flag, either.
The slavery issue was used in recruiting, convincing normally anti-war religious factions to drop their opposition (or even support it) under the "just war" doctrine, and eventually as a tactic near the end of the war to try to promote a slave revolt in the Confederacy. But the original fight (like the American Revolution, the "occupy" movement, and the RIAA/MPAA inspired draconian copyright regime) was about a crony capitalists / government axis using tariffs and laws to keep a large segment of the population as captive customers for overpriced monopoly products, suppressing both their trade with suppliers in other countries and their ability to make their own, lower-priced, replacement products.
It was the north's "1%" against the south-as-ghetto.
(Note that I say this as a descendant of a number of people who fought on the Union side.)
Unfortunately, the actual history of the conflict has been largely suppressed. IMHO the current anti-confederate-battle-flag move is both an attempt to finish off the suppression of the history of the conflict and to pre-emptively propagandize against any move by southern border states to take their own measures against what they perceive as a massive invasion across the southern border.
"Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it." applies here - even if the history isn't studied because books about it are suppressed (e.g. removed from book stores and libraries because they contain the "evil racist flag").
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"in at least one instance she was denied the use of a pen to take notes after being told she might use it as a weapon"
Haha, spot on, Sherlock. She IS using her pen as a weapon. She is a journalist.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
>For the record. the Civil War was not about one side fighting for the right to own black people under the banner of a "white power" flag, either.
That's complete bullshit, that's been spread way too widely but utterly fails to match the facts.
1) The confederates were NOT fighting for states' rights, exactly the opposite in fact, they wanted to get RID of states' rights. 3 of the declarations of secession state that a fundamental reason for their secession was their anger at states like Maine for refusing to return runaway slaves or allow slave transit. In other words - they opposed the right of Maine and New York to NOT support the slave trade.
2) The confederacy was formed by a declaration which all the confederate states had to sign - much like the US was originally formed by the declaration of independence. The very FIRST article in that declaration bound all the member states to a promise to never, under any circumstances, now or in the future, ban slavery or inhibit it in any way.
3) The various declarations of secession ALL discussed slavery at length and repeatedly stated that the single most important reason for the secession was that the abolitionists in northern states threatened what they saw as the proper and natural state of the world: one where whites could own blacks as slaves.
4) Non-slave owning whites in the South did NOT in fact support the war or the secessions - that vast majority very vocally and visibly opposed it. So severe was the opposition that on multiple occasions General Lee had to threaten to burn towns to the ground before they would allow him to feed his horses or buy food for his soldiers there ! In Tennessee this happened twice !
The real heroes of the South are those citizens, who supported abolition - who despised the slave owning minority (a ruling class that tended to mistreat poorer whites pretty badly as well) and actively opposed the war to the extent that the confederate army had to threaten their lives just to buy supplies !
In fact, there isn't a single official contemporary document by any of the Southern states governments, the confederate government or any of their leaders or generals that does not repeatedly say that the war is about preserving the right to own slaves.
EVERY claim to the contrary appeared AFTER the war, in a desperate attempt to white-wash the history of why that war happened.
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Anyone else try to look up the documentary "My Country, My Country" on IMDB? You can quite literally put in the full movie title and the only auto-complete search it finds for you is "My Cousin, Vinny". I've never seen that with any other movie on IMDB, no matter how obscure. Even foreign films. But if you actually force it to execute the search, you'll see that the title is on IMDB. I wonder if I am on the watch list, now? :P
I imagine Bogaboga will thank you, at some point, for doing just what he asked.
You've lost the game already!
This whole story would only matter if America were still a democracy. You're all waaaay past that now, but willfully ignorant of the reality, and the need to fight for a dying dream.
You must have the same opinion as your government. 1st amendment is dead.
This is the message the government sends.
The feds view Snowdon as one of the biggest cases of treason in modern times and she was a link.
When someone is stopped a number of people spread over a range of pay grades are involved. Try adding a couple of orders of magnitude.
Remember back when travel to the US didn't include this level of harassment?
We've come a long way, brother! Today, it is common practice to have your property stolen with no legal recourse. Today, you're smart if you're scared to complain. And think about it: Laptops are harmless. Data isn't going to jump out and eat anybody while you're in flight.
The desire to know everything about you is indicative of an obsessive, sick need to control. The only thing more pathetic are those who welcome it; the folks beaten as kids for not being obedient enough or for thinking without permission.