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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.
you do realise that all these detentions happened years before the Snowden leaks?
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.
Or it could be this.
"Poitras has been subject to monitoring by the U.S. Government, which she speculates is because of a wire transfer she sent in 2006 to Iraqi doctor Riyadh al-Adhadh, a suspected Sunni insurgent"
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
...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.
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)
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
I'm not sure what you mean. It is not legal for the IRS to "harass people hoping to change policy."
It is, however, legal for the IRS to ask organizations claiming tax exemption as charities to show that they are not engaging in political lobbying (because political organizations are not tax exempt). If that's what you call "harassing," then, no, not only is it not illegal, it is in fact part of IRS's job.
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
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.
Who cares what other people posted at some other time? Respond to what I said, not some mythical personified slashdot. You're making a false category error in your thinking.
Pretty sure there's a freedom of association clause in the Constitution.
It took me forever to find, but there it is, right next to the freedom of the press clause, in a whole section about this, right at the top of the Bill of Rights. Very easy to gloss right over that.
You gotta make an effort!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
http://dailycaller.com/2015/06...
Another blatant case of government employees trying to get even with people they don't agree with.
A corporate oligarchy isn't a fascist state. Fascism tightly controls and regulates private businesses, trade organizations, and banking interests, and provides social programs for it's citizens (free medical care, free university level education, public health programs, universal old age pensions, etc.), and that is coupled with strong nationalism, and in the case of the German fascists, virulent racism and aggressive expansion. Not much of that is characteristic of the emerging corporate oligarchies. They both suck, but they aren't the same.
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!!
If fewer people had your attitude and pressed for change, things would change. That's the only way they change.
It's called the "Privileges and Immunities Clause". All citizens have the RIGHT to travel in and through all of the US states, the District, territories and possessions. If you are a citizen of the United States, no one has the authority to bar you from entry into any one of the United States, etc.
It's just wikipedia - but any intelligent person can read the content, then search out arguments, both pro and con.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Gubbermint says the same thing on this page: http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/...
"Citizens are also allowed to re-enter the U.S. repeatedly without being required to re-establish proof of admissibility."
If a US citizen IS denied entry into the United States, he has this to fall back on:
http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/us...
If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or
intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth,
Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any
right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of
the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same;
or
If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the
premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free
exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured -
They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than
ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in
violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an
attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit
aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined
under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life,
or both, or may be sentenced to death.
Long story short, the gubbermint recognizes that fucking with a citizens rights is serious business, potentially punishable by death.
"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
Yet another reason NOT to be on Facebook.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I make sure I fart every time a TSA agent has to hand check me. It's my little way of protesting. It's a stupid system.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
It's not possible for an honest person to make this claim.
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)
Liberal weenies love to crow about Obamacare but all it really did was to provide corporate welfare for the insurance industry. It didn't actually provide care. It didn't even make health insurance terribly affordable. It certainly didn't improve deductibles and other out of pocket expenses.
Insurance is not "health care". I cheap or free clinic is health care.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
So all former and current members of Congress who served with any of the people on this list should be subject to the same level of scrutiny every single time they travel?
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.
The retroactive immunity came much later.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
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.
#RacistFlagsMustGo(except for Black Power flags)
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.
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.
That does not make it right. I *hope* that is the contention here.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
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.
it's not possible for an honest person to have need of the 5th amendment
Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.
Remember that next time you talk to a cop and they don't feel you were "concerned" enough about the situation and use that fact against you in a court of law: http://reason.com/blog/2014/08...
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Might be. I wonder if the CIA/DOD/executive branch folks who helped armed ISIS are also on a list like that.
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..
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.
if you're not on a Government Watchlist, you're not doing it right.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Mainstream media are dripfed propaganda by the Government with explicit instructions that define their conditions of operation in the jurisdiction: that they print what is given them and nothing more.
Examples: GMP leaked emails to Channel 5 and the BBC to change their stories regarding the Barton Moss anti-fracking protests. The same Police Authority emailing Channel Four News and the Dispatches programme instructing them not to show raw footage of police activity (including footage of assaults on the public by police officers) at the site. the privately owned quango calling itself ATVOD (the Authority for Television On Demand, formerly the Association~) threatening action against independent journalists including the UKColumn and others for being "unauthorised news media organisations(!)" and "Too television-like", and even going to such lengths as threatening to prosecute under copyright legislation for using common word combinations in broadcasts and in print.
These examples all follow close on the heels of the complete farce that was the Leveson Inquiry.
But, don't take my word for it. Take a look at what other (nonlocal mainstream and/or independent sites like RT, the New York Community Media Alliance, Namac, IFP, the UKColumn, and PieNMash Films) outlets have to say on the subject of soft censorship. They've all had to deal with attempted Government influence on their output, to which their unanimous retort: "I refer you to the response given in Arkell v Pressdram."
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
If you have suspicion that someone is breaking the Law, have your evidence ready before publicly airing it, and be absolutely prepared to defend your statement when you do.
yeah we'd have to disqualify every republican presidential candidate who has accused obama of breaking the law
None of the criminals among my circle of family or acquaintences were active or under investigation when I interacted with them.
how do you know this?
No doubt government is always attempting to co-opt the press to portray only what makes them look good and they have been successful to a degree. But the various leaks, corruption/waste stories and abuse of power pieces over the last decade or so have show that there are some holdouts that scoff at the government line. Also to a degree the internet has taken over for some of the "shaming" of "oppressive officers" that was once predominantly taken care of the press, with blog stories, Debt clocks & internet video/audio.
So, you know the evidence against her better than the authorities? You think if there was enough to charge her they'd let her go every single fucking time?
And thank god that they do, otherwise we wouldn't know what kind of sleazy bullshit our country's doing.
You might be OK living in a country with ubiquitous surveillance and no Fourth Amendment, but there are still a significant number of Americans who are not.
You don't know as much about the entire Snowden saga if you think the reason he ended up in Russia was anything but the United States pulling his passport while he was on a layover in Russia on his way to Bolivia. If you don't have the initiative to find these things out for yourself, you should keep your obeisance to a regime that no longer recognizes your rights to yourself.
You are welcome on my lawn.
In all seriousness, If I'm a civil servant (Note not an politically appointed one, just a white collar worker) and the Speaker of the House starts grandstanding about people going to jail, I'm certainly not offering my neck out. If I'm in her position I tell them to go pound sand too. She literally has nothing to gain by testifying even presuming she is innocent and honest people can get tripped up in testimony very easy. If they wanted her testimony that bad they could have easily had it by giving her immunity.
Brings to mind the the quote "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
Not, it's not easy. De-authorizing usually involves guns and a whole lot of people dying.
-- Will program for bandwidth
And with this post it becomes official: "whining" now exclusively means "I can't point out any logical or factual errors in that position I don't like, but boy howdy I sure can't bring myself to admit that!". Congratulations on being the one to bring it past the tipping point!
he's entirely too much like his Republican Predecessor.
Congratulations on admitting the obvious. Anyone who claims to hate GWB, but still supported Obama after he signed his first extension of the PATRIOT act, is and idiot or a goddamned hypocrite.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
> Notably, not a single one mentions corporations or businesses, nor any mention of socialist programs
You must have not searched very far.
“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.” - Musolini, who was himself quoting Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile.
There is some doubt about the exact wording (which libertarians have stretched to "he never said that" in their usual spurious approach to dealing with inconvenient facts) but there is absolutely not doubt that Musolini believed and repeatedly expressed the sentiment. Indeed, anybody sufficiently familiar with the history of Italy during the Musolini years will confirm it.
It's interesting how few Americans know anything about that, the only part of fascism they learned about was "autocratic rule" with no idea of the mechanisms or economic system it used (indeed, most Americans believe it was socialist which is flat out false - both Hitler and Musolini despised socialism and communism with a hatred that would have made McCarthy look like a liberal - that's WHY Hitler invaded Russia, Hitler used the socialists to get into power and kicked them out in his very first speech after he achieved it).
Funny story - the LAST time I mentioned this quote and history an incredulous American gave me a very long rant about how it couldn't possibly be true (utterly devoid of any actual facts as rants tend to be) - and then an Italian slashdotter, who obviously learned his own country's history in rather more detail than Americans do (much like most people outside America only know the highlights reel of US history - but without the extra stuff learned from the endless self-glorification of Hollywood movies) replied to confirm what I said. Facism is just another name for corporatism - an ultra-capitalist state known not for it's heavy regulation but rather for massive deregulation of favored industries, and choking regulation only on disfavored competition.
Frankly the ONLY difference between the US of today and the Italy of 1930 is that Italy in 1930 didn't pretend to have elections.
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>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/...
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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.
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