Archive for June, 2013

Ryan Anderson discusses what the Supreme Court got wrong in its marriage decisions—but why the proponents of same-sex marriage failed to achieve their goal of a court-imposed nationwide redefinition. One thing is clear: the debate about marriage will continue, now more than ever.

The morning after two important—and troubling—Supreme Court decisions in the Proposition 8 and Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) cases, here’s the lay of the land. The important takeaway: The marriage debate is every bit as live today as it was yesterday morning…and that means it’s time to redouble our efforts to stand for marriage across America. Some key numbers following the decisions:

50 The number of states whose marriage laws remain the same after the Court’s marriage decisions.

38 The number of states with laws defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. That includes California, where the scope of today’s Prop 8 decision beyond the specific plaintiffs will be the subject of ongoing debate and, most likely, further litigation.

12 The number of states that can now force the federal government to recognize their redefinition of marriage. The Court struck Section 3 of DOMA, which means that it must recognize same-sex marriages in states that redefine marriage.

1 The number of sections of the Defense of Marriage Act struck down yesterday (Section 3). Section 2, which ensures that no state will be forced to recognize another state’s redefinition of marriage, is still law.

0 The number of states forced to recognize other states’ redefinition of marriage.

The important news you may not be hearing is that the U.S. Supreme Court did not redefine marriage across the nation. That means the debate about marriage will continue. States are free to uphold policies recognizing that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, so that children have a mother and a father.

States will lead the way even as we work to restore clear marriage policy at the federal level. And in the states, support for marriage as the union of a man and a woman remains strong.

Still, the Court should have respected the authority of California citizens and Congress.

On DOMA, the Court did not respect Congress’s authority to define marriage for the purposes of federal programs and benefits. The Court got federalism wrong.

On Proposition 8, the citizens of California who voted twice to pass Prop 8 should have been able to count on their Governor and Attorney General to defend the state’s constitution. That’s what democratic self-government is all about.

Now more than ever, we need to make it clear why marriage as the union of a man and a woman matters—for children, for civil society, and for limited government. As citizens, we all need to be prepared to make the case for marriage. That’s why we at Heritage have worked with allies to produce a booklet called “What You Need to Know about Marriage.” Download your free copy at TheMarriageFacts.com.

http://blog.heritage.org/2013/06/27/morning-bell-the-supreme-courts-marriage-decisions-by-the-numbers/

Glenn Beck Reacts to Supreme Courts Ruling DOMA Unconstitutional – 6/26/13

Jay Sekulow Spoke with Glenn Beck: SCOTUS Decision on DOMA & Prop 8

Breaking Down the Court’s Prop 8 and Doma Rulings | Supreme Court Same-Sex Marriage Ruling

Wall Street Journal Legal Editor Ashby Jones breaks down the Supreme Court’s Prop 8 and Doma rulings, and what the decisions could mean for same-sex marriage going forward.

Supreme Court strikes down key part of DOMA, dismisses Prop 8 case

America : Supreme Court shoots down DOMA and Prop 8 within the U.S. (Jun 26, 2013)

Rush Limbaugh: Scalia was right when he warned repeal of sodomy laws would lead to gay marriage

Glenn Beck and Rand Paul DOMA Reaction: Gay Marriage Rulings Will Lead To Polygamy, Zoophilia

The Five Reacts To Supreme Court’s DOMA And Prop 8 Rulings ‘This Is A Huge Conservative Victory’

Dr. Jeffress Discusses the SCOTUS DOMA Decision on The O’Reilly Factor (6/26/13)

DOMA Struck DOWN – Justice Scalia’s Hypocritical Rage Quotes

Andrew Sullivan: Gay People Like Glenn Greenwald Can Now Come Back, and Jesus Was Thrilled Today

Sally Kohn Battles Fox Panelist Over SCOTUS Ruling: How Does My Right To Marry Affect You At All?

Fox News contributor Sally Kohn today reacted to the Supreme Court ruling that her partnership and the unions of many other people across the country deserve equal protection under the law. She said that this is the latest step in the United States’ attempts over history in “striving towards making a more perfect union,” adding that in the United States, you can’t just pass a law “solely for the purpose of discriminating.”

Kohn thought it was smart for the Supreme Court to lean on the states rights argument, which she said conservatives would be cheering had this been literally any other political issue. Fellow panelist Ryan Anderson found it contradictory that the Supreme Court would take make such a significant ruling for states rights in the DOMA case, yet dismissed the California Proposition 8 case in which the people actually voted to decide how to define marriage in their state. He argued that the government’s business in getting involved in marriage is to promote marriages that can produce children, hence the definition of marriage being one man and one woman.

Kohn told Anderson that he can make “excuses” but the fact is laws passed just to discriminate are wrong. She also pointed out that the ruling is also significant due to the marriage benefits that gay couples can now get. Anderson shot back that the Supreme Court didn’t exactly say that state bans against gay marriage are unconstitutional, and reaffirmed that the California ban “tells the truth about marriage.” Kohn said, “I’m a little confused as to how my right to marry affects Ryan at all, unless we’re getting married, Ryan.”

Headline: Supreme Court rules DOMA is unconstitutional

Watch Rep. Bachmann and Others Speak Against DOMA Ruling

Moments After DOMA Ruling – Gay Activists Promise to Push Gay Marriage Nation-Wide

Supreme Court Strikes Down DOMA | WSJ WorldStream | Supreme Court DOMA Ruling

Mixed Reactions to Supreme Court Decisions

Supreme Court strikes down DOMA

In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court strikes down a federal provision denying benefits to legally married couples. For more CNN videos, visit our site at http://www.cnn.com/video/

Edith Windsor, who filed the original case that could upend the Defense of Marriage Act, says just getting the case to this point is a kind of victory.

“We’ve made a huge step forward and a huge difference in how people look at us,” she said. “And so, it’ll happen. Another year if not now.”

It was the death of Windsor’s life partner, Thea Clara Spyer, that led to the case.

Theirs was not a fleeting romance — the women were together 42 years sharing ups and downs, laughs and tears. They also shared what they’d earned together, including from Windsor’s job as a programmer with IBM and Spyer’s work as a psychologist.

FRANK SINATRA – STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT – LIVE

Frank Sinatra – My Way (Live in London 1971)

The Supreme Court struck down part of DOMA. Here’s what you need to know

By Dylan Matthews

The Supreme Court today struck down a key part of the Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 law signed by President Clinton that defined marriage as between a man and a woman for the purpose of federal law.

The decision was 5-4, with the majority opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy — who also wrote the court’s historic gay rights decisions in Romer v. Evans and Lawrence v. Texas. Justices Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, and John Roberts all filed dissents. Justice Clarence Thomas joined Scalia’s dissent, and joined Alito’s in part, while Roberts joined Scalia’s in part. Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined Kennedy’s majority opinion.

Here’s what you need to know.

What was the actual case about?

United States v. Windsor concerns Edith Windsor, who was widowed when her wife Thea Spyer died in 2009. Windsor and Spyer were married in 2007 in Canada after being partners for 40 years. Windsor was forced to pay $363,053 in estate tax on Spyer’s estate, which she argues she would not have to pay if she had been Spyer’s husband. Thus, she claims, the Defense of Marriage Act, which prevents her from being considered Spyer’s spouse for the purposes of federal taxes, literally cost her $363,053.

How did it get here?

The Obama administration has declined to defend DOMA, and so the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG), a standing organization in Congress, took over the law’s defense at the instruction of House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled in June that DOMA’s definition of marriage as between a man and a woman lacked a rational basis, and ordered damages of $363,053 paid to Windsor. In October, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals concurred, with a panel ruling 2-1 for Windsor. Then the Supreme Court considered it. Here are the arguments in the case:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/26/the-supreme-court-struck-down-doma-heres-what-you-need-to-know/

What issues did the Court have to decide on?\

Three. The first was the equal protection issue. The second was whether the fact that the executive branch agrees with Windsor means that there isn’t a real controversy in this case, meaning the court doesn’t have jurisdiction. The third was whether BLAG would be harmed by DOMA being overturned, and thus whether it has standing to defend the law (a friend-of-the-court brief by Harvard professor Vicki Jackson argues that even Congress doesn’t have standing, and even if it did, BLAG wouldn’t).

Justice Kennedy’s ruling held that the court had jurisdiction in the case, effectively ruling that there was a real controversy and that BLAG had standing to defend the law. His ruling was solely based on his judgment that DOMA violates the equal protection clause.

What does this mean for gay couples?

It depends on what area you’re talking about. “What section 3 of DOMA does is that it performs a find and replace of every instance of ‘spouse’ or ‘husband’ or ‘wife’ appears and changes it so that it’s “opposite sex husband” or ‘opposite sex wife’,” says Rita Lin, a partner at Morrison and Foerster in San Francisco who argued Golinski v. United States Office of Personnel Management, another DOMA case. “The effect is going to vary based on which of the thousand-plus statutes or regulations are affected.”

There are some clear-cut cases. It seems pretty clear that legally married same-sex couples where one member is employed by the federal government are entitled to spousal benefits, just the same as any other married couple. For other legally married couples who don’t live in states where same-sex marriage is recognized, there’s some question as to whether the “state of celebration” or “state of residence” matters. Usually, the former is the standard used, meaning a marriage is valid if it’s valid in the state it was celebrated. That would mean most legally married same-sex couples, regardless of where they live, are entitled to spousal benefits.

Other areas, like tax law, may require additional rule-making before same-sex couples are treated equally. “Some operate just based on policy, without getting into a regulation or statute, so those can be modified very quickly,” Tara Borelli, an attorney at Lambda Legal who was also a counsel in Golinski. ”Others require rule-making.” And others require statutory changes. Borelli notes that Social Security will probably have to be changed by Congress for same-sex couples to be treated equally.

This does open the door for bi-national same-sex couples to be treated equally under the law. That means that comprehensive immigration reform probably need not include a provision specifically tailored to making sure bi-national partners of same-sex couples can get visas automatically, the same as opposite-sex partners. As Paul Smith, a partner at Jenner & Block and arguably the leading gay rights litigator in the country (he won Lawrence v. Texas, overturning state bans on gay sex), told me, “My understanding is that the elimination of DOMA would by itself mean that all bi-national married couples would have the same rights, whether same sex or not.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/26/the-supreme-court-struck-down-doma-heres-what-you-need-to-know/

Background Articles and Videos

Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas (Dale Carpenter)

n 2003 the Supreme Court struck down America’s sodomy laws in the case of Lawrence v. Texas. In Flagrant Conduct, a work nine years in the making, Dale Carpenter challenges what we thought we knew about the case. Drawing on dozens of interviews, he analyzes the claims of virtually every person involved. Carpenter first introduces us to the interracial defendants themselves, who were hardly prepared “for the strike of lightning” that would upend their lives, and then to the Harris County arresting officers. He charts not only the careful legal strategy that Lambda Legal attorneys adopted to make the case compatible to a conservative Supreme Court but also the miscalculations of the Houston prosecutors who assumed that the nationâ€™s extant sodomy laws would be upheld. Dale Carpenter clerked for Judge Edith H. Jones of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and blogs frequently for The Volokh Conspiracy. Charles Lane is the author of The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction.

Geoffrey R. Stone of the University of Chicago Law School says, “Dale Carpenter’s Flagrant Conduct does for Lawrence v. Texas what Richard Kluger’s Simple Justice and Anthony Lewis’s Gideon’s Trumpet did for Brown v. Board of Education and Gideon v. Wainwright. It tells the story of a profoundly dramatic and important Supreme Court decision in a way that brings to life the stakes, the participants, the justices, and the drama of the constitutional controversy. It is a landmark achievement.”

Lawrence Vs. Texas (2003) – Opinion (Kennedy) – Supreme Court Of The United Sates Of America

Justice Kennedy delivering the opinion of the United States Supreme Court in the case John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Garner v Texas 02-102 (2003). The court found that a Texas law classifying consensual, adult homosexual intercourse as illegal sodomy violated the privacy and liberty of adults to engage in private intimate conduct under the 14th amendment. Kennedy is joined by Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer, while O’Connor wrote a separate concurrence. Justice Scalia wrote a dissent, which is joined by Rehnquist, Thomas. Thomas also wrote a separate dissenting opinion.

Lawrence Vs. Texas (2003) – Dissent (Scalia) – Supreme Court Of The United Sates Of America

Lawrence v. Texas

Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003),^[1] is a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court. In the 6–3 ruling, the Court struck down the sodomy law in Texas and, by extension, invalidated sodomy laws in thirteen other states, making same-sex sexual activity legal in every U.S. state and territory. The Court overturned its previous ruling on the same issue in the 1986 case Bowers v. Hardwick, where it upheld a challenged Georgia statute and did not find a constitutional protection of sexual privacy.

Lawrence explicitly overruled Bowers, holding that it had viewed the liberty interest too narrowly. The Court held that intimate consensual sexual conduct was part of the liberty protected by substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. Lawrence invalidated similar laws throughout the United States that criminalized sodomy between consenting adults acting in private, whatever the sex of the participants.^[2]

The case attracted much public attention, and a large number of amici curiae (“friends of the court”) briefs were filed. Its outcome was celebrated by gay rights advocates, who hoped that further legal advances might result as a consequence.

Background

Legal punishments for sodomy often included heavy fines and/or life prison sentences, with some states, beginning with Illinois in 1827, denying other rights, such as suffrage, to anyone convicted of the crime of sodomy.^{[citation needed]} In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, several states imposed various eugenics laws against anyone deemed to be a “sexual pervert”.^{[citation needed]} As late as 1970, Connecticut denied a driver’s license to a man for being an “admitted homosexual”.^[3]

As of 1960, every state had an anti-sodomy law.^[4] In 1961, the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code advocated repealing sodomy laws as they applied to private, adult, consensual behavior.^[5] Two years later the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) took its first major case in opposition to these laws.^[6] Most judges were largely unsympathetic to the substantive due process claims raised.

In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Supreme Court struck down a law barring the use of contraceptives by married couples. In Griswold for the first time the Supreme Court recognized, at least for married couples, a right to privacy,^[7] drawing on the Fourth Amendment’s protection of private homes from searches and seizures without a warrant based on probable cause, the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process of law, and the Ninth Amendment’s assurance that rights not specified in the Constitution are “retained by the people”. Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972) expanded the scope of sexual privacy rights to unmarried persons. In 1973, the choice whether to have an abortion was found to be protected by the Constitution in Roe v. Wade.

In Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), the Supreme Court heard a constitutional challenge to sodomy laws brought by a man who had been arrested, but was not prosecuted, for engaging in oral sex with another man in his home. The Court rejected this challenge in a 5 to 4 decision. Justice Byron White’s majority opinion emphasized that Eisenstadt and Roe had only recognized a right to engage in procreative sexual activity, and that long-standing moral antipathy toward homosexual sodomy was enough to argue against the notion of a “right” to sodomy. Justice Blackmun, writing in dissent, argued that Eisenstadt held that the Constitution protects people as individuals, not as family units.^[8] He then reasoned that because state intrusions are equally burdensome on an individual’s personal life regardless of his marital status or sexual orientation, then there is no reason to treat the rights of citizens in same-sex couples any differently.^[9]

By the time of the Lawrence decision, nine states—Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia—still banned consensual sodomy without respect to the sex of those involved, and four—Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri—prohibited same-sex couples from engaging in anal and oral sex.^[4]

History

Arrest of Lawrence and Garner

On September 17, 1998, John Lawrence,^[10]^[11] a gay 55-year-old medical technologist, was hosting two gay acquaintances, Tyron Garner,^[12] age 31, and Robert Eubanks,^[13] 40, at his apartment on the outskirts of Houston. Lawrence and Eubanks had been friends for more than 20 years. Garner and Eubanks had a tempestuous on-again off-again romantic relationship since 1990. Lacking transportation home, the couple were preparing to spend the night. Eubanks, who had been drinking heavily, left to purchase a soda from a nearby vending machine. Apparently outraged that Lawrence had been flirting with Garner, he called police and reported “a black male going crazy with a gun” at Lawrence’s apartment.^[14]

Four Harris County sheriff’s deputies responded within minutes and Eubanks pointed them to the apartment. They entered the unlocked apartment toward 11 p.m. with their weapons drawn. In accordance with police procedures, the first to arrive, Joseph Quinn, took the lead both in approaching the scene and in later determining what charges to bring, if any. He later reported seeing Lawrence and Garner having anal sex in the bedroom. A second officer reported seeing them engaged in oral sex, and two others did not report seeing the pair having sex. Lawrence did not acquiesce to the police. Instead he repeatedly challenged the police for entering his home. Quinn had discretionary authority to charge them for a variety of offenses and then to arrest them or not. When Quinn considered charging them with having sex in violation of state law, he had to get an Assistant District Attorney to check to the statutes to be certain they covered sexual activity inside a residence. He was told that Texas’s anti-sodomy statute, the “Homosexual Conduct” law, made it a Class C misdemeanor if someone “engages in deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex”.^[15] The statute, Chapter 21, Sec. 21.06 of the Texas Penal Code, had been adopted in 1973 when the state revised its criminal code to end its proscription on heterosexual anal and oral intercourse.^[16]

Quinn decided to charge Lawrence and Garner with having “deviate sex” and to arrest them. In the opinion of the author of the most detailed account of the arrests, Quinn’s decision was likely driven by Lawrence’s verbal abuse, along with some combination of Quinn’s negative response to homosexuality, the fact that Lawrence was white and Garner was black, and the false gun report.^[17] In the separate arrest reports he filed for each, he wrote that he had seen the arrestee “engaged in deviate sexual conduct namely, anal sex, with another man”.^[17] Lawrence and Garner were held in jail overnight. At a hearing the next day, they pled not guilty to a charge of “homosexual conduct”. They were released toward midnight.^[18] Eubanks pled no contest to charges of filing a false police report. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail but released early.^[19]

Prosecution and appeals

The gay rights advocates from Lambda Legal litigating the case convinced Lawrence and Garner not to contest the charges despite their innocence and to plead no contest instead.^[20] On November 20, Lawrence and Garner pleaded no contest to the charges and waived their right to a trial. Justice of the Peace Mike Parrott found them guilty and imposed a $100 fine and court costs of $41.25 on each defendant. When the defense attorneys realized that the fine was below the minimum required to permit them to appeal the convictions, they asked the judge to impose a higher penalty. Parrott, well aware that the attorneys intended to use the case to raise a constitutional challenge, increased it to $125 with the agreement of the prosecutor.^[21]

To appeal, Lawrence and Garner needed to have their cases tried in Texas Criminal Court. Their attorneys asked the court to dismiss the charges against them on Fourteenth Amendment equal protection grounds, claiming that the law was unconstitutional since it prohibited sodomy between same-sex couples, but not between heterosexual couples. They also asserted a right to privacy and that the Supreme Court’s decision in Bowers v. Hardwick that found no privacy protection for consensual sex between homosexuals was “wrongly decided”.^[22] On December 22, Judge Sherman Ross denied the defense motions to dismiss. The defendants again pled “no contest”. Ross fined them $200 each, the amount agreed upon in advance by both sides.^[23]

A three-judge panel of the Texas Fourteenth Court of Appeals heard the case on November 3, 1999.^[24] Their 2–1 decision issued on June 8, 2000, ruled the Texas law was unconstitutional. Justice John S. Anderson and Chief Justice Paul Murphy found that the law violated the 1972 Equal Rights Amendment to the Texas Constitution, which bars discrimination based on sex, race, color, creed, or national origin. J. Harvey Hudson dissented.^[25] The Court of Appeals decided to review the case en banc. On March 15, 2001, without hearing oral arguments, it reversed the three-judge panel’s decision and upheld the law’s constitutionality 7–2, denying both the substantive due process and equal protection arguments.^[26] Attorneys for Lawrence and Garner asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the highest appellate court in Texas for criminal matters, to review the case. After a year’s delay, on April 17, 2002, that request was denied. Lambda Legal’s Harlow called that decision “a major abdication of judicial responsibility”. Bill Delmore, the Harris County prosecutor who argued the case, called the judges “big chickens” and said: “They have a history of avoiding the hot potato cases if they can.”^[27]

Consideration by the Supreme Court

In a petition for certiorari filed in the U.S. Supreme Court on July 16, 2002, Lambda Legal attorneys asked the Court to consider:^[28]

1. Whether the petitioners’ criminal convictions under the Texas “Homosexual Conduct” law—which criminalizes sexual intimacy by same-sex couples, but not identical behavior by different-sex couples—violate the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection of the laws?2. Whether the petitioners’ criminal convictions for adult consensual sexual intimacy in their home violate their vital interests in liberty and privacy protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?3. Whether Bowers v. Hardwick should be overruled?

On December 2, 2002, the Court agreed to hear the case. Lambda Legal coordinated the submission of sixteen amicus curiae briefs to complement their own brief. Submitting organizations included the American Bar Association, the American Psychological Society, the American Public Health Association, the Cato Institute, the Log Cabin Republicans, a group of history professors, and a group of religious denominations.^[29] An op-ed in support by former Sen. Alan Simpson appeared in The Wall Street Journal on the morning scheduled for oral argument.^[30] The attorneys for Texas did not control the amicus briefs submitted in support of their position. Two were by noteworthy scholars, Jay Alan Sekulow and Robert P. George, while the remainder represented religious and social conservatism. Several, including that of Liberty Counsel, depicted homosexuals as self-destructive, disease-prone, and promiscuous. The states of Alabama, South Carolina, and Utah advised the Court that unlike heterosexual sodomy, homosexual sodomy had “severe physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual consequences”.^[31]

At oral argument on March 26, 2003, Paul M. Smith, an experienced litigator who had argued eight cases before the Supreme Court, spoke on behalf of the plaintiffs.^[32] Texas Attorney General John Cornyn, then a candidate for the U.S. Senate, refused to have his office take the case. Charles A. Rosenthal, District Attorney of Harris County, represented the state.^[33] His performance was later described as “the worst oral argument in years”, but some believe his lack of preparation reflected his lack of enthusiasm for the statute he was defending.^[34]^[35]

On April 7, 2003, Sen. Rick Santorum referred to the oral arguments in Lawrence when asked his views on homosexuality:

We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose…. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything…. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn’t exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution, this right that was created…in Griswold…^[36]

Decision

On June 26, 2003, the Supreme Court released its 6–3 decision striking down the Texas statute. Five justices held it violated due process guarantees, and a sixth, Sandra Day O’Connor, held it violated equal protection guarantees. The opinion overruled Bowers v. Hardwick and implicitly invalidated similar sodomy statutes in 13 other states.

Majority opinion

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion which Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer joined. He wrote: “The petitioners [Lawrence and Garner] are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime.” Kennedy reviewed the assumption the court made in Bowers, using the words of Chief Justice Burger’s concurring opinion in that case, that “Condemnation of [homosexual practices] is firmly rooted in Judeao-Christian moral and ethical standards.” He reviewed the history of legislation that criminalized certain sexual practices, but without regard for the gender of those involved. He cited the Model Penal Code’s recommendations since 1955, the Wolfenden Report of 1963, and a 1981 decision of the European Court of Human Rights.

He endorsed the views Justice Stevens had outlined in his dissent in Bowers and wrote: “Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today. It ought not to remain binding precedent. Bowers v. Hardwick should be and now is overruled.” The majority decision also held that the intimate, adult consensual conduct at issue here was part of the liberty protected by the substantive component of the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process protections. Holding that “the Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual”, the court struck down the anti-sodomy law as unconstitutional.

Kennedy underscored the decision’s focus on consensual adult sexual conduct in a private setting:

The present case does not involve minors. It does not involve persons who might be injured or coerced or who are situated in relationships where consent might not easily be refused. It does not involve public conduct or prostitution. It does not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter.^[37]

O’Connor’s concurrence

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor filed a concurring opinion in which she offered a different rationale for invalidating the Texas sodomy statute. She disagreed with the overturning of Bowers—she had been in the Bowers majority—and disputed the court’s invocation of due process guarantees of liberty in this context. Rather than including sexuality under protected liberty, she used the equal protection argument and struck down the law because it was directed at one group. O’Connor maintained that a sodomy law that was neutral both in effect and application might be constitutional, but that there was little to fear because “democratic society” would not tolerate it for long. O’Connor noted that a law limiting marriage to heterosexual couples would pass the rational scrutiny as long as it was designed to “preserv[e] the traditional institution of marriage” and not simply based on the state’s dislike of homosexual persons.

Scalia’s dissent

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a dissent, which Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas joined. Scalia objected to the Court’s decision to revisit Bowers, pointing out many decisions from lower courts that relied on Bowers that might now need to be reconsidered.^[38] He noted that the same rationale used to overturn Bowers^[39] could have been used to overturn Roe v. Wade, which the Justices in the majority in Lawrence had recently upheld in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Scalia also criticized the majority opinion for failing to give the same respect to stare decisis that three of those in the majority had insisted on in Casey.^[40]

Scalia wrote that if the court was not prepared to validate laws based on moral choices as it had done in Bowers, state laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity would not prove sustainable.^[41]

He wrote that:

Today’s opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct…. [T]he Court has taken sides in the culture war, departing from its role of assuring, as neutral observer, that the democratic rules of engagement are observed.

He cited the majority opinion’s concern that the criminalization of sodomy could be the basis for discrimination against homosexuals as evidence that the majority ignored the views of most Americans:

So imbued is the Court with the law profession’s anti-anti-homosexual culture, that it is seemingly unaware that the attitudes of that culture are not obviously “mainstream”; that in most States what the Court calls “discrimination” against those who engage in homosexual acts is perfectly legal.

He continued: “Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means.” The majority’s “invention of a brand-new ‘constitutional right'”, he wrote, showed it was “impatient of democratic change”.

Thomas’s dissent

Justice Thomas wrote in a separate dissent that the law the Court struck down was “uncommonly silly”, a phrase from Justice Potter Stewart’s dissent in Griswold v. Connecticut, but he voted to uphold it as he could find “no general right of privacy” or relevant liberty in the Constitution. He added that if he were a member of the Texas legislature he would vote to repeal the law.

Reactions

President Bush’s press secretary Ari Fleischer refused to comment on the decision, noting only that the administration had not filed a brief in the case. As governor, Bush had opposed repeal of the Texas sodomy provision, which he called a “symbolic gesture of traditional values”.^[42] After quoting Fleischer calling it “a state matter”, Linda Greenhouse, writing in The New York Times, commented: “In fact, the decision today…took what had been a state-by-state matter and pronounced a binding national constitutional principle.”^[43]

The Lambda Legal’s lead attorney in the case, Ruth Harlow, stated in an interview after the ruling that “the court admitted its mistake in 1986, admitted it had been wrong then…and emphasized today that gay Americans, like all Americans, are entitled to full respect and equal claim to [all] constitutional rights.”^[44] Prof. Laurence Tribe has written that Lawrence “may well be remembered as the Brown v. Board of Education of gay and lesbian America”.^[45] Jay Alan Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice has referred to the decision as having “changed the status of homosexual acts and changed a previous ruling of the Supreme Court… this was a drastic rewrite”.^[46]

Peter LaBarbera, a senior policy analyst of the anti-LGBT group Culture and Family Institute, later president of the anti-LGBT organization Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, said that the end result of Lawrence v. Texas was “like the Roe v. Wade of the homosexual issue”.^[47]^[48] The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops called the decision “deplorable”.^[49]

Columbia Law Prof. Katherine M. Franke, in an analysis of Lawrence that appeared in June 2004, criticized its “domesticated” conception of liberty that failed to present “a robust concept of freedom”. She contrasted it with the language of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which discussed “the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life”. Lawrence‘s emphasis on geographical privacy, in her view, described a circumscribed form of liberty and failed to develop the court’s evolving assertion of the right to autonomy and personal independence. Its assumption, based on nothing in the record, that Lawrence and Garner were in a relationship and had a personal bond leaves open the court’s view of their right to express their sexuality or fulfill erotic desires. She noted how a Kansas court in Limon v. Kansas read Lawrence to allow far greater punishment for engaging in same-sex activity with a minor than different-sex activity with a minor. She terms this “the legal enforcement of heteronormative preferences”.^[50] The decision in Limon was later reversed, in part on the basis of Lawrence.^[51]

Subsequent cases

A few months later, on November 18, 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that same-sex couples have a right to marry. Though deciding the case on the basis of the state constitution, Chief Justice Margaret Marshall quoted Lawrence in its second paragraph: “Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code.”^[52]

Upon rehearing Williams v. Pryor after Lawrence, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Alabama’s ban on the sale of sex toys.^[53] Facing comparable facts, the Fifth Circuit struck down Texas’s sex toy ban holding that “morality is an insufficient justification for a statute” and “interests in ‘public morality’ cannot constitutionally sustain the statute after Lawrence“.^[54]

Lawrence invalidated age of consent laws that differed based on sexual orientation. The day after the Lawrence decision, the Supreme Court ordered the State of Kansas to review its 1999 “Romeo and Juliet” law that reduces the punishment for a teenager under 18 years of age who has consensual sexual relations with a minor no more than four years their junior, but explicitly excludes same-sex conduct from the sentence reduction.^[55] In 2004, the Kansas Appeals Court upheld the law as is, but the Kansas Supreme Court unanimously reversed the lower court’s ruling on October 21, 2005,^[56] in State v. Limon.^[57]

Subsequent federal and state case law has been quite explicit in limiting the scope of Lawrence and upholding traditional state regulations on marriage, expressly allowing a marriage-procreation link. (See Standhardt v. Superior Court ex rel County of Maricopa, 77 P.3d 451 (Ariz. App. 2003); Morrison v. Sadler, 821 N.E.2d 15 (Ind. App. 2005); Hernandez v Robles (7 NY3d 338 2005).) In Muth v. Frank, 412 F.3d 808 (7th Cir. 2005), the Seventh Circuit declined to extend Lawrence to cases of consensual adult incest, although it did say that Lawrence v. Texas was “a new substantive rule and […] thus retroactive”. The case was distinguished because parties were not similarly situated since there is in the latter case an enhanced possibility of genetic mutation of a possible offspring.

In Martin v. Ziherl, the Supreme Court of Virginia ruled the state’s fornication law unconstitutional.^[58] In the Holm case a polygamist attempted without success to use Lawrence to overturn Utah’s laws banning these polygamous relationships. The Supreme Court refused to hear his plea.^[59] The Connecticut Supreme Court rejected an argument based on Lawrence that a teacher had a constitutional right to engage in sexual activity with his female students.^[60]^[61]

The United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, the last court of appeals for Courts-Martial before the Supreme Court, has ruled that Lawrence applies to Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the article banning sodomy. It has also twice upheld prosecutions under Article 125 when applied as necessary to preserve good order and discipline in the armed forces.^[62]^[63]

Judge Vaughn Walker cited Scalia’s dissent in his decision in Perry v. Brown that found California’s Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage unconstitutional.^[64]

The level of scrutiny applied in Lawrence

Justice Scalia and others have noted that the majority did not appear to apply the strict scrutiny standard of review that would be appropriate if the Lawrence majority had recognized a full-fledged “fundamental right”. He wrote the majority, instead, applied “an unheard-of form of rational basis review that will have far-reaching implications beyond this case”.^[65]

Nan D. Hunter has argued that Lawrence used a new method of substantive due process analysis, and that the Court intended to abandon its old method of categorizing due process rights as either “fundamental” or “not fundamental” as too restrictive.^[66] Justice Souter, for example, argued in Washington v. Glucksberg that the role of the Court in all cases, including unenumerated rights cases, is to ensure that the government’s action has not been arbitrary.^[67] Justice Stevens has repeatedly criticized tiered scrutiny and prefers a more active judicial balancing test based on reasonability.^[68]

Lower courts have read Lawrence differently on the question of scrutiny. In Lofton v. Secretary of the Department of Children and Family Services the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld a state law barring adoption of children by homosexuals, holding explicitly that Lawrence did not apply strict scrutiny.^[69] In Witt v. Department of the Air Force, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that Lawrence applied intermediate scrutiny.^[70]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_v._Texas

Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )

Pronk Pops Show 115, June 28, 2013: Segment 2: Conservative Court Calls Congress Cowards: Voting Rights Act of 1965, Section 4 (b) and Its formula for Requiring Preclearance Struck Down as Unconstitutional –Videos

Posted on June 28, 2013. Filed under: American History, Business, Communications, Consitutional Law, Economics, Education, Federal Government, Government, Government Spending, History, Law, Media, Philosophy, Politics, Polls, Radio, Regulation, Security, Success, Videos, Violence, Wisdom | Tags: Articles, Department of Justice, DOJ, Nine State Required Pre-clearance, Photos, Raymond Thomas Pronk, Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, Supreme Court Decision, The Pronk Pops Show 115, Videos, Voting Rights Act of 1965 |

Pronk Pops Show 115: June 28, 2013

Pronk Pops Show 114: June 21, 2013

Pronk Pops Show 113: June 14, 2013

Pronk Pops Show 112: June 7, 2013

Pronk Pops Show 111: May 31, 2013

Pronk Pops Show 110: May 24, 2013

Pronk Pops Show 109: May 17, 2013

Pronk Pops Show 108: May 10, 2013

Pronk Pops Show 107: May 3, 2013

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 113 -115

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Show 112

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 108-111

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 106-108

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 104-105

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 101-103

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 98-100

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 94-97

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 93

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 92

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 91

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 88-90

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 84-87

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 79-83

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 74-78

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 71-73

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 68-70

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 65-67

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 62-64

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 58-61

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 55-57

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 52-54

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 49-51

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 45-48

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 41-44

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 38-40

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 34-37

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 30-33

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 27-29

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 17-26

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 16-22

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 10-15

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 01-09

Segment 2: Conservative Court Calls Congress Cowards: Voting Rights Act of 1965, Section 4 (b) and Its formula for Requiring Preclearance Struck Down as Unconstitutional –Videos

The Band – Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

Judge Napolitano ~ Supreme Court Strikes Down Key Provision Of Voting Rights Law

Voting Rights Act Takes Hit by Supreme Court – 6/25/2013

The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down a section of the Voting Rights Act, weakening a tool the federal government has used for nearly five decades to block discriminatory voting laws.

In a five-to-four ruling, the court ruled that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional. That section of the landmark 1965 law provides the formula for determining which states must have any changes to their voting laws pre-approved by the Justice Department’s civil rights division or the D.C. federal court. Nine states are required to get pre-clearance, as are certain jurisdictions in seven other states.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority that Section 4 is unconstitutional because the standards by which states are judged are “based on decades-old data and eradicated practices.”

“Nearly 50 years later, things have changed dramatically,” Roberts wrote. “The tests and devices that blocked ballot access have been forbidden nationwide for over 40 years. Yet the Act has not eased [Section 5’s] restrictions or narrowed the scope of [Section 4’s] coverage formula along the way. Instead those extraordinary and unprecedented features have been reauthorized as if nothing has changed, and they have grown even stronger.”

The court could have made a much broader ruling by striking down Section 5, which dictates that those states must get pre-clearance. However, the court decided that the Justice Department still has a role in overseeing voting laws.

Nevertheless, civil rights advocates called the ruling a huge blow to democracy.

“The Supreme Court has failed minority voters today,” Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund said Tuesday outside of the court.

The ruling underscores the Supreme Court’s lawmaking powers, challenging Congress’ overwhelmingly bipartisan decision in 2006 to renew the Voting Rights Act for another 25 years. Ifill pointed out that the court renewed the law after holding 52 hearings over nine months and amassing 15,000 pages of evidence of discrimination — including more than 600 objections to voting based on intentional discrimination in the jurisdictions covered by Section 4.

It’s now up to Congress to change the coverage rules so that Section 5 — the section requiring pre-clearance of voting laws in certain states — can continue to be enforced.

“The ball has been thrown not only in Congress’ court, but in our court,” Ifill said, calling on the public to mobilize behind an update to the law.

CLASH Sean Hannity, Juan Williams, Erik Rush over Congress fixing Voting Rights Act

Howard Fineman: Voting Rights ‘Preclearance Is Dead Unless Congress Acts Soon’

The Huffington Post Editorial Director Howard Fineman delivered a grim prognosis relating to the sustainability of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 after the Supreme Court struck from the law provisions relating to the regions of the United States which must submit reapportionment proposals to the Justice Department for preclearance. “Preclearance is dead,” Fineman said, “unless Congress acts soon.”

NBC News reporter Luke Russert began by asking Fineman how today’s ruling on the VRA impacts Democratic plans to expand into traditionally Republican states in the Deep South and Southwest.

“I think a lot is going to depend on how we come to look at discrimination and voting now,” Fineman began. “I think the way to approach this is for the Democrats to say, ‘Look, let’s move forward here.'”

RELATED: If GOP Approaches New Voting Rights Act Like They Did Immigration Reform, The Party Is Doomed

“This is an opportunity to renew for the next century the spirit of the Civil Rights Acts of the ’60s,” Fineman continued. “At the very least, what they’re going to have to do, is raise a whole lot of money for a whole lot of lawsuits all over the country.”

“I think preclearance is dead unless Congress acts soon,” he concluded. “And that’s going to mean you’re going to have to have vigilant people filing lawsuits all over the country, seeking injunctions after the fact trying to make sure the voting procedures are just.”

BREAKING NEWS Supreme Court Throws Out Voting Rights Provision

The divided U.S. Supreme Court threw out a core part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, rolling back a landmark law that opened the polls to millions of southern blacks. The justices, voting 5-4, struck down the law’s formula for determining which states must get federal approval before changing their election rules. The ruling all but invalidates the section preclearance requirement, leaving it without force unless Congress can enact a new method for determining which jurisdictions are covered.

Part of Voting Rights Act Unconstitutional

The Five Clash w/ Beckel on Voting Rights: Supreme Court Has Gutted Civil Rights And It’s Just Wrong

Al Sharpton: The Supreme Court ‘Just Cancelled The Dream’ Of MLK Jr. In Voting Rights Decision

Voting Rights Act Section 4 Struck Down By Supreme Court ~ 6. 25. 2013

Scalia: ‘Racial Entitlement’ in Voting Rights Act

SCOTUS Conservatives Signal Intention To Dismantle Voting Rights Act

Supreme Courts Rules Struck Down Of Voting Rights Act

Joan Baez – The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

Voting Rights Act of 1965

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (42 U.S.C. §§ 1973–1973aa-6)^[1] is a landmark piece of national legislation in the United States that outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the U.S.^[2]

Echoing the language of the 15th Amendment, the Act prohibits states from imposing any “voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure … to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.”^[3] Specifically, Congress intended the Act to outlaw the practice of requiring otherwise qualified voters to pass literacy tests in order to register to vote, a principal means by which Southern states had prevented African Americans from exercising the franchise.^[2] The Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had earlier signed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law.^[2]^[4]

The Act established extensive federal oversight of elections administration, providing that states with a history of discriminatory voting practices (so-called “covered jurisdictions”) could not implement any change affecting voting without first obtaining the approval of the Department of Justice, a process known as preclearance.^[5] These enforcement provisions applied to states and political subdivisions (mostly in the South) that had used a “device” to limit voting and in which less than 50 percent of the population was registered to vote in 1964.^[5] The Act has been renewed and amended by Congress four times, the most recent being a 25-year extension signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2006.^[6]

The Act is widely considered a landmark in civil-rights legislation,^[7] though some of its provisions have sparked political controversy. During the debate over the 2006 extension, some Republican members of Congress objected to renewing the preclearance requirement (the Act’s primary enforcement provision), arguing that it represents an overreach of federal power and places unwarranted bureaucratic demands on Southern states that have long since abandoned the discriminatory practices the Act was meant to eradicate.^[8] Conservative legislators also opposed requiring states with large Spanish-speaking populations to provide bilingual ballots.^[9] Congress nonetheless voted to extend the Act for twenty-five years with its original enforcement provisions left intact.^[10]

In the 2013 case Shelby County v. Holder, the United States Supreme Court struck down Section 4(b) of the Act and its formula for requiring preclearance as unconstitutional based on current conditions, saying it was rational and needed at the time it was enacted but is no longer necessary. Preclearance itself was not struck down, but it currently has no effect unless or until Congress passes a new formula.^[11]

Background

The first page of the Voting Rights Act

Further information: Disfranchisement after the Civil War

The 13th Amendment, ratified in 1865 after the Civil War, abolished and prohibited slavery and secured a minimal degree of citizenship to former slaves. The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to all people “born or naturalized in the United States,” and included the due process and equal protection clauses. This amendment did not explicitly prohibit vote discrimination on racial grounds.

The 15th Amendment, ratified on February 3, 1870, provided that, “The right of U.S. citizens to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”.^[12] Additionally under the Amendment, the Congress was given the authority to enforce those rights and regulate the voting process. Soon after the end of Reconstruction, starting in the 1870s, Southern Democratic legislators found other means to deny the vote to blacks, through violence, intimidation, and Jim Crow laws. From 1890 to 1908, 10 Southern states wrote new constitutions with provisions that included literacy tests, poll taxes, and grandfather clauses that permitted otherwise disqualified voters whose grandfathers voted (thus allowing some white illiterates to vote), some with the aim and effect of re-imposing racially motivated restrictions on the voting process that disenfranchised blacks. State provisions applied to all voters and were upheld by the Supreme Court in early litigation, from 1875 (United States v. Cruikshank) through 1904. During the early 20th century, the Supreme Court began to find such provisions unconstitutional in litigation of cases brought by African Americans and poor whites. States reacted rapidly in devising new legislation to continue disfranchisement of most blacks and many poor whites. Although there were numerous court cases brought to the Supreme Court, through the 1960s, Southern states effectively disfranchised most blacks.

In 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was created with the mission to promote blacks’ civil rights, including to “secure for them impartial suffrage.” The NAACP’s success was limited: although they did achieve important judicial rulings by the Supreme Court and some legislative successes, Southern legislators quickly devised alternate ways to keep many southern blacks disfranchised through the early 1960s.

Following the 1964 election, a variety of civil rights organizations banded together to push for the passage of legislation that would ensure black voting rights once and for all. The campaign to bring about federal intervention to prevent discrimination in voting culminated in the voting rights protests in Selma, Alabama, and the famous Selma to Montgomery marches. Demonstrations also brought out white violence, and Jimmie Lee Jackson, James Reeb, and Viola Liuzzo were murdered. President Lyndon B. Johnson, in a dramatic joint-session address, called upon Congress to enact a strong voting rights bill. Johnson’s administration drafted a bill intended to enforce the 14th and 15th Amendments, aiming to eliminate various previously legal strategies to prevent blacks and other minorities from voting.

Legislative history

The Act was sent to Congress by President Johnson on March 17, 1965. The bill passed the Senate on May 26, 1965 (after a successful cloture vote on March 23), by a vote of seventy-seven to nineteen. The House was slower to give its approval. After five weeks of debate, it was finally passed on July 9. After differences between the two bills were resolved in conference, the House passed the Conference Report on August 3, the Senate on August 4. On August 6, President Johnson signed the Act into law with Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, and other civil rights leaders in attendance.

Vote count

President Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks at the signing of the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965.

The two numbers in each line of this list refer to the number of representatives voting in favor and against the act, respectively.

Senate: 77–19

Democrats: 47–17 (73%-27%)
Republicans: 30–2 (94%-6%)

House: 333–85

Democrats: 221–61 (78%-22%)
Republicans: 112–24 (82%-18%)

Conference Report:

Senate: 79–18

Democrats: 49–17 (four Southern Democrats voted in favor: Albert Gore, Sr., Ross Bass, George Smathers and Ralph Yarborough).
Republicans: 30–1 (the lone nay was Strom Thurmond; John Tower who did not vote was paired as a nay vote with Eugene McCarthy who would have voted in favor.)

House: 328–74

Democrats: 217–54
Republicans: 111–20

Provisions

Section 2

Final page of the Voting Rights Act, signed by President Johnson, the President of the Senate, and the Speaker of the House

Section 2 contains a general prohibition on voting discrimination, enforced through federal district court litigation. Congress amended this section in 1982, prohibiting any voting practice or procedure that has a discriminatory result. The 1982 amendment provided that proof of intentional discrimination is not required. The provision focused instead on whether the electoral processes are equally accessible to minority voters.^[13] This section is permanent and does not require renewal.

On March 9, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Bartlett v. Strickland that the Voting Rights Act does not require governments to draw district lines favorable to minority candidates when the district has minorities as less than half of the population.^[14]

Section 4

The central component to Section 4 of the Act is a formula for determining which jurisdictions will be subject to the preclearance conditions of Section 5. As originally enacted, the first portion of the formula was whether, as of November 1, 1964, the jurisdiction used some form of “test or device” to restrict the opportunity to register and vote (such as a literacy test or a character reference). The second portion was a check of whether less than half of all eligible citizens were registered to vote on November 1, 1964, or that half of all eligible citizens voted in the presidential election of November 1964.^[15]

Subsequent revisions of the law moved the date where both portions of the formula were gauged ahead to be as of November 1, 1968 and, later, as of November 1, 1972. Revisions in 1982 and 2006 extended the protections of the law but did not change the nature of the formula itself.

Smaller components of Section 4 include protections for voters with limited English skills to ensure they are able to register and vote as well as receive materials on the electoral process in a language which they will understand.^[16]

In a decision on the Shelby County v. Holder case released on June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled Section 4(b) unconstitutional.^[17]

Section 5 Preclearance

Section 5 of the Act requires that the United States Department of Justice, through an administrative procedure, or a three-judge panel of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, through a declaratory judgment action “preclear” any attempt to change “any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting…” in any “covered jurisdiction.”^[5] The Supreme Court gave a broad interpretation to the words “any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting” in Allen v. State Board of Election, 393 U.S. 544 (1969). A covered jurisdiction that seeks to obtain Section 5 Preclearance, either from the United States Attorney General or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, must demonstrate that a proposed voting change does not have the purpose and will not have the effect of discriminating based on race or color. In some cases, they must also show that the proposed change does not have the purpose or effect of discriminating against a “language minority group.” Membership in a language minority group includes “persons who are American Indian, Asian American, Alaskan Natives or of Spanish heritage.” The burden of proof under current Section 5 jurisprudence is on the covered jurisdiction to establish that the proposed change does not have a retrogressive purpose.^[18]

Covered jurisdictions may not implement voting changes without federal preclearance. The Justice Department has 60 days to respond to a request for a voting change. If the Justice Department or federal court rejects a request for Preclearance, the jurisdiction may continue the prior voting practice or may adopt a substitute and seek Preclearance for it. If the jurisdiction implements a voting change before the Justice Department denies Preclearance in contravention of the Act, the jurisdiction must return to the pre-existing practice or enact a different change.

Those states that had less than 50 percent of the voting age population registered to vote in 1960 and/or 1964 were covered in the original act. In addition, some counties and towns that have been found in violation of section 2 have been added. Some cities and counties in Virginia and New Hampshire (see below) have since been found no longer to need Preclearance.

In 2006, the United States Commission on Civil Rights reviewed the Justice Department Preclearance record and found that the percentage of DOJ objections to submitted changes has declined markedly throughout the 40-year period of the Act: from 5.5 percent in the first period to 1.2 percent in the second, and to 0.6 percent in the third. Over the 10 years prior to the review, the overall objection rate was so low as to be practically negligible, at less than 0.1 percent.^[19] The Commission’s two Democratic members dissented from the report, charging that the Commission had “abandon[ed] the field of battle.”^[20]

In the case Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder (2009), the Supreme Court ruled that the district should have greater capability of applying for exemption from this section.^[21]

On June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court case of Shelby County v. Holder held that the preclearance coverage formula in Section 4(b) was unconstitutional. Without a valid coverage formula, no jurisdiction is currently required to have any of their voting changes precleared under Section 5.^[22]

Bail out

The term “bail out” refers to the process by which covered jurisdictions may seek exemption from Section 5 coverage.^[23] In order to bail out, a covered jurisdiction needs to obtain a declaratory judgment from the District Court for the District of Columbia.^[5] Eighteen Virginia jurisdictions not covered by Section 5 Preclearance requirements have successfully “bailed out.”^[23]

Before August 1984, this process required covered jurisdictions to demonstrate that the voting test that they used immediately before coverage was not used in a discriminatory fashion. The 1982 amendment included two significant changes.^[23] First, Congress provided that where a state is covered in its entirety, individual counties in that state may separately bail out. Second, Congress completely redesigned the bailout standard. The post-1984 bailout standard requires that a covered jurisdiction demonstrate nondiscriminatory behavior during the 10 years prior to filing and while the action is pending and that it has taken affirmative steps to improve minority voting opportunities.^[23]^[24]

On September 22, 2010, the first two jurisdictions outside the state of Virginia—Kings Mountain, North Carolina, and Sandy Springs, Georgia—successfully “bailed out” from Section 5 Preclearance requirements.^[25] On November 15, 2012, New Hampshire sued to “bail out” from the requirements, which were originally imposed on ten towns that used a literacy test and had voting disparities when the Act was passed,^[26] and prevailed on March 1, 2013.^[27]

Bail in

Similar to the bail out procedure, under Section 3 of the VRA there is a “bail in” or ‘pocket trigger’ process by which uncovered jurisdictions found to be a ‘pocket’ of discrimination may be required to seek preclearance under 42 USC 1973a(c).^[28] The statutory language is similar to Section 5 oversight but the period of coverage is based on a ruling or consent decree issued by a federal judge. Not used prior to 1975, Section 3 has bailed in the following: ^[29]

States

Arkansas
New Mexico

Counties

California: Los Angeles
Florida: Escambia
Nebraska: Thurston
New Mexico: Bernalillo
South Dakota: Buffalo
South Dakota: Charles Mix

Townships

Tennessee: Chattanooga

These covered districts are not counted in the Section 5 covered areas below and are not affected by the 2013 Supreme Court decision invalidating the formula in Section 4 for jurisdictions requiring Section 5 preclearance.

Jurisdictions formerly covered

States and counties requiring preclearance under Section 5 of the VRA as of January, 2008. Several small jurisdictions have since bailed out,^[30] but the majority of the map remains accurate

The jurisdictions listed below had to have their voting changes precleared before the June 25, 2013, Supreme Court decision Shelby County v. Holder that struck down the formula used to determine who was covered under Section 5 (see 28 C.F.R. part 51 appendix):^[32]

States

Alabama, except for the city of Pinson^[33]
Alaska
Arizona
Georgia, except for the city of Sandy Springs
Louisiana
Mississippi
South Carolina
Texas, except for Jefferson County Drainage District Number Seven and Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One
Virginia, except for 24 counties (Amherst, Augusta, Bedford, Botetourt, Carroll, Craig, Culpeper, Essex, Frederick, Grayson, Greene, James City, King George, Middlesex, Page, Prince William, Pulaski, Rappahanock, Roanoke, Rockingham, Shenandoah, Washington, Warren, and Wythe) and seven independent cities (Fairfax, Falls Church, Harrisonburg, Manassas Park, Salem, Williamsburg, and Winchester)

Counties

California: Kings (except for Alta Irrigation District), Monterey, Yuba (except for Browns Valley Irrigation District and the city of Wheatland)
Florida: Collier, Hardee, Hendry, Hillsborough, Monroe
New York: Bronx, Kings (Brooklyn), New York (Manhattan)
North Carolina: Anson, Beaufort, Bertie, Bladen, Camden, Caswell, Chowan, Cleveland (except for the city of Kings Mountain), Craven, Cumberland, Edgecombe, Franklin, Gaston, Gates, Granville, Greene, Guilford, Halifax, Harnett, Hertford, Hoke, Jackson, Lee, Lenoir, Martin, Nash, Northampton, Onslow, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Person, Pitt, Robeson, Rockingham, Scotland, Union, Vance, Washington, Wayne, Wilson
South Dakota: Shannon, Todd

Townships

Michigan: Clyde Township (Allegan County), Buena Vista Township

Renewal

President George W. Bush signs the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act in July 2006.

Some temporary sections of the Voting Rights Act (none involving the outlawing of literacy tests, which are permanently banned)^[34] have been renewed four times and remain in force. These provisions were renewed in 1970, 1975, 1982, and 2006. In the 1982 action, Congress amended the Act to make some sections (including section 2) permanent while renewing the remainder (including section 5) for 25 years (until July 1, 2007).

In July 2006, 41 years after the Voting Rights Act passed, renewal of the temporary provisions enjoyed bi-partisan support. However, a number of Republican lawmakers acted to amend, delay or defeat renewal of the Act for various reasons. One group of lawmakers led by Georgia congressman Lynn Westmoreland came from some preclearance states, and claimed that it was no longer fair to target their states, given the passage of time since 1965 and the changes their states had made to provide fair elections and voting. Another group of 80 legislators supported an amendment offered by Steve King of Iowa, seeking to strip provisions from the Act that required that translators or multilingual ballots be provided for U.S. citizens who do not speak English.^[9] The “King letter” said that providing ballots or interpreters in multiple languages is a costly, unfunded mandate.

The bill to renew the Act was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on July 13 by a vote of 390-33, with support from Republican House leadership, led by Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. The U.S. Senate passed the bill 98–0 on July 20.^[6] President George W. Bush signed the bill in a morning ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House on July 27, 2006, one year in advance of the 2007 expiration date.^[6] This extension renewed the Act for another 25 years.^[6] The audience included members of the families of slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. Also in attendance were the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, NAACP Chairman Julian Bond and other prominent African Americans.^[6]

Criticisms

Preclearance

Some jurisdictions singled out in the Act for their practices in the 1960s are still required by law to receive federal permission for certain changes to election law or changes in venue.^[35] These nine Southern states and mostly Southern counties have complained that the practices banned by the Act disappeared long ago and that further compliance with the mandates of the Act are a costly nuisance and an “unfair stigma” to their towns.^[9] As an example of the federal bureaucracy involved, Georgia Rep. Jack Kingston said, “If you move a polling place from the Baptist church to the Methodist church, you’ve got to go through the Justice Department.”^[9]

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., said:^[36]

Congress is declaring from on high that states with voting problems 40 years ago can simply never be forgiven, that Georgians must eternally wear the scarlet letter because of the actions of their grandparents and great-grandparents. We have repented and we have reformed.

— Lynn Westmoreland

Some who think that this federal oversight is discriminatory to these particular states have proposed that the oversight be extended to all 50 states or eliminated entirely.^[37]

The 2006 extension of the preclearance procedure was challenged in a lawsuit, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder, which was argued before the Supreme Court on April 30, 2009.^[38] The lawsuit was brought by a municipal water district in Texas, which elects members to a water board. The district does not register voters, nor has it been accused of discrimination. However, it wished to move the voting location from a private home to a public school; the preclearance procedure required it to seek approval from the Justice Department, because Texas is a covered jurisdiction under Section 5.^[39] While the Court did not declare preclearance unconstitutional, the decision redefined the law to allow any political subdivision covered by Section 5 to request exemption from federal review.^[40]

During the 2010 election cycle, the state of Florida passed two redistricting amendments to their state constitution that were aimed at preventing future attempts at gerrymandering. Then-governor Charlie Crist, a supporter of both amendments, submitted a request to the DOJ for preclearance, as required by the VRA. In early 2011, Florida’s newly-elected governor Rick Scott, a vocal opponent of these amendments, withdrew the request for preclearance, placing the legal status of the amendments in limbo.^[41]^[42] In particular, only five of Florida’s counties are required to obtain preclearance under the Act, making it unclear what the status of these amendments is in the remaining counties. Proponents of these amendments, both of which passed with greater than 60% voter approval, are accusing Scott’s administration of attempting to “thwart the will of the voters”, by “abusing their power”, and the VRA’s preclearance clause, as a means to defeat these amendments despite overwhelming voter support.^[43]

Gerrymandering

Some judges and proponents of racially drawn congressional districts have interpreted Section 5 of the Act as requiring racial gerrymandering in order to ensure minority representation.^[44]^[45] The United States Supreme Court in Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900 (1995), overturned a 1992 Congressional redistricting plan that had created minority majority districts in Georgia as unconstitutional gerrymander. In Bush v. Vera, the Supreme Court, in a plurality opinion, rejected Texas’s contention that Section 5 required racially-gerrymandered districts.

Constitutionality

On November 9, 2012, the Supreme Court granted certiorari for the case of Shelby County v. Holder originating from Shelby County, Alabama, limited to the question of whether Congress’ decision in 2006 to reauthorize Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act under the pre-existing coverage formula of Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act exceeded its authority under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and thus violated the Tenth Amendment and Article IV of the United States Constitution.^[46]^[47]

Oral arguments in Shelby County v. Holder were on February 27, 2013.^[48] On June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court struck down, with a 5 to 4 vote, Section 4(b) of Voting Rights Act as unconstitutional while ruling that Section 5 is still permissible.^[49]^[17]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965

Background Articles and Videos

Constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act

Why Today Is Better Than Yesterday

By John Yoo

Do conservatives have a lot more to be happy about today than yesterday? Yes. Today, the Supreme Court struck down the most onerous element of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in Shelby County v. Holder. The Act had required several states and localities, almost all in the southern states of the confederacy, to seek permission from the Justice Department or a federal court before changing any electoral procedure. This included the drawing of electoral districts. A separate provision, still in force after Shelby, prohibits individual measures to block access to the ballot on the grounds of race.

The Act made sense in 1965, when Jim Crow still prevented blacks from registering and voting in the South. But it doesn’t anymore. One chart of voting registration by race, found on page 15 of Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion, says it all:

I became a lawyer so I wouldn’t have to work with numbers. But even I get it. After 40 years of the Voting Rights Act, in the original Jim Crow southern states African-American voting registration is actually the same or higher than that of whites. In the last election, African-American turnout was higher than white turnout in five of these six states, and in the sixth state the gap was less than 0.5 percent.

Shelby shows that the Court — albeit by a 5-4 majority — finally came to grips with reality. The Voting Rights Act worked. But it was an extraordinary remedy that intruded on state sovereignty over elections. And like all extraordinary remedies, it was only for unusual times. Those times have come to an end.

But there is one remaining and open question: Will this be bad for Republicans in the South? The Voting Rights Act resulted in an alliance between the NAACP and the Republican party of the 1980s and 1990s to pack minorities into voting districts. This had the effect of ensuring that minorities would be elected to Congress (which the NAACP liked), but diluted minority influence in regular politics by reducing their numbers in all other voting districts (which the Republican party liked). The end of the Voting Rights Act might have the long-term effect of making more congressional seats in the South more competitive and reducing the number of safe seats for members of the congressional black caucus. I would say that that is another victory for the nation wrought by Shelby.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/351985/why-today-better-yesterday-john-yoo

June 26, 2013

Voting Rights Act: Winning the Case While Losing the Principle

By Herbert W. Titus and William J. Olson

Yesterday morning, by a vote of five to four, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Congress could no longer rely on data of state racial discrimination affecting voting rights which had been assembled in the 1960’s and 1970’s to justify the preclearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act. Under the preclearance provision (section 4) struck down by the Court, some States and their political subdivisions had been required since 1965 to obtain approval by specified federal authorities in Washington, D.C. before any change in their voting laws can take effect.

Roberts. Justice Thomas wrote aconcurring opinion. A dissent was filed by Justice Ginsburg, with Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan.

While the Court ruled that section 4 of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional, this decision was anything but a principled victory, and, indeed, has opened the door to further legislation that could be every bit as bad, if not worse, than the section 4 which it struck down.

In the very first paragraph of the majority opinion, Chief Justice Roberts acknowledged the extraordinary nature of two provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Section 5 of the Act requiring “States to obtain federal permission before enacting any law related to voting [is] a drastic departure from basic principles of federalism….” And, Section 4 of the Act “appl[ying] that requirement only to some States – [is] an equally dramatic departure from the principle that all States enjoy equal sovereignty.”

However extraordinary and unprecedented these two sections were viewed, the Court refused to rule that either section was unconstitutional for that reason.

Rather, the Court decided that the Section 4 formula governing whether a particular State or political subdivision was required to get Section 5 permission was unconstitutional solely because it was based upon outdated voting discrimination data.

On two occasions Justice Roberts cited with apparent approval some of the most lawless words ever written by the Supreme Court — words contained in Justice Warren’s opinion approving the original Voting Rights Act of 1965: “exceptional conditions can justify legislative measures not otherwise appropriate.” South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 393 U.S. 301, 309 (1966).

In so ruling, the Court left the door open for Congress to assemble new data to enact into law a new formula whereby some States and their political subdivisions would be singled out for federal preclearance before they would be permitted to make any election law change. And what might that new formula be?

According to Section 5, left intact by the Court, the 1965 Act, as amended, prohibits: (i) any voting procedure that has “any discriminatory purpose” — not just one that worsens one’s exercise of the voting privilege, or (ii) any voting change that diminishes the ability of citizens on account of race, or language minority status “to elect their preferred candidates of choice.” Neither outcome based test was ever envisioned by the Fifteenth Amendment.

The Court invited Congress to replace section 4 with a new and improved version. Indeed, Chief Justice Roberts wrote:

“Congress may draft another formula based on current conditions. Such a formula is an initial prerequisite to a determination that exceptional conditions still exist justifying such an ‘extraordinary departure from the traditional course of relations between the States and the Federal Government.'”

How refreshing to know that a State’s sovereignty cannot be overridden by the federal government — unless Congress and the President have an important reason to do so.

According to the Court’s decision, then, neither the principle of state sovereignty, nor the principle of state equality, preserved not only by the Tenth Amendment and by the nation’s federal structure dating back to the Declaration of Independence, stands in the way of an affirmative action by Congress that would single out those states that fail to elect to office minority group candidates sufficiently proportionate to their numbers in the population.

Thus, the Shelby County Court opinion frees Congress to amend the 1965 Act to impose new burdens on a new group of States and their political subdivisions — or on all states — just so long as Congress justifies the imposition of new burdens to meet current needs.

In our Shelby County amicus brief, we advocated a legal system that treats each man as man, no more and no less. We urged the Court to strike down not only Section 4 of the 1965 Act, but Section 5 — to close the door to special privileges based upon race — minority, majority, or otherwise. The Court rejected that invitation.

In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas claimed that the same reasons that justified the Court to strike down the outmoded formula of Section 4, would justify striking down Section 5 as well. However, until the Court returns to the rule of law — fixed as to time, uniform as to person, and universal as to place — we will continue to be ruled by judges whose opinions change with changing times.

Postscript: To put this case into the context of how the current Court views constitutional principles, just the day before the Court handed down Shelby County, the Court decided Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. In Fisher the Court refused to adopt the principle of racial equality in the admission of students to the University, permitting race to be used as a factor in the admitting process if it did so in pursuance of a compelling interest to carry out a policy of educational diversity. Thus, once again the Court sidestepped our constitutional commitment in the nation’s charter and in the Fourteenth Amendment to the principle of human equality regardless of race or color, and preserved the right of every justice to decide each case as he pleases, without meaningful constitutional constraint, doing what each believes to be right in his own eyes.

Herb Titus taught constitutional law for 26 years, concluding his academic career as founding dean of Regent Law School. Bill Olson served in three positions in the Reagan administration. They now practice constitutional law together, defending against government excess, at William J. Olson, P.C. They filed an amicus curiae brief in the Shelby County case. They can be reached at wjo@mindspring.com or twitter.com/OlsonLaw

Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )

Pronk Pops Show 115, June 28, 2013: Segment 1: The U.S. Economy Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Grew Only 1.8% (Third Estimate) Not 2.4% (Second Estimate) in First Quarter of 2013 — Videos

Posted on June 28, 2013. Filed under: Budgetary Policy, College, Communications, Disasters, Economics, Education, Employment, Energy, Federal Government, Fiscal Policy, Foreign Policy, Government, Government Spending, Investments, Media, Philosophy, Politics, Polls, Public Sector Unions, Radio, Regulation, Resources, Social Science, Success, Tax Policy, Taxes, Technology, Unemployment, Unions, Videos, War, Wisdom | Tags: Charts, Economic Recovery, Economics, Economy, Politics, Pronk Pops Show, Raymond Thomas Pronk, Real GDP Quarterly-to-Quarterly Growth in Real GDP, Videos |

Pronk Pops Show 115: June 28, 2013

Pronk Pops Show 114: June 21, 2013

Pronk Pops Show 113: June 14, 2013

Pronk Pops Show 112: June 7, 2013

Pronk Pops Show 111: May 31, 2013

Pronk Pops Show 110: May 24, 2013

Pronk Pops Show 109: May 17, 2013

Pronk Pops Show 108: May 10, 2013

Pronk Pops Show 107: May 3, 2013

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 113 -115

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Show 112

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 108-111

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 106-108

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 104-105

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 101-103

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 98-100

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 94-97

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 93

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 92

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 91

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 88-90

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 84-87

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 79-83

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 74-78

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 71-73

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 68-70

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 65-67

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 62-64

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 58-61

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 55-57

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 52-54

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 49-51

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 45-48

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 41-44

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 38-40

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 34-37

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 30-33

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 27-29

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 17-26

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 16-22

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 10-15

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 01-09

Segment 1: The U.S. Economy Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Grew Only 1.8% (Third Estimate) Not 2.4% (Second Estimate) in First Quarter of 2013 — Videos

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1379861-real-gdp-per-capita-another-perspective-on-the-economy

Line		2011				2012				2013
Line		I	II	III	IV	I	II	III	IV	I
1	Gross domestic product	0.1	2.5	1.3	4.1	2.0	1.3	3.1	0.4	1.8
2	Personal consumption expenditures	3.1	1.0	1.7	2.0	2.4	1.5	1.6	1.8	2.6
3	Goods	5.4	-1.0	1.4	5.4	4.7	0.3	3.6	4.3	4.4
4	Durable goods	7.3	-2.3	5.4	13.9	11.5	-0.2	8.9	13.6	7.6
5	Nondurable goods	4.6	-0.3	-0.4	1.8	1.6	0.6	1.2	0.1	2.8
6	Services	2.0	1.9	1.8	0.3	1.3	2.1	0.6	0.6	1.7
7	Gross private domestic investment	-5.3	12.5	5.9	33.9	6.1	0.7	6.6	1.3	7.4
8	Fixed investment	-1.3	12.4	15.5	10.0	9.8	4.5	0.9	14.0	3.0
9	Nonresidential	-1.3	14.5	19.0	9.5	7.5	3.6	-1.8	13.2	0.4
10	Structures	-28.2	35.2	20.7	11.5	12.9	0.6	0.0	16.7	-8.3
11	Equipment and software	11.1	7.8	18.3	8.8	5.4	4.8	-2.6	11.8	4.1
12	Residential	-1.4	4.1	1.4	12.1	20.5	8.5	13.5	17.6	14.0
13	Change in private inventories	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
14	Net exports of goods and services	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
15	Exports	5.7	4.1	6.1	1.4	4.4	5.3	1.9	-2.8	-1.1
16	Goods	5.7	3.7	6.2	6.0	4.0	7.0	1.1	-5.0	-2.5
17	Services	5.8	5.1	6.1	-8.8	5.2	1.1	4.0	2.5	2.4
18	Imports	4.3	0.1	4.7	4.9	3.1	2.8	-0.6	-4.2	-0.4
19	Goods	5.2	-0.7	2.9	6.3	2.0	2.9	-1.2	-3.9	-1.3
20	Services	-0.6	4.2	13.8	-1.7	9.0	2.3	2.6	-5.6	4.5
21	Government consumption expenditures and gross investment	-7.0	-0.8	-2.9	-2.2	-3.0	-0.7	3.9	-7.0	-4.8
22	Federal	-10.3	2.8	-4.3	-4.4	-4.2	-0.2	9.5	-14.8	-8.7
23	National defense	-14.3	8.3	2.6	-10.6	-7.1	-0.2	12.9	-22.1	-12.0
24	Nondefense	-1.7	-7.5	-17.4	10.2	1.8	-0.4	3.0	1.7	-2.1
25	State and local	-4.7	-3.2	-2.0	-0.7	-2.2	-1.0	0.3	-1.5	-2.1
	Addendum:
26	Gross domestic product, current dollars	2.2	5.2	4.3	4.2	4.2	2.8	5.9	1.3	3.1

US first-quarter growth was 1.8%, not 2.4% – economy

Marc Faber – Economic Predictions, Debt, Crisis, Depression

Financial Crisis, Jim Rogers Interview

Peter Schiff: Don’t get Burned by a Volatile Market

Peter Schiff ~ Where Is The Bottom In Gold?

Jim Rogers Economy Predictions 2013

USA Will Lose Economic War Jim Rogers

Background Articles and Videos

GDP Propaganda Exposed

EMBARGOED UNTIL RELEASE AT 8:30 A.M. EDT, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26, 2013

BEA 13-30

* See the navigation bar at the right side of the news release text for links to data tables,
contact personnel and their telephone numbers, and supplementary materials.

Lisa Mataloni:	(202) 606-5304	(GDP)	gdpniwd@bea.gov
Kate Shoemaker:	(202) 606-5564	(Profits)	cpniwd@bea.gov
Recorded message:	(202) 606-5306
Jeannine Aversa:	(202) 606-2649	(News Media)

National Income and Product Accounts
Gross Domestic Product, 1st quarter 2013 (third estimate);
Corporate Profits, 1st quarter 2013 (revised estimate)

Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property
located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 1.8 percent in the first quarter of 2013 (that
is, from the fourth quarter to the first quarter), according to the "third" estimate released by the Bureau
of Economic Analysis. In the fourth quarter, real GDP increased 0.4 percent.

The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for
the "second" estimate issued last month. In the second estimate, real GDP increased 2.4 percent. With
the third estimate for the first quarter, the increase in personal consumption expenditures (PCE) was less
than previously estimated, and exports and imports are now estimated to have declined (for more
information, see "Revisions" on page 3).

The increase in real GDP in the first quarter primarily reflected positive contributions from PCE,
private inventory investment, and residential fixed investment that were partly offset by negative
contributions from federal government spending, state and local government spending, and exports.
Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, decreased.

BOX._____________

Comprehensive Revision of the National Income and Product Accounts

BEA will release the results of the 14th comprehensive (or benchmark) revision of the national
income and product accounts (NIPAs) in conjunction with the second quarter 2013 "advance" estimate
on July 31, 2013. More information on the revision is available on BEA’s Web site at
www.bea.gov/gdp-revisions. An article in the March 2013 issue of the Survey of Current Business
discusses the upcoming changes in definitions and presentations, and an article in the May Survey
describes the changes in statistical methods. Revised NIPA table stubs and news release stubs are also
available on the Web site. An article in the September Survey will describe the estimates in detail.
________________

FOOTNOTE._______
Quarterly estimates are expressed at seasonally adjusted annual rates, unless otherwise specified.
Quarter-to-quarter dollar changes are differences between these published estimates. Percent changes are
calculated from unrounded data and are annualized. "Real" estimates are in chained (2005) dollars.
Price indexes are chain-type measures.

This news release is available on BEA’s Web site along with the Technical Note
and Highlights related to this release. For information on revisions, see "Revisions to GDP, GDI, and Their Major Components".
_________________

The acceleration in real GDP in the first quarter primarily reflected an upturn in private
inventory investment, an acceleration in PCE, and smaller decreases in federal government spending and
in exports that were partly offset by a deceleration in nonresidential fixed investment and a smaller
decrease in imports.

Motor vehicle output added 0.33 percentage point to the first-quarter change in real GDP after
adding 0.18 percentage point to the fourth-quarter change. Final sales of computers added 0.09
percentage point to the first-quarter change in real GDP after adding 0.10 percentage point to the fourth-
quarter change.

The price index for gross domestic purchases, which measures prices paid by U.S. residents,
increased 1.2 percent in the first quarter, unrevised from the second estimate; this index increased 1.6
percent in the fourth quarter. Excluding food and energy prices, the price index for gross domestic
purchases increased 1.5 percent in the first quarter, compared with an increase of 1.2 percent in the
fourth.

Real personal consumption expenditures increased 2.6 percent in the first quarter, compared with
an increase of 1.8 percent in the fourth. Durable goods increased 7.6 percent, compared with an increase
of 13.6 percent. Nondurable goods increased 2.8 percent, compared with an increase of 0.1 percent.
Services increased 1.7 percent, compared with an increase of 0.6 percent.

Real nonresidential fixed investment increased 0.4 percent in the first quarter, compared with an
increase of 13.2 percent in the fourth. Nonresidential structures decreased 8.3 percent, in contrast to an
increase of 16.7 percent. Equipment and software increased 4.1 percent, compared with an increase of
11.8 percent. Real residential fixed investment increased 14.0 percent, compared with an increase of
17.6 percent.

Real exports of goods and services decreased 1.1 percent in the first quarter, compared with a
decrease of 2.8 percent in the fourth. Real imports of goods and services decreased 0.4 percent,
compared with a decrease of 4.2 percent.

Real federal government consumption expenditures and gross investment decreased 8.7 percent
in the first quarter, compared with a decrease of 14.8 percent in the fourth. National defense decreased
12.0 percent, compared with a decrease of 22.1 percent. Nondefense decreased 2.1 percent, in contrast
to an increase of 1.7 percent. Real state and local government consumption expenditures and gross
investment decreased 2.1 percent, compared with a decrease of 1.5 percent.

The change in real private inventories added 0.57 percentage point to the first-quarter change in
real GDP, after subtracting 1.52 percentage points from the fourth-quarter change. Private businesses
increased inventories $36.7 billion in the first quarter, following increases of $13.3 billion in the fourth
quarter and $60.3 billion in the third.

Real final sales of domestic product -- GDP less change in private inventories -- increased 1.2
percent in the first quarter, compared with an increase of 1.9 percent in the fourth.

Gross domestic purchases

Real gross domestic purchases -- purchases by U.S. residents of goods and services wherever
produced -- increased 1.8 percent in the first quarter; it was unchanged in the fourth.

Gross national product

Real gross national product -- the goods and services produced by the labor and property
supplied by U.S. residents -- increased 1.2 percent in the first quarter, compared with an increase of 0.9
percent in the fourth. GNP includes, and GDP excludes, net receipts of income from the rest of the
world, which decreased $17.7 billion in the first quarter after increasing $19.2 billion in the fourth; in
the first quarter, receipts decreased $16.3 billion, and payments increased $1.4 billion.

Current-dollar GDP

Current-dollar GDP -- the market value of the nation's output of goods and services -- increased
3.1 percent, or $120.0 billion, in the first quarter to a level of $15,984.1 billion. In the fourth quarter,
current-dollar GDP increased 1.3 percent, or $53.1 billion.

Gross domestic income

Real gross domestic income (GDI), which measures the output of the economy as the costs
incurred and the incomes earned in the production of GDP, increased 2.5 percent in the first quarter,
compared with an increase of 5.5 percent in the fourth. For a given quarter, the estimates of GDP and
GDI may differ for a variety of reasons, including the incorporation of largely independent source data.
However, over longer time spans, the estimates of GDP and GDI tend to follow similar patterns of
change.

Revisions

The downward revision to the percent change in real GDP primarily reflected downward
revisions to personal consumption expenditures, to exports, and to nonresidential fixed investment that
were partly offset by a downward revision to imports.

Advance Estimate Second Estimate Third Estimate
(Percent change from preceding quarter)

Real GDP...................................... 2.5 2.4 1.8
Current-dollar GDP............................ 3.7 3.6 3.1
Gross domestic purchases price index.......... 1.1 1.2 1.2

Corporate Profits

Profits from current production (corporate profits with inventory valuation and capital
consumption adjustments) decreased $28.0 billion in the first quarter, in contrast to an increase of $45.4
billion in the fourth quarter. Current-production cash flow (net cash flow with inventory valuation
adjustment) -- the internal funds available to corporations for investment -- increased $125.6 billion in
the first quarter, in contrast to a decrease of $89.8 billion in the fourth.

Taxes on corporate income decreased $10.5 billion in the first quarter, compared with a decrease
of $4.4 billion in the fourth. Profits after tax with inventory valuation and capital consumption
adjustments decreased $17.5 billion in the first quarter, in contrast to an increase of $49.8 billion in the
fourth. Dividends decreased $103.5 billion, in contrast to an increase of $124.3 billion. The large
fourth-quarter increase reflected accelerated and special dividends paid by corporations at the end of
2012 in anticipation of changes to individual income tax rates. Current-production undistributed profits
increased $85.8 billion, in contrast to a decrease of $74.3 billion.

Domestic profits of financial corporations decreased $3.4 billion in the first quarter, compared
with a decrease of $3.5 billion in the fourth. Domestic profits of nonfinancial corporations decreased
$5.0 billion in the first quarter, in contrast to an increase of $24.8 billion in the fourth. In the first
quarter, real gross value added of nonfinancial corporations increased, and profits per unit of real value
added decreased. The decrease in unit profits reflected an increase in the unit nonlabor costs incurred by
corporations that was partly offset by a decrease in unit labor costs; unit prices were unchanged.

The rest-of-the-world component of profits decreased $19.6 billion in the first quarter, in contrast
to an increase of $24.1 billion in the fourth. This measure is calculated as (1) receipts by U.S. residents
of earnings from their foreign affiliates plus dividends received by U.S. residents from unaffiliated
foreign corporations minus (2) payments by U.S. affiliates of earnings to their foreign parents plus
dividends paid by U.S. corporations to unaffiliated foreign residents. The first-quarter decrease was
accounted for by a larger decrease in receipts than in payments.

Profits before tax with inventory valuation adjustment is the best available measure of industry
profits because estimates of the capital consumption adjustment by industry do not exist. This measure
reflects depreciation-accounting practices used for federal income tax returns. According to this
measure, domestic profits of both financial and nonfinancial corporations decreased. The decrease in
nonfinancial corporations primarily reflected decreases in "other" nonfinancial and in manufacturing that
were partly offset by increases in information and in wholesale trade. Within manufacturing, the largest
decreases were in petroleum and coal products and in machinery.

Profits before tax decreased $34.7 billion in the first quarter, in contrast to an increase of $27.3
billion in the fourth. The before-tax measure of profits does not reflect, as does profits from current
production, the capital consumption and inventory valuation adjustments. These adjustments convert
depreciation of fixed assets and inventory withdrawals reported on a tax-return, historical-cost basis to
the current-cost measures used in the national income and product accounts. The capital consumption
adjustment increased $12.5 billion in the first quarter (from -$199.5 billion to -$187.0 billion), compared
with an increase of $0.5 billion in the fourth. The inventory valuation adjustment decreased $5.8 billion
(from -$9.2 billion to -$15.0 billion), in contrast to an increase of $17.6 billion.

The first-quarter changes in taxes on corporate income and in the capital consumption
adjustment mainly reflect the expiration of bonus depreciation claimed under the American Taxpayer
Relief Act of 2012. For detailed data, see the table "Net Effects of the Tax Acts of 2002, 2003, 2008,
2009, 2010, and 2012 on Selected Measures of Corporate Profits" at
www.bea.gov/national/xls/technote_tax_acts.xls. Profits from current production are not affected
because they do not depend on the depreciation-accounting practices used for federal income tax returns;
rather, they are based on depreciation of fixed assets valued at current cost using consistent depreciation
profiles based on used-asset prices. For more details on the effect of tax act provisions on the capital
consumption adjustment, see FAQ #999 on the BEA Web site, "Why does the capital consumption
adjustment for domestic business decline so much in the first quarter of 2012?"

* * *

BEA’s national, international, regional, and industry estimates; the Survey of Current Business;
and BEA news releases are available without charge on BEA’s Web site at www.bea.gov. By visiting
the site, you can also subscribe to receive free e-mail summaries of BEA releases and announcements.

* * *

Next release -- July 31, 2013, at 8:30 A.M. EDT for:
Gross Domestic Product: Second Quarter 2013 (Advance Estimate)
Comprehensive Revision of the National Income and Product Accounts
(1929 through First Quarter 2013)

Real GDP Per Capita: Another Perspective On The Economy

Earlier Friday we learned that the Advance Estimate for Q1 2013 real GDP came in at 2.5 percent, up from 0.4 percent in Q4 2012. Let’s now review the numbers on a per-capita basis.

For an alternate historical view of the economy, here is a chart of real GDP per-capita growth since 1960. For this analysis I’ve chained in today’s dollar for the inflation adjustment. The per-capita calculation is based on quarterly aggregates of mid-month population estimates by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which date from 1959 (hence my 1960 starting date for this chart, even though quarterly GDP has is available since 1947). The population data is available in the FRED series POPTHM. The logarithmic vertical axis ensures that the highlighted contractions have the same relative scale.

I’ve drawn an exponential regression through the data using the Excel GROWTH() function to give us a sense of the historical trend. The regression illustrates the fact that the trend since the Great Recession has a visibly lower slope than long-term trend. In fact, the current GDP per-capita is 11.6% below the regression trend.

(click to enlarge)

The real per-capita series gives us a better understanding of the depth and duration of GDP contractions. As we can see, since our 1960 starting point, the recession that began in December 2007 is associated with a deeper trough than previous contractions, which perhaps justifies its nickname as the Great Recession. In fact, at this point, 20 quarters beyond the 2007 GDP peak, real GDP per capita is still 1.04% off the all-time high following the deepest trough in the series.

Here is a more revealing snapshot of real GDP per capita, specifically illustrating the percent off the most recent peak across time, with recessions highlighted. The underlying calculation is to show peaks at 0% on the right axis. The callouts shows the percent off real GDP per-capita at significant troughs as well as the current reading for this metric.

(click to enlarge)

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1379861-real-gdp-per-capita-another-perspective-on-the-economy

Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )

Pronk Pops Show 115, June 28, 2013: Segment 0: Enemy Of The State: Life Imitating Art –National Security Agency Targets American People — Vidoes

Posted on June 28, 2013. Filed under: American History, Books, Budgetary Policy, Communications, Consitutional Law, Economics, Education, Employment, Federal Government, Fiscal Policy, Foreign Policy, Government, Government Spending, History, Illegal Immigration, Immigration, Law, Media, Philosophy, Politics, Regulation, Resources, Security, Tax Policy, Taxes, Videos, Violence, War, Wisdom | Tags: Art, Bill Binney, Culture, Economics, Enemy of The State, James Banford, Life, Movies, NSA, Photos, Politics, PRISM, Privacy, Pronk Pops Show 115, Raymond Thomas Pronk, Videos |

Pronk Pops Show 115: June 28, 2013

Pronk Pops Show 114: June 21, 2013

Pronk Pops Show 113: June 14, 2013

Pronk Pops Show 112: June 7, 2013

Pronk Pops Show 111: May 31, 2013

Pronk Pops Show 110: May 24, 2013

Pronk Pops Show 109: May 17, 2013

Pronk Pops Show 108: May 10, 2013

Pronk Pops Show 107: May 3, 2013

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 113 -115

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Show 112

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 108-111

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 106-108

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 104-105

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 101-103

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 98-100

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 94-97

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 93

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 92

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 91

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 88-90

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 84-87

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 79-83

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 74-78

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 71-73

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 68-70

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 65-67

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 62-64

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 58-61

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 55-57

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 52-54

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 49-51

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 45-48

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 41-44

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 38-40

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 34-37

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 30-33

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 27-29

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 17-26

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 16-22

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 10-15

Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 01-09

Segment 0: Enemy Of The State: Life Imitating Art –National Security Agency Targets American People — Vidoes

ENEMY OF THE STATE… (1998) MUST WATCH..TAKE SERIOUSLY..

Nova: The Spy Factory Full Video

INTERVIEW with NSA WHISTLEBLOWER: Confirm EVERYONE in US is under VIRTUAL SURVEILLANCE since 9/11

He told you so: Bill Binney talks NSA leaks

James Bamford on NSA Leaks – Charlie Rose 06/13/2013

Companies With Ties to Israel Wiretap the U.S. for the NSA

James Bamford: Inside the NSA’s Largest Secret Domestic Spy Center

James Bamford on NSA’s un democratic Surveillance

Enemy of the State

Enemy of the State is a 1998 American action-thriller about a group of rogue NSA agents who kill a US Congressman and try to cover up the murder. It was written by David Marconi, directed by Tony Scott, and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. It stars Will Smith and Gene Hackman, with Jon Voight, Lisa Bonet, and Regina King in supporting roles.

The film grossed over $250,000,000 worldwide ($111,549,836 within the US).

Plot

As the U.S. Congress moves to pass new legislation that dramatically expands the surveillance powers of intelligence agencies, Congressman Phil Hammersley (Robards) remains firmly opposed to its passage. To ensure the bill’s passage, National Security Agency official Thomas Reynolds (Voight) kills Hammersley, but he is unaware of a video camera set up by wildlife researcher Daniel Zavitz (Lee) that has captured the entire incident. Zavitz discovers the murder, and alerts an underground journalist, at the same time transferring the video to an innocuous computer disc. Reynolds learns of Zavitz’s footage, and sends a team to recover the video. While fleeing, Zavitz runs into an old college friend, labor lawyer Robert Clayton Dean (Smith). Zavitz secretly passes the computer disc into Dean’s shopping bag without his knowledge. Zavitz flees and is killed when hit by a fire truck. Reynolds soon has the underground journalist killed.

When the NSA discovers that Dean may have the video, a team raids his house and plants surveillance devices. Unable to find the video, the NSA proceeds to falsely incriminate Dean of passing classified information to Rachel Banks (Bonet), a former girlfriend. The subterfuge destroys Dean’s life: he is fired from his job, his bank accounts are frozen, and his wife (King) throws him out of the house. Dean, trailed by the NSA, meets with Banks, who sets up a meeting with “Brill”, one of her secret contacts. After meeting an NSA agent posing as Brill (Byrne), Dean realizes his error, only to have the real Brill, retired NSA agent Edward Lyle (Hackman), ferry him to temporary safety and help rid Dean of most of the tracking devices he is unwittingly carrying. Dean ultimately rids himself of the final device and, fleeing his pursuers, escapes.

With Dean and Lyle in hiding, the NSA agents kill Banks and frame Dean for the murder. Lyle is able to find evidence that the NSA executed Hammersley’s murder, but it is destroyed during an escape from an NSA raid.

It is then revealed that Lyle was an expert in communications for the NSA; he was stationed in Iran before the Iranian Revolution. When the revolution occurred, Lyle made it out of the country, but his partner, Rachel’s father, was killed. Since then he has been in hiding. Lyle tries to coax Dean into trying to run away, but Dean is adamant about clearing his name.

Dean and Lyle blackmail another supporter of the surveillance bill, Congressman Sam Albert (Wilson), by videotaping him having an affair with his aide. Dean and Lyle “hide” bugs that Reynolds had used on Dean in Albert’s room so Albert will find them and have the NSA start an investigation. Lyle also deposits $140,000 into Reynolds’ bank account to make it appear that he is taking bribes.

Lyle contacts Reynolds to tell him he has the video of the Hammersley murder and asks to meet. Dean tells them that the Hammersley murder footage is in the hands of Mafia boss Joey Pintero (Sizemore), whose office is under FBI surveillance. Dean, Reynolds, and the NSA team head into Pintero’s restaurant, precipitating a gunfight that kills the mobsters, Reynolds, and several of his NSA team.

Dean and Lyle escape, with Lyle quickly disappearing from the authorities. The FBI discovers the plot behind the legislation, causing it to fail, though they cover up the NSA’s involvement. Dean is cleared of all charges and is reunited with his wife. Lyle escapes to a tropical location, but sends a “goodbye” message to Dean.

Cast

Will Smith as Robert Clayton Dean
Gene Hackman as Edward “Brill” Lyle
Jon Voight as Thomas Brian Reynolds
Barry Pepper as David Pratt
Regina King as Carla Dean
Ian Hart as John Bingham
Lisa Bonet as Rachel F. Banks
Jascha Washington as Eric Dean
James LeGros as Jerry Miller
Jake Busey as Krug
Scott Caan as Jones
Jamie Kennedy as Jamie Williams
Jason Lee as Daniel Leon Zavitz
Gabriel Byrne as Fake Brill
Stuart Wilson as Congressman Sam Albert
Jack Black as Fiedler
Anna Gunn as Emily Reynolds
Laura Cayouette as Christa Hawkins
Loren Dean as Loren Hicks
Bodhi Elfman as Van
Dan Butler as NSA Director Admiral Shaffer
Seth Green as Selby (uncredited)
Tom Sizemore as Boss Paulie Pintero (uncredited)
Jason Robards as Congressman Phil Hammersley (uncredited)
Philip Baker Hall as Attorney Mark Silverberg (uncredited)
Brian Markinson as Attorney Brian Blake (uncredited)
Larry King as Himself (uncredited)
Ivana Miličević as Ruby’s Sales Clerk

Production

Although the story is set in both Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, most of the filming was done in Baltimore. Location shooting began on a ferry in Fells Point. In mid-January, the company moved to Los Angeles to complete production in April 1998.^[3]

Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise were considered for the part that went to Will Smith, who took the role largely because he wanted to work with Gene Hackman and had previously enjoyed working with producer Jerry Bruckheimer on Bad Boys. George Clooney was also considered for a role in the film. Sean Connery was considered for the role that went to Hackman. The film’s crew included a technical surveillance counter-measures consultant who also had a minor role as a spy shop merchant. Hackman had previously acted in a similar thriller about spying and surveillance film, The Conversation (1974).

Reception

Enemy of the State was moderately well received by critics. Rotten Tomatoes presented a 71% “Fresh” rating for the movie, with 57 critics approving of the movie and 24 noting the film as “Rotten;”^[4] similar results could be found at the website Metacritic, which displayed a normalized ranking of 67 out of 100 on the basis of the views of 22 critics.^[5] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times expressed enjoyment in the movie, noting how its “pizazz [overcame] occasional lapses in moment-to-moment plausibility;”^[6] Janet Maslin of the New York Times approved of the film’s action-packed sequences, but cited how it was similar in manner to the rest of the members of “Simpson’s and Bruckheimer’s school of empty but sensation-packed filming.”^[7] In a combination of the two’s views, Edvins Beitiks of the San Francisco Examiner praised many of the movie’s development aspects, but criticized the overall concept that drove the film from the beginning — the efficiency of government intelligence — as unrealistic.^[8]

According to film critic Kim Newman, Enemy of the State could be construed as a “continuation of The Conversation,” the 1974 psychological thriller that starred Hackman as a paranoid, isolated surveillance expert.^[9]

Box office

The film opened at #2, behind The Rugrats Movie, grossing $20,038,573 over its first weekend in 2,393 theatres and averaging about $8,374 per venue.^[10]^[11]

Real life

An episode of PBS’ Nova titled “Spy Factory” reports that the film’s portrayal of the NSA’s capabilities are fiction: although the agency can intercept transmissions, connecting the dots is difficult.^[12] However, in 2001, then-NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden, who was appointed to the position during the release of the film, told CNN’s Kyra Philipps that “I made the judgment that we couldn’t survive with the popular impression of this agency being formed by the last Will Smith movie.^[13]” James Risen wrote in his 2006 book State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration that Hayden “was appalled” by the film’s depiction of the NSA, and sought to counter it with a PR campaign on behalf of the agency.^[14]

In June 2013 the NSA’s PRISM and Boundless Informant programs for domestic and international surveillance were uncovered by the Guardian and Washington Post as the result of information provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. This information revealed much more extensive capabilities than those represented by the film, such as collection of internet browsing, email and telephone data of not only every American, but citizens of other nations as well. The Guardian’s John Patterson opined that Hollywood depictions of NSA surveillance, including Enemy of the State and Echelon Conspiracy, had “softened” up the American public to “the notion that our spending habits, our location, our every movement and conversation, are visible to others whose motives we cannot know.^[15]“

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_of_the_State_%28film%29

U.S. and World Population Clock

http://www.census.gov/popclock/

316 Million and Counting

Less 40 Million Plus Foreigners (Illegal Aliens) and Rapidly Growing

U.S. Debt Clock

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Where’s The Fence

IQ2: Undocumented Immigrant Debate: Mark Krikorian part 6 of 12

Immigration with Mark Krikorian

Mark Krikorian’s Intro – Amnesties: Past, Present, Future

The New Case Against Immigration: Both Legal and Illegal

Senator Lee and Megyn Kelly discuss the pending Corker/Hoeven border security amendment

Immigration by the Numbers — Off the Charts

Immigration, World Poverty and Gumballs – Updated 2010

How Many Illegal Aliens Are in the US? – Walsh – 1

How Many Illegal Aliens Are in the United States? Presentation by James H. Walsh, Associate General Counsel of the former INS – part 1.

How Many Illegal Aliens Are in the US? – Walsh – 2

How Many Illegal Aliens Are in the US? – Philip Romero

Sessions: How In The World Can We Justify Passing This Immigration Bill?

-Based on CBO data, the Gang of Eight immigration bill would add approximately 30 million total immigrants over the next decade and 46 million by 2033, which CBO concluded would depress wages for US workers. Budget Ranking Member Sessions addressed the Congressional Budget Office’s economic and fiscal estimate of the Gang of Eight immigration bill in remarks on the Senate floor. The report plainly stated: “Taking into account all of [the] flows of new immigrants, CBO and JCT expect that a greater number of immigrants with lower skills than with higher skills would be added to the workforce, slightly pushing down the average wage for the labor force as a whole… However, CBO and JCT expect that currently unauthorized workers who would obtain legal status under S. 744 would see an increase in their average wages… [An] increase in the average wage would not occur for a dozen years.”

Sessions reacted: “This is supposed to be good for the people we represent? … This will add to [our] problems, this report says, quite clearly—unequivocally. It’s going to increase unemployment and it’s going to pull down wages. That is exactly the wrong thing that ought to be happening at this time. How in the world can we justify passing a bill that hammers the American working man and woman that’s out trying to feed a family?”

Senator Sessions previously observed: “This bill guarantees three things: amnesty, increased welfare costs, and lower wages for the U.S. workforce.”

Rand Paul: Lack Of Border Security Is Immigration Bill’s ‘Fatal Flaw’ – Bloomberg 6/18/2013

Milton Friedman on illegal immigration

USDA & Mexican embassy encouraging illegals to get welfare.

SEIU Represents Undocumented Workers

Eliseo Medina bragging about illegal immigrants in the SEIU

Ann Coulter on Immigration Bill, Amnesty and Gang of Eight

Beware of the Big Interventionist Government Statists (BIGS) Disinformation Campaign On Immigration

Marco Rubio Ad Pushing Conservative Gang of 8 Bill

On Tuesday, a fresh new ad debuted, featuring Senator Marco Rubio pitching the ‘Gang of 8′ immigration bill, by an organization calling itself Americans for a Conservative Direction. As Politico reports, the ad and its new group are funded by the FWD.us, the organization formed to push Silicon Valley’s priorities in Washington, backed by Mark Zuckerberg. FWD plans to push immigration reform partly through a subsidiary group aimed to garner conservative support, Americans for a Conservative Direction. According to Politico, Americans for a Conservative Direction will spend seven figures to run the pro-immigration-bill ads in several key states, including Texas, Florida, Utah, North Carolina, Iowa, and Kentucky.

Kelly Ayotte – Independence

“Nothing”

“Today”

“Our Back”

Conservative Video Marco Rubio Ad Pushing Gang of 8 Bill, Funded by Mark Zuckerberg? – Immigration

“…a fresh new ad debuted, featuring Senator Marco Rubio pitching the ‘Gang of 8′ immigration bill, by an organization calling itself Americans for a Conservative Direction. As Politico reports, the ad and its new group are funded by the FWD.us, the organization formed to push Silicon Valley’s priorities in Washington, backed by Mark Zuckerberg. FWD plans to push immigration reform partly through a subsidiary group aimed to garner conservative support, Americans for a Conservative Direction. According to Politico, Americans for a Conservative Direction will spend seven figures to run the pro-immigration-bill ads in several key states, including Texas, Florida, Utah, North Carolina, Iowa, and Kentucky.

Americans for a Conservative Direction’s board members include:

Haley Barbour: former Governor Haley Barbour served as the 62nd governor of Mississippi from 2004 to 2012 and served as Chairman of the Republican National Committee in the mid ’90s.
Sally Bradshaw: former Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s Chief of Staff from 1999-2001, and served as a Co-Chair of the Republican National Committee’s Growth and Opportunity Project.
Joel Kaplan: currently Vice President of US Public Policy at Facebook. Joel also served as Deputy Chief of Staff to former President George W. Bush.
Dan Senor: former chief advisor to Representative Paul Ryan on the Romney-Ryan 2012 campaign
Rob Jesmer: former Executive Director at the National Republican Senatorial Committee from 2008 — 2012.
Politico notes that “the FWD.us blitz, and the heavy-duty group of GOP advisers who have signed on to support it, illustrate the fierce intensity of elite pressure on Republicans to pass a bill.”

The fact that GOP ‘elite,’ establishment pressure is pushing immigration reform also illustrates the growing disconnect between the ‘Beltway’ and grassroots conservatives. For instance, Red State’s Erick Erickson, posted a piece entitled: “HAHAHAHA. Meet Americans for a Conservative Direction, the Latest GOP Scam in Washington,” noting:

I’d like to introduce you to “Americans for a Conservative Direction.” It’s got Haley Barbour as the head of it, whose nephew was on the RNC audit committee. He’s joined by Sally Bradshaw of the same RNC Audit Committee. They’ve also got Joel Kaplan of Facebook, Dan Senor whose wife is Campbell Brown formerly of CNN, and Rob Jesmer.
Jesmer, you will recall, headed the National Republican Senatorial Committee and backed Arlen Specter, Charlie Crist, Trey Greyson, Bob Bennett, and every other terrible squishy moderate to liberal candidate the GOP could field.
And now they want to call themselves “Americans for a Conservative Direction.”
Erickson added another post today, slamming the group’s use of the word ‘conservative’:

Typical GOP consultants. Prop up a single issue — the Gang of 8 Immigration plan — and use “conservative” as the word to try to sell it. At what point do conservatives make Republican consultants stop whoring that word around? Heck, we’ve got the American Conservative Union now working with defense and infrastructure lobbyists for big government spending. This is nuts.
Friends, the consultant class of the GOP at least screws rich liberals too. Gotta give them applause for their equal opportunity con-jobs.
The ad also contains a serious, misleading error. As Senator Rubio makes his pitch, wording underneath him reads “Establish Border Security First”: Huh? ‘Border security first’? That’s precisely conservatives’ main gripe with the Gang of 8 bill — it does not establish border security, much less ‘first.’ In fact, as I’ve written, the only ‘trigger’ necessary for the legalization to proceed is that a border strategy and border fencing plan has been submitted to Congress and ‘commenced.’ Further down the line, there is no real ‘border security’ before the green card/permanent residency process may proceed: regarding the border, all that is required is that the two plans are “substantially” implemented and operational. …”

Mark Levin Exposes Americans for a Conservative Direction

Mark Zuckerberg’s New Venture: The ‘FWD’ Group for American Jobs

Laura Ingraham: Marco Rubio has betrayed conservatives

Laura Ingraham Confronts Marco Rubio Over Immigration Reform: ‘Stop Dividing The Republican Party’

Ted Cruz Discusses ‘Gang of 8’ Immigration Bill with Rush Limbaugh (part 1)

Ted Cruz Discusses ‘Gang of 8’ Immigration Bill with Rush Limbaugh (part 2)

Sen. Ted Cruz Speaks on the Senate Floor in Opposition to the Gang of Eight’s Immigration Bill

Glenn Beck: Interview with House Republicans Planning Revolt On Immigration Bill

Chris Crane Testimony At Senate Immigration Hearing

Sessions To Senate: Can Anyone Explain How This Immigration Bill Will Help Struggling Americans?

Schumer, Gang of Eight Refuse To Say How Many Will Be Admitted Under Their Plan

Law Enforcement Groups Detail How Immigration Bill Guts Future Enforcement

Dramatic Guest Worker Provisions In Immigration Bill Designed To Suppress Wages

Sessions Warns Washington Elites Against Rush To Amnesty

Sen. Ted Cruz Speaks on the Senate Floor in Opposition to the Gang of Eight’s Immigration Bill

Congressman Steve King Spoke on the House Floor — Immigration and Securing the Border

Congressman Steve King leads House opposition to Senate’s Gang of Eight immigration bill

Senator Boxer Speaks on the Need for Immigration Reform

Senate close to passing immigration bill

Ted Cruz Launches National Petition Against Gang of Eight’s Bill

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) launched a national petition on Thursday to stop the Senate Gang of Eight’s amnesty bill and send Washington a “strong signal” of the grassroots opposition to the bill.

“This is urgent,” Cruz wrote in an e-mail to supporters. “We must stop this Gang of 8 immigration bill, which would give amnesty to an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants with no guarantee of a secure border.”

“The Senate debate is in the final stages and we need to send Washington a strong signal of the overwhelming grassroots opposition to this amnesty bill from Americans across the country,” Cruz explained.

Cruz urged supporters to share the petition with friends and to “act now–without delay–to help us defeat amnesty and stand for legal immigration!”

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/20/Ted-Cruz-Launches-National-Petition-Against-Gang-of-Eight-s-Amnesty-Bill

CBO Releases Two Analyses of the Senate’s Immigration Legislation

The Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act (S. 744) would revise laws governing immigration and the enforcement of those laws, allowing for a significant increase in the number of noncitizens who could lawfully enter the United States on both a permanent and temporary basis. Additionally, the bill would create a process for many individuals who are present in the country now on an unauthorized basis to gain legal status, subject to requirements specified in the bill. The bill also would directly appropriate funds for tightening border security and enforcing immigration laws, and would authorize future appropriations for those purposes.

Based on joint work with the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), CBO released two analyses related to the immigration legislation that was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee:

A cost estimate providing projections of the bill’s effects on federal spending, revenues, and the deficit.
A report on the economic impact of S. 744, analyzing the bill’s effects on economic output, the size of the labor force, employment, wages, capital investment, interest rates, and productivity.

How Would the Legislation Affect the U.S. Population?

CBO estimates that, by 2023, enacting S. 744 would lead to a net increase of 10.4 million in the number of people residing in the United States, compared with the number projected under current law. That increase would grow to about 16 million by 2033. CBO also estimates that about 8 million unauthorized residents would initially gain legal status under the bill, but that change in status would not affect the size of the U.S. population.

How Would the Legislation Affect the Federal Budget from 2014 Through 2023?

CBO and JCT estimate that enacting S. 744 would generate changes in direct spending and revenues that would decrease federal budget deficits by $197 billion over the 2014–2023 period. CBO also estimates that implementing the legislation would result in net discretionary costs of $22 billion over the 2014–2023 period, assuming appropriation of the amounts authorized or otherwise needed to implement the legislation. Combining those figures would lead to a net savings of about $175 billion over the 2014–2023 period from enacting S. 744. However, the net impact of the bill on federal deficits would depend on future actions by lawmakers, who could choose to appropriate more or less than the amounts estimated by CBO. In addition, the total amount of discretionary funding is currently capped (through 2021) by the Budget Control Act of 2011; extra funding for the purposes of this legislation might lead to lower funding for other purposes.

Following the long-standing convention of not incorporating macroeconomic effects in cost estimates—a practice that has been followed in the Congressional budget process since it was established in 1974—cost estimates produced by CBO and JCT typically reflect the assumption that macroeconomic variables such as gross domestic product (GDP) and employment remain fixed at the values they are projected to reach under current law. However, because S. 744 would significantly increase the size of the U.S. labor force, CBO and JCT relaxed that assumption by incorporating in this cost estimate their projections of the direct effects of the bill on the U.S. population, employment, and taxable compensation.

The bill also would have a broader set of effects on output and income that are not reflected in the cost estimate described above. Those additional economic effects include changes in the productivity of labor and capital, the income earned by capital, the rate of return on capital (and therefore the interest rate on government debt), and the differences in wages for workers with different skills. Those effects and their estimated consequences for the federal budget are described in a report, The Economic Impact of S. 744, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, that accompanies the cost estimate.

According to CBO’s central estimates (within a range that reflects the uncertainty about two key economic relationships in CBO’s analysis), the economic impacts not included in the cost estimate would have no further net effect on budget deficits over the 2014–2023 period.

How Would the Legislation Affect the Federal Budget for 2024 Through 2033?

CBO and JCT generally do not provide cost estimates beyond the standard 10-year projection period. However, S. 744 would cause a significant number of people to become eligible for certain federal benefits in the decade following 2023, so CBO and JCT have extended their estimate of the effects of this legislation for another decade.

The additional amount of federal direct spending stemming from enactment of S. 744 would grow after 2023 as more people became eligible for federal benefits as a result of the bill. The additional amount of federal revenues owing to the legislation also would increase after 2023 as the labor force continued to increase. On balance, CBO and JCT estimate that those changes in direct spending and revenues would decrease federal budget deficits by about $700 billion (or 0.2 percent of total output) over the 2024–2033 period. In addition, the legislation would have a net discretionary cost of $20 billion to $25 billion over the 2024–2033 period, assuming appropriation of the necessary amounts. According to CBO’s central estimates (within a range that reflects the uncertainty about two key economic relationships in CBO’s analysis), the economic impacts not included in the cost estimate would further reduce deficits (relative to the effects reported in the cost estimate) by about $300 billion over the 2024–2033 period.

How Would the Legislation Affect the Economy?

S. 744 would boost economic output. Taking account of all economic effects (including those reflected in the cost estimate), the bill would increase real (inflation-adjusted) GDP relative to the amount CBO projects under current law by 3.3 percent in 2023 and by 5.4 percent in 2033, according to CBO’s central estimates. Compared with GDP, gross national product (GNP) per capita accounts for the effect on incomes of international capital flows and adjusts for the number of people in the country. Relative to what would occur under current law, S. 744 would lower per capita GNP by 0.7 percent in 2023 and raise it by 0.2 percent in 2033, according to CBO’s central estimates.

Per capita GNP would be less than 1 percent lower than under current law through 2031 because the increase in the population would be greater, proportionately, than the increase in output; after 2031, however, the opposite would be true. CBO’s central estimates also show that average wages for the entire labor force would be 0.1 percent lower in 2023 and 0.5 percent higher in 2033 under the legislation than under current law. Average wages would be slightly lower than under current law through 2024, primarily because the amount of capital available to workers would not increase as rapidly as the number of workers and because the new workers would be less skilled and have lower wages, on average, than the labor force under current law. However, the rate of return on capital would be higher under the legislation than under current law throughout the next two decades.

The estimated reductions in average wages and per capita GNP for much of the next two decades do not necessarily imply that current U.S. residents would be worse off, on average, under the legislation than they would be under current law. Both of those figures represent differences between the averages for all U.S. residents under the legislation—including both the people who would be residents under current law and the additional people who would come to the country under the legislation—and the averages under current law for people who would be residents in the absence of the legislation. As noted, the additional people who would become residents under the legislation would earn lower wages, on average, than other residents, which would pull down the average wage and per capita GNP; at the same time, the income earned by capital would increase. CBO has not analyzed the full economic effects of the legislation separately for the incomes of people who would be U.S. residents under current law.

In sum, relative to current law, enacting S. 744 would:

Increase the size of the labor force and employment,
Increase average wages in 2025 and later years (but decrease them before that),
Slightly raise the unemployment rate through 2020,
Boost the amount of capital investment,
Raise the productivity of labor and of capital, and
Result in higher interest rates.

http://www.cbo.gov/publication/44345

Leftist group ‘Americans for a Conservative Direction’ using conservative front name to sell its immigration message (Your view)

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
So, for the leftist establishment group FWD.us to utilize the name “conservative” in a front name for its pro-amnesty group “Americans for a Conservative Direction,” it must mean that they are impressed with the intellectual prowess and marketability of the conservative message in America.
Au contraire, patriots.
This group is using a moniker hoping it will confuse people into thinking that as long as Congressmen Rubio and Ryan are for it, and this “conservative” group backs it, it must be acceptable.
But the group is headed by some known elements who don’t have a conservative ideological thought — people like Mark Zuckerburg of Facebook, Joe Green, Bill Gates, etc. A group of cognoscenti, techno-nerds, with the resources to fund big-dollar ad campaigns and the computer savvy to influence the outcomes when necessary.
The parent group is FWD.us, so if you want to see their agenda, I would encourage some research about them.
Their version of immigration reform differs vastly from that of the majority of Americans, but they are selling their ideas on any outlet willing to take their money. Conservatives must appreciate the fact that these charlatans turn to tried-and-true name association when they want to give credence to their cause.
Their facade is crumbling, however, and the more people become aware of their agenda, the bigger their fail.
One more of a myriad of reasons Congress should reject the Gang of Eight bill coming before them.
Tracy Tubbs
Decatur

http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/06/leftist_group_using_conservati.html

FWD.us

FWD.us is a 501(c)(4) lobbying group based in the United States that aims to lobby and advocate for its version of immigration reform, changes to the US education system to improve science and technology education, and the facilitation of scientifc breakthroughs with broad public benefits. It is primarily supported and funded by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. The initiative is led by principal Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and its president is Joe Green, a close friend and confidant of Zuckerberg. The group is non-partisan and aims to build a bipartisan consensus around its proposed policies.

Pre-launch

The first rumors of the creation of a lobbying group on immigration reform were reported by Evelyn Rusli in the Wall Street Journal on March 26, 2013.^[4] On April 4, 2013, Politico obtained a leaked prospectus prepared by Joe Green intended for prospective contributors, with a proposed name of “Human Capital” for the lobbying group. Green admitted that the prospectus was authentic but also stated that many details, including the name of the group, had changed since the time the prospectus was sent out.^[5]^[6]

Launch

FWD.us was launched on April 11, 2013. The launch was accompanied by an op-ed by Mark Zuckerberg in the Washington Post laying out the agenda and arguing for the vision of the group.^[2] There was extensive media coverage of the launch.^[7]^[8]^[9]^[10]

Goals

The main goals of FWD.us, as outlined by Zuckerberg in his Washington Post op-ed^[2] and described on the FWD.us website^[11] are:

Immigration reform (in the context of immigration to the United States)
Improving the quality of science and technology education (again focused on the United States)
Encouraging more investment in breakthrough technologies in a manner that benefits the public at large.

Immigration reform

Zuckerberg’s op-ed written at launch^[2] as well as the FWD.us website^[12] describe the following main aspects of immigration reform that FWD.us will advocate for:

Improved border security.
An immigration policy that is biased in favor of attracting extremely talented and hard-working people.
A path to citizenship for current and prospective immigrants to the United States, including those who are present in the United States illegally.
An improved employment verification system (the current most widely used system is e-verify).

A statement released on April 17, 2013, by Joe Green, the president of FWD.us, expressed approval of the preliminary immigration deal announced by the Gang of Eight.^[13]

People

Founders and key supporters

The founders of FWD.us include Mark Zuckerberg (the public face of the group), Joe Green (founder and president of the group), Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Dropbox employees Drew Houston and Ruchi Sanghvi, LinkedIn CEO and founder Reid Hoffman, super-angel Ron Conway, and venture capitalists Jim Breyer (of Accel Partners), Matt Cohler (of Benchmark Capital), John Doerr (of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers), and Chamath Palihapitiya (of The Social+Capital Partnership).^[1]

Other major contributors include Steve Ballmer (CEO of Microsoft — was not in the original list at launch), Steve Chen (co-founder of YouTube — was not in the original list at launch), Brian Chesky (founder of Airbnb), Chris Cox, Paul Graham (co-founder of Y Combinator), Reed Hastings (CEO of Netflix), Chad Hurley, Josh James, Max Levchin (former CTO of Paypal), Joe Lonsdale (founder of Palantir and Addepar), Andrew Mason (founder and CEO of Groupon), Marissa Mayer (CEO of Yahoo!), Mary Meeker, Dave Morin (CEO of Path), Mark Pincus, Keith Rabois, Eric Schmidt (executive chairman at Google Inc), Brad Smith (Microsoft executive vice president of legal affairs), Kevin Systrom (CEO of Instagram), Padmasree Warrior (CTO of Cisco), and Fred Wilson (of Union Square Ventures).^[1]

Although some earlier reports, including the leaked prospectus by Politico, had suggested that Bill Gates and Marc Andreessen would be involved with FWD.us,^[5] their names did not appear on the FWD.us site at launch.^[10] However, Gates’ name was added to the list of founders later.^[14]

Elon Musk (CEO of SpaceX and of Tesla Motors) was originally listed as a major contributor, but left the group in May 2013 in the wake of advertisements put out by FWD.us supporting some political activities that conflicted with Musk’s environmentalist priorities.^[15] David Sacks, who was originally listed as a major contributor, also left the group at around the same time.^[16]^[17]

Team

The team is split between the Silicon Valley area and the Washington D.C. area.^[3]

The team in Silicon Valley is led by Joe Green (President).^[18]

The team in Washington D.C. includes Rob Jesmer (former executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee) and Kate Hansen (who worked as the communications director for the Democratic Governors Association in 2012).^[19]

Funding

According to news reports, the lobbying group is raising about $50 million (USD) for its lobbying efforts.^[4] As of April 2013, information about funds is not available on the official site, though a list of major contributors is available.^[1]

Methods

Plans prior to launch

The leaked prospectus obtained by Politico suggested that the lobbying group was planning to use the tremendous leverage that tech companies and their leaders had in pushing their agenda to the public, similar to the tactics used for the protests against SOPA and PIPA that were coordinated for January 18, 2012. However, in the same Politico article, Joe Green said that the prospectus used misleading language, and that various tech leaders would, “operating solely as individuals”, promote the agenda of the lobbying group.^[5]

According to the leaked prospectus, the tactics were described as follows:

“grassroots and grasstops” organizing in targeted congressional districts, online advocacy campaigns, paid online and television advertising that will be “critical to creating the political infrastructure we need” and “earned media.”^[5]

The use of stories

A “Stories” section on the website features videos of FWD.us supporters featuring their personal stories. Featured videos include videos by Ruchi Sanghvi (who worked at Facebook and is now at Dropbox) and Max Levchin (co-founder of PayPal).^[20]

Political lobbying and ads

The lobbying firm Fierce, Isakowitz and Blalock reported that FWD.us had paid it 30,000 USD in March 2013 (prior to the official launch of FWD.us) to lobby for immigration reform.^[21]

On April 23, 2013, Politico reported that FWD.us had created a front group called “Americans for a Conservative Direction” that would air political ads in support of conservative Republican politicians who supported immigration policies similar to those desired by FWD.us. Video advertisements were already being aired in favor of pro-immigration conservative politicians Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio.^[22]^[23]^[24]^[25] The Politico report also indicated that FWD.us was planning to open another front group called “Council for American Job Growth” designed to appeal to people with progressive political sensibilities.^[22] The pro-conservative advertisements met with considerable backlash from progressive friends and erstwhile supporters of Zuckerberg and the cause.^[26]^[27]^[28]

In May 2013, the New York Times called the ads a “sophisticated lobbying campaign being waged by technology companies and their executives.”^[29]

Facilitating grassroots activism

On June 6, 2013, FWD.us announced the launch of tools that enabled US residents to phone their senators and representatives to express views on the immigration bill that would soon be put to a vote.^[30]

Reception

Criticism of Keystone XL Pipeline Support

At least two key members of the group and several liberal organizations withdrew support from FWD.us after revelations that the group supported the Keystone XL oil pipeline in two major ways. Elon Musk, a founder of the electric carmaker Tesla, and David O. Sacks, chief executive of Yammer, left the group and withdrew financial support. The Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters and MoveOn.org also suspended advertisements on Facebook.^[31]

The controversy stemmed from the fact that FWD.us paid tens of millions of dollars for advertisements supporting three prominent lawmakers who also supported the Keystone XL oil pipeline. The lawmakers were Republican Marco Rubio, Republican Lindsey Graham, and Democrat Mark Begich.^[31] In addition, FWD.us ran advertisements praising the Keystone XL pipeline through one of its subsidiaries, Americans for Conservative Action and Council for American Job Growth.^[32]

At least five people protesting Zuckerburg’s involvement in FWD.us were arrested at Facebook’s first shareholder meeting on 11 June 2013.^[33]

Parallels drawn with other present and past groups

The first report in the Wall Street Journal that reported rumors of the lobbying group that would eventually become FWD.us considered its possible overlap in terms and methods with Michael Bloomberg‘s group called the Partnership for a New American Economy as well as with the March for Innovation, a “virtual march for immigration reform.”^[4] An in-depth article in The New Republic likened FWD.us to the Technology CEO Council, founded 24 years before FWD.us by the heads of first-generation computing companies like Dell, Intel, Xerox, and Hewlett-Packard.^[34]

Viability of the approach

The launch of FWD.us met with a wide range of reactions. Gregory Ferenstein, writing for TechCrunch, expressed skepticism regarding whether FWD.us was that different from existing lobbying groups and whether it would be able to accomplish anything.^[8] Om Malik, writing for GigaOm, also expressed a mixed reaction, albeit for different reasons.^[9]

The “cynical” approach taken by FWD.us in its political lobbying and campaigning has met with some criticism.^[35] However, an article in The New Republic argued that the cynical approach might be necessary for FWD.us to meet its goals, while noting dissent from “Silicon Valley libertarians” such as Michael Arrington and Peter Thiel (neither of whom were listed as contributors to FWD.us) from the idea of trying to influence politics and play the political game.^[34] Chamath Palihapitiya and Jim Breyer defended the approach used by FWD.us despite the political backlash.^[34]^[36]

Miscellaneous

A blog post by the Sunlight Foundation sought to put FWD.us in the context of the existing state of immigration lobbying.^[37]

Hector Ruiz, former chairman and CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, wrote a piece critical of Mark Zuckerberg arguing that freer migration and a path to citizenship should be extended to all people, not just an elite.^[38]

Shaun Raviv in an article for The Atlantic and Nathan Smith in a blog post for Open Borders: The Case (a website focused on discussing and debating open borders), critiqued Mark Zuckerberg and FWD.us for the modesty of their vision, their focus on high-skilled immigration, and their endorsement of border security.^[39]^[40]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FWD.us

Background Articles and Videos

BORDERS : Mexican Drug War – Full Documentary 2013

The full-length documentary that is an “on the ground,” on location look at the problem at the US/Mexico border. The film demonstrates the reticence, if not absolute refusal, of the US Govt to adequately protect the dangerous southern border. While security is feigned in some locations, it is totally disregarded in others. Footage shows the mostly non-functional and worthless border fence, easy access across the border at nearly any location, interviews with affected US citizens in the border zone, and questions why certain drugs are illegal that fuel the carnage. I do apologize for some of the wind problems in the sound as I was in very windy locations without an adequate cover on the mic. I did submit this documentary to several networks, but was told it was too politically charged for broadcast. So, here it is on youtube.

The Mexico–United States barrier – also known in the United States as the border fence, rotted fence or border wall – is actually several separation barriers designed to prevent illegal movement across the Mexico–United States border. The barriers were built as part of three larger “Operations” to taper transportation of illegal drugs manufactured in Latin America and illegal immigration: Operation Gatekeeper in California, Operation Hold-the-Line ^[1] in Texas, and Operation Safeguard^[2] in Arizona. The barriers are strategically placed to mitigate the flow of illegal border crossings along the Mexico–United States international border into the Southwestern United States. Construction supporters cite the ongoing escalation of national security risks, relating to Cartel border violence, and their possible co-operation with overseas terrorists. Opponents claim the barriers are a taxpayer boondoggle, an ineffective deterrent and that the barriers inappropriately jeopardize the health and safety of those seeking illegal entry into the United States, as well as destroy animal habitat, prevent animals from reaching water, disturb animal migration patterns, and otherwise damage the environment.

General impact on illegal immigration

96.6% of apprehensions by the Border Patrol in 2010 occurred at the southwest border.^[3] The number of Border Patrol apprehensions declined 61% from 1,189,000 in 2005 to 723,840 in 2008 to 463,000 in 2010. The decrease in apprehensions may be due to a number of factors including changes in U.S. economic conditions and border enforcement efforts. Border apprehensions in 2010 were at their lowest level since 1972.^[3]

The 1,951-mile (3,141 km) border between the United States and Mexico traverses a variety of terrains, including urban areas and deserts. The barrier is located on both urban and uninhabited sections of the border, areas where the most concentrated numbers of illegal crossings and drug trafficking have been observed in the past. These urban areas include San Diego, California and El Paso, Texas. As of August 29, 2008, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had built 190 miles (310 km) of pedestrian border fence and 154.3 miles (248.3 km) of vehicle border fence, for a total of 344.3 miles (554.1 km) of fence. The completed fence is mainly in New Mexico, Arizona, and California, with construction under way in Texas.^[4]

U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that it had more than 580 miles (930 km) of fence in place by the second week of January, 2009.^[5] Work is still under way on fence segments in Texas and on the Border Infrastructure System in California.

The border fence is not one continuous structure and is actually a grouping of short physical walls that stop and start, secured in between with “virtual fence” which includes a system of sensors and cameras monitored by Border Patrol Agents.^[6] As a result of the effect of the barrier, there has been a marked increase in the number of people trying to illegally cross the Sonoran Desert and crossing over the Baboquivari Mountain in Arizona.^[7] Such illegal immigrants must cross 50 miles (80 km) of inhospitable terrain to reach the first road, which is located in the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation.^[7]^[8]

There have been around 5,000 migrant deaths along the Mexico-U.S. border in the last thirteen years, according to a document created by the Human Rights National Commission of Mexico, also signed by the American Civil Liberties Union^[9] Between 43 and 61 people died trying to cross the Sonoran Desert during that same time period; three times that of the same period the previous year.^[7] In October 2004 the Border Patrol announced that 325 people had died crossing the entire border during the previous 12 months.^[10] Between 1998 and 2004, 1,954 persons are officially reported to have died along the US-Mexico border. Since 2004, the bodies of 1086 migrants have been recovered in the southern Arizona desert.^[11]

U.S. Border Patrol Tucson Sector reported on Oct. 15, 2008 that its agents were able to save 443 undocumented immigrants from certain death after being abandoned by their smugglers, during FY 2008, while reducing the number of deaths by 17 percent from 202 in FY 2007 to 167 in FY 2008. Without the efforts of these agents, hundreds more could have died in the deserts of Arizona.^[12] According to the same sector, border enhancements like the wall have allowed the Tucson Sector agents to reduce the number of apprehensions at the borders by 16 percent compared with fiscal year 2007.^[13]

Barrier status

U.S. Representative Duncan Hunter, a Republican from California and the then-chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, proposed a plan to the House on November 3, 2005 calling for the construction of a reinforced fence along the entire United States–Mexican border. This would also include a 100-yard (91 m) border zone on the U.S. side. On December 15, 2005, Congressman Hunter’s amendment to the Border Protection, Anti-terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005 (H.R. 4437) passed in the House. This plan calls for mandatory fencing along 698 miles (1,123 km) of the Mexican border.^[14] On May 17, 2006 the U.S. Senate proposed with Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 (S. 2611) what could be 370 miles (600 km) of triple layered-fencing and a vehicle fence. Although that bill died in committee, eventually the Secure Fence Act of 2006 was passed by Congress and signed by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2006.

U.S.-Mexico Border at the Pacific Ocean in Imperial Beach, California. (Tire tracks from Border Patrol Jeeps are visible on the beach.)

The government of Mexico and ministers of several Latin American countries have condemned the plans.^[15] Rick Perry, governor of Texas, also expressed his opposition saying that instead of closing the border it should be opened more and through technology support legal and safe migration.^[16] The barrier expansion has also been opposed by a unanimous vote of the Laredo, Texas City Council.^[17] Laredo’s Mayor, Raul G. Salinas, is concerned about defending his town’s people by saying that the Bill which includes miles of border wall would devastate Laredo. He states “these are people that are sustaining our economy by forty percent, and I am gonna [sic] close the door on them and put [up] a wall? You don’t do that. It’s like a slap in the face.” He hopes that Congress would revise the Bill that better reflects the realities of life on the border.^[18] There are no plans to build border fence in Laredo at this time. However, there is a large Border Patrol presence in Laredo.

Secure Fence Act

Beach in Tijuana.

House Resolution 6061 (H.R. 6061), “Secure Fence Act of 2006”, was introduced on September 13, 2006. It passed through the U.S. House of Representatives on September 14, 2006 with a vote of 283–138.

On September 29, 2006, by a vote of 80–19 the U.S. Senate confirmed H.R. 6061 authorizing, and partially funding the “possible” construction of 700 miles (1,125 km) of physical fence/barriers along the border. The very broad support implies that many assurances have been made by the Administration, to the Democrats, Mexico, and the pro “Comprehensive immigration reform” minority within the GOP, that Homeland Security will proceed very cautiously. Michael Chertoff, announced that an eight-month test of the virtual fence, he favors, will precede any construction of a physical barrier.

On October 26, 2006, President George W. Bush signed H.R. 6061 which was voted upon and passed by the 109th Congress of the United States.^[19] The signing of the bill comes right after a CNN poll shows us that most Americans “prefer the idea of more Border Patrol agents to a 700-mile (1,125-kilometer) fence.”^[20] There is a down payment of $1.2 billion to the Department of Homeland Security marked for border security, but not specifically for the border fence.

As of January 2010, the fence project has been completed from San Diego, California to Yuma, Arizona. From there it continues into Texas and consists of a fence that is 21 feet (6.4 m) tall and 6 feet (1.8 m) deep in the ground, cemented in a 3-foot (0.91 m)-wide trench with 5000 psi (UK/Éire:345 bar; 352 kg/cm²) concrete. There were no fatalities during construction, but there were 4 serious injuries with multiple aggressions against building crews, there was one reported shooting with no injury to a crew member in Mexicali region. All fence sections are south of the all American canals, and have access roads giving border guards the ability to reach any point easily, including the dunes area where a border agent was killed 3 years before and is now sealed off.

The Republican Party’s 2012 platform states that “The double-layered fencing on the border that was enacted by Congress in 2006, but never completed, must finally be built.”^[21] The Washington Office on Latin America notes on its Border Fact Check site that the extremely high cost of complying with the Secure Fence Act’s mandate, estimated at US$4.1 billion, or more than the Border Patrol’s entire annual budget of US$3.55 billion, was the main reason that it was not fulfilled.^[22]

Rethinking the expansion

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD) announced in January 2007 that Congress will revisit the fence plan, while committee chairs are holding up funding until a comprehensive border security plan is presented by the United States Department of Homeland Security. Both Senators from Texas, John Cornyn (R-TX) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), advocate revising the plan.^[17]

Construction of the border fence will not be subject to any laws. This is because in 2005 the Real ID Act, attached as a rider to a supplemental appropriations bill funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, decreed, “Not withstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall have the authority to waive all legal requirements such Secretary, in such Secretary’s sole discretion, determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads.” Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff used his new power to “waive in their entirety” the Endangered Species Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Coastal Zone Management Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act to extend triple fencing through the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve near San Diego.^[23] The Real ID Act further stipulates that his decisions are not subject to judicial review, and in December 2005 a federal judge dismissed legal challenges by the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society, and others to Chertoff’s decision.

Secretary Chertoff exercised his waiver authority on April 1, 2008. In June 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of a lower court ruling upholding the waiver authority in a case filed by the Sierra Club. (Associated Press) In September, 2008 a federal district court judge in El Paso dismissed a similar lawsuit brought by El Paso County, Texas.^[24]

By January 2009, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had spent $40 million on environmental analysis and mitigation measures aimed at blunting any possible adverse impact that the fence might have on the environment. On January 16, 2009, DHS announced it was pledging an additional $50 million for that purpose, and signed an agreement with the U.S. Department of the Interior for utilization of the additional funding.^[25]

Expansion freeze

President Barack Obama ordered a halt to the expansion of the “virtual fence,” the Department of Homeland Security announced on March 16, 2010.^[26] The money would be used to upgrade current border technology.

Local efforts

In response to a perceived lack of will on the part of the federal government to build a secure border fence, and a lack of state funds, Arizona officials plan to launch a website allowing donors to help fund a state border fence.

Controversy

Steel barrier wall near Mariposa port of entry, Nogales Sonora, Mexico. Viewpoint: from Sonora northeast to Arizona.

Wildlife Friendly Border Wall in Brownsville, Texas. A young man climbs wall using horizontal beams for foot support.

Divided land

Tribal lands of three American Indian nations would be divided by the proposed border fence.^[27]^[28]^[29]^[30]^[31]

On January 27, 2008, a U.S. Native American human rights delegation, which included Margo Tamez, (Lipan Apache-Jumano Apache) and Teresa Leal (Opata-Mayo) reported the removal of the official International Boundary obelisks of 1848 by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in the Las Mariposas, Sonora-Arizona sector of the Mexico-U.S. border. The obelisks were moved southward approximately 20 meters, onto the property of private landowners in Sonora, as part of the larger project of installing the 18-foot (5.5 m) steel barrier wall.^[32]

The proposed route for the border fence would divide the campus of the University of Texas at Brownsville into two parts, according to Antonio N. Zavaleta, a vice president of the university.^[33] There have been campus protests against the wall by students who feel it will harm their school.^[6] In August, 2008, UT-Brownsville reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for the university to construct a portion of the fence across and adjacent to its property. The final agreement, which was filed in federal court on Aug. 5 and formally signed by the Texas Southmost College Board of Trustees later that day, ended all court proceedings between UTB/TSC and DHS. On August 20, 2008, the university sent out a request for bids for the construction of a 10-foot (3.0 m) high barrier that incorporates technology security for its segment of the border fence project. The southern perimeter of the UTB/TSC campus will be part of a laboratory for testing new security technology and infrastructure combinations.^[34] The border fence segment on the UTB campus was substantially complete by December, 2008.^[35]

Hidalgo County

In the spring of 2007 more than 25 landowners, including a corporation and a school district, from Hidalgo and Starr County in Texas refused border fence surveys, which would determine what land was eligible for building on, as an act of protest.^[36]

In July 2008, Hidalgo County and Hidalgo County Drainage District No. 1 entered into an agreement with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for the construction of a project that combines the border fence with a levee to control flooding along the Rio Grande. Construction of two of the Hidalgo County fence segments are under way; five more segments are scheduled to be built during the fall of 2008; the Hidalgo County section of the border fence will constitute 22 miles (35 km) of combined fence and levee.^[37]

Mexico

Mexico has almost always condemned any course of action by the United States on its stance to increase border security and immigration control dating back over a century. It is estimated that over 500 people a year die trying to cross into the US illegally. In prior years, two times the amount was estimated as a casuality. Because of this, some Mexicans see the barriers as a slightly positive thing; but most Mexicans, as well as the Mexican government, somewhat view it a discrimination, as well as a source of alienation by the United States.

In 2006, the Mexican Government vigorously condemned the Secure Fence act of 2006. Mexico has also urged the US to alter its plans for expanded fences along their shared border, saying that it would damage the environment and harm wildlife.^[38]

In June 2007, it was announced that a section of the barrier had been mistakenly built from 1 to 6 feet (1.8 m) inside Mexican territory. This will necessitate the section being moved at an estimated cost of over US$3 million.^[39]

In 2012, then presidential candidate of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto was campaigning in Tijuana at the Playas de Monumental, less than 600 yards from the US/Mexico border adjacent to Border Field State Park. In one of his speeches he critizied the US government for building the barriers, and asked for them to be removed. Ultimately, he mocked Ronald Reagan’s “Tear down this wall” speech from Berlin in 1987.

Environmental impact

In April 2008, the Department of Homeland Security announced plans to waive more than 30 environmental and cultural laws to speed construction of the barrier. Despite claims from then Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff that the department would minimize the construction’s impact on the environment, critics in Arizona and Texas asserted the fence endangered species and fragile ecosystems along the Rio Grande. Environmentalists expressed concern about butterfly migration corridors and the future of two species of local wildcats, the ocelot and the jaguarundi.^[40]

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) conducted environmental reviews of each pedestrian and vehicle fence segment covered by the waiver, and published the results of this analysis in Environmental Stewardship Plans (ESPs).^[41] Although not required by the waiver, CBP has conducted the same level of environmental analysis (in the ESPs) that would have been performed before the waiver (in the “normal” NEPA process) to evaluate potential impacts to sensitive resources in the areas where fence is being constructed.

ESPs completed by CBP contain extremely limited surveys of local wildlife. For example, the ESP for border fence built in the Del Rio Sector included a single survey for wildlife completed in November, 2007, and only “3 invertebrates, 1 reptile species, 2 amphibian species, 1 mammal species, and 21 bird species were recorded.” The ESPs then dismiss the potential for most adverse effects on wildlife, based on sweeping generalizations and without any quantitative analysis of the risks posed by border barriers. Approximately 461 acres of vegetation will be cleared along the impact corridor. From the Rio Grande Valley ESP: “The impact corridor avoids known locations of individuals of Walker’s manioc and Zapata bladderpod, but approaches several known locations of Texas ayenia. For this reason, impacts on federally listed plants are anticipated to be short-term, moderate, and adverse.” This excerpt is typical of the ESPs in that the risk to endangered plants is deemed short-term without any quantitative population analysis.

By August, 2008, more than 90 percent of the southern border in Arizona and New Mexico had been surveyed. The remaining portions will be surveyed in the next three months. In addition, 80 percent of the California/Mexico border has been surveyed.^[4]

Public opinion in the United States

A July 29, 2010 Rasmussen Reports nationwide poll revealed that Americans favored building a fence along the U.S. border with Mexico, with 68 percent in favor and 21 percent against (margin of error: +/- 3 percentage points).^[42]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico%E2%80%93United_States_barrier

Background Articles and Videos

Stellar Wind

Stellar Wind was the open secret code name for four surveillance programs by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) during the presidency of George W. Bush and revealed by Thomas Tamm to The New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau.^[1] The operation was approved by President George W. Bush shortly after the September 11 attacks in 2001.^[2] Stellar Wind was succeeded during the presidency of Barack Obama by four major lines of intelligence collection in the territorial United States, together capable of spanning the full range of modern telecommunications.^[3]

The program’s activities involved data mining of a large database of the communications of American citizens, including e-mail communications, phone conversations, financial transactions, and Internet activity.^[1] William Binney, a retired Technical Leader with the NSA, discussed some of the architectural and operational elements of the program at the 2012 Chaos Communication Congress.^[4]

There were internal disputes within the Justice Department about the legality of the program, because data are collected for large numbers of people, not just the subjects of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants.^[4]

During the Bush Administration, the Stellar Wind cases were referred to by FBI agents as “pizza cases” because many seemingly suspicious cases turned out to be food takeout orders. According to Mueller, approximately 99 percent of the cases led nowhere, but “it’s that other 1% that we’ve got to be concerned about”.^[2] One of the known uses of these data were the creation of suspicious activity reports, or “SARS”, about people suspected of terrorist activities. It was one of these reports that revealed former New York governor Eliot Spitzer’s use of prostitutes, even though he was not suspected of terrorist activities.^[1]

In March 2012 Wired magazine published “The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)” talking about a vast new NSA facility in Utah and says “For the first time, a former NSA official has gone on the record to describe the program, codenamed Stellar Wind, in detail,” naming the official William Binney, a former NSA code breaker. Binney went on to say that the NSA had highly secured rooms that tap into major switches, and satellite communications at both AT&T and Verizon.^[5] The article suggested that the otherwise dispatched Stellar Wind is actually an active program.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_Wind_%28code_name%29

PRISM

PRISM is a clandestine national security electronic surveillance program operated by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) since 2007.^[1]^[2]^[3]^{[Notes 1]} PRISM is a government codename for a data collection effort known officially as US-984XN.^[8]^[9] It is operated under the supervision of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).^[10] The existence of the program was leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden and published by The Guardian and The Washington Post on June 6, 2013.

A document included in the leak indicated that the PRISM SIGAD was “the number one source of raw intelligence used for NSA analytic reports.”^[11] The President’s Daily Brief, an all-source intelligence product, cited PRISM data as a source in 1,477 items in 2012.^[12] The leaked information came to light one day after the revelation that the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had been requiring the telecommunications company Verizon to turn over to the NSA logs tracking all of its customers’ telephone calls on an ongoing daily basis.^[13]^[14]

According to the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, PRISM cannot be used to intentionally target any Americans or anyone in the United States. Clapper said a special court, Congress, and the executive branch oversee the program and extensive procedures ensure the acquisition, retention, and dissemination of data accidentally collected about Americans is kept to a minimum.^[15] Clapper issued a statement and “fact sheet”^[16] to correct what he characterized as “significant misimpressions” in articles by The Washington Post and The Guardian newspapers.^[17]

History

Slide showing that much of the world’s communications flow through the US

Details of information collected via PRISM

PRISM is a “Special Source Operation” in the tradition of NSA’s intelligence alliances with as many as 100 trusted U.S. companies since the 1970s.^[1] A prior program, the Terrorist Surveillance Program, was implemented in the wake of the September 11 attacks under the George W. Bush Administration but was widely criticized and had its legality questioned, because it was conducted without approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).^[18]^[19]^[20]^[21] PRISM was authorized by an order of the FISC.^[11] Its creation was enabled by the Protect America Act of 2007 under President Bush and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which legally immunized private companies that cooperated voluntarily with US intelligence collection and was renewed by Congress under President Obama in 2012 for five years until December 2017.^[2]^[22] According to The Register, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 “specifically authorizes intelligence agencies to monitor the phone, email, and other communications of U.S. citizens for up to a week without obtaining a warrant” when one of the parties is outside the U.S.^[22]

PRISM was first publicly revealed on June 6, 2013, after classified documents about the program were leaked to The Washington Post and The Guardian by American Edward Snowden.^[2]^[1] The leaked documents included 41 PowerPoint slides, four of which were published in news articles.^[1]^[2] The documents identified several technology companies as participants in the PRISM program, including (date of joining PRISM in parentheses) Microsoft (2007), Yahoo! (2008), Google (2009), Facebook (2009), Paltalk (2009), YouTube (2010), AOL (2011), Skype (2011), and Apple (2012).^[23] The speaker’s notes in the briefing document reviewed by The Washington Post indicated that “98 percent of PRISM production is based on Yahoo, Google and Microsoft.”^[1]

The slide presentation stated that much of the world’s electronic communications pass through the United States, because electronic communications data tend to follow the least expensive route rather than the most physically direct route, and the bulk of the world’s internet infrastructure is based in the United States.^[11] The presentation noted that these facts provide United States intelligence analysts with opportunities for intercepting the communications of foreign targets as their electronic data pass into or through the United States.^[2]^[11]

According to The Washington Post, the intelligence analysts search PRISM data using terms intended to identify suspicious communications of targets whom the analysts suspect with at least 51 percent confidence to not be United States citizens, but in the process, communication data of some United States citizens are also collected unintentionally.^[1] Training materials for analysts tell them that while they should periodically report such accidental collection of non-foreign United States data, “it’s nothing to worry about.”^[1]

Response from companies

The original Washington Post and Guardian articles reporting on PRISM noted that one of the leaked briefing documents said PRISM involves collection of data “directly from the servers” of several major internet services providers.^[2]^[1]

Initial Public Statements

Corporate executives of several companies identified in the leaked documents told The Guardian that they had no knowledge of the PRISM program in particular and also denied making information available to the government on the scale alleged by news reports.^[2]^[24] Statements of several of the companies named in the leaked documents were reported by TechCrunch and The Washington Post as follows:^[25]^[26]

Slide listing companies and the date that PRISM collection began

Microsoft: “We provide customer data only when we receive a legally binding order or subpoena to do so, and never on a voluntary basis. In addition we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers. If the government has a broader voluntary national security program to gather customer data we don’t participate in it.”^[25]
Yahoo!: “Yahoo! takes users’ privacy very seriously. We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers, systems, or network.”^[25] “Of the hundreds of millions of users we serve, an infinitesimal percentage will ever be the subject of a government data collection directive.”^[26]
Facebook: “We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers. When Facebook is asked for data or information about specific individuals, we carefully scrutinize any such request for compliance with all applicable laws, and provide information only to the extent required by law.”^[25]
Google: “Google cares deeply about the security of our users’ data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘back door’ into our systems, but Google does not have a backdoor for the government to access private user data.”^[25] “[A]ny suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users’ Internet activity on such a scale is completely false.”^[26]
Apple: “We have never heard of PRISM. We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order.”^[27]

Dropbox: “We’ve seen reports that Dropbox might be asked to participate in a government program called PRISM. We are not part of any such program and remain committed to protecting our users’ privacy.”^[25]

In response to the technology companies’ denials of the NSA being able to directly access the companies’ servers, The New York Times reported that sources had stated the NSA was gathering the surveillance data from the companies using other technical means in response to court orders for specific sets of data.^[13] The Washington Post suggested, “It is possible that the conflict between the PRISM slides and the company spokesmen is the result of imprecision on the part of the NSA author. In another classified report obtained by The Post, the arrangement is described as allowing ‘collection managers [to send] content tasking instructions directly to equipment installed at company-controlled locations,’ rather than directly to company servers.”^[1] “[I]n context, ‘direct’ is more likely to mean that the NSA is receiving data sent to them deliberately by the tech companies, as opposed to intercepting communications as they’re transmitted to some other destination.^[26]

“If these companies received an order under the FISA amendments act, they are forbidden by law from disclosing having received the order and disclosing any information about the order at all,” Mark Rumold, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told ABC News.^[28]

Slide showing two different sources of NSA data collection. The first source the fiber optic cables of the internet handled by the Upstream program and the second source the servers of major internet companies handled by PRISM.^[29]

On May 28, 2013, Google was ordered by United States District Court Judge Susan Illston to comply with a National Security Letter issued by the FBI to provide user data without a warrant.^[30] Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in an interview with VentureBeat said, “I certainly appreciate that Google put out a transparency report, but it appears that the transparency didn’t include this. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were subject to a gag order.”^[31]

The New York Times reported on June 7, 2013, that “Twitter declined to make it easier for the government. But other companies were more compliant, according to people briefed on the negotiations.”^[32] The other companies held discussions with national security personnel on how to make data available more efficiently and securely.^[32] In some cases, these companies made modifications to their systems in support of the intelligence collection effort.^[32] The dialogues have continued in recent months, as General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has met with executives including those at Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Intel.^[32] These details on the discussions provide insight into the disparity between initial descriptions of the government program including a training slide which states “Collection directly from the servers”^[29] and the companies’ denials.^[32]

While providing data in response to a legitimate FISA request approved by FISC is a legal requirement, modifying systems to make it easier for the government to collect the data is not. This is why Twitter could legally decline to provide an enhanced mechanism for data transmission.^[32] Other than Twitter, the companies were effectively asked to construct a locked mailbox and provide the key to the government, people briefed on the negotiations said.^[32] Facebook, for instance, built such a system for requesting and sharing the information.^[32] Google does not provide a lockbox system, but instead transmits required data by hand delivery or secure FTP.^[33]

Post-PRISM Transparency Reports

In response to the publicity surrounding media reports of data-sharing, several companies requested permission to reveal more public information about the nature and scope of information provided in response to National Security requests.

On June 14, 2013, Facebook reported that the U.S. Government had authorized the communication of “about these numbers in aggregate, and as a range.” In a press release posted to their web site, Facebook reported, “For the six months ending December 31, 2012, the total number of user-data requests Facebook received from any and all government entities in the U.S. (including local, state, and federal, and including criminal and national security-related requests) – was between 9,000 and 10,000.” Facebook further reported that the requests impacted “between 18,000 and 19,000” user accounts, a “tiny fraction of one percent” of more than 1.1 billion active user accounts.^[34]

Microsoft reported that for the same period, it received “between 6,000 and 7,000 criminal and national security warrants, subpoenas and orders affecting between 31,000 and 32,000 consumer accounts from U.S. governmental entities (including local, state and federal)” which impacted “a tiny fraction of Microsoft’s global customer base”.^[35]

Google issued a statement criticizing the requirement that data be reported in aggregated form, stating that lumping national security requests with criminal request data would be “a step backwards” from its previous, more detailed practices on its site transparency report. The company said that it would continue to seek government permission to publish the number and extent of FISA requests.^[36]

Response from United States government

Executive branch

Shortly after publication of the reports by The Guardian and The Washington Post, the United States Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, on June 7 released a statement confirming that for nearly six years the government of the United States had been using large internet services companies such as Google and Facebook to collect information on foreigners outside the United States as a defense against national security threats.^[13] The statement read in part, “The Guardian and The Washington Post articles refer to collection of communications pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They contain numerous inaccuracies.”^[37] He went on to say, “Section 702 is a provision of FISA that is designed to facilitate the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning non-U.S. persons located outside the United States. It cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person, or anyone located within the United States.”^[37] Clapper concluded his statement by stating “The unauthorized disclosure of information about this important and entirely legal program is reprehensible and risks important protections for the security of Americans.”^[37] On March 12, 2013, Clapper had told the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that the NSA does “not wittingly” collect any type of data on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.^[38] In an NBC News interview, Clapper said he answered Senator Wyden’s question in the “least untruthful manner by saying no”.^[39]

Clapper also stated that “the NSA collects the phone data in broad swaths, because collecting it (in) a narrow fashion would make it harder to identify terrorism-related communications. The information collected lets the government, over time, make connections about terrorist activities. The program doesn’t let the U.S. listen to people’s calls, but only includes information like call length and telephone numbers dialed.”^[15]

On June 8, 2013, Clapper said “the surveillance activities published in The Guardian and The Washington Post are lawful and conducted under authorities widely known and discussed, and fully debated and authorized by Congress.”^[40]^[10] The fact sheet described PRISM as “an internal government computer system used to facilitate the government’s statutorily authorized collection of foreign intelligence information from electronic communication service providers under court supervision, as authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (50 U.S.C. § 1881a).”^[10]

The National Intelligence fact sheet further stated that “the United States Government does not unilaterally obtain information from the servers of U.S. electronic communication service providers. All such information is obtained with FISA Court approval and with the knowledge of the provider based upon a written directive from the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence.” It said that the Attorney General provides FISA Court rulings and semi-annual reports about PRISM activities to Congress, “provid[ing] an unprecedented degree of accountability and transparency.”^[10]

The President of the United States, Barack Obama, said on June 7 “What you’ve got is two programs that were originally authorized by Congress, have been repeatedly authorized by Congress. Bipartisan majorities have approved them. Congress is continually briefed on how these are conducted. There are a whole range of safeguards involved. And federal judges are overseeing the entire program throughout.”^[41] He also said, “You can’t have 100 percent security and then also have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience. You know, we’re going to have to make some choices as a society.”^[41]

In separate statements, senior (not mentioned by name in source) Obama administration officials said that Congress had been briefed 13 times on the programs since 2009.^[42]

Legislative branch

In contrast to their swift and forceful reactions the previous day to allegations that the government had been conducting surveillance of United States citizens’ telephone records, Congressional leaders initially had little to say about the PRISM program the day after leaked information about the program was published. Several lawmakers declined to discuss PRISM, citing its top-secret classification,^[43] and others said that they had not been aware of the program.^[44] After statements had been released by the President and the Director of National Intelligence, some lawmakers began to comment:

Senator John McCain (R-AZ)

June 9 “We passed the Patriot Act. We passed specific provisions of the act that allowed for this program to take place, to be enacted in operation,”^[45]

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee

June 9 “These programs are within the law”, “part of our obligation is keeping Americans safe”, “Human intelligence isn’t going to do it”.^[46]
June 9 “Here’s the rub: the instances where this has produced good — has disrupted plots, prevented terrorist attacks, is all classified, that’s what’s so hard about this.”^[47]
June 11 “It went fine…we asked him[ Keith Alexander ] to declassify things because it would be helpful (for people and lawmakers to better understand the intelligence programs).” “I’ve just got to see if the information gets declassified. I’m sure people will find it very interesting.”^[48]

Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), member of Senate Intelligence Committee and past member of Homeland Security Committee

June 11 “I had, along with Joe Lieberman, a monthly threat briefing, but I did not have access to this highly compartmentalized information” and “How can you ask when you don’t know the program exists?”^[49]

Representative John Boehner (R-OH), Speaker of the House of Representatives

June 11 “He’s a traitor”^[50] (referring to Edward Snowden)

Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), principal sponsor of the Patriot Act

June 9, “This is well beyond what the Patriot Act allows.”^[51] “President Obama’s claim that ‘this is the most transparent administration in history’ has once again proven false. In fact, it appears that no administration has ever peered more closely or intimately into the lives of innocent Americans.”^[51]

Representative Mike Rogers (R-MI), a Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

June 9 “One of the things that we’re charged with is keeping America safe and keeping our civil liberties and privacy intact. I think we have done both in this particular case,”^[46]
June 9 “Within the last few years this program was used to stop a program, excuse me, to stop a terrorist attack in the United States we know that. It’s, it’s, it’s important, it fills in a little seam that we have and it’s used to make sure that there is not an international nexus to any terrorism event that they may believe is ongoing in the United States. So in that regard it is a very valuable thing,”^[52]

Senator Mark Udall (D-CO)

June 9 “I don’t think the American public knows the extent or knew the extent to which they were being surveilled and their data was being collected.” “I think we ought to reopen the Patriot Act and put some limits on the amount of data that the National Security (Agency) is collecting,” “It ought to remain sacred, and there’s got to be a balance here. That is what I’m aiming for. Let’s have the debate, let’s be transparent, let’s open this up”.^[46]

Representative Todd Rokita (R-IN)

June 10 “We have no idea when they [ FISA ] meet, we have no idea what their judgments are”,^[53]

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY)

June 6 “When the Senate rushed through a last-minute extension of the FISA Amendments Act late last year, I insisted on a vote on my amendment (SA 3436) to require stronger protections on business records and prohibiting the kind of data-mining this case has revealed. Just last month, I introduced S.1037, the Fourth Amendment Preservation and Protection Act,”^[54]
June 9 “I’m going to be seeing if I can challenge this at the Supreme Court level. I’m going to be asking the Internet providers and all of the phone companies: ask your customers to join me in a class-action lawsuit.”^[45]

Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-IL)

June 9 “We will be receiving secret briefings and we will be asking, I know I’m going to be asking to get more information. I want to make sure that what they’re doing is harvesting information that is necessary to keep us safe and not simply going into everybody’s private telephone conversations and Facebook and communications. I mean one of the, you know the terrorists win when you debilitate freedom of expression and privacy.”^[52]

Judicial branch

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has not acknowledged, denied or confirmed any involvement in the PRISM program at this time. It has not issued any press statement or release relating to the current situation and uncertainty.

Applicable law and practice

On June 8, 2013, the Director of National Intelligence issued a fact sheet stating that PRISM “is not an undisclosed collection or data mining program”, but rather computer software used to facilitate the collection of foreign intelligence information “under court supervision, as authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (50 U.S.C. § 1881a).”^[10] Section 702 provides that “the Attorney General [A.G.] and the Director of National Intelligence [DNI] may authorize jointly, for a period of up to 1 year from the effective date of the authorization, the targeting of persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States to acquire foreign intelligence information.”^[55] In order to authorize the targeting, the A.G. and DNI need to get an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) pursuant to Section 702 or certify that “intelligence important to the national security of the United States may be lost or not timely acquired and time does not permit the issuance of an order.”^[55] When asking for an order, the A.G. and DNI must certify to FISC that “a significant purpose of the acquisition is to obtain foreign intelligence information.”^[55] They do not need to specify which facilities or property that the targeting will be directed at.^[55]

After getting a FISC order or determining that there are emergency circumstances, the A.G. and DNI can direct an electronic communication service provider to give them access to information or facilities to carry out the targeting and keep the targeting secret.^[55] The provider then has the option to: (1) comply with the directive; (2) reject it; or (3) challenge it to FISC.

If the provider complies with the directive, it is released from liability to its users for providing the information and reimbursed for the cost of providing it.^[55]

If the provider rejects the directive, the A.G. may request an order from FISC to enforce it.^[55] A provider that fails to comply with FISC’s order can be punished with contempt of court.^[55]

Finally, a provider can petition FISC to reject the directive.^[55] In case FISC denies the petition and orders the provider to comply with the directive, the provider risks contempt of court if it refuses to comply with FISC’s order.^[55] The provider can appeal FISC’s denial to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review and then appeal the Court of Review’s decision to the Supreme Court by a writ of certiorari for review under seal.^[55]

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the FISA Courts had been put in place to oversee intelligence operations in the period after the death of J. Edgar Hoover. Beverly Gage of Slate said, “When they were created, these new mechanisms were supposed to stop the kinds of abuses that men like Hoover had engineered. Instead, it now looks as if they have come to function as rubber stamps for the expansive ambitions of the intelligence community. J. Edgar Hoover no longer rules Washington, but it turns out we didn’t need him anyway.”^[56]

Involvement of other countries

Australia

The Australian government has said it will investigate the impact of the PRISM program and the use of the Pine Gap surveillance facility on the privacy of Australian citizens.^[57]

Canada

Canada’s national cryptologic agency, the Communications Security Establishment, said that commenting on PRISM “would undermine CSE’s ability to carry out its mandate”. Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart lamented Canada’s standards when it comes to protecting personal online privacy stating “We have fallen too far behind,” Stoddart wrote in her report. “While other nations’ data protection authorities have the legal power to make binding orders, levy hefty fines and take meaningful action in the event of serious data breaches, we are restricted to a ‘soft’ approach: persuasion, encouragement and, at the most, the potential to publish the names of transgressors in the public interest.” And, “when push comes to shove,” Stoddart wrote, “short of a costly and time-consuming court battle, we have no power to enforce our recommendations.”^[58]

Germany

Germany did not receive any raw PRISM data, according to a Reuters report.^[59]

Israel

Israeli newspaper Calcalist discussed^[60] the Business Insider article^[61] about the possible involvement of technologies from two secretive Israeli companies in the PRISM program – Verint Systems and Narus.

New Zealand

In New Zealand, University of Otago information science Associate Professor Hank Wolfe said that “under what was unofficially known as the Five Eyes Alliance, New Zealand and other governments, including the United States, Australia, Canada, and Britain, dealt with internal spying by saying they didn’t do it. But they have all the partners doing it for them and then they share all the information.”^[62]

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has had access to the PRISM program on or before June 2010 and wrote 197 reports with it in 2012 alone. PRISM may have allowed GCHQ to circumvent the formal legal process required to seek personal material.^[63]^[64]

Domestic response

The neutrality of this section is disputed. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (June 2013)

The New York Times editorial board charged that the Obama administration “has now lost all credibility on this issue,”^[65] and lamented that “for years, members of Congress ignored evidence that domestic intelligence-gathering had grown beyond their control, and, even now, few seem disturbed to learn that every detail about the public’s calling and texting habits now reside in a N.S.A. database.”^[66]

Republican and former member of Congress Ron Paul said, “We should be thankful for individuals like Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald who see injustice being carried out by their own government and speak out, despite the risk…. They have done a great service to the American people by exposing the truth about what our government is doing in secret.”^[67] Paul denounced the government’s secret surveillance program: “The government does not need to know more about what we are doing…. We need to know more about what the government is doing.”^[67] He called Congress “derelict in giving that much power to the government,” and said that had he been elected president, he would have ordered searches only when there was probable cause of a crime having been committed, which he said was not how the PRISM program was being operated.^[68]

In response to Obama administration arguments that it could stop terrorism in the cases of Najibullah Zazi and David Headley, Ed Pilkington and Nicholas Watt of The Guardian said in regards to the role of PRISM and Boundless Informant interviews with parties involved in the Zazi scheme and court documents lodged in the United States and the United Kingdom indicated that “conventional” surveillance methods such as “old-fashioned tip-offs” of the British intelligence services initiated the investigation into the Zazi case.^[69] An anonymous former CIA agent said that in regards to the Headley case, “That’s nonsense. It played no role at all in the Headley case. That’s not the way it happened at all.”^[69] Pilkington and Watt concluded that the data-mining programs “played a relatively minor role in the interception of the two plots.”^[69] Michael Daly of The Daily Beast stated that even though Tamerlan Tsarnaev had visited Inspire and even though Russian intelligence officials alerted U.S. intelligence officials about Tsarnaev, PRISM did not prevent him from carrying out the Boston bombings, and that the initial evidence implicating him came from his brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and not from federal intelligence. In addition Daly pointed to the fact that Faisal Shahzad visited Inspire but that federal authorities did not stop his attempted terrorist plot. Daly concluded “The problem is not just what the National Security Agency is gathering at the risk of our privacy but what it is apparently unable to monitor at the risk of our safety.”^[70] In addition, political commentator Bill O’Reilly criticized the government, saying that PRISM did not stop the Boston bombings.^[71]

In a blog post, David Simon, the creator of The Wire, compared the NSA’s programs, including PRISM, to a 1980s effort by the City of Baltimore to add dialed number recorders to all pay phones to know which individuals were being called by the callers;^[72] the city believed that drug traffickers were using pay phones and pagers, and a municipal judge allowed the city to place the recorders. The placement of the dialers formed the basis of the show’s first season. Simon argued that the media attention regarding the NSA programs is a “faux scandal.”^[72]^[73] George Takei, an actor who had experienced Japanese American internment, said that due to his memories of the internment, he felt concern towards the NSA surveillance programs that had been revealed.^[74]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an international non-profit digital-rights group based in the U.S., is hosting a tool, by which an American resident can write to their government representatives regarding their opposition to mass spying.^[75]

On June 11, 2013, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the NSA citing that PRISM “violates Americans’ constitutional rights of free speech, association, and privacy”.^[76]

International response

Reactions of Internet users in China were mixed between viewing a loss of freedom worldwide and seeing state surveillance coming out of secrecy. The story broke just before US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in California.^[77]^[78] When asked about NSA hacking China, the spokeswoman of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China said “China strongly advocates cybersecurity”.^[79] The party-owned newspaper Liberation Daily described this surveillance like Nineteen Eighty-Four-style.^[80] Hong Kong legislators Gary Fan and Claudia Mo wrote a letter to Obama, stating “the revelations of blanket surveillance of global communications by the world’s leading democracy have damaged the image of the U.S. among freedom-loving peoples around the world.”^[81]

Sophie in ‘t Veld, a Dutch Member of the European Parliament, called PRISM “a violation of EU laws”.^[82]

Protests at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin

The German Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, Peter Schaar, condemned the program as “monstrous”.^[83] He further added that White House claims do “not reassure me at all” and that “given the large number of German users of Google, Facebook, Apple or Microsoft services, I expect the German government […] is committed to clarification and limitation of surveillance.” Steffen Seibert, press secretary of the Chancellor’s office, announced that Angela Merkel will put these issues on the agenda of the talks with Barack Obama during his pending visit in Berlin.^[84]

The Italian president of the Guarantor for the protection of personal data, Antonello Soro, said that the surveillance dragnet “would not be legal in Italy” and would be “contrary to the principles of our legislation and would represent a very serious violation”.^[85]

William Hague, the foreign secretary of the United Kingdom, dismissed accusations that British security agencies had been circumventing British law by using information gathered on British citizens by Prism^[86] saying, “Any data obtained by us from the United States involving UK nationals is subject to proper UK statutory controls and safeguards.”^[86] David Cameron said Britain’s spy agencies that received data collected from PRISM acted within the law: “I’m satisfied that we have intelligence agencies that do a fantastically important job for this country to keep us safe, and they operate within the law.”^[86]^[87] Malcolm Rifkind, the chairman of parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, said that if the British intelligence agencies were seeking to know the content of emails about people living in the UK, then they actually have to get lawful authority.^[87] The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office was more cautious, saying it would investigate PRISM alongside other European data agencies: “There are real issues about the extent to which U.S. law agencies can access personal data of UK and other European citizens. Aspects of U.S. law under which companies can be compelled to provide information to U.S. agencies potentially conflict with European data protection law, including the UK’s own Data Protection Act. The ICO has raised this with its European counterparts, and the issue is being considered by the European Commission, who are in discussions with the U.S. Government.”^[82]

Ai Weiwei, a Chinese dissident, said “Even though we know governments do all kinds of things I was shocked by the information about the US surveillance operation, Prism. To me, it’s abusively using government powers to interfere in individuals’ privacy. This is an important moment for international society to reconsider and protect individual rights.”^[88]

Kim Dotcom, a German-Finnish Internet entrepreneur who owned Megaupload, which was closed by the U.S. federal government, said “We should heed warnings from Snowden because the prospect of an Orwellian society outweighs whatever security benefits we derive from Prism or Five Eyes.”^[89] The Hong Kong law firm representing Dotcom expressed a fear that the communication between Dotcom and the firm had been compromised by U.S. intelligence programs.^[90]

Russia has offered to consider an asylum request from Edward Snowden.^[91]

Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid said “We knew about their past efforts to trace our system. We have used our technical resources to foil their efforts and have been able to stop them from succeeding so far.”^[92]^[93]

Related government Internet surveillance programs

Main article: List of government surveillance projects

A parallel program, code-named BLARNEY, gathers up metadata as it streams past choke points along the backbone of the Internet. BLARNEY’s summary, set down in the slides alongside a cartoon insignia of a shamrock and a leprechaun hat, describes it as “an ongoing collection program that leverages IC [intelligence community] and commercial partnerships to gain access and exploit foreign intelligence obtained from global networks.”^[94]

A related program, a big data visualization system based on cloud computing and free and open-source software (FOSS) technology known as “Boundless Informant”, was disclosed in documents leaked to The Guardian and reported on June 8, 2013. A leaked, top secret map allegedly produced by Boundless Informant revealed the extent of NSA surveillance in the U.S.^[95]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29

ThinThread

ThinThread is the name of a project that the United States National Security Agency (NSA) pursued during the 1990s, according to a May 17, 2006 article in The Baltimore Sun.^[1] The program involved wiretapping and sophisticated analysis of the resulting data, but according to the article, the program was discontinued three weeks before the September 11, 2001 attacks due to the changes in priorities and the consolidation of U.S. intelligence authority.^[2] The “change in priority” consisted of the decision made by the director of NSA General Michael V. Hayden to go with a concept called Trailblazer, despite the fact that ThinThread was a working prototype that protected the privacy of U.S. citizens.

ThinThread was dismissed and replaced by the Trailblazer Project, which lacked the privacy protections.^[3] A consortium led by Science Applications International Corporation was awarded a $280 million contract to develop Trailblazer in 2002.^[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinThread

Trailblazer

Trailblazer was a United States National Security Agency (NSA) program intended to develop a capability to analyze data carried on communications networks like the Internet. It was intended to track entities using communication methods such as cell phones and e-mail.^[1]^[2] It ran over budget, failed to accomplish critical goals, and was cancelled.

NSA whistleblowers J. Kirk Wiebe, William Binney, Ed Loomis, and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence staffer Diane Roark complained to the Department of Defense’s Inspector General (IG) about waste, fraud, and abuse in the program, and the fact that a successful operating prototype existed, but was ignored when the Trailblazer program was launched. The complaint was accepted by the IG and an investigation began that lasted until mid-2005 when the final results were issued. The results were largely hidden, as the report given to the public was heavily (90%) redacted, while the original report was heavily classified, thus restricting the ability of most people to see it.

The people who filed the IG complaint were later raided by armed Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents. While the Government threatened to prosecute all who signed the IG report, it ultimately chose to pursue an NSA Senior Executive — Thomas Andrews Drake — who helped with the report internally to NSA and who had spoken with a reporter about the project. Drake was later charged under the Espionage Act of 1917. His defenders claimed this was retaliation.^[3]^[4] The charges against him were later dropped, and he agreed to plead guilty to having committed a misdemeanor under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, something that Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project (which helped represent him) called an “act of civil disobedience”.^[5]

Background

Trailblazer was chosen over a similar program named ThinThread, a less costly project which had been designed with built-in privacy protections for United States citizens.^[4]^[3] Trailblazer was later linked to the NSA electronic surveillance program and the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy.^[3]

In 2002 a consortium led by Science Applications International Corporation was chosen by the NSA to produce a technology demonstration platform in a contract worth $280 million. Project participants included Boeing, Computer Sciences Corporation, and Booz Allen Hamilton. The project was overseen by NSA Deputy Director William B. Black, Jr., an NSA worker who had gone to SAIC, and then been re-hired back to NSA by NSA director Michael Hayden in 2000.^[6]^[7]^[8] SAIC had also hired a former NSA director to its management; Bobby Inman.^[9] SAIC also participated in the concept definition phase of Trailblazer.^[10]^[11]

Redacted version of the DoD Inspector General audit, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the Project on Government Oversight and others. ^[12]^[5]

The NSA Inspector General issued a report on Trailblazer that “discussed improperly based contract cost increases, non-conformance in the management of the Statement of Work, and excessive labor rates for contractor personnel.” ^[13]

In 2004 the DoD IG report criticized the program (see the Whistleblowing section below). It said that the “NSA ‘disregarded solutions to urgent national security needs'” and “that TRAILBLAZER was poorly executed and overly expensive …” Several contractors for the project were worried about cooperating with DoD’s audit for fear of “management reprisal.”^[5] The Director of NSA “nonconcurred” with several statements in the IG audit, and the report contains a discussion of those disagreements.^[14]

In 2005, NSA director Michael Hayden told a Senate hearing that the Trailblazer program was several hundred million dollars over budget and years behind schedule.^[15] In 2006 the program was shut down,^[3] after having cost billions of US Dollars.^[16] Several anonymous NSA sources told Hosenball of Newsweek later on that the project was a “wasteful failure”.^[17]

The new project replacing Trailblazer is called Turbulence.^[3]

Whistleblowing

According to a 2011 New Yorker article, in the early days of the project several NSA employees met with Diane S Roark, an NSA budget expert on the House Intelligence Committee. They aired their grievances about Trailblazer. In response, NSA director Michael Hayden sent out a memo saying that “individuals, in a session with our congressional overseers, took a position in direct opposition to one that we had corporately decided to follow … Actions contrary to our decisions will have a serious adverse effect on our efforts to transform N.S.A., and I cannot tolerate them.”^[3]

In September 2002, several people filed a complaint with the Department of Defense IG’s office regarding problems with Trailblazer: they included Roark (aforementioned), ex-NSA senior analysts Bill Binney, Kirk Wiebe, and Senior Computer Systems Analyst Ed Loomis, who had quit the agency over concerns about its mismanagement of acquisition and allegedly illegal domestic spying.^[3]^[18]^[19] A major source for the report was NSA senior officer Thomas Andrews Drake. Drake had been complaining to his superiors for some time about problems at the agency, and about the superiority of ThinThread over Trailblazer, for example, at protecting privacy.^[19] Drake gave info to DoD during its investigation of the matter.^[19] Roark also went to her boss at the House committee, Porter Goss, about problems, but was rebuffed.^[20] She also attempted to contact William Renquist, the Supreme Court Chief Justice at the time.^[19]

Drake’s own boss, Maureen Baginski, the third-highest officer at NSA, quit partly over concerns about the legality of its behavior.^[3]

In 2003, the NSA IG (not the DoD IG)^[19] had declared Trailblazer an expensive failure.^[21] It had cost more than $1 billion.^[8]^[22]^[23]

In 2005, the DoD IG produced a report on the result of its investigation of the complaint of Roark and the others in 2002. This report was not released to the public, but it has been described as very negative.^[18] Mayer writes that it hastened the closure of Trailblazer, which was at the time in trouble from congress for being over budget.^[3]

In November 2005, Drake contacted Siobhan Gorman, a reporter of The Baltimore Sun.^[24]^[17]^[25] Gorman wrote several articles about problems at the NSA, including articles on Trailblazer. This series got her an award from the Society of Professional Journalists.^[17]

In 2005, President George W. Bush ordered the FBI to find whoever had disclosed information about the NSA electronic surveillance program and its disclosure in the New York Times. Eventually, this investigation led to the people who had filed the 2002 DoD IG request, even though they had nothing to do with the New York Times disclosure. In 2007, the houses of Roark, Binney, and Wiebe were raided by armed FBI agents. According to Mayer, Binney claims the FBI pointed guns at his head and that of his wife. Wiebe said it reminded him of the Soviet Union.^[3]^[18] None of these people were ever charged with any crime. Four months later, Drake was raided in November 2007 and his computers and documents were confiscated.

In 2010 Drake was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice on charges of obstructing justice, providing false information, and violating the Espionage Act of 1917,^[17]^[26]^[27] part of President Barack Obama’s crackdown on whistleblowers and “leakers”.^[24]^[17]^[28]^[18] The government tried to get Roark to testify to a conspiracy, and made similar requests to Drake, offering him a plea bargain. They both refused.^[3]

In June 2011, the ten original charges against Drake were dropped, instead he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.^[5]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AXwwSq_me4

Boundless Informant

Boundless Informant is a big data analysis and data visualization system used by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) to give NSA managers summaries of NSA’s world wide data collection activities.^[1] It is described in an unclassified, For Official Use Only Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) memo published by The Guardian.^[2] According to a Top Secret heat map display also published by The Guardian and allegedly produced by the Boundless Informant program, almost 3 billion data elements from inside the United States were captured by NSA over a 30-day period ending in March 2013.

Data analyzed by Boundless Informant includes electronic surveillance program records (DNI) and telephone call metadata records (DNR) stored in an NSA data archive called GM-PLACE. It does not include FISA data, according to the FAQ memo. PRISM, a government codename for a collection effort known officially as US-984XN, which was revealed at the same time as Boundless Informant, is one source of DNR data. According to the map, Boundless Informant summarizes data records from 504 separate DNR and DNI collection sources (SIGADs). In the map, countries that are under surveillance are assigned a color from green, representing least coverage to red, most intensive.^[3]^[4]

History

Slide showing that much of the world’s communications flow through the US.

Intelligence gathered by the United States government inside the United States or specifically targeting US citizens is legally required to be gathered in compliance with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) and under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA court).^[5]^[6]^[7]

NSA global data mining projects have existed for decades, but recent programs of intelligence gathering and analysis that include data gathered from inside the United States such as PRISM were enabled by changes to US surveillance law introduced under President Bush and renewed under President Obama in December 2012.^[8]

Boundless Informant was first publicly revealed on June 8, 2013, after classified documents about the program were leaked to The Guardian.^[1]^[9] The newspaper identified its informant, at his request, as Edward Snowden, who worked at the NSA for the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.^[10]

Technology

According to published slides, Boundless Informant leverages Free and Open Source Software—and is therefore “available to all NSA developers”—and corporate services hosted in the cloud. The tool uses HDFS, MapReduce, and Cloudbase for data processing.^[11]

Legality and FISA Amendments Act of 2008

The FISA Amendments Act (FAA) Section 702 is referenced in PRISM documents detailing the electronic interception, capture and analysis of metadata. Many reports and letters of concern written by members of Congress suggest that this section of FAA in particular is legally and constitutionally problematic, such as by targeting U.S. persons, insofar as “Collections occur in U.S.” as published documents indicate.^[12]^[13]^[14]^[15]

The ACLU has asserted the following regarding the FAA: “Regardless of abuses, the problem with the FAA is more fundamental: the statute itself is unconstitutional.”^[16]

Senator Rand Paul is introducing new legislation called the Fourth Amendment Restoration Act of 2013 to stop the NSA or other agencies of the United States government from violating the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution using technology and big data information systems like PRISM and Boundless Informant.^[17]^[18]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundless_Informant

ECHELON

ECHELON is a name used in global media and in popular culture to describe a signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection and analysis network operated on behalf of the five signatory states to the UKUSA Security Agreement^[1] (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, referred to by a number of abbreviations, including AUSCANNZUKUS^[1] and Five Eyes).^[2]^[3] It has also been described as the only software system which controls the download and dissemination of the intercept of commercial satellite trunk communications.^[4]

ECHELON, according to information in the European Parliament document, “On the existence of a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications (ECHELON interception system)” was created to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies during the Cold War in the early 1960s.^[5]

The system has been reported in a number of public sources.^[6] Its capabilities and political implications were investigated by a committee of the European Parliament during 2000 and 2001 with a report published in 2001,^[5] and by author James Bamford in his books on the National Security Agency of the United States.^[4] The European Parliament stated in its report that the term ECHELON is used in a number of contexts, but that the evidence presented indicates that it was the name for a signals intelligence collection system. The report concludes that, on the basis of information presented, ECHELON was capable of interception and content inspection of telephone calls, fax, e-mail and other data traffic globally through the interception of communication bearers including satellite transmission, public switched telephone networks (which once carried most Internet traffic) and microwave links.^[5]

Bamford describes the system as the software controlling the collection and distribution of civilian telecommunications traffic conveyed using communication satellites, with the collection being undertaken by ground stations located in the footprint of the downlink leg.

Organization

UKUSA Community
Australia Canada New Zealand United Kingdom United States of America

The UKUSA intelligence community was assessed by the European Parliament (EP) in 2000 to include the signals intelligence agencies of each of the member states:

the Government Communications Headquarters of the United Kingdom,
the National Security Agency of the United States,
the Communications Security Establishment of Canada,
the Defence Signals Directorate of Australia, and
the Government Communications Security Bureau of New Zealand.
the National SIGINT Organisation (NSO) of The Netherlands

The EP report concluded that it seemed likely that ECHELON is a method of sorting captured signal traffic, rather than a comprehensive analysis tool.^[5]

Capabilities

The ability to intercept communications depends on the medium used, be it radio, satellite, microwave, cellular or fiber-optic.^[5] During World War II and through the 1950s, high frequency (“short wave”) radio was widely used for military and diplomatic communication,^[7] and could be intercepted at great distances.^[5] The rise of geostationary communications satellites in the 1960s presented new possibilities for intercepting international communications. The report to the European Parliament of 2001 states: “If UKUSA states operate listening stations in the relevant regions of the earth, in principle they can intercept all telephone, fax and data traffic transmitted via such satellites.”^[5]

The role of satellites in point-to-point voice and data communications has largely been supplanted by fiber optics; in 2006, 99% of the world’s long-distance voice and data traffic was carried over optical-fiber.^[8] The proportion of international communications accounted for by satellite links is said to have decreased substantially over the past few years^[when?] in Central Europe to an amount between 0.4% and 5%.^[5] Even in less-developed parts of the world, communications satellites are used largely for point-to-multipoint applications, such as video.^[9] Thus, the majority of communications can no longer be intercepted by earth stations; they can only be collected by tapping cables and intercepting line-of-sight microwave signals, which is possible only to a limited extent.^[5]

One method of interception is to place equipment at locations where fiber optic communications are switched. For the Internet, much of the switching occurs at relatively few sites. There have been reports of one such intercept site, Room 641A, in the United States. In the past^[when?] much Internet traffic was routed through the U.S. and the UK, but this has changed; for example, in 2000, 95% of intra-German Internet communications was routed via the DE-CIX Internet exchange point in Frankfurt.^[5] A comprehensive worldwide surveillance network is possible only if clandestine intercept sites are installed in the territory of friendly nations, and/or if local authorities cooperate. The report to the European Parliament points out that interception of private communications by foreign intelligence services is not necessarily limited to the U.S. or British foreign intelligence services.^[5]

Most reports on ECHELON focus on satellite interception; testimony before the European Parliament indicated that separate but similar UK-US systems are in place to monitor communication through undersea cables, microwave transmissions and other lines.^[10]

Controversy

Hardware

According to its website, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) is “a high technology organization … on the frontiers of communications and data processing”. In 1999 the Australian Senate Joint Standing Committee on Treaties was told by Professor Desmond Ball that the Pine Gap facility was used as a ground station for a satellite-based interception network. The satellites were said to be large radio dishes between 20 and 100 meters in diameter in geostationary orbits.^{[citation needed]} The original purpose of the network was to monitor the telemetry from 1970s Soviet weapons, air defence radar, communications satellites and ground based microwave communications.^[15]

Name

The European Parliament’s Temporary Committee on the ECHELON Interception System stated: “It seems likely, in view of the evidence and the consistent pattern of statements from a very wide range of individuals and organisations, including American sources, that its name is in fact ECHELON, although this is a relatively minor detail.”^[5] The U.S. intelligence community uses many code names (see, for example, CIA cryptonym).

Former NSA employee Margaret Newsham claims that she worked on the configuration and installation of software that makes up the ECHELON system while employed at Lockheed Martin, for whom she worked from 1974 to 1984 in Sunnyvale, California, US, and in Menwith Hill, England, UK.^[16] At that time, according to Newsham, the code name ECHELON was NSA’s term for the computer network itself. Lockheed called it P415. The software programs were called SILKWORTH and SIRE. A satellite named VORTEX intercepted communications. An image available on the internet of a fragment apparently torn from a job description shows Echelon listed along with several other code names.^[17]

Ground stations

The 2001 European Parliamentary (EP) report^[5] lists several ground stations as possibly belonging to, or participating in, the ECHELON network. These include:

Likely satellite intercept stations

The following stations are listed in the EP report (p. 54 ff) as likely to have, or to have had, a role in intercepting transmissions from telecommunications satellites:

Hong Kong (since closed)
Australian Defence Satellite Communications Station (Geraldton, Western Australia)
Menwith Hill (Yorkshire, U.K.) Map (reportedly the largest Echelon facility)^[18]
Misawa Air Base (Japan) Map
GCHQ Bude, formerly known as GCHQ CSO Morwenstow, (Cornwall, U.K.) Map
Pine Gap (Northern Territory, Australia – close to Alice Springs) Map
Sugar Grove (West Virginia, U.S.) Map
Yakima Training Center (Washington, U.S.) Map
GCSB Waihopai (New Zealand)
GCSB Tangimoana (New Zealand)
CFS Leitrim (Ontario, Canada)
Teufelsberg (Berlin, Germany) (closed 1992)

Other potentially related stations

The following stations are listed in the EP report (p. 57 ff) as ones whose roles “cannot be clearly established”:

Ayios Nikolaos (Cyprus – U.K.)
Bad Aibling Station (Bad Aibling, Germany – U.S.)
- relocated to Griesheim in 2004^[19]
- deactivated in 2008^[20]
Buckley Air Force Base (Aurora, Colorado)
Fort Gordon (Georgia, U.S.)
Gander (Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada)
Guam (Pacific Ocean, U.S.)
Kunia Regional SIGINT Operations Center (Hawaii, U.S.)
Lackland Air Force Base, Medina Annex (San Antonio, Texas)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

Room 641A

Room 641A is a telecommunication interception facility operated by AT&T for the U.S. National Security Agency that commenced operations in 2003 and was exposed in 2006.^[1]^[2]

Description

Room 641A is located in the SBC Communications building at 611 Folsom Street, San Francisco, three floors of which were occupied by AT&T before SBC purchased AT&T.^[1] The room was referred to in internal AT&T documents as the SG3 [Study Group 3] Secure Room. It is fed by fiber optic lines from beam splitters installed in fiber optic trunks carrying Internet backbone traffic^[3] and, as analyzed by J. Scott Marcus, a former CTO for GTE and a former adviser to the FCC, who has access to all Internet traffic that passes through the building, and therefore “the capability to enable surveillance and analysis of internet content on a massive scale, including both overseas and purely domestic traffic.”^[4] Former director of the NSA’s World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group, William Binney, has estimated that 10 to 20 such facilities have been installed throughout the United States.^[2]

The room measures about 24 by 48 feet (7.3 by 15 m) and contains several racks of equipment, including a Narus STA 6400, a device designed to intercept and analyze Internet communications at very high speeds.^[1]

The very existence of the room was revealed by a former AT&T technician, Mark Klein, and was the subject of a 2006 class action lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against AT&T.^[5] Klein claims he was told that similar black rooms are operated at other facilities around the country.

Room 641A and the controversies surrounding it were subjects of an episode of Frontline, the current affairs documentary program on PBS. It was originally broadcast on May 15, 2007. It was also featured on PBS’s NOW on March 14, 2008. The room was also covered in the PBS Nova episode “The Spy Factory”.

Lawsuit

Basic diagram of how the alleged wiretapping was accomplished. From EFF court filings^[4]

More complicated diagram of how it allegedly worked. From EFF court filings.^[3] See bottom of the file page for enlarged and rotated version.

Main article: Hepting v. AT&T

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T on January 31, 2006, accusing the telecommunication company of violating the law and the privacy of its customers by collaborating with the National Security Agency (NSA) in a massive, illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans’ communications. On July 20, 2006, a federal judge denied the government’s and AT&T’s motions to dismiss the case, chiefly on the ground of the States Secrets Privilege, allowing the lawsuit to go forward. On August 15, 2007, the case was heard by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and was dismissed on December 29, 2011 based on a retroactive grant of immunity by Congress for telecommunications companies that cooperated with the government. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.^[6] A different case by the EFF was filed on September 18, 2008, titled Jewel v. NSA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

List of government surveillance projects for the United States

United States

A top secret document leaked by Edward Snowden to The Guardian in 2013, originally due to be declassified on 12 April 2038.

Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative: Under this initiative, a Suspicious Activity Report may be filed by law enforcers, public safety personnel, owners of critical infrastructure or the general public.
PRISM: A clandestine national security electronic surveillance program operated by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) which can target customers of participating corporations outside or inside the United States
DCSNet: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)’s point-and-click surveillance system that can perform instant wiretaps on any telecommunications device located in the United States.^[6]
Main Core: A personal and financial database storing information of millions of U.S. citizens believed to be threats to national security.^[7] The data mostly comes from the NSA, FBI, CIA, as well as other government sources.^[7]
- Magic Lantern: A keystroke logging software deployed by the FBI in the form of an e-mail attachment. When activated, it acts as a trojan horse and allows the FBI to decrypt user communications.^[8]
- Carnivore: A system implemented by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that was designed to monitor email and electronic communications. Apparently replaced by commercial software such as NarusInsight
NSA call database
- Stellar Wind
- Room 641A
Intelligence Community (IC): A cooperative federation of 16 government agencies working together, but also separately, to gather intelligence and conduct espionage
- Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative
- Utah Data Center: The Intelligence Community’s US$1.5 billion data storage that is designed to store extremely large amounts of data, on the scale of yottabytes^[9]^[10]^[11]
Financial Crimes Enforcement Network: A bureau of the Department of the Treasury that collects and analyzes financial transactions in order to combat financial crimes.
Terrorist Finance Tracking Program: A joint initiative run by the CIA and the Department of the Treasury to access the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) transaction database as part of the Bush administration‘s “Global War on Terrorism“. According to the U.S. government, its efforts to counter terrorist activities were compromised after the existence of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program was leaked to the media.^[12]
Tailored Access Operations: Intelligence-gathering unit of the NSA that is capable of harvesting approximately 2 petabytes of data per hour.^[13]^[14]
Boundless Informant: A system deployed by the National Security Agency to analyze global electronic information. In March 2013, Boundless Informant gathered 14 billion data reports from Iran, 6.3 billion from India, and 2.8 billion from the United States.^[15]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_government_surveillance_projects

Background Articles and Videos

Ron Paul On Syria – Plans Rumours And War Propaganda For Attacking Syria – Revolution – June 19 2012

Ron Paul First Syria Then Iran

Congressman Ron Paul, MD – We’ve Been NeoConned

CIA Covert Action in the Cold War: Iran, Jamaica, Chile, Cuba, Afghanistan, Libya, Latin America

The CIA’s Covert Operations: Afghanistan, Cambodia, Nicaragua, El Salvador

Top 10 The best Armies on the World 2013 FULL HD

1: United States 2: Russia 3: China 4: India 5: United Kingdom 6: Turkey 7: South Korea 8: France 9: Japan 10: Israel

★ TOP 10 NAVIES IN THE WORLD 2013 ★

TOP 10 AIR FORCES IN 2013 NEW!!

Removal Statistics

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has adopted common sense policies that ensure our immigration laws are enforced in a way that best enhances public safety, border security and the integrity of the immigration system. As part of this approach, ICE has adopted clear priorities that call for the agency’s enforcement resources to be focused on the identification and removal of those that have broken criminal laws, recently crossed our border, repeatedly violated immigration law or are fugitives from immigration court.

Over the past four years, through the use of targeted enforcement tools this approach has fundamentally shifted ICE’s removal efforts to focus on criminal and other priorities.

In FY 2012, ICE removed 409,849 individuals. Ninety-six percent of these removals fell into one of ICE’s enforcement priorities, a record high.

ICE makes every effort to count removals or returns in the year in which they occur. This is the case for the overwhelming majority of removals and returns. However, when a removal or return occurs near the end of a fiscal year, it sometimes cannot be confirmed as completed until the early part of the following fiscal year. When this happens, the removal or return is counted in the year it is confirmed rather than the previous year when it actually occurred. In addition, there are a small number of cases, such as voluntary departures, where ICE is not present when the individual leaves the country. To capture these departures, ICE periodically conducts data base searches such as airline manifest records to confirm the date. These departures are also counted in the year confirmed. Regardless of whether the removal or return is counted in the year it occurred or the year confirmed, each removal or return is only counted in one fiscal year.

ICE Priority Chart Hierarchy

If an alien was identified by more than one priority, ICE defaults that individual to the highest priority based on the following hierarchy (ordered highest to lowest):

Criminal Offender
Immigration Fugitive
Repeat Immigration Violator
Border Removal
Other Removable Alien

Definitions of Common Terms

Criminal Offender: An alien convicted for one or more crimes. This category includes individuals who, in addition to have been convicted of a crime, also may have been immigration fugitives, border removals, or were previously removed or returned.

Immigration Fugitive: An alien who is subject to a final order of removal and has absconded instead of complying with the order.

Repeat Immigration Violator: An alien previously removed or returned who has re-entered the country illegally again.

Border Removal: An alien apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at or near the border or a port of entry and referred to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ICE only counts this type of removal if CBP referred the alien to ICE for detention, administrative prosecution or removal.

Other Removable Alien: An alien who is not confirmed to be within any of the above definitions. Removals in this category may include aliens removed on national security grounds or for general immigration violations. removalsbypriority

criminal-aliens-removed removals-highest-priority

http://www.ice.gov/removal-statistics/

Top Rep For Immigration Law Enforcement Officers: Senate Immigration Bill Threatens Public Safety

–Testimony from Chris Crane, ICE Officer and President of the National ICE Council representing our nation’s ICE officers, agents and staff. Crane is also a former marine.

Today’s hearing was on the Gang of Eight’s immigration proposal, which the Majority hopes to rush to a vote before the American people know what’s in it.”

Chris Crane Testimony At Senate Immigration Hearing

Sessions To Senate: Can Anyone Explain How This Immigration Bill Will Help Struggling Americans?

Schumer, Gang of Eight Refuse To Say How Many Will Be Admitted Under Their Plan

Law Enforcement Groups Detail How Immigration Bill Guts Future Enforcement

Dramatic Guest Worker Provisions In Immigration Bill Designed To Suppress Wages

Sessions Warns Washington Elites Against Rush To Amnesty

Sen. Ted Cruz Speaks on the Senate Floor in Opposition to the Gang of Eight’s Immigration Bill

Congressman Steve King Spoke on the House Floor — Immigration and Securing the Border

Congressman Steve King leads House opposition to Senate’s Gang of Eight immigration bill

Immigration Reform in Limbo: House ‘Teabaggers’ Bent on Torpedoing Bill

Immigration by the Numbers — Off the Charts

Immigration, World Poverty and Gumballs – Updated 2010

How Many Illegal Aliens Are in the US? – Walsh – 1

How Many Illegal Aliens Are in the United States? Presentation by James H. Walsh, Associate General Counsel of the former INS – part 1.

How Many Illegal Aliens Are in the US? – Walsh – 2

How Many Illegal Aliens Are in the United States? Presentation by James H. Walsh, Associate General Counsel of the former INS – part 2.

Holder’s Path To Amnesty Attorney Gen Says Amnesty Is A Civil Right -?- Wake Up America!

Glenn Beck : Is Amnesty A Civil Rights Issue? 6/13/13

Glenn Beck: Interview with House Republicans Planning Revolt On Immigration Bill

Glenn Beck to Release Name of 70 House Republicans for Showdown w John Boehner on Amnesty Bill

Laura Ingraham Confronts Marco Rubio Over Immigration Reform: ‘Stop Dividing The Republican Party’

Rand Paul: Immigration Reform Can’t Pass Without Conservative Votes – Laura Ingraham 4/24/2013

Historical populations
Census	Pop.	%±
1790	3,929,214	—
1800	5,236,631	33.3%
1810	7,239,881	38.3%
1820	9,638,453	33.1%
1830	12,866,020	33.5%
1840	17,069,453	32.7%
1850	23,191,876	35.9%
1860	31,443,321	35.6%
1870	38,558,371	22.6%
1880	49,371,340	28.0%
1890	62,979,766	27.6%
1900	76,212,168	21.0%
1910	92,228,531	21.0%
1920	106,021,568	15.0%
1930	123,202,660	16.2%
1940	132,165,129	7.3%
1950	151,325,798	14.5%
1960	179,323,175	18.5%
1970	203,211,926	13.3%
1980	226,545,805	11.5%
1990	248,709,873	9.8%
2000	281,421,906	13.2%
2010	308,745,538	9.7%
Est. 2013	316,057,000	2.4%
Sources: United States Census Bureau^[25]^[26]^[27]

ank	Core city (cities)	Metro area population	Metropolitan Statistical Area	Region^[48]	New York City Los Angeles Chicago
1	New York City	19,015,900	New York–New Jersey–Connecticut–Pennsylvania, NY–NJ–CT–PA MSA	Northeast
2	Los Angeles	12,944,801	Los Angeles–Long Beach–Santa Ana, CA MSA	West
3	Chicago	9,504,753	Chicago–Joliet–Naperville, IL–IN–WI MSA	Midwest
4	Dallas–Fort Worth	6,526,548	Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington, TX MSA	South
5	Houston	6,086,538	Houston–The Woodlands-Sugar Land MSA	South
6	Philadelphia	5,992,414	Philadelphia–Camden–Wilmington, PA–NJ–DE–MD MSA	Northeast
7	Washington, D.C.	5,703,948	Washington, DC–VA–MD–WV MSA	South
8	Miami	5,670,125	Miami–Fort Lauderdale–Pompano Beach, FL MSA	South
9	Atlanta	5,359,205	Atlanta–Sandy Springs–Marietta, GA MSA	South
10	Boston	4,591,112	Boston–Cambridge–Quincy, MA–NH MSA	Northeast
11	San Francisco	4,391,037	San Francisco–Oakland–Fremont, CA MSA	West
12	Riverside–San Bernardino	4,304,997	Riverside–San Bernandino–Ontario, CA MSA	West
13	Detroit	4,285,832	Detroit–Warren–Livonia, MI MSA	Midwest
14	Phoenix	4,263,236	Phoenix–Mesa–Glendale, AZ MSA	West
15	Seattle	3,500,026	Seattle–Tacoma–Bellevue, WA MSA	West
16	Minneapolis–St. Paul	3,318,486	Minneapolis–St. Paul–Bloomington, MN–WI MSA	Midwest
17	San Diego	3,140,069	San Diego–Carlsbad–San Marcos, CA MSA	West
18	Tampa–St. Petersburg	2,824,724	Tampa–St. Petersburg–Clearwater, FL MSA	South
19	St. Louis	2,817,355	St. Louis–St. Charles–Farmington, MO–IL MSA	Midwest
20	Baltimore	2,729,110	Baltimore–Towson, MD MSA	South
based upon 2011 population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau^[49]

U.S. and World Population Clock

http://www.census.gov/popclock/

316 Million and Counting

Less 40 Million Plus Foreigners (Illegal Aliens) and Rapidly Growing

U.S. Debt Clock

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

US Senate Votes to Consider Citizenship for Illegal Immigrants

News Wrap: Senate Votes to Begin Immigration Reform Debate

Border Insecurity Citizens Track Surge Of Illegal Immigration! – Wake Up America!!

Chris Pyle, Whistleblower on CIA Domestic Spying in 70s, Says Be Wary of Attacks on NSA’s Critics

NSA Chief Grilled at Senate Hearing on Surveillance Programs

He told you so: Bill Binney talks NSA leaks

“In the wake of multiple leaks regarding the data mining programs PRISM and Boundless Informant, whistleblowers are coming out in droves to talk about the unprecedented government surveillance on the American public. RT Correspondent Meghan Lopez had a chance to sit down with NSA whistleblower William Binney to talk about the latest developments coming out of the NSA case. Binney is a 32 year veteran of the NSA, where he helped design a top secret program he says helps collect data on foreign enemies. He is regarded as one of the best mathematicians and code breakers in NSA history. He became an NSA whistleblower in 2002 when he realized the program he helped create to spy no foreign enemies was being used on Americans.”

A Massive Surveillance State Glenn Greenwald Exposes Covert NSA Program Collecting Calls, Emails

What You Should Know About The New NSA Utah Data Center

Glenn Greenwald Vs Bush Press Sec. Ari Fleischer Over NSA’s PRISM

NSA Whistleblowers: “All U.S.Citizens” Targeted By Surveillance Program, Not Just Verizon Customers

Experts Say NSA Leak Damage Could be Significant

“SPY AND DENY” IS THE NEW NORMAL IN USA!

Era of Online Sharing Offers ‘Big Data,’ Privacy Trade-Offs

How PRISM Easily Gives Your Private Data Over to Big Brother

“The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.

The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called Prism, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.”*

We’ve been assured by the president that the NSA’s PRISM program won’t affect “ordinary” U.S. citizens, but what is the criteria for deciding who gets their data mined and monitored? Cenk Uygur, Ben Mankiewicz, and John Iadarola (Host, TYT University) discuss the egregious reach of the Obama administration’s secret mass surveillance program.

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: ‘I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of things’

Microtargeting

RNC/DNC Collecting Your Info En Masse

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IS DESTROYING AMERICA

The Dangers of Unlimited Legal & Illegal Immigration

Immigration by the Numbers — Off the Charts

Immigration, World Poverty and Gumballs – Updated 2010

THEY COME TO AMERICA II. The Cost of Amnesty

They Come to America (Trailer 2)

2012: They Come to America. The Cost of Illegal Immigration.

Schumer Refuses To Estimate Future Immigration Flow Under Gang Of Eight Proposal

Obama To Stop Deporting Young Illegal Immigrants

“The Obama administration will stop deporting young illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and who do not pose a security threat, senior administration officials said this morning, a move that could prove important in a presidential campaign that will turn in part on who wins over Latino voters.
Effective immediately, young immigrants who arrived in the U.S. illegally before they turned 16 will be allowed to apply for work permits as long as they have no criminal history and meet other criteria, officials said.

Reality Check: President Obama’s Immigration Reform Rings Hollow

(Part I) A Day in the Life of an Arizona Rancher: Fences, Illegal Aliens, and One Man’s Watchtower

(Part II) A Day in the Life of an Arizona Rancher: Fences, Illegal Aliens, and One Man’s Watchtower

Background Articles and Videos

Ap’s “Illegal Immigrant” Stand – Leno: Illegal Immigrants That is Out, Now “Undocumented Democrats”

Illegal immigration to the United States – Wiki Article

Illegal immigration to the United States is the act of foreign nationals entering the United States, without government permission and in violation of United States nationality law, or staying beyond the termination date of a visa, also in violation of the law.

The illegal immigrant population of the United States in 2008 was estimated by the Center for Immigration Studies to be about 11 million people, down from 12.5 million people in 2007. Other estimates range from 7 to 20 million. According to a Pew Hispanic Center report, in 2005, 56% of illegal immigrants were from Mexico; 22% were from other Latin American countries, primarily from Central America; 13% were from Asia; 6% were from Europe and Canada; and 3% were from Africa and the rest of the world.

Profile and demographics

Illegal immigrants continue to outpace the number of legal immigrants —a trend that’s held steady since the 1990s. While the majority of illegal immigrants continue to concentrate in places with existing large Hispanic communities, increasingly illegals are settling throughout the rest of the country.

An estimated 14 million people live in families in which the head of household or the spouse is in the United States illegaly . The number of illegal immigrants arriving in recent years tend to be better educated than those who have been in the country a decade or more. A quarter of all immigrants who have arrived in recent years have at least some college education. Nonetheless, illegal immigrants as a group tend to be less educated than other sections of the U.S. population: 49 percent haven’t completed high school, compared with 9 percent of native-born Americans and 25 percent of legal immigrants.

Illegal immigrants work in many sectors of the U.S. economy. According to National Public Radio in 2005, about 3 percent work in agriculture; 33 percent have jobs in service industries; and substantial numbers can be found in construction and related occupations (16 percent), and in production, installation, and repair (17 percent). According to USA Today in 2006, about 4 percent work in farming; 21 percent have jobs in service industries; and substantial numbers can be found in construction and related occupations (19 percent), and in production, installation, and repair (15 percent), with 12% in sales, 10% in management, and 8% in transportation. Illegal immigrants have lower incomes than both legal immigrants and native-born Americans, but earnings do increase somewhat the longer an individual is in the country.

A percentage of illegal immigrants do not remain indefinitely but do return to their country of origin; they are often referred to as “sojourners: they come to the United States for several years but eventually return to their home country.”

Breakdown by state

As of 2006, the following data table shows a spread of distribution of locations where illegal immigrants reside by state.

Number of illegal immigrants

According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), different estimates of the total number of illegal immigrants vary depending on how the term is defined. There are also questions about data reliability.

The GAO has stated that “it seems clear that the population of undocumented foreign-born persons is large and has increased rapidly.” On April 26, 2006 the Pew Hispanic Center (PHC) estimated that in March 2005 the number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. ranged from 11.5 to 12 million individuals. This number was derived by a statistical method known as the “residual method.” According to the General Accounting office the residual estimation (1) starts with a census count or survey estimate of the number of foreign-born residents who have not become U.S. citizens and (2) subtracts out estimated numbers of legally present individuals in various categories, based on administrative data and assumptions (because censuses and surveys do not ask about legal status). The remainder, or residual, represents an indirect estimate of …

‘NSA should come clean about domestic spying’: Ray Kelly

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly launched a stinging rebuke to the federal government’s secret phone and Internet monitoring campaign — and suggested leaker Edward Snowden was right about privacy “abuse.”

“I don’t think it ever should have been made secret,” Kelly said today, breaking ranks with US law-enforcement officials.

His blast came days after the Obama administration and Attorney General Eric Holder outraged New York officials by endorsing a federal monitor for the NYPD.

Kelly appeared to firmly reject Holder’s claim that disclosure of the monitoring campaign seriously damaged efforts to fight terrorism.

“I think the American public can accept the fact if you tell them that every time you pick up the phone it’s going to be recorded and it goes to the government,” Kelly said. “I think the public can understand that. I see no reason why that program was placed in the secret category.”

“Secondly, I think if you listen to Snowden, he indicates that there’s some sort of malfeasance, people . . . sitting around and watching the data. So I think the question is: What sort of oversight is there inside the [National Security Agency] NSA to prevent that abuse, if it’s taking place?”

Kelly has been on the receiving side of this kind of criticism.

The NYPD secretly spied on Muslim organizations, infiltrated Muslim student group and videotaped mosque-goers in New Jersey for years, it was revealed in 2012. The NYPD said its actions were lawful and necessary to keep the city safe.

After the vast federal phone-Internet monitoring program was revealed, President Obama said he had struck the right balance between ensuring security and protecting privacy.

But yesterday, Kelly indicated Obama was wrong.

“I think we can raise people’s comfort level if in fact information comes out as to that we have these controls and these protections inside the NSA,” he said.

Allies of Kelly viewed his criticism as payback for Holder’s decision to recommend — at the 11th hour of a controversial court case — that a federal monitor oversee the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program.

“Everything that Ray Kelly does has a purpose,” said City Council Public Safety Chairman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Queens). “If Eric Holder wants to lecture Police Commissioner Kelly on how to fight crime in New York, then one of the world’s foremost experts on public safety [Kelly] can lecture Holder on how to fight terrorism.”

Holder and other law-enforcement officials have trashed Snowden and his claim about out-of-control government snooping.

Kelly said of the leaker:

“He tried to give the impression, it seems to me, that these system administrators had carte blanche to do what they wanted to do,” he said. “I think it’s a problem if that’s in fact what’s happening.”

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/nsa_should_come_clean_ray_kelly_dfAKlqJ4keYDNiJqANhIMO

Senate Dismisses Any Pretense of Enforcement in the Gang of Eight Immigration Bill

Rubio Reneges on Promise to Fix Flaws in the Bill

(Washington, D.C. June 13, 2013) In the first important vote on amendments to the Gang of Eight immigration bill, S.744, the United States Senate quickly dismissed any pretense that they intend to deliver on promises of future immigration enforcement, declared the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). By a 57-43 vote, the Senate tabled an amendment by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that would have required that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) demonstrate effective control of U.S. borders for six months before illegal aliens could gain amnesty.

“Today’s vote makes it clear that a majority of senators place a higher priority on granting amnesty to illegal aliens than they do on fulfilling their promises to the American people that our borders will be secured and that our immigration laws will be enforced,” said Dan Stein, president of FAIR. “Tellingly, Gang of Eight member Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who has repeatedly vowed to oppose the bill if border enforcement provisions are not strengthened, was among the majority of senators who voted to kill the Grassley amendment.”

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) described the amendment as a “poison pill” and used a parliamentary procedure to shut off debate on it. “In the Alice in Wonderland world of the United States Senate, securing our borders and fulfilling promises to the American people, before rewarding illegal aliens, is considered a ‘poison pill,'” observed Stein.

“The vote also undermines whatever credibility Sen. Rubio had left as an honest broker on behalf of the interests of the American people. The fix is in and Rubio is off the fence. The Gang of Eight and the Senate leadership will employ any tactic to prevent amendments that might upset special interest constituencies from supporting the bill,” Stein continued.

“Under this bill there will be no border security. There will be no immigration enforcement. The Gang of Eight bill is about delivering amnesty to illegal aliens and cheap labor to business interests, and nothing else,” Stein concluded.

http://www.fairus.org/news/senate-dismisses-any-pretense-of-enforcement-in-the-gang-of-eight-immigration-bill

State photo-ID databases become troves for police

The faces of more than 120 million people are in searchable photo databases that state officials assembled to prevent driver’s-license fraud but that increasingly are used by police to identify suspects, accomplices and even innocent bystanders in a wide range of criminal investigations.

The facial databases have grown rapidly in recent years and generally operate with few legal safeguards beyond the requirement that searches are conducted for “law enforcement purposes.” Amid rising concern about the National Security Agency’s high-tech surveillance aimed at foreigners, it is these state-level facial-recognition programs that more typically involve American citizens.

The most widely used systems were honed on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq as soldiers sought to identify insurgents. The increasingly widespread deployment of the technology in the United States has helped police find murderers, bank robbers and drug dealers, many of whom leave behind images on surveillance videos or social-media sites that can be compared against official photo databases.

But law enforcement use of such facial searches is blurring the traditional boundaries between criminal and non-criminal databases, putting images of people never arrested in what amount to perpetual digital lineups. The most advanced systems allow police to run searches from laptop computers in their patrol cars and offer access to the FBI and other federal authorities.

Such open access has caused a backlash in some of the few states where there has been a public debate. As the databases grow larger and increasingly connected across jurisdictional boundaries, critics warn that authorities are developing what amounts to a national identification system — based on the distinct geography of each human face.

“Where is government going to go with that years from now?” said Louisiana state Rep. Brett Geymann, a conservative Republican who has fought the creation of such systems there. “Here your driver’s license essentially becomes a national ID card.”

Facial-recognition technology is part of a new generation of biometric tools that once were the stuff of science fiction but are increasingly used by authorities around the nation and the world. Though not yet as reliable as fingerprints, these technologies can help determine identity through individual variations in irises, skin textures, vein patterns, palm prints and a person’s gait while walking.

The Supreme Court’s approval this month of DNA collection during arrests coincides with rising use of that technology as well, with suspects in some cases submitting to tests that put their genetic details in official databases, even if they are never convicted of a crime.

Facial-recognition systems are more pervasive and can be deployed remotely, without subjects knowing that their faces have been captured. Today’s driver’s-
license databases, which also include millions of images of people who get non-driver ID cards to open bank accounts or board airplanes, typically were made available for police searches with little public notice.

Thirty-seven states now use facial-recognition technology in their driver’s-license registries, a Washington Post review found. At least 26 of those allow state, local or federal law enforcement agencies to search — or request searches — of photo databases in an attempt to learn the identities of people considered relevant to investigations.

“This is a tool to benefit law enforcement, not to violate your privacy rights,” said Scott McCallum, head of the facial-recognition unit in Pinellas County, Fla., which has built one of the nation’s most advanced systems.

The technology produces investigative leads, not definitive identifications. But research efforts are focused on pushing the software to the point where it can reliably produce the names of people in the time it takes them to walk by a video camera. This already works in controlled, well-lit settings when the database of potential matches is relatively small. Most experts expect those limitations to be surmounted over the next few years.

That prospect has sparked fears that the databases authorities are building could someday be used for monitoring political rallies, sporting events or even busy downtown areas. Whatever the security benefits — especially at a time when terrorism remains a serious threat — the mass accumulation of location data on individuals could chill free speech or the right to assemble, civil libertarians say.

“As a society, do we want to have total surveillance? Do we want to give the government the ability to identify individuals wherever they are . . . without any immediate probable cause?” asked Laura Donohue, a Georgetown University law professor who has studied government facial databases. “A police state is exactly what this turns into if everybody who drives has to lodge their information with the police.”

Facial-recognition systems analyze a person’s features — such as the shape of eyes, the curl of earlobes, the width of noses — to produce a digital “template” that can be quickly compared with other faces in a database.

The images must be reasonably clear, though newer software allows technicians to sharpen blurry images, bolster faint lighting or make a three-dimensional model of a face that can be rotated to ease comparisons against pictures taken from odd angles.

For the state officials issuing driver’s licenses, the technology has been effective at detecting fraud. As millions of images are compared, the software typically reveals the identities of hundreds or thousands of people who may have more than one driver’s license.

When searches are made for criminal investigations, typically a photo called a “probe” is compared against existing images in a database. The analytical software returns a selection of potential matches, though their accuracy can vary dramatically. A probe image of a middle-aged white man, for example, could produce a possible match with a 20-something African American woman with similarly shaped eyes and lips. Many systems include filters that allow searchers to specify race, sex and a range of possible ages for a suspect.

“It’s a fine line where you need to protect the rights of the citizens, but you also are protecting the right of citizens when you ferret out crime,” said Anthony J. Silva, administrator of Rhode Island’s Division of Motor Vehicles and a former town police chief.

Establishing identity, Silva said, is essential to effective police work: “I can’t tell you how many times I was handed fraudulent documents. And when you are on the street at 3 a.m., who do you call?”

Pennsylvania’s Justice Network, which has allowed police anywhere in the state to compare a facial image with mug-shot databases, has become a key investigative tool, officials said, and last month it added access to 34 million driver’s-license photos. (Some residents have several images, taken over years.)

A detective in Carlisle, Pa., attempting to learn the real name of a suspect known on the street as “Buddha the Shoota” compared a Facebook page picturing the man with the mug-shot database and got a promising lead.

“Facebook is a great source for us,” said Detective Daniel Freedman, who can do facial searches from his department-issued smartphone. “He was surprised when we walked in and said, ‘How you doin’, Buddha?’ ”

He said the suspect responded, “How you know that?” — to which Freedman replied simply, “We’re the police.”

Safeguards and trends

There typically is little concern when facial-recognition systems relying on criminal databases help identify suspects in narrowly targeted investigations. But searches against images of citizens from driver’s licenses or passports, as opposed to mug shots of prisoners, raise more complex legal questions.

Police typically need only to assert a law enforcement purpose for facial searches, whether they be of suspects or potential witnesses to crimes. Civil libertarians worry that this can lead to broadly defined identity sweeps. Already many common but technically illegal activities — blocking a sidewalk, cycling at night without a light or walking a dog without a leash — can trigger police stops and requests for identification, they say.

“The potential for abuse of this technology is such that we have to make sure we put in place the right safeguards to prevent misuse,” Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) said in a statement. “We also need to make sure the government is as transparent as possible in order to give the American people confidence it’s using this technology appropriately.”

A few states, including Washington, Oregon and Minnesota, have legal barriers to police accessing facial-recognition technology in driver’s-license registries. New Hampshire’s legislature passed a law prohibiting motor vehicle officials from collecting any biometric data.

But the broader trend is toward more sophisticated databases with more expansive access. The current version of the Senate’s immigration bill would dramatically expand an electronic photo-verification system, probably relying on access to driver’s-license registries.

Montana has a facial-recognition system to help prevent fraud in its driver’s-license registry, but officials are still debating whether to allow police any kind of access.

“I can see it’s an amazingly powerful tool. It has a lot of possibilities,” said Brenda Nordlund, the administrator of the Motor Vehicle Division there. “I don’t know if that’s what citizens expect when they come in and get their driver’s-license pictures taken.”

There are substantial variations in how states allow police searches of their driver’s-license databases. Some allow only licensing-agency officials to conduct the actual searches. Others let police do searches themselves, but only from a headquarters office. And still others have made the technology available to almost any officer willing to get trained.

The District of Columbia has facial-recognition technology for its driver’s-license registry but does not permit law enforcement searches, spokeswoman Vanessa Newton said. Virginia motor vehicle officials have run a pilot program experimenting with facial-recognition technology but have not made a decision on whether police will have access to such a system if it is eventually installed, spokeswoman Sunni Brown said. Maryland does not use such technology in its driver’s-license registry.

Police long have had access to some driver’s-license information — including photographs — when they are investigating criminal suspects whose names they know. But facial-recognition technology has allowed police working from a photo of an unknown person to search for a name.

Las Vegas police, for example, called on authorities two states away in Nebraska for help solving a homicide. Based on a tip, investigators had a page from a social-media site featuring the image of an unknown suspect; the tipster said the woman in the photo had lived in Nebraska. The facial-recognition software produced a hit on a driver’s license there, cracking open the case.

“That picture hung on our wall for a long time,” said Betty Johnson, vehicle services administrator in Nebraska. “We are pretty darn proud of that one.”

Who has the databases?

A single private contractor, MorphoTrust USA, which is based in a suburban Boston office park but is owned by French industrial conglomerate Safran, dominates the field of government facial-
recognition technology systems. Its software operates in systems for the State Department, the FBI and the Defense Department. Most facial-recognition systems installed in driver’s-license registries use the company’s technology, it says.

The largest facial database belongs to the State Department and includes about 230 million searchable images, split almost equally between foreigners who apply for visas and U.S. citizens who hold passports. Access for police investigations, though, is more limited than with state driver’s-license databases.

Police often can find out who you are based on your facial image, even if you’ve never been arrested for any crime.

The FBI’s own facial-recognition database has about 15 million criminal mug shots. Bureau officials are pushing to expand that by tens of millions more by encouraging states to upload their criminal justice photos into the national system. The FBI does not collect driver’s-license images, but the bureau has developed access to state systems that do.

That effort began with“Project Facemask,” which compared images of federal suspects and fugitives against photos in North Carolina’s driver’s-license registry, helping identify a double-homicide suspect who had changed his name and moved to that state from California. The FBI now has agreements giving access to driver’s-license databases in 10 states for investigative purposes. Many motor vehicle officials say they also run searches for federal agents who request them, typically through “fusion centers” that ease the sharing of information among state, local and federal authorities.

Depending on the importance of the case, federal agents can potentially tap facial databases held by driver’s-license registries, state criminal justice systems, the FBI, the State Department and the Defense Department, which has several million searchable faces, mostly Afghans and Iraqi men. Together these amount to an estimated 400 million facial images in government hands, though the rules on access to each database vary. (Often an individual is pictured in more than one database, or even more than once in a single one.)

Federal investigators searched several facial databases in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing in April, officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. But the images were not clear enough to produce hits, even though both of the alleged bombers had driver’s licenses in Massachusetts, a state that uses facial-recognition technology.

Yet as facial databases grow and video cameras become more prevalent and powerful, such searches will become more effective, experts say.

“More and more, what you’re going to see is criminals and other people whose images were taken over the years are digitized, [and] put into these databases, and incidents like Boston will be easier to solve,” said James Albers, senior vice president for government operation.

…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/state-photo-id-databases-become-troves-for-police/2013/06/16/6f014bd4-ced5-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html