"CLOUD ACT" COMPROMISES YOUR PRIVACY
GOP SENATORS TRY TO SNEAK
MASSIVE SURVEILLANCE EXPANSION
INTO SPENDING BILL
BY Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.
SEE: https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/28529-gop-senators-try-to-sneak-massive-surveillance-expansion-into-spending-bill; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
The unconstitutional surveillance of American citizens by agents of their own government could soon expand exponentially, should a controversial act be included in the forthcoming spending bill.
The legislation, called the “Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act,” or CLOUD Act, is sponsored by Senators Hatch, Coons, Graham, and Whitehouse, and they are trying to get the measure attached to the forthcoming spending bill.
Specifically, the CLOUD Act would increase unconstitutionally the authority of the executive branch of the federal government, granting it power to decide when and how data collected by law enforcement should be shared with foreign governments.
An article published by Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) summarizes the way that the bill breaks down the wall placed by the Fourth Amendment around the liberty of Americans. EFF reports:
The CLOUD Act has two major components. First, it empowers U.S. law enforcement to grab data stored anywhere in the world, without following foreign data privacy rules. Second, it empowers the president to unilaterally enter executive agreements with any nation on earth, even known human rights abusers. Under such executive agreements, foreign law enforcement officials could grab data stored in the United States, directly from U.S. companies, without following U.S. privacy rules like the Fourth Amendment, so long as the foreign police are not targeting a U.S. person or a person in the United States.
When foreign police use their power under CLOUD Act executive agreements to collect a foreign target’s data from a U.S. company, they might also collect data belonging to a non-target U.S. person who happens to be communicating with the foreign target. Within the numerous, combined foreign investigations allowed under the CLOUD Act, it is highly likely that related seizures will include American communications, including email, online chat, video calls, and internet voice calls.
As one might imagine, given their habit of trying to prevent the surveillance state from growing and ignoring the Constitution, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) issued a joint statement calling on Senate leadership to exclude the CLOUD Act from the spending bill and to require a separate debate and vote on the proposal.
After explaining that the act would remove the requirement that government agencies receive a warrant from a federal judge before conducting such surveillance sharing, the pair expressed their opposition to such overreach.
The CLOUD Act places far too much power in the President’s hands and denies Congress its critical oversight role. Specifically, the CLOUD Act permits the executive branch to enter into agreements with foreign governments and gives the House and Senate just 90 days to pass a resolution of disapproval to block it from going into effect. Instead of supplying a blanket pre-approval of these agreements, Congress should examine each agreement and determine — on an individual basis — whether the prohibitions on warrantless surveillance of stored and real-time communications should be waived with respect to each country.
It is a sobering fact that we have arrived as a country so far removed from our Constitution that senators would have to nearly beg the body’s leadership to uphold the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.
To refresh your memory, the Fourth Amendment — the part of the Bill of Rights that would be legislatively repealed should the CLOUD Act be included in the spending bill — reads: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
While it seems unlikely that the Republican leaders in the Senate, particularly the members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, will uphold their oaths office and “preserve, protect, and defend” this fundamental component of the Constitution, there is historical precedent for such a surveillance plan, a combination of powerful legislators that promote it, and courageous citizens standing up in defense of their liberty.
Given the role that rebellion against the unreasonable, unwarranted searches and seizures by government played in igniting the spark that lit the fires of armed resistance in America and the War for Independence that raged for eight years, it is remarkable that that liberty now is once again under attack from a powerful central government.
James Otis is a name that is almost completely forgotten by contemporary Americans, but he was once the most famous lawyer in the colonies, and it was his renowned recrimination of unreasonable searches in Boston that earned him fame and influenced his countrymen to resist the tyranny of these deprivations.
At a trial challenging the constitutionality of the General Writs of Assistance, Otis spoke eloquently and persuasively in favor of freedom from the unreasonable searches being carried out by 18th-century government agents:
Now, one of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one’s house. A man’s house is his castle; and whilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle. This writ, if it should be declared legal, would totally annihilate this privilege. Custom-house officers may enter our houses when they please; we are commanded to permit their entry. Their menial servants may enter, may break locks, bars, and everything in their way; and whether they break through malice or revenge, no man, no court can inquire. Bare suspicion without oath is sufficient.
This wanton exercise of this power is not a chimerical suggestion of a heated brain. I will mention some facts. Mr. Pew had one of these writs, and, when Mr. Ware succeeded him, he endorsed this writ over to Mr. Ware; so that these writs are negotiable from one officer to another; and so your Honors have no opportunity of judging the persons to whom this vast power is delegated. Another instance is this: Mr. Justice Walley had called this same Mr. Ware before him, by a constable, to answer for a breach of the Sabbath-day Acts, or that of profane swearing. As soon as he had finished, Mr. Ware asked him if he had done. He replied, “Yes.” “Well then,” said Mr. Ware, “I will show you a little of my power. I command you to permit me to search your house for uncustomed goods” — and went on to search the house from the garret to the cellar; and then served the constable in the same manner.
In 1788, nearly three decades after the speech of Otis in defense of the right to be free from unwarranted searches and seizures, his equally eminent sister, Mercy Otis Warren, echoed her brother’s bold attack on despotism. Writing under the pseudonym “Columbian Patriot,” Warren said:
There is no provision by a bill of rights to guard against the dangerous encroachments of power in too many instances to be named: but I cannot pass over in silence the insecurity in which we are left with regard to warrants unsupported by evidence — the daring experiment of granting writs of assistance in a former arbitrary administration is not yet forgotten in Massachusetts; nor can we be so ungrateful to the memory of the patriots who counteracted their operation, as so soon after their manly exertions to save us from such a detestable instrument of arbitrary power, to subject ourselves to the insolence of any petty revenue officer to enter our houses, search, insult, and seize at pleasure.
These are not the days of our Founders, though, and we have proven ourselves to be very cowardly posterity of that remarkable generation.
Today we live in the post-9/11 era where we meekly “subject ourselves” to the insolence of having our data forcibly seized from us.
It is for this reason that Senators Wyden and Paul felt compelled to unite in defense of these fundamental liberties — liberties once the common inheritance of all Americans.
For the efforts of these lawmakers, Americans should remember the wise words of Mercy Otis Warren and be grateful to “the patriots who counteracted” the government’s assault on this most precious prerogative.
The spending bill must be passed by March 23 at midnight or the federal government will shut down for the third time this year.
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US government “Fusion Centers” harassing patriots concerned about Islam
BY ROBERT SPENCER
SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2018/03/us-government-fusion-centers-harassing-patriots-concerned-about-islam; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
This is ominous: a free citizen being harassed by the West Virginia State Police over her concerns about a mosque with ties to the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). This shows how successfully such groups have manipulated government and law enforcement officials with their spurious claims of being victims of “racism” and “Islamophobia.” These Fusion Centers are extremely insidious. The Trump Administration needs to act to protect patriotic American citizens, and close them.
“Deep state attacks: Gov’t ‘Fusion Centers’ spying on patriots concerned about Islam,” by Leo Hohmann, March 6, 2018 (thanks to M.S.):
_____________________________________________________________Brenda Arthur received an unexpected visit on March 8 that, one week later, leaves her feeling more than a little uneasy.At her door that day was an officer with the West Virginia State Police. He wanted to know about her involvement in a Freedom of Information request regarding a local mosque.Arthur, who will turn 67 this summer, serves as leader of the West Virginia chapter of ACT For America, whose mission is to educate Americans about the advancement of Islamic principles in Western societies.As a Jewish American, she was concerned about a major expansion of the Islamic Association of West Virginia in her hometown of South Charleston. This mosque has hosted an openly anti-Semitic preacher in the past, and so she went to city hall in late January to have a look at its construction permits and site plans, something that is within the right of every American citizen under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and state open-records laws.She had no idea that this perfectly legal activity, performed every day by citizen watchdogs across the U.S., would prompt a visit from the state police.Arthur was not available to answer the door when Sgt. R.C. Workman came knocking, but Workman left his business card with a hand-written note on the back:“Brenda, please contact me at: 304-573-6190.”Workman’s unit is part of the West Virginia Intelligence Exchange, a secretive outfit that works closely with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s “intelligence fusion center” in West Virginia.All 50 states have at least one DHS fusion center, and the story of Brenda Arthur lends credence to the views of civil libertarians that these centers, whatever their stated purpose, have been weaponized against law-abiding American citizens.Fusion centers were established a few years after the 9/11 terror attacks by the George W. Bush administration and expanded under Barack Obama.The West Virginia Fusion Center website says its mission is to “Embrace proactive intelligence efforts. Those efforts are key to inhibiting criminal networks, whether those groups are terrorists, drug-related groups, organized crime, or other criminal enterprises.”Fusion centers work with “non-traditional sources,” including corporate America, to build threat assessments on people.But what is it about Brenda Arthur that could garner the attention of this specialized police unit? She seems like an unlikely candidate to be involved in terrorism or organized crime.Arthur is a senior citizen who’s never broken a law in her life. She is a professional insurance broker, a great-aunt to six children, one of whom she helps with financial support for a private education at a Montessori school.But fusion centers know no boundaries, including the U.S. Constitution, says constitutional attorney and civil liberties advocate John Whitehead.“The word mosque, it’s key words like that. If you don’t like mosques, they’re gonna be after you, they’re watching you, because everything is determined by algorithms,” said Whitehead, founder of the Charlottesville, Va.-based Rutherford Institute.Being an “activist” also draws the attention of the fusion centers, he said.‘Do not talk to them’Whitehead has strict advice for any law-abiding citizen who is approached by law enforcement asking questions about their personal activities.“If they come to your door, do not talk to them. If they call you on the phone, do not talk to them.”Whitehead said the intimidation tactics used by fusion centers are similar to the East German Stasi and other secret-police agencies.“They’re copying the tactics of former totalitarian regimes and the slightest mistake can get you in trouble,” he said. “That’s why you shouldn’t talk to them. The threat assessments are very dangerous. Don’t talk to them. Call someone like us, let us issue one of our letters and that usually shuts them up, and also puts them on record.”“Once you’re in their system,” Whitehead added, “you cannot get out.”BlindsidedArthur was typical in that she was caught off guard by the visit.“So I called him at the number he gave me and asked ‘what’s this about?’”Sgt. Workman did not beat around the bush.“We came by your house and wanted to talk to you.”“Yes sir, what about?” Arthur asked.“It’s about that FOIA request you made about the building plans for the mosque,” he told her.It did not immediately dawn on her that she was actually not the one whose name was on the Freedom of Information Act request.“I hadn’t filed it, a friend of mine did. Within seconds it occurred to me, but I didn’t want the other lady to be brought into it so I just acknowledged it and said ‘you know I file a lot of FIOAs, I filed one with the Health and Human Resources, with the auditor’s office, with Bureau for Medical Services, and more.”“Yes, but those FOIAs are within the normal course of things,” said the stern voice on the other end of the phone line.Why is it that this particular request, for information on a mosque project, was considered abnormal? And who decides what is NORMAL in a search of public-record documents?She explained that she is an upstanding citizen activist and member ACT For America.“I explained we are an organization with 750,000 members, we support the Constitution, American liberty, American values, and we fight terrorism and the concepts of Sharia law, which are antithetical to the U.S. Constitution.”In the course of the 10-minute phone conversation, Arthur did a lot of explaining.She explained that she was perusing the website of the local mosque when she came across a photo that caught her attention. It was of a man standing in the middle of the mosque speaking to the congregation. That man was Nihad Awad, executive director of Council on American-Islamic Relations or CAIR.“He’s a terrorist supporter, he finances terror, and is part of a terrorist-tied organization,” Arthur told the sergeant.That prompted Sgt. Workman to hint at the real reason for his inquiry.“Well, we have a good relationship with that mosque and when he came here they notified us he was coming,” he told Arthur.That sparked something in Arthur’s memory.When she and a friend had gone to city hall on Jan. 31 to inspect the documents, the city manager and another city official stood over their shoulders the entire time. They made a point of telling the two women, “We have a good relationship with the mosque.”Who’s the snitch?The West Virginia Fusion Center’s website encourages Americans to report “suspicious activity” by filing a SAR or Suspicious Activity Report on a fellow resident.A SAR is defined as “the sharing of information concerning activity, incident, or behavior that the reporting individual considers to be outside of normal parameters,” the website states.Inquiring about a mosque was not NORMAL activity. Arthur had been flagged for suspicious activity, probably by a city official who has a good relationship with the mosque, or someone at the mosque itself.In West Virginia, the fusion center operates under the supervision of the West Virginia Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety [DMAPS].I called DMAPS Tuesday and asked what could possibly be suspicious about a 66-year-old insurance broker with no criminal record going to city hall and inspecting public-record documents.Lawrence Messina, director of communications for West Virginia DMAPS, said he would ask that question of his superiors and get back with me.He sent the following email at 2:09 p.m. on March 13:“I have consulted with my colleagues here at the Office of the Secretary as well as with the W.Va. Intelligence Fusion Center and the W.Va. State Police (the latter is also part of this department). We decline to comment on this matter.”Arthur, as a Jewish American, has every reason to be concerned that an anti-Semite like Awad would be invited to speak in her community. He is a supporter of Hamas, which is on the U.S. State Department’s list of designated foreign terrorist organizations, and he rejects the right of Israel to exist. [See Discover the Networks for documentation of Awad’s long history of radical statements, activities and affiliations.]….
