Legislative proposal to revoke citizenship of accused terrorist called unconstitutional

Legislative proposal to revoke citizenship of accused terrorist called unconstitutional

I hope this is the last we hear of this.

Senator Lieberman's bill is intended to strip the citizenship of Americans accused of engaging in terrorism against the United States or its foreign allies.


According to the Post, concerns of lawmakers include that the bill is "too broadly worded" to pass constitutional scrutiny in this context and may be ineffectual. "There are much better ways of obtaining information from terrorists" Senator Charles E. Schumer (D - N.Y.) reportedly said through a statement issued from his office.

This could mean that another attempt to introduce a bill thought to have a chance at passing constitutional muster may be coming soon. I hope not. I can't believe that we would try to strip people of yet another civil right in order to punish alleged terrorists. I thought we were over that. Then again, maybe not...

More Scary News

Now that I am reading Fox News online, I can find out all sorts of scary information. In particular, the Times Square attempted bombing appears to have brought all sorts of kooks out of the woodwork and into the mainstream media. Here's two items that caught my interest:

Lieberman Unveils Bill to Strip US Citizenship of Terror Suspects Arrested Abroad

"Sen. Joe Lieberman introduced legislation on Thursday that would strip Americans of their citizenship if they are arrested overseas for their affiliation with a foreign terrorist organization.

Under the bill, Americans captured overseas and found to be connected with a foreign terrorist organization would be stripped of citizenship and could be hauled before a military commission.

"I believe that anyone apprehended and charged with attempt to commit a terrorist act against the United State is effectively a prisoner of war and should be tried by the military system of justice," the Connecticut independent senator said at a news conference flanked by other lawmakers supporting the bill, including Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., and Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pa., who is introducing a companion bill in the House.

"The reason we're doing this, being an American citizen means something," Lieberman said. "To me, somebody who takes up arms against the United States, whether they wear the uniform of a foreign country or associate with a foreign terrorist organization, has given up their right to be an American citizen."

The bill would expand a 1940s-era law that requires citizens fighting in a military force that is an enemy of the U.S. to renounce their citizenship to include those who are part of a terrorist organization."

 

Much like another bill introduced in another country (Israel) by another Lieberman (Avigdor) making citizenship conditional upon "good behavior," this bill would deny a fundamental right to a person because the majority disapproves of his undoubtedly disrespectful behavior. However, no one expects to pull citizenship from  the Bernie Madoffs of the world, just to put them in jail.

Along these same lines, it appears that the American public has retreated from 200 years of civil rights, deciding that the rights of the accused are no longer worth preserving. According to another article on FoxNews.com:

 

"American voters split down the middle over whether the Times Square bomber should be treated like a criminal or a combatant, but nearly half believe that the botched terror attempt was a failure for homeland security.

The man officials say admitted trying to bomb Times Square is a Pakistani who recently became a naturalized U.S. citizen.


A slim 51 percent majority of Democrats would treat the suspect like a criminal defendant, while just over half of Republicans (51 percent) and independents (52 percent) would treat him like an enemy combatant.

Click here to see the poll.

Click here for the raw data.

Here's the "enemy combatant" argument rearing its head again from the right wing of American discourse. It seems like our justice system isn't good enough for them; "bad guys" - especially when they are Muslim and darker-skinned - don't deserve our rights and can't possibly be tried in our judicial system. Arguments like these don't even deserve to be discussed in public. Just giving them credibility skews our public debate towards the kooky right. Let's banish it to where it belongs - to the dustbin of history.

Obama: Software Flaws Let Christmas Bomber Get Through

We are being told that institutional failure or human failure (i.e. "someone needs to pay") is responsible for the inability to connect the dots between intelligence fragments, and therefore a dangerous person with explosives being allowed to board Northwest Airlines flight 253. But according to Danger Room blog, it is really a simple matter of crappy software:

Obama: Software Flaws Let Christmas Bomber Get Through: "
Crappy government software — and failure to use that software right — almost got 289 people killed in the botched Christmas day bombing.

“Information sharing does not appear to have contributed to this intelligence failure; relevant all-sources analysts as well as watchlisting personnel who needed this information were not preventing from accessing it,” the White House noted in its review of the incident. The problem was in the databases, and in the data-mining software. “Information technology within the CT [counterterrorism] community did not sufficiently enable the correlation of data that would have enable analysts to highlight the relevant threat information.”

You bet it didn’t. Government search tools weren’t even flexible enough to handle simple misspellings. As the White House review notes:

A misspelling of Mr. Abdulmutallab’s name initially resulted in the State Department believing he did not have a valid U.S. visa. A determination to revoke his visa however would have only occurred if there had been a successful integration of intelligence by the CT [counterterrorism] community, resulting in his being watchlisted.

This is a problem that commercial software firms largely solved years ago. (Try typing “Noa Schactmann” into Google, and see what comes up.) How it could persist in the CT community, I just don’t understand.

In a memo to his agency chiefs, President Obama ordered the Director of National Intelligence to “accelerate information technology enhancement, to include knowledge discovery, database integration, cross-database search, and the ability to correlate biographic information with terrorism-related intelligence.”

All of which will be helpful. But analysts have to actually use the tools. That didn’t happen in the Christmas attack. “NCTC and CIA personnel who are responsible for watchlisting did not search all available databases,” the White House noted.

The Department of Homeland Security did run Northwest Airlines flight 253’s passenger manifest against terrorism databases. But only after the flight took off. Ugh.

[Photo: U.S. Marshalls]"


Is there some reason we can't get this right??? Do we need to point our fingers in the wrong direction in order to score political points? Let's fix this problem and get it right this time.

We Knew it was Coming: The Airport Crack Scanner

Danger Room reports:

The “underpants bomber” has renewed calls for new and more invasive security measures. Already, there’s a push to install scanners that show travelers’ naked bodies through clothing, using either millimeter wave or backscatter X-ray imaging. But even those scanners might not have caught the terrorist who nearly brought down Northwest flight 253.

That’s why one company is trumpeting a sensor that can supposedly “detect substances such as explosive materials … hidden inside or outside of the human body.” First step: Actually build a human-sized machine.There has already been one report of a suicide bomber carrying explosives internally. Many sources, including the BBC, carried an early report suggesting that Abdullah Hassan Al Aseeri adopted the new tactic of “carrying explosives in his anal cavity” for an attack in September. The target, a Saudi prince, survived, but Aseeri was reportedly blown in half by the blast. Later reports suggest the explosives were actually sewn into his underwear, but security experts believe there is a real danger of “internally carried” bombs, a technique used for years by drug smugglers.Nesch, a company based in Crown Point, Indiana, may have a solution.

It’s called diffraction-enhanced X-ray imaging or DEXI, which employs
proprietary diffraction enhanced imaging and multiple image radiography (.pdf).

Rather than simply shining X-rays through the subject and looking at the amount that passes through (like a conventional X-ray machine), DEXI analyzes the X-rays that are scattered or refracted by soft tissue or other low-density material. Conventional X-rays show little more than the skeleton, but the new technique can reveal far more, which makes it useful for both medical and security applications.

“Our patented technology can detect substances such as explosive
materials, narcotics, and low-density plastics hidden inside or outside
of the human body,” company CEO Ivan Nesch claims. DEXI allows
explosives to create contrast, he adds, so it would be able to detect
both the underpants bomber and the shoe bomber before they boarded.

The image shows how a conventional radiograph does not detect two packets of “illegal materials” concealed in soft tissue, while they are plainly visible in when DEXI technology is used.

Of course, X-ray scanners always bring up a concern over the level of radiation involved. One of Nesch’s corporate slogans is “Less radiation, more information,” as DEXI uses significantly less radiation than other approaches.“It is far less than what a passenger would receive simply by flying on an airplane across the United States,” says Nesch. “Passengers who are imaged using DEXI security will be exposed to approximately 50 times less radiation than that of a conventional radiograph. ”

Have we heard this before?? It is completely safe, and it will enhance security? It will preserve privacy?

The first thing I thought when I heard about bombers carrying explosives in their underwear and body cavities, I knew privacy would go down the toilet. People would be screaming for full body scans and body cavity searches in as many airports as possible. Of course, any pretenses about modesty from the "family values" right would immediately be forgotten in the name of security. Which is what we see now. And the advent of the "crack scanner" seems to point us in this direction.

Bend over, America!