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Civil rights suit underway against park officials in pepper-spray incident; ranger Mayo back on duty A Civil Rights lawsuit is underway in San Francisco Federal District Court against two Point Reyes National Seashore rangers and two superiors for their part in the pepper-spraying last July of a teenage brother and sister from Inverness Park. The incident took place off park property in Point Reyes Station. The teens, who were bystanders at a minor law-enforcement matter, were never charged with wrongdoing. Attorneys for both sides are meeting with a federal judge, making initial disclosures, submitting preliminary motions, and setting up a schedule of conferences and hearings which ultimately will culminate in jury selection and a trial on Feb. 27. 2006. Hearing the case is Judge Susan Illston, US District Court, Northern District of California. Attorneys Dennis Cunningham and Gordon Kaupp of San Francisco on behalf of Chris Miller and his sister Jessica are suing ranger Roger Mayo, who sprayed Chris in the face as he started to leave the scene and extensively sprayed his sister even after she was in handcuffs and kneeling on the ground. Also being sued are ranger Angelina Gregorio, who held Jessica down during the Mayo pepper-spraying, chief ranger Colin Smith, and National Seashore Supt. Don Neubacher....
Behind-the-Scenes Battle on Tracking Data Mining Bush administration officials are opposing an effort in Congress under the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act to force the government to disclose its use of data-mining techniques in tracking suspects in terrorism cases. As part of the vote in the House this week to extend major parts of the antiterrorism law permanently, lawmakers agreed to include a little-noticed provision that would require the Justice Department to report to Congress annually on government-wide efforts to develop and use data-mining technology to track intelligence patterns. But a set of talking points distributed among Republican lawmakers as the measure was being debated warned that the Justice Department was opposed to the amendment because it would add to the list of "countless reports" already required by Congress and would take time away from more critical law enforcement activities. The government's use of vast public and private databases to mine for leads has produced several damaging episodes for the Bush administration, most notably in connection with the Total Information Awareness system developed by the Pentagon for tracking terror suspects and the Capps program of the Department of Homeland Security for screening airline passengers. Both programs were ultimately scrapped after public outcries over possible threats to privacy and civil liberties, and some Republicans and Democrats in Congress say they want to keep closer tabs on such computer operations to guard against abuse....
Congress Report: TSA Broke Privacy Laws The Transportation Security Administration violated privacy protections by secretly collecting personal information on at least 250,000 people, congressional investigators said Friday. The Government Accountability Office sent a letter to Congress saying the collection violated the Privacy Act, which prohibits the government from compiling information on people without their knowledge. The information was collected as the agency tested a program, now called Secure Flight, to conduct computerized checks of airline passengers against terrorist watch lists. TSA had promised it would only use the limited information about passengers that it had obtained from airlines. Instead, the agency and its contractors compiled files on people using data from commercial brokers and then compared those files with the lists. The GAO reported that about 100 million records were collected....
House Beats Back Challenges to Patriot Act The House voted Thursday to extend permanently virtually all the major antiterrorism provisions of the USA Patriot Act after beating back efforts by Democrats and some Republicans to impose new restrictions on the government's power to eavesdrop, conduct secret searches and demand library records. The legislation, approved 257 to 171, would make permanent 14 of the 16 provisions in the law that were set to expire at the end of this year. The remaining two provisions - giving the government the power to demand business and library records and to conduct roving wiretaps - would have to be reconsidered by Congress in 10 years. The House version of the legislation essentially leaves intact many of the central powers of the antiterrorism act that critics had sought to scale back, setting the stage for what could be difficult negotiations with the Senate, which is considering several very different bills to extend the government's counterterrorism powers under the act....
The Security Pretext: An Examination of the Growth of Federal Police Agencies Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, bureaucrats and special interest groups have been busy repackaging everything from peanut subsidies to steel protectionism under the rubric of "national security." Federal law enforcement agencies have also been expanding their power in the name of combating terrorism, whether or not such expansion has anything to do with enhancing security. One safeguard that exists to prevent such abuse is congressional oversight, but too many members of Congress are too often reluctant to challenge law enforcement officials. For freedom to prevail in the age of terrorism, three things are essential. First, government officials must take a sober look at the potential risk and recognize that there is no reason to panic and act rashly. Second, Congress must stop federal police agencies from acting arbitrarily. Before imposing costly and restrictive security measures that inconvenience thousands of people, police agencies ought to be required to produce cost-benefit analyses. Third, government officials must demonstrate courage rather than give in to their fears. Radical Islamic terrorists are not the first enemy that America has faced. British troops burned the White House in 1814, the Japanese navy launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Soviet Union deployed hundreds of nuclear missiles that targeted American cities. If policymakers are serious about defending our freedom and our way of life, they must wage this war without discarding our traditional constitutional framework of limited government....
Breaking the Rules Local prosecutors in many of the 2,341 jurisdictions across the nation have stretched, bent or broken rules while convicting defendants, the Center has found. Since 1970, individual judges and appellate court panels cited prosecutorial misconduct as a factor when dismissing charges at trial, reversing convictions or reducing sentences in at least 2,012 cases. The nature of the questionable conduct covers every type attributed to Moss, and more. In 513 additional cases, appellate judges offered opinions—either dissents or concurrences—in which they found the prosecutorial misconduct serious enough to merit additional discussion; some of the dissenting judges wrote that they found the misconduct warranted a reversal. In thousands more cases, judges labeled prosecutorial behavior inappropriate, but allowed the trial to continue or upheld convictions using a doctrine called "harmless error." The Center analyzed 11,452 cases in which charges of prosecutorial misconduct were reviewed by appellate court judges....

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