CIVIL LIBERTIES

SUIT FILED TO OVERTURN CLINTON-ERA INTERNET PORN LAW

AP - Eight years after Congress tried to criminalize material deemed
"harmful to children," free speech advocates and Web site publishers
took their challenge of the law to trial. Salon, Nerve and other
plaintiffs backed by the American Civil Liberties Union are suing over
the 1998 Child Online Protection Act. They believe the law could
restrict legitimate material they publish online - exposing them to
fines or even jail time. . . The law, signed by then-President Clinton,
requires adults to use some sort of access code, or perhaps a credit
card number, to view material that may be considered "harmful to
children." It would impose a $50,000 fine and six-month prison term on
commercial Web site operators that publish such content, which is to be
defined by "contemporary community standards." It has yet to be
enforced, however. The U.S. Supreme Court has twice granted preliminary
injunctions, including one in June 2004 in which it ruled 5-4 that the
plaintiffs were likely to prevail. The ACLU argues that filters are a
more effective way of policing the Internet. It notes that the law would
not regulate any material posted overseas.

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AMERICA'S STASI

FBI - FBI Citizens' Academies have sprung up all over the country the
past few years - 24 of them, in fact: Albany, Atlanta, Baltimore,
Boston, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbia, Dallas, Denver,
Honolulu, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Little Rock, Memphis, Milwaukee,
Newark, Omaha, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, St. Louis,
and Washington, D.C.

The academies give business, civic, religious, and community leaders an
inside look at federal law enforcement in general and the FBI in
particular. Their overall goal is to foster relationships and
understanding between an FBI field office and its community - and so
improve the Bureau's ability to solve/detect crimes. . . and help
citizens' make their communities a better and safer place.

In Phoenix, alumni of the Academy have taken part in a reverse boiler
room. They call potential victims of telemarketing fraud to warn them
that their names were found on "mooch" lists maintained by fraudulent
telemarketers. Citizens' Academy alumni also take part in the Phoenix
Office's Adopt-A-School Program, and they often refer names of potential
Special Agent applicants to the office. Some participants of the
Philadelphia Citizens' Academy gained a deeper understanding of FBI
operations after a trip to the FBI Academy, where after classroom
instruction, tours of the facilities, and practical exercises, they put
everything they learned to the test at Hogan's Alley. Especially
memorable for some of the participants was a turn at Firearms Training
System, which exposes the students to virtual reality "life-and-death"
situations—and helps them experience what Special Agents in real
life-and-death situations experience.

TIME, 2004 - Members of Highway Watch are given a secret toll-free
number to report any suspicious behavior — people taking pictures of
bridges, for example, or passengers handling heavy backpacks with
unusual care. "We want to hear from you when something just doesn't look
right," Beatty said. "Say you're out at a truck stop and you see someone
hanging out near your truck, wearing a jacket. Maybe it's too hot out
for a jacket. Go back inside, alert someone and check him out through
the window.". . .

Highway Watch, which will receive an additional $22 million next year,
preserves the part of TIPS concerned with monitoring behavior in public
space. The Department of Homeland Security has also launched Port Watch,
River Watch and Transit Watch. Then there are the familiar Neighborhood
Watch groups, many of which have expanded their missions to include
homeland security. In New York City, government outsourcing of
surveillance has even trickled down to doormen and building
superintendents, thousands of whom are being trained to watch out for
strange trucks parked near buildings and tenants who move in without
furniture.

After the session in Little Rock, two newly initiated Highway Watch
members sat down for the catered barbecue lunch. The truckers, who haul
hazardous material across 48 states, explained how easy it is to spot
"Islamics" on the road: just look for their turbans. Quite a few of them
are truck drivers, says William Westfall of Van Buren, Ark. "I'll be
honest. They know they're not welcome at truck stops. There's still a
lot of animosity toward Islamics." Eddie Dean of Fort Smith, Ark., also
has little doubt about his ability to identify Muslims: "You can tell
where they're from. You can hear their accents. They're not real clean
people.". . .

Beatty's slide show did not mention that in the U.S., it's almost always
Sikhs who wear turbans, not Muslims. Last year a Sikh truck driver who
was wearing a turban was shot twice while standing near his tractor
trailer in Phoenix, Ariz. He survived the attack, which police are
investigating as a hate crime.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040705-658321-1,00.html

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GERMAN JOYS REVIEW: 'DAS LEBEN DER ANDEREN' - The former East Germany,
a relatively small country of 16 million people, was controlled by the
most sophisticated, cunning, and thorough secret police the world has
ever seen, the East German Ministerium für Staatsicherheit, or "Stasi."
The Stasi had about 90,000 employees - a staggering number for such a
small population - but even more importantly, recruited a network of
hundreds of thousands of "unofficial employees," who submitted secret
reports on their co-workers, bosses, friends, neighbors, and even family
members. Some did so voluntarily, but many were bribed or blackmailed
into collaboration.

In a totalitarian country plagued by shortages, the state lavished funds
and training on Stasi agents. They did sometimes resort to physical
violence and torture, especially in the basement of the infamous
Hohenschonhausen prison in Berlin. However, such drastic measures were
rarely necessary -- the Stasi could usually get the information it
obsessively sought from a meek and terrorized population by doling out
(or withholding) state favors: university slots for parents of teenage
children, painkillers for closet addicts, or perhaps a visa to visit
relatives in the West.

http://andrewhammel.typepad.com/german_joys/2006/05/german_joyes_re.html

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