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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhat happened to one family caught up in the Secret Squirrels' databases,agents and FISA courts?
The Other Side of the Story(Read the whole article)
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On the other side was just a humongous computer bank full of numbers. If you didnt do anything wrong, what was the problem? Today, lets try putting a face on it in the form of Brandon Mayfield.
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In 2004, after terrorists bombed commuter trains in Madrid, Spanish officials found a suspicious fingerprint on a plastic bag at the scene. The F.B.I. ran it through its files and decided, erroneously, that it matched Mayfields. Further investigation revealed that Mayfield had married an Egyptian immigrant and converted to Islam information the authorities apparently found far more compelling than the fact that he had never been to Spain.
Peculiar things then began to happen in the Mayfield house. His wife, Mona, returned home to find unlocked doors mysteriously bolted. Their daughter, Sharia, then 12, noticed that someone had been fooling around with her computer. I had a desktop monitor, and it looked like some of the screws had been taken out and not put back in all the way, she said in a phone interview. And the hard drive was sticking out.
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The snoopers had warrants from the court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA courts are supposed to keep investigators within the law while theyre secretly searching for terrorists. We have been hearing a lot about this recently, since the Obama administration keeps pointing out that the N.S.A.s phone records project had the blessing of FISA judges. Last year, the feds made 1,856 requests to FISA judges and got 1,856 thumbs-up.
So there we are: Search of huge database produces a (wrong) name. Investigators get permission to search an American familys house without their knowledge, from a secret court that does not seem to be superhard to convince.
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Spain saved the day. The Spanish investigators were dubious from the beginning that the fingerprints at the bombing site were Mayfields; they had been hoping, perhaps, for a person who had set foot in Europe within the last decade. They found and arrested someone whose finger was a real match.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/15/opinion/collins-the-other-side-of-the-story.html?_r=0
You better hope you don't ever get caught in this net.
They misidentified(manufactured) fingerprints AND ignored the fact he had never been to Spain.
Who else has gone through this type of thing?
And don't tell me it's 'legal.' That doesn't make it right. Citizens United made things legal that people here turn blue howling about.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Monkie
(1,301 posts)its worse than "just" misidentifying...
He studied law at Washburn University and Lewis and Clark College, receiving his law degree from Washburn in 1999, and practicing family law in Newport before moving to the Portland area. Mayfield performed work for the Modest Means Program of the Oregon State Bar, which matches attorneys who are willing to work at reduced rates for low-income clients. In 2003 he offered legal aid to Jeffrey Leon Battle, one of the Portland Seven, a group of people convicted of trying to travel to Afghanistan to help the Taliban. Battle at the time was involved in a child custody case.
Fingerprints on a bag containing detonating devices, found by Spanish authorities following the Madrid commuter train bombings, were initially identified by the FBI as belonging to Mayfield ("100% verified" . According to the court documents in judge Ann Aiken's decision, this information was largely "fabricated and concocted by the FBI and DOJ"
Are_grits_groceries
(17,111 posts)And people want to trust them and justify this secret process because it's legal .
Thanks for the post.
truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)If everything is secret, interpretations of the law, application of the law, etc. it cannot be challenged in court.
So claiming it is "legal" is sophistry at best.
bunnies
(15,859 posts)and everything that happened afterword was a result of the framing. Goes to show that it doesnt matter what the laws are. Theyll do whatever they want anyway. Disgusting.
panzerfaust
(2,818 posts)... too bad it is not constitutional.
Why are we doing this to ourselves?
abelenkpe
(9,933 posts)Passed a bunch of invasive unnecessary laws without reading, debating or really considering them and started a war on "terrorism." that seems to have no end and justifies secret courts, unending detention, bombing suspects in foreign countries without apprehension or trial etc etc etc. We need to end the war on terror.
truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)Power is what's important, not safety, for TPTB.
abelenkpe
(9,933 posts)Laelth
(32,017 posts)-Laelth
Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)forestpath
(3,102 posts)Beacool
(30,254 posts)July 11, 2008
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama's vote for a federal surveillance law that he had previously opposed has sparked a backlash from his online advocates, who had energized his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
In October, Obama had vowed to help filibuster an update of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that gave telecommunication companies that had cooperated with President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program immunity from lawsuits.
After 9/11, Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop, without the mandated warrant from a federal court, on electronic communication involving terrorist suspects.
Critics said Bush's Terrorist Surveillance Program was a violation of civil liberties.
The Senate voted Wednesday on the bill updating FISA -- which had a provision to shield telecommunications companies that had cooperated in the surveillance. Obama joined the 68 other senators who voted to send the bill to the president's desk.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/11/obama.netroots/
This vote came about a month after he secured the nomination.
hfojvt
(37,573 posts)Over here!!! Pick me!!! Pick me!!!!
I will gladly spend two weeks in jail so I can pass go and collect $2,000,000.
Shoot, make it a month and $1,000,000
I'm right here at 475 Evergreen Terrace, Paoli, Kansas*
* not even a real town, or a real street unless by fluke.
Hydra
(14,459 posts)I saw a documentary on this case, and he was inches from being thrown in prison, maybe even a Gitmo type place and never heard from again. Pure luck that the Spanish Authorities found the real bomber.
Now? Maybe they just grab you, torture you and show trial you like Jose Padilla.
Ms. Toad
(34,126 posts)SharonAnn
(13,781 posts)http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/87796/lettre-de-cachet
Lettre de cachet, (French: letter of the sign [or signet]), a letter signed by the king and countersigned by a secretary of state and used primarily to authorize someones imprisonment. It was an important instrument of administration under the ancien régime in France. Lettres de cachet were abused to such an extent during the 17th and 18th centuries that numerous complaints on the subject appear on the list of grievances presented to the Estates-General of 1789.
State lettres de cachet were sent by the government in the interests of society, either to maintain public order or to assure the proper functioning of institutions. In the first case, a public authority (in Paris the lieutenant general of police) might obtain from the king the orders for someones detention for a limited period of time, or a public prosecutor would demand a lettre de cachet for the arrest of an accused person before trial. In the second case, the king might use a lettre de cachet to summon political bodies (such as the Estates-General), to order them to discuss a particular matter or to exclude from their meetings some person or persons considered undesirable. Lettres de cachet were also used to arrest suspect foreigners or spies. They were also granted to private persons for action on another individual. Couched in very brief, direct terms, a lettre de cachet simply commanded the recipient to obey the orders therein without delay, giving no explanation.
...
The effect of a lettre de cachet was to initiate and enforce the imprisonment of an individual in a state fortress, particularly the Bastille, or in a convent or hospital. That the duration of the imprisonment was not necessarily specified in the lettre de cachet served to aggravate the arbitrary character of the measure taken. Nor was there any legal mechanism for appeal against a lettre de cachet; release, no less than detention, depended entirely upon the kings pleasure. In the law of the ancien régime, the lettre de cachet was thus an expression of that exercise of justice that the king reserved to himself, independently of the law courts and their processes, just as he reserved the right to grant lettres de grâce, or pardons, to persons who had been convicted by the courts.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)Not the only one, of abuse. Thanks.
Hydra
(14,459 posts)How many other people have been charged and disappeared that we've never even heard of? If asked, I'm sure the Gov't would say "that person was a terrorist, and that's all we're going to say about it."
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)This applies
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023017085
zappaman
(20,606 posts)Actually it is.
Not without it's problems, but still the best place to live.
Ms. Toad
(34,126 posts)So many people have said to me over the last few days, "prove it." You can't show anyone is harmed by this. Along with we've evolved (since the personal experiences I've had being spied on).
Glad to find it here - and disappointed it doesn't seem to be getting more prominent notice. Guess I should expect that - those of us who knew it was bad didn't need the additional reinforcing evidence, and those who believe this particular administration can do no evil won't likely be convinced by reality anyway