Thursday, September 8, 2011

Big Meech”

Demetrius “Big Meech” Flenory and Terry “Southwest T”, were sentenced on September 12, 2008 to 30 years in prison for running one of the largest cocaine trafficking rings in recent US history.
We’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars generated, luxurious cars, homes, boats and jewelry.
BMF Entertainment, a record label who released music from artists such as Bleu DaVinci served as one of the money laundering channels for the organization.
BMF’s rise to fame is paved with intrigue and one of the most interesting rise and falls stories of this century. Both writers and law enforcement have compared BMF with the likes of the Mafia families within the US in the mid 1900′s.
The World is BMF’s
BMF flooded the streets from 1990 through 2005, funneling their earnings through BMF entertainment, with affiliations to hip hop icon Young Jeezy, and Jacob Arabov (aka Jacob The Jeweler). But their story began in the early 1990s in Detroit and they eventually extended their territory to Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, Missouri, California and Texas.
There have been 65 indictments so far in the still evolving BMF case. Unnder terms of their plea bargain, the brothers agreed to forfeit $270 million to the government. The government has taken over $19 million dollars in assets from members of BMF which include 13 homes, 35 vehicles, millions of dollars worth of jewelry and $5 million dollars cash.
Young Jeezy was implicated by Ralph “Ralphie” Simms as part of a plea bargain, claiming the rapper received kilos of cocaine from the organization.
Jacob Arabov (aka Jacob The Jeweler) was one of  the notable defendants in the case against Big Meech & Southwest T. Jacob himself  was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison, and fined $50,000 for lying to federal agents investigating the drug ring. He was originally arrested for conspiring to launder money for the BMF.
Creative Loafing has one of the most in depth and well versed takes on the street history of BMF which I highly recommend to anyone interested in this case.

Creative Loafing – Hip Hop’s Shadowy Empire

“Big Meech” Flenory and the Black Mafia Family were hip-hop royalty. But investigators say they had a darker side. Part 1 of 3
Traffic busts in Missouri, wiretaps in Atlanta, and a double homicide with a connection to the mayor’s son-in-law. Part 2 of 3
In the summer of 2005, the party would get out of hand for Demetrius “Big Meech” Flenory and the Black Mafia Family. And the feds would be ready to make their move. Part 3 of 3
Related Posts with Thumbnails

Monday, September 5, 2011

Young Reese ft OB Getemz - Hard On The Eight - Music Video

Skin care tips for Black men

The man of the `90s should be just as concerned about his appearance as his female counterpart. Gone are the days when it was considered macho for men to have rugged skin to match their personalities. Women aren't impressed with bad complexions in men any more than men admire women with bad skin.
While today men overall are more aware of the importance of taking care of their bodies, far too many still neglect their skin.
A major skin problem affecting Black men who shave is that of ingrown hair, which results when curly or kinky hair grows back into the skin. The problem most often affects the face and front crease of the neck, but can also occur on the back of the neck and the scalp. The skin may become infected with bacteria and, consequently, form bumps over the hair. The subsequent irritation causes the skin to darken, and when severe, permanent scarring may result. Continuing to shave aggravates the problem, for often the skin is broken and bleeding occurs.
Dermatologists and skin-care experts offer these tips to help Black men combat the problem of ingrown hair:
If you can, grow a beard and totally eliminate the problem. However, this is not a viable alternative for many men in the military or those who work in corporate America.
Some experts advise against shaving daily unless absolutely necessary. The more you shave, the greater the chance for hairs to grow into the skin.
* When shaving, don't rush, but take your time to avoid nicks and scars.
* By not shaving too closely you'll lessen the chances of hair growing back into the skin.
* Some men find it helpful to lift hairs onto the surface of the skin with a sewing needle sterilized in alcohol.
* Do not use tweezers to pull out hairs. When the hair is extruded altogether, the skin heals and a new bump occurs when the hair tries to grow out again.
* The shaving blade should pass in only one direction. Do not shave in both directions.
* Take extra care to soften the skin and hair with plenty of soap and water or shaving cream before starting.
* Change razor blades often. Do not use a dull blade.
* Consider using depilatory treatment to take hair off cleanly. It also straightens the hair and helps cure the problem of ingrown hair. Consult with a specialist before deciding on such a solution.
* When facial irritation and infection are severe due to ingrown hair, see a dermatologist who may prescribe antibiotics to reduce infection and other medication to heal the skin.
Other skin-care and grooming tips for today's Black man:
* Like women, men should take care to thoroughly wash their faces at least twice daily to remove dirt and grime.
* If you have dry skin, use a moisturizer. If you have oily skin, take care to keep the shine down. Consult with a skin-care specialist to determine which facial products are best for you.
* Because pre-shave products often dry the skin, use after-shave conditioning moisturizers.
* Take time to trim unsightly hair protruding from ears and nose.
* Keep your mustache, beard and sideburns neatly trimmed and groomed.
* Take good care of your teeth now or you'll be sorry later. Brush at least twice daily, and use mouthwash to keep your breath fresh. Regularly visit a dentist for cleaning and examinations.
*Use moisture lotions on the body, especially on hands, feet, knees, ankles and elbows. Women find ashiness very unappealing.
* Even if you work with your hands, don't neglect them. Get manicures and pedicures to keep your hands and feet looking good.

Friday, September 2, 2011

Secrets of the Giza Pyramids

Secrets of the Giza Pyramids

May 18, 2011
Post image for Secrets of the Giza Pyramids

Secrets of the Giza Pyramids

by Charles Marcello
Everyone knows we live within a three dimensional universe, and that time equals the fourth dimension. While at the same time just about everyone has heard of E=MC2 …the thing is, the Pyramids of Giza has both of those truths intertwined within their legends and their physical makeup. What is a four sided pyramid? The quick smart-aleck answer is, it’s a four sided pyramid. While the other answer equals, a four sided pyramid is one sixth of a cube, or a box, or a perhaps the misunderstood science called a cubit.
If that is true… and it is mathematically true… then what are those pyramids trying to say? Well, Graham Hancock and Robert Duval were able to answer some of those questions… I believe in their quest to be unique they still wanted to be accepted by mainstream Egyptologist, so they only allowed their uniqueness to go so far. I on the other hand don’t care if someone calls me a liar, or if someone else is annoyed I used the bible to make point, or any other derogatory names people can invent. I didn’t start this journey worried about how others were going to receive the truth. All I demanded was the truth. All I continually search for is the truth.
Over a decade ago I discovered a three dimensional mathematical concept that I broke all the down into a simple sixth grade mathematical formula… so anyone who wanted to learn, could. Because I already had that experience, when I started to break down 144,000 and 666 at first I thought it was simple understanding… until I had a dream about the number 6… then I knew an extremely advanced civilization hid that science in those numbers and that they lived in our very distant past, because those two numbers exist all over the ancient world. So I began a journey of re-reading the Bible with a brand new appreciation. When I discovered December 3, 2012 does in fact match the Pyramids of Giza layout, I tried to give it away. Seriously, for two weeks I told people… hey go check this out. No one would… so I then created a simple video and posted it online, and then went, now look… and still no one wanted to do the work. I let this discovery sit for almost a year, and still no one took it! I was like… damn it! I do not want this… But there truly was no one else. So I accepted my fate and dove into this project head first. The math is completely undeniable. Even though the math always made sense and was always correct, I was not sure until I found this alchemical symbol (below)…This picture (squaring the circle) told me that what I accidentally discovered over a decade ago was in fact true.
At the bottom of this post you will find compass method
of drawing perfectly this alchemical symbol.
I still thought it was simply a game because it argued against everything the world told me I should believe. To then find the same answers within 144,000 and 666… it totally blew me away. So when I decided to see what else the pyramids were actually trying to say… once I understood what Graham Hancock and Robert Duval had discovered… I instantly knew they didn’t go far enough. Its not their fault, and I can honestly say without their research I never would have put two and two together. They deserve all the credit for this find. While Maurice Cotterell deserves all the credit for helping me to unlock the truth about our spiritual reality.
Those pyramids are in fact demanding our truly ancient ancestors flew in space… make no mistake, anyone who tells you different, after sitting down and doing math, is either dishonest or purposely ignorant. They’re being purposely ignorant because they refuse to do the math while desperately holding onto an outdated belief… or they’re being dishonest because they desperately want YOU to hold onto that outdated belief. A four sided pyramid is in fact 1/6 of a cube. The question becomes what are they trying to tell us with those pyramids?

The first is the Great Pyramid. They are telling us they understood our reality is three dimensional and that is exactly how they saw their/our reality. If you use the mathematics as described by Graham Hancock and instead of using the Earth, use the Sun. Understand The Great Pyramid is explaining two things. One, use the Great Pyramid as 1/6 the true dimensional volume of our Sun… Then use the apex of that pyramid as the volume of our Sun. What does the rest of the pyramid teach?


- – - – - – - – -

The summary of the selected main mean dimensions of the Great Pyramid (Khufu):
dimension b. inch m royal cub. palm digit
base 9068.8 230.35 440 3,080 12,320
height 5776 146.71 280 1,960 7,840
sum     720 5,040 20,160
slope 7343.2 186.52 356 2,492 9,968
edge 8630.4 219.21 418 2,926 11,704

Volume of the Great Pyramid:
Volume of the Pyramid =h*B/3 (Here h is the height of the Pyramid, B is the area of the base)
=(1/3)*146.71*(230.35*230.35) cu. meters = 2,594,865.6 cubic meters (18,069,333 cubic royal cubits or 91,636,814 cubic feet)
Khafre
Base: 214.5 m (704 ft) on each side
Height: 143.5 m (471 ft) tall
Angle of Incline: 53 degrees 7′ 48″
Volume: 2,200,603.543 cubic meters
Menkaure
Base: 110 m (345.5 ft) on each side
Height: 68.8 m (216 ft) tall
Angle of Incline: 51.3 degrees
Volume: 277,465.584 cubic meters
Interesting relationship between volumes of the 1st (Khufu) and the 2nd (Khafre) pyramid: If volume of the Great Pyramid  (Khufu) is equal 1, volume of the Khafre’s pyramid (to the scale) is 0.848. If volume of Earth is equal 1, volume of Venus (to the same scale)  is 0.857.  …In other words, both volume relationships are different by just 1% (1.01056).

Subject Related Resources

(cut and paste as URL address these links below):
  • http://www.cheops-pyramide.ch/khufu-pyramid/pyramid-alignment.html
  • http://www.ronaldbirdsall.com/gizeh/petrie/index.htm
  • http://www.crystalinks.com/gpstats.html
  • http://www.catchpenny.org/pyramid.html

- – - – - – - – -

With the Second pyramid they are trying to teach us they understood how our solar system works. Time is not the axial rotation of our planet, no matter how hard religious influenced scientist try to force that geocentric outdated ignorance onto man. Make no mistake it is being forced onto our world by a religious institution. This same religious institution once made the world believe it was flat and the universe revolved around our planet… now they have our world believing the universe is flat and time revolves around the individual. Sorry I have to be the one to expose that as pure nonsense, but those pyramids, and your bible by the way, proves it! For you see the creators of those pyramids not only understood three dimensional volume, they also understood the secret of time… ie… the Star of David… more on that in a few minutes. Because what the second pyramid demands is, they understood that time in our solar system is measured by the elliptic rotation of our Sun around the center of our Galaxy. Yet even that is just the beginning… because when you T-Cubic meter time you realize they also understood the truth about our spiritual reality.
While the third pyramid is teaching us the truth about light! Light is simply the by-product of matter, regardless of how fast matter moves light always leaves matter at a constant. That is one of truths the legends about the EYE in the center of a pyramid is teaching. The other is how to truthfully view our reality… as if a god looking back down upon creation… while the third truth is how to create unlimited Energy. You do this by capturing Light. If  E=MC2, then captured C equals Me… or stated another way… the creators of those pyramids knew the secret to Hawkings Radiation.
I would give you the math but I could post it day long and haters will not believe it and simply try to tear me down. So instead I demand you do it yourself. I’m giving this all away, I’m not asking you for anything other then spend one hour doing the math.
Here’s where it gets interesting… they are also telling us they understood how our universe actually works. They broke our reality down into what I call M-Cubic or T-Cubic Meters. Where you create a homogenous box/cubic (meaning all six sides are exactly the same), and then your break them down using M-Cubic or T-Cubic Meters. Here is a visual representation…

That picture is there simply to get your mind wrapped around this concept… so you will understand those pyramids are telling you how many times you need to m-cubic meter our reality in order to discover the real truth of our existence.
Now I’m going to skip way ahead and give you the answer, and then demand you find out for yourself if its true or not.
The Star of David is not only talking about the beauty of God, its also telling us everything we need to do mathematically in order to understand our true reality.

Space is comprised of both the extremely small all the way to the extremely large dimensions, ie… from the lowest of dimensions to the instant vastness of space. While Time is just the opposite. In order to prove this, you need to T-Cubic meter time until you stop light from one atom to another… and then you need to invert that answer and stretch it across the universe. Where time throughout the vastness of space happens instantly… From there time begins to slow down as you T-Cubic meter downward, until it either appears to stop or does in fact stop. Space and Time are uniform inside their respective dimensions only. In our reality time moves at the same speed whether you’re experiencing velocity here on Earth or on Mars, Mercury, Venus or Saturn or on the other side of our galaxy… you can prove that is true by M-Cubic Metering each planet… You will discover mathematically they all come together at a certain dimension. You now have the measuring stick for time. That is what the Star of David is actually trying to teach us when it comes to the majesty of our Reality and God. It truly is beautiful!
Earlier I said if you capture light you can then convert it over to energy. That is true… there will be many new ways for mankind to discover how to do so over the next several years, that is… if we survive the transition some cultures have prophesized/warned us about… before we all die this how I suggest you should start.

Create a little sphere that allows light in but does not allow light to escape. Inside this little sphere you want to add mercury, with trace amounts of silver and gold… while at the same time you want to add into this little sphere a gas that gets hotter and hotter the more it is compressed. This glass like object must be able to expand and contract ever so slightly. Then create a second larger sphere that will hold the first sphere. Allow this sphere to capture light, yet not allow it to escape as well. Inside this sphere you want to add a gas that becomes colder as the gas is compressed. I believe magnets need to be used as well. But that’s as far as I’m going to take this new power device. This is important… before you create this device make sure you have a way to measure the energy being created inside, while at the same time, make sure you are able to open this device quickly. If I’m understanding the hidden science within ancient texts correctly, if you don’t have a way to drain the energy it will kill you.

We are ONE

If you do the math and open your eyes to our true reality you will see the beauty of our existence in a way you’ve never noticed it before. Once you do see the truth of our reality, you will realize we are all One. And the saying, “From one many, from many one,” you will understand truly equals the only way we can save ourselves from ourselves… We Must Re-Learn this simple truth… we are all ONE regardless of race, color or creed… we are all One Spiritually, we all live in one house/planet… YES each of us has the right to choose our own path. Its your life, live it… yet in order to save ourselves from ourselves we must have a solid base from which to rebuild our reality upon. Our world is broken, and it is cracking at the seems, just like prophecy said it would… Please open your eyes. Can We Learn To Love Like God. If each us takes responsibility for everyone else’s sins what could you justify? What could you justify knowing your loved ones are begging God to be held responsible for everything you do? What could any of us get away with then? History demands humans are capable of the most atrocious crimes if they believe one of two things… if they believe they can get away with it, or if WE know we won’t be punished for it. The twentieth century has taught that lesson well. From Hitler to Stalin etc etc… If the children of yesterday prayed to God every night to be held responsible for their parents sins, do any of you believe the fires of the holocaust would have been lit? Or that the bricks would’ve been laid for the prisons of the USSR? What would our world be like right now if our children prayed every night to be held responsible for our sins… would we stop throwing away their future for our own personal greed?
Whether we as the Only One Race/The Human Race… like it or not, we only have two choices… If our world discovers this science before we learn we are in fact One, and only as One can we save ourselves from ourselves… if we refuse to learn that simple lesson we will kill ourselves… make no mistake history is repeating itself right before our eyes. Just look at the European Unions Headquarters as one shocking example… they took an artist rendition of the tower of Babel and then created their Union Headquarters from that rendition.
If that’s not telling you how close we are to killing ourselves, from receiving our own judgment for our own iniquities… because of the evil we accept as truth and force ourselves to slave under… if the world continues to deny the simple truth we are all One Spiritually… then we are doomed… if you believe the one has nothing to do with the other, then nothing will save you from yourself, nothing!
Well, that’s it. You now have it all! You can accept, deny, embrace or throw away everything I’ve said, the choice is yours. Whatever you decide, I hope you enjoy this ride, this wonderful miracle we call life.
–Charles Marcello

Additional Material (on this page):

  • PS 2:  World’s Knowledge in a single Monument
  • PS 1:  Pyramids and the Solar System
  • PS 3:  Drawing the Alchemical Symbol

PS 1: World’s Knowledge in a single Monument

by Charles Marcello
How would you put all of our worlds knowledge into a single monument… and I do mean all our science, all our understanding of our solar system, and our technology?  Below is a scenario Ive asked people on another forum to think about before they even begin to search for hidden knowledge.
The scenario…
Its December 21, 2012 and you’re one of those people who aint worried about something happening.  So you and your significant other decide to go to a Christmas Choral down at the park. The people on stage or singing Silent Night when you hear a sound off in the distance… You think nothing of it.
A few seconds later you notice that sound is louder.  A few more seconds and it sounds like an airplane and a freight train roaring down upon you at the same time.  The next thing you know your significant other has a frightened look, you turn to see, but you never make it. 
The next thing you know you’re waking up in a valley, and as you look around you see nothing but destruction in every direction.  You also notice several children wondering around, plus a few adults.  You start checking to see if the children and all the other adults are okay.  All of you gather in one area.  After three days and zero help, and with no other survivors being seen, you decide, its either get busy living or get busy dieing.
The children ages are between 8 and 3 years.  The adults are all over twenty, and then there’s you.
Because its winter you realize you need to find or create shelter.  You don’t recognize the area, so you’re not sure which way you should go.  So you suggest two adults stay behind with the children, and each group should walk for three hours one going east, the others west, north and south.
Several hours later one of the groups finds a cave that will house all of you.  For the remainder of the day you and the adults decide to gather wood.
After three days of zero food and water, the children are cranky, scared and hungry.  Two adults always stay behind, while the 8 other adult survivors go out to find food, water and wood.  Because all you have are the clothes on your backs… you understand you are right back in the stone ages.  You and other adults start to fashion weapons to hunt with.  Some how only 2 adults die and thankfully you only lose 10 children to hunger and sickness within the first three months.  You’re down to 8 adults and 90 children.
For the next three years you and the adults work furiously to garden and hunt for food and clothes for the coming winters.  You and the other adults are up at dawn and doing back breaking work until sunset… your only motivation is you understand you and your small band might be all that’s left of humanity.  You don’t talk all that much about what has been lost, the pain of it is just to great.  Thankfully some of the children are old enough to help with some of the chores now.  Then it hits.  In one year you lose all of the adults and thirty children.  And now you have the same symptoms that killed all the others… and that’s when the deeper reality hits you.  Because you and all the other adults were to busy with survival, neither you or the other adults taught the children how to read, math, world history or science.  Because you’re the last adult, how would
you go about explaining to illiterate children all that you know?  Would you sit them all down, or would you pick the smartest one or two within the group?  Would you explain to the others, these two have extremely important information that they must be allowed to learn, so they can also learn how to pass it forward?  Would you use figurines to help explain the science to those children, like birds, snakes, simple designs of the night sky, ect… etc…?  How would you do it?  How would you pass all you know forward?  Would you explain it with God being the main figure?  Or would you want to be as matter a fact as possible, yet trying to explain it in such a way, that its entertaining enough so these children would feel compelled to pass it forward?  There is no way you could know how long its going to take for humanity to reach the same level of technology we currently enjoy.
How would you tell the story that some advanced culture in the future will be able to see your science, math, history for what it is?  How would you explain it to children and how would you place advanced knowledge within the stories?
I would ask all who are actually interested in understanding what I believe I’ve discovered… I would ask you spend a little bit of time thinking about that… and then allow your mind to understand, that over time, as our ancestors move further and further away from our time, your stories will become boring, and harder to relate to or even understand… does it seem so far fetched some future “priest” would decide to spice it up a bit.  To glorify his position even more?  How would you find the science, math, history in your own story?  Now re-read the first five books of the bible…  If you do this mental exercise, do you see any similarities within your own story?
When those pyramids were built, they knew when the secrets were unlocked, they wouldn’t have to have everything just so.  That just needed to show they knew this, that, those things and some of those…  would you really over build something just so everything is one two three… or would you not insult your future generations intelligence?  Let alone glorify your own ignorance.  Science has closed the patent door to concepts we reject, just like our ancestors did in the 19th century.  Open your.mind by trying to describe your knowledge to a two year old like the whole future of mankind depended in it.  Then relook at all our ancient monuments and ancient religious texts.
–Charles Marcello

PS 2: Pyramids and the Solar System

by Editor in Chief
Max Toth in his book Pyramid states how many interpreted the various dimensions of the Great Pyramid. It reads: “…pyramidologists believe that the Pyramid in all its symbolism, represents the laws of the universe expressed geometrically (p. 189).” This cannot be denied if history is correct about when men acquired certain knowledge. The dimensions of the Great Pyramid will show its purpose and plan in the design. Space is not available to list all these correlation’s, but a few of the most important and the simplest to understand will be provided. Here are some of the dimensions and their correlation to astronomical calculations.
The base unit of measurement in the Pyramid’s is 25.052 inches. The Pryamid’s inch is 1.0025 of our regular inch. Each side of its base is 365.2422 cubits, which is the exact number of days in a solar year. Now 365.24 cubits occur five or six times somewhere within the pyramid that shows it was not a coincidence.
  • The Pyramid’s perimeter ( the distance around the four sides of the base) correlates with the circumference of the earth.
  • According to Professor Piazzi Smyth, multiplying the height of the Pyramid’s 35th layer by 10 derives the distance of the earth from the sun.
  • The base unit of measurement used by the Pyramid designer is ten-millionth of the earth’s polar radius, according Peter Lemeisuier.
    Simply put it is one ten millionth the distance from the North Pole to equator.
  • The number of days in a century (100 years) is 36,524 days and corresponds to the total inches valued in the Pyramid’s perimeter.
  • The number Pi is the mathematical constant 3.1415, with the ratio of the diameter to the distance around the circle, called the circumference. In the pyramid it is the ratio of the height to twice the length of the base.
Other correlations
  • The Great Pyramid is a scale model of the Earth at a ratio of 1 : 43,200.
  • The Great Pyramid has perfect geometric relationships.
  • It contains a complete astronomical catalog of our solar system.
    It contains, in its various ratios and dimensions, the quantum physics of light.
    The Great Pyramid’s height is in relationship to its base sides as a circles’ radius is to its circumference ( 1/2  Pi ).
  • We can’t help but be surprised and amazed to see that the Great pyramid corresponds so precisely to the earth: When we use the regular height of the pyramid (146.7m), it reveals the earth as a perfect sphere with only the equator radius, and when we use the minimum height of the pyramid (146.2m), it reveals the real earth with equator and polar radius.
The whole solar system appears to have been transformed at the same time as when the earth itself suffered an increase in it’s orbital period from 360 days per year to its present value of 365.242184 days. The once harmonious solar system was based upon the numerical values of the Babylonian/Sumerian sexagesimal base-60 system. This is in accordance with the myths of the ancients when correctly decoded. The existence of the asteroid belt, and of Ceres, the largest asteroid within the belt, with a critical proof that Ceres once possessed an orbit of exactly 1440 days per year at the very time when the earth itself possessed 360 days per year.

The Sun – Important Numbers

The Sun:
Mean diameter 1.392×106 km (109 × Earth )
Equatorial radius 6.955×105 km (109 × Earth )
Equatorial circumference 4.379×106 km (109 × Earth )
Illustration showing relative sizes of the planets compared to the sun
  • The Sun has a diameter of about 1,392,000 km, about 109 times that of Earth,  and its mass (about 2×1030 kilograms, 330,000 times that of Earth) accounts for about 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System.
  • The maximum distance of the Sun from the Earth (aphelion) is approximately 152 million kilometers, about 109 times that of the Sun’s diameter. 
  • On September 18-19 the distance of the Sun from Earth is approximately 150.336 million km, about 108 times that of the Sun’s diameter (or 216 times of the Sun’s Radius)
    216=63 , also 216=23 x 33
  • The mean distance of the Sun from the Earth is approximately 149.6 million kilometers (1 AU). At this average distance, light travels from the Sun to Earth in about 8 minutes and 19 seconds (499 seconds).
  • Mean distance from Milky Way core ~2.5×1017 km or 26,000 light-years
  • Galactic period (2.25–2.50)×108 a
  • Velocity:
    ~220 km/s (orbit around the center of the Galaxy)
    ~20 km/s (relative to average velocity of other stars in stellar neighborhood)
    ~370 km/s (relative to the cosmic microwave background)
Volume of the Planets and the Sun (Source: NASA)
Rank Name Volume
(cubic km)
1 Sun 1.41200 x 1016
2 Jupiter 1.43128 x 1015
3 Saturn 8.27130 x 1014
4 Uranus 6.83300 x 1013
5 Neptune 6.25400 x 1013
6 Earth 1.08321 x 1012
7 Venus 9.28430 x 1011
8 Mars 1.63180 x 1011
9 Mercury 6.08300 x 1010
10 Moon 2.19580 x 1010
11 Pluto 7.150000 x 109

Solar System – Planets


Earth (outer circle), Venus (middle), and Mercury (inner circle) – to scale
Satellite image of the pyramids near Giza with overlay of Earth, Venus and Mercury (scaled down by the same factor). Although it is not a perfect match, similarity in size is puzzling.Click to enlarge.
Interesting relationship between volumes of the 1st (Khufu) and the 2nd (Khafre) pyramid: If volume of the Great Pyramid  (Khufu) is equal 1, volume of the Khafre’s pyramid (to the scale) is 0.848. If volume of Earth is equal 1, volume of Venus (to the same scale)  is 0.857.  …In other words, both volume relationships are different by just 1% (1.01056).

Speed of Light

Exact values
Metres per second 299,792,458
Planck units     1
Approximate values
kilometres per second     300,000
kilometres per hour     1,079 million
miles per second     186,000
miles per hour     671 million
astronomical units per day     173
Approximate light signal travel times
Distance     Time
one foot     1.0 ns
one metre     3.3 ns
one kilometre     3.3 ?s
one statute mile     5.4 ?s
from geostationary orbit to Earth     119 ms
the length of Earth’s equator     134 ms
from Moon to Earth     1.3 s
from Sun to Earth (1 AU)     8.3 min
one parsec     3.26 years
from Proxima Centauri to Earth     4.24 years
from Alpha Centauri to Earth     4.37 years
from the nearest galaxy (the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy) to Earth     25,000 years
across the Milky Way     100,000 years

PS 3: Drawing the Alchemical Symbol

by Editor in Chief

How to draw perfectly this alchemical symbol – Compass Method


Note: Click on any of the images below to see them in full size
1. Draw 2 points (dots) A and B  and connect them with a straight line:
2. From each point (A and B) draw a circle with radius AB.  Mark 2 points where
both circles intersect and connect them with a straight line:
3.Mark point C where both lines intersect and draw a circle from point C
with radius = AC = BC. This will be the inner circle of the symbol: 4. Find 4 corners of the square DEFG around the circle by drawing 4 circles as shown below:
5.  Draw perfect square around the circle connecting with straight lines its corners DEFG
6.Draw small equilateral triangle on top of the square;
find its top corner H by drawing 2 circles with radius = side of the square DE:
7. Draw straight lines through points HD, HE, and FG, mark points I and J where these lines intersect. These are corners of the large equilateral triangle HJI:
8. Draw arcs from points H and J. Mark point K where both intersect.
Connect points K and I  to find the center L of the big circle:
9. Draw big circle with the center L and its radius = LH
10. Remove the “construction” lines to see the perfect symbol:

Secret of the Zebra — Catalyst to New Thought?

 The Macro-view of Our Ancient Past

  By Ron O. Cook
 Reflect deeply upon the Zebra’s markings.  Stripes circumscribe… then seem to explode in a uniform yet complex race around the animal’s body only to culminate in a mental mystery.  In that moment, one wonders about the reason for such optical impact and stark contrast of dark on light design…worthy of the finest computer-graphic rendering.  Considering such “contemporary” design levels imbedded within the roots of so-called primal being, humanity’s thoughts on everyday utility seem inadequate by comparison.
 
At what point did “Nature” (or some ancient genetic engineer) decide to genetically map the mathematical “fractallian” precision onto the body of such a beautiful specimen as the Zebra?  Did it just manifest through evolution, or is there something more extraordinary to the puzzle?  Some believe there must be a gestalt secret entwined within the matrix of biological information and processing of programmable DNA that is evident in the symbol of the stripes.  Could it be a created messenger from an ancient geneticist’s cause for aesthetic communication across the ages?  To think of the complexity involved in such a theory, boggles the mind and upsets more than the old bromide of which came first…the “white horse” or the dark stripes.  Something strange and different goes on when one delves deeply beyond the implied common science.
 
Could the knowledge of non-linear dynamics known by an ancient sentient civilizations such as the old Egyptians have genetically manufactured animals, including Zebras, if it had in its possession the basics of Fractal Geometry…could we?  In the near future, research will produce a gargantuan amount of geologic and genetic data on the environment and the Animal Kingdom Genome.  Couple this new information with the other leading-edge fields of Holography, Nanotechnology, Super Computers, Virtual Reality, Microbiology, and many more, then use the mathematical loom of Fractals to weave theory into reality, and we may find ourselves face-to-face with a checkered Zebra. 
 
Fractua” is Latin for irregular, so Benoit Mandelbrot (an IBM Fellow) coined the name “fractals” (1980) for his new self-similar geometry, which can emulate the visual dictates of the world of chaos and the dimensional reality of natural forms.  Fractal Geometry can define reality in a numerical fashion as it exists in the micro and macro realms…thus digitally mapping all being, via quantum manipulation and on-going change factors which are broadcast within the electromagnetic spectrum and throughout eternity. 
 
The fact that some students of knowledge seem to miss when entranced by the symbol of the Mandelbrot Set’s “island molecule,” is that it looks exactly like a silhouetted, sitting Buddha.  To accidentally stumble upon such synchronism between a mathematical equation for reality and a philosophical icon for life (Buddha) is indeed awesome for those who seek the arcane wisdom of the gods.  If the two were truly related, perhaps more investigation would bridge the gaps between ancient religion and modern science. Are the two, one?  Both are really looking for the same understanding of truthful existence in this Universe.  However, the point remains…there are no schools of thought higher than Truth…though its secret is ever fleeting. 
 
Issac Asimov reinforced the above by stating philosophically that the secret/s of the Universe are enfolded in fractals and that the enigma of this constancy will remain forever unknown — an enigma.   Other scientists think otherwise and are in a heated race to frame a fractal-future in a new and fascinating understanding that could finally addresses the concepts of infinite creation through a quantum/holographic/fractal marriage.
 
Most of Nature still remains hidden from the vision of truth.  We must in the coming decades stare into the depths of “what-if-thought” and realize life’s deeper understandings and the clues to our deepest past.  Causes and issues such as the Earth’s rain forests being consumed at exponential rates, spurs some of us to fight such economic greed knowing that the plants that grow there are sources of extracts that are far more precious to us as cures for disease rather than being “slashed” lands for coffee or other crops.  Their worth is still enfolded within the grasp of Natures packaging waiting for intellectual release. Many think our ancient ancestors encompassed their knowledge in their genetic gifts passed forward.
 
While predestined cycles approach a point of serendipity, and a plethora of causal ingredients point to a paradigm of why man exists on this earth, some men still see with the veil of illusion crystallized between their retinas and the mind’s eye of intuitional knowledge…the sixth sense.  Consciousness resides at levels prefixed at the “un,” the “sub,” and shoots to a high of super-consciousness.  Now, psycho-cognitive and other scientific research reinforces old myths into truths that higher understanding only amplifies as mankind sheds its “selfdom” for altruistic beliefs, thereby ushering in a realm of higher consciousness.
 
How deeply does mankind truly see?  Can we match mind to wisdom and perceive that there are greater scientific unknowns (than the Zebra’s stripes) just floating around us waiting to be discovered? Or, does the cause of the “ENIGMNI” (the absolute ultimate unknowable) exert its power over mankind’s quest to push forever the envelope of reality beyond our own comprehension?  Perhaps the evolution of alternative means of thought enabling us to see and understand the makings of the Universe will require exploration of creative pathways that go around old empiric paradigms…systems of doing science that have become the tacit infrastructure (a way of expressing unspeakable, yet concrete concepts of life).  Have we become victims of our own complex ignorance and are now unable to participate in the “brainstorm” required for tomorrow’s world?  Philosophy and Science must again merge in the search for truth…through a rededication to creativity…the ongoing act.
 
As to the secret of the Zebra — could mankind have missed the “point” of the ancient Unicorn in that its symbolic message to us was not the one-horned horse, but the one with the gift of Fractal Geometry on its coat to “point” (guide) our way from the beginnings of our time to the grand leaps required of our complex future.  Orientation for a new viewpoint may be dawning.  Considering where we are in human development… it is something to think about and apply to all the so-called gifts we find manifest about us in the caldron of Existence. If we accept the Secret of the Zebra, then we are only just awakening to the fact that there were highly advanced minds creating here on this Earth long ago and they were doing the preliminary work on the Primary Technology that we enjoy as Nature.
Related posts:

THE BROTHERHOOD Part 1: Introduction , The Main Manipulating Groups

 
By Ivan Fraser and Mark Beeston (http://www.truthcampaign.co.uk)
http://educate-yourself.org/nwo/brotherhoodpart1.shtml
"Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the past." (from '1984') George Orwell
Introduction
From the moment our senses first register the presence of our parents we are being shown the way that life apparently is. Through no fault of ours or theirs, our parents begin the programming process as their views of life, shaped by their education, employment and the media are imposed on us. Formal education through schools, colleges and universities continues the systematic indoctrination where the 'correct' views and interpretations of science, history and society result in exam passes and the ability to 'get on' in life. Alternative views and the rejection of establishment education lead to supposedly lesser jobs and a struggle against economic poverty. Our entire understanding of the world and current affairs is filtered through the mass media, interpreted by journalists and so-called experts. Their views become our views simply because we are not offered any alternatives. To overcome daily problems within society we turn to elected representatives of our community. We give our decision-making abilities to these few people who are increasingly remote, as local council power is removed to national government and ever more to Europe.
Our experience of life is determined by the framework around our society. The basic premise is that the goal of each individual should be to become a minute part in the global machine of consumerism led by Western multinational corporations and banks. Every other consideration is subordinate to the prime motivation of profit. Obviously, those in the positions of influence – politicians, bankers, corporate executives, media moguls – have been, according to their own definition, 'successful' within the System, so have an interest in maintaining the status quo at all costs. This framework shapes every aspect of our life through education, the media, health care, cultural and sporting events, religion etc.
With these framing conditions in place, the System regulates itself: individuals with attitudes that suit the perpetuation of the System achieve status and influence within it; those who accept the establishment rules soon find ways to impose those rules; those who are blind to the exploitative realities of consumerism attain positions to promote it. Regardless of how the framework came to be imposed, the truth is that the same attitudes control education, media, governments and banks and therefore exert an irrepressible influence over every aspect of our lives, our thoughts and opinions.
The vast majority of the world's population are merely sheep happily following the herd. Whatever is broadcast in the media as being desirable to the masses suddenly and miraculously becomes desired by the masses. Whatever our neighbour owns or achieves becomes the object of great envy and we lust to acquire what we believe to be ours by right. Thus, when we are shown a solution to a problem, any old solution to anything which interferes with our need to follow the latest trends, we accept it without question and cease to seek any further for ourselves. Problems abound and so do solutions; but it is the easiest and most profitable proffered option which is seized by the majority whilst the minority are trampled underfoot in the stampede to acquire the latest object of idolatry. And just like sheep who follow blindly and without question the direction of the herd, we are led through the gates of a pen to be confined at the shepherds convenience until it is time for the final journey, once again without hesitation and happy in the knowledge that we are with the 'in-crowd', through the gates of the slaughterhouse
However, this framework has not been constructed by chance or appeared by accident. It is a deliberate policy which has been implemented over the centuries and continues with ever more sinister repercussions today. It is the identities of these shepherds, their methods and motivation with which the following chapter is concerned.
Since Biblical times, the esoteric knowledge, outlined briefly in this book, has been largely withheld from the majority of people throughout the world. Initially, this information was the remnant of Atlantean knowledge but was gradually dispersed and further diluted by cataclysmic events such as the Great Flood. Throughout the ages, lost information has been returned to the collective consciousness of mankind via prophets and channellers. Great Mystery Schools, such as the Essene order, set themselves apart in order to carry forward this knowledge via carefully selected initiates. These initiates were the mystics and magi as well as the scholars, healers and philosophers, such as Pythagoras, who, it is said, was very much influenced by the Druid culture.
Secrecy was maintained by these orders to avoid persecution and to prevent the very powerful information from falling into the hands of those who would use it for imbalanced reasons. Knowledge was concealed within myth and fable, often passed between generations by word of mouth alone, as in the case of the Celtic Druids. Any written documents were careful ciphered, with the keys to the code known only to selected initiates. Covens formed throughout the world and maintained secrecy through secret signals and codes which would reveal their meeting places. This practice persists today amongst secret orders such as occultists and Freemasons etc..
Eventually, a large number of sects, which were initially sub-divisions of essentially the same orders, began to lose sight of the original purity of their doctrines. Gradual misinterpretation of codes and myths as well as the uprising of egotistical desires caused many of the groups to become separated in their intent; some of these have developed into cult organisations and religions. Luciferic influence has seen to it that most dogmatic religion owes more to misunderstanding of basic truths than anything else. Differences are amplified and seen as more important to followers of such creeds than the common ties between them – all due to misinterpretation of the same fundamental knowledge. All of the world's major religions share a pagan origin but have gradually moved their sights further and further to the left of the centre where Truth inevitably lies.
Despite this, some of the purer mystery schools have survived through the ages in areas all over the world. The ancient Egyptian magicians, the ancient Greek philosophers, the Celtic Druids, American Indian shamen, Australian aboriginal shaman and oriental magicians have all possessed arcane knowledge pertaining to the true nature of Creation. Initiates were often revered as holy men by the laity and were spared the distractions of daily life in order to keep alive the flames of the inherent magic of life. However, within certain of the more secretive societies, the Luciferic consciousness has managed to take hold with disastrous consequences for mankind.
For millennia, human history has been a chronicle of the power struggle of man against man and of man against nature. In his over-physical five-sense-perception state, that which man could acquire for himself as an individual has been the main motivating factor, often seen as essential for survival. Survival has been perceived as for the fittest, the most powerful, the wealthiest and this has perpetuated imbalance all the way to its most bitter conclusions which are war, bondage and persecution. Domination through conflict and might over meekness has seen aeons of feudalism and social hierarchy in the worst possible expressions.
To perpetuate their claim of deserved superiority over the masses, the rulers of the past have explored innumerable ways to achieve their goals, both subtle and violent. One method has been recognised as being the most effective and has been employed by the ruling aristocracy throughout the world since pre-history right up to the present day through governments, businesses and monarchies. That is, by keeping the masses in ignorance of their true potential and power; to keep them at a low level of education, preoccupying their minds away from who they truly are from birth; to manipulate them via a systematic education programme, in all areas of their existence, into channelling their lives in pursuit of handing over power to their rulers. If this can be done in such a way that the masses have no recourse and believe this condition to be the only way to live, then they will be highly unlikely to challenge the status quo.
The present System has been engineered throughout the ages by these imbalanced secret societies in order to perpetuate their wealth and power. It is they who designed the System and it is only they who know every individual link in the chains which have kept us in bondage for millennia. Today we have a global network of secret societies, initiates into the 'Mysteries', whose only motivation is to serve the Luciferic consciousness. How many times have we heard such phrases as 'It's the money men who really rule the world', but how many of us realise the accuracy of this sentiment and its full implications?
Armed with vast amounts of wealth and esoteric knowledge, the negative secret society network has flourished as the aristocracy of the world. Power, wealth and information has been gained and maintained via warfare, exploitation, and especially in the last century, through control of the world's economic systems. Collectively these organisations, led by the self-appointed global Elite, have become known as the 'Brotherhood'.
These days, initiation into the various secret societies which form the Brotherhood is relatively easy. Potential initiates are hand picked and invited to join certain exclusive clubs, such as the Freemasons and certain mutually beneficial business cartels which are merely Brotherhood front organisations. Candidates are tempted with the promise that, once accepted into the organisation, many personal advantages would be on offer: improved career prospects with promotion easier to achieve, more prosperous lifestyles and obstacles to success would be made to disappear. In other words this mutually beneficial 'old-boy network' would take care of its own.
The only way for the Brotherhood to prosper is to keep the world in ignorance of who they really are. By convincing people that they are little more than robots, they can use those robots to perpetuate their power base. Power always seeks power and will never stop until all power is focused solely in the hands of the most ambitious.
In the last century, with the acceleration in technological development, particularly in terms of communication, the Elite have sought to realise their ambitions more swiftly with more blatant and definable aims: the creation of a World Government; a world currency and bank; a world army; the control of public opinion culminating in a microchipped population connected to a central computer; the destruction of any alternatives to their System; and to make huge amounts of money in the process. This sinister plan by the Elite has become popularly known by researchers as the New World Order.
The situation within the hierarchy of the Elite is necessarily complex as the activities are concealed behind a large number of front organisations of varying degrees of secrecy. Everything is based upon the pyramid principle with the very few Elite at the apex as the All-Seeing-Eye and ultimate controllers right down to those at the bottom who, in the largest numbers, have no idea about the true agenda which is being ministered to them from above. Through the levels of initiation from the bottom to the top, only the most ambitious and ruthless are filtered out to occupy more and more select positions of power and knowledge of the ultimate agenda. This is further enforced at each step of the pyramid by the process of COMPARTMENTALISATION which is the operation of the 'need to know' principle; this way even those upon the same level of the pyramid know very little of their fellow initiate's business and role within the overall plan. The vast majority of people working to further the Elite's aims of a New World Order, do so unknowingly but others whose names constantly recur will have a pretty good idea of what is happening.
The USA was founded by the Elite for the very reason of executing the plan to control the world. It is this nation which is the hub of its wheel of influence. Christopher Columbus and his voyage was backed and financed by the Brotherhood, with his ships' sails bearing a red cross on a white background, the symbol of the Knights Templar (the chivalric order who went on to become the Freemasons etc., whose symbol is the red rose or cross upon a white background which represents blood and semen in Satanic ritual). Almost a century before Columbus, the Templars had reached North America and had already begun trading with and exploiting the native nations there. Since its 'discovery', the history of the USA has been the history of ethnic cleansing, imposition of power, slavery, mass exploitation and the worship of wealth. The U.S. president, generally accepted as the most powerful man in the world, is a slave to his prime allegiance, the Brotherhood. Even he is probably not a top-level member as it is wiser to hide behind the tools of corruption in anonymity and to pull the strings in this way.
I do not seek to condemn these people for their beliefs – everyone should be free to develop their own belief system – but I feel that they are seriously misguided in the ways they seek to impose them on the majority and conceal the truth. They have allowed themselves to become slaves to and also the major implementers the Luciferic consciousness which has taken this planet to the brink of destruction.
Presenting the information concisely is a difficult operation due to the complexity of the interconnections between people, organisations and events. I have attempted to simplify the situation into a manageable amount but it remains merely the tip of the iceberg. It should be remembered also that nothing is black and white, no one is 'good' or 'evil' – such simple distinctions are part of the manipulation which encourages us to judge our neighbours in order to create conflict.
THE MAIN MANIPULATING GROUPS
Freemasonry
The basic recruitment of members to further the Elite's plans is through the secret society network of Freemasonry which is the latest incarnation of the Christian/military order known as the Knights Templars who gained staggering riches and a wealth of esoteric knowledge during the Crusades, in which the 'righteous' Christians were dispatched to the Holy Land with free reign to slaughter the Jews and Moslems in a series of campaigns between the 11th and 13th Centuries.
The vast majority of members are on the first three rungs of the thirty-three level hierarchy and have no idea of the hidden agenda.
Once initiated into the lowest level – the first of thirty three degrees – vows are taken to pledge allegiance to the society above all else. Most initiates are willing to do this as the temptation of power, wealth and knowledge is hard to refuse. It is hinted that there are penalties to pay for betraying their society and revealing its secrets but at this level the organisation is viewed by its members as little more than a secretive social club with a morality based upon chivalry. Certain of what appear to be esoteric secrets are revealed to them upon initiation as a 'taster' for what is to come as long as the initiate remains faithful to the order. Money is then paid by the initiate in order to progress to the second degree through a ceremony involving the revelation of yet further secret knowledge with the promise of more to come at each stage.
Initiation into higher degrees requires increasingly larger sums of money and still the clues keep coming; promises of wonderful arcane knowledge are continual yet the actual knowledge revealed remains encoded and only serves to whet the appetite. No one is ever given the full scenario, only pieces of what appears to be a picture of the most awesome significance. As more and more is revealed and the higher up the ladder the initiate is allowed, the greater are the personal perks provided and doorways opened in terms of career and social status. Moreover, the warnings against transgression of the secret society's rules become blatant and more sinister at each step.
It is impossible to achieve high levels of initiation within Freemasonry unless one is hand picked by those of the higher degrees. In order to do this, one must meet their criteria of wealth, status, social class and character type. By the time the twentieth degree is reached a minimum of professional level income is required to fund progression through the system. The result of this financially dependent progression is that the top level members of the Brotherhood elite are among the richest, and most powerfully influential people in the world. They are also responsible, directly and indirectly for most of the money/power based crime such as the illegal drugs industry, political assassinations, Satanism and mind control which goes on every day, all round the world.
At the apex of the pyramid of the Brotherhood are the select few who actually know the full agenda of the organisation. These privileged elite have become known as the 'Illuminati', which is Latin for 'illuminated ones'. All other members (nearly five million world-wide) are ignorant of the true purpose of their individual organisation as a front for the Illuminati. Only the most suitable are selected to rise in the ranks, those recognised as being wealthy, ambitious and corrupt enough to perpetuate the ultimate goal which is world domination. No one but the Illuminati actually knows anything of importance and therefore cannot betray the game plan. Everyone else provides a front, a smoke screen of ignorance and misinformation and all must offer complete obedience to the will of their organisation or be banished (or worse). The same thing also happens in our universities whereby particularly talented scholars are approached with magnificent offers of wealth and status in order to follow unofficial secret research programs into such topics as UFOs, psychic warfare and advanced energy sources.
Betrayal of the Brotherhood is the worst crime possible in the eyes of its members and is ultimately punishable by death. The Brotherhood is all powerful: all top level members of the police and military forces around the world are placed there through the Brotherhood as Brotherhood tools. Judges and lawyers, media moguls, businessmen and politicians are recruited so that no member of the Brotherhood elite is ever in danger of being held accountable by the System for any crime or misdemeanour. The Brotherhood can, and quite literally does, get away with murder because it is also the law which opposes it. If a non-Brotherhood member should slip through the net and achieve high status then there are ways to ensure that such people are unable to achieve their full potential. For example, I doubt if Prince Charles will ever fulfil his right of kingship as he has publicly refused to enrol with the Freemasons. It infiltrates every area of our society at all levels, but at the top, in the highest social and monetary bracket, the Brotherhood prevails almost in total. It is the single largest vehicle for the perpetuation of the Luciferic consciousness on Earth.
One of the ways by which the faithfulness of members is ensured, especially in the higher levels is by the insistence that the initiated give details of their most intimate secrets to the organisation, so that if any transgression of the rules were to occur then this information would be revealed and used to publicly destroy the individual concerned. As an example of this, one Masonic branch, the Skull and Bones Society, centred around the Harvard and Yale universities, was founded on opium money, is blatantly racist, has some particularly bizarre rituals including an initiation which includes lying in a coffin with a ribbon tied around the genitalia whilst masturbating and shouting out one's greatest sexual fantasies. It boasts amongst its members (who, remember, swear complete allegiance to the society above all other commitments) George Bush, Percy Rockefeller, Winston Lord (one time CFR chairman) and nine members of the board of the Morgan Guaranty Trust (see House of Rothschild).
Also associated with Freemasonry within the Elite's own hierarchy are other esoteric societies such as the Grand Orient Lodges, the Knights of Malta, the Knights Templar, P2 and the Black Nobility.
The Brotherhood owns the law, they own the military, they own the oil companies, pharmaceutical companies and just about everything which provides fuel for the status quo. It sets the standards for education, it sets the curriculum, it plants seeds via the media and education systems of what will later become, through tender nurturing, power hungry, dis-satisfied, spiritually unaware slaves to their System. If it was not so sinister it would be purely perfect in its all encompassing design.
While the first three degree Masons and Round Table members are raising money for charity and enjoying relatively harmless social events, their superiors in the Craft are organising wars, drug pushing, co-ordinating assassinations, mind-control, raping and murdering young children in Satanic abuse and formulating plans for world domination.
History has convinced me that it is possible to get away with virtually any crime as long as it is on a large enough scale.
The U.S. presidents, also thirty-third degree Masons, are financed into the position not as leaders of men but as a tool of the Brotherhood. All allegiance come secondary to the bonds within their secret society, on pain of death. Political systems are also a front for the Brotherhood elite. Not as representatives of the people, elected by the people, for the people, but as tools of and for the Brotherhood. Science is controlled to the benefit of the elite, wars are created and manipulated to the benefit of the elite. Every time a bomb is dropped or a tank built, ultimately it is the multi-national businesses who profit, especially the oil industries and world bankers. All is Brotherhood controlled. The scale of the manipulation in all areas of the status quo is almost immeasurable and for this reason virtually unbelievable to most prisoners of the System.
The Round Table
The Round Table was established in the 1891 as a Masonic-like secret society to manipulate events to lead to a centralised global government. The leading lights were Cecil Rhodes, whose wealth largely derived from the exploitation of South African diamond reserves, and Alfred Milner, a Rothschild agent who took over after the death of Rhodes. Financial backing also came from the Rockefellers. Groups were established throughout the world, working behind the scenes through a co-ordination of world banks in order to bring pressure on governments to promote the New World Order.
As well as Milner, who effectively controlled Lloyd George's War Cabinet during the Great War, members in the first half of this century included Arthur Balfour (then Foreign Secretary, later Prime Minister and whose Balfour Declaration created the State of Israel); Lord Astor who owned The Times; and Nathan Rothschild, Governor of the Bank of England. After WW1, the Round Table was instrumental in the formation of the League Of Nations, the forerunner of the Elite-controlled United Nations.
Rhodes' legacy includes a bequeathal of funds for the financial sponsorship of selected overseas students who attend Oxford University to be sold the New World Order. These 'Rhodes Scholars' include Bill Clinton.
The influence of the Round Table and that of the various groups it has spawned is prevalent today, although the majority of members will have no idea of what they are involved in.
Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA)
One of the more public Round Table creations is the Royal Institute of International Affairs which is based at Chatham House in London and was formed in 1920 by the Anglo/American delegations from the Treaty of Versailles meetings. Prominent in the British delegation was Alfred Milner. The RIIA's patron is the Queen of England.
Supposedly, the RIIA is a 'think tank' but in effect it determines British policy. And yet, its membership list is never divulged and it is shrouded in secrecy. Information that has been obtained reveals that its current joint presidents are Lord Carrington (former Foreign Secretary, director-general of NATO and close business partner of Henry Kissinger), Lord James Callaghan (former Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister) and Lord Roy Jenkins (former Chancellor of the Exchequer and president of the European Commission).
Funding is derived from its corporate members which is a vast list including government departments, petrochemical companies (who also fund its Environment Programme!), merchant and high street banks, newspapers, television stations, the Church of England, Amnesty International ...etc..
Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)
In 1921, funded by the Rockefellers, the RIIA founded its American wing – known as the Council on Foreign Relations. As its membership is marginally more public than its British counterpart it is clearly seen that anyone who has had any influence on American or global politics ever since has been a member of the CFR. This includes 14 of the last 18 US Secretaries of State; the previous eight CIA directors; the majority of presidential and vice-presidential candidates including Eisenhower, Nixon, Carter, Mondale, Ford, Nelson Rockefeller, Bush and Clinton.
The Bilderberg Group (Bil)
This was convened for the first time in May 1954 by Polish socialist Joseph Retinger, a major voice behind the European Union. Also instrumental in its creation was Prince Bernhard of the House of Orange in the Netherlands (former German SS officer an spy via chemical company I.G. Farben and who later became chairman of Shell Oil). It was to be a group of leading politicians and their advisors, executives from media, banking and multinational corporations, educationalists and military leaders who would meet to discuss the global future by addressing matters of critical importance in an off-the-record manner so that the distractions of politics could be kept out of the way.. The group has since met annually in strict secrecy and despite the considerable high level media representation in the group the meetings are never reported.
Leading the group is an unelected steering committee, the chairman of which since 1991 has been Lord Carrington. Members outside this committee probably do not know the agenda towards which the group is working and are merely invited to be sold the public face of the New World Order for them to expound its virtues in their areas of influence.
The Trilateral Commission (TC)
Also known as the 'Child of Bilderberg', this group was founded by David Rockefeller in 1972-73 to covertly unify the policies of the US, Europe and Japan. Jimmy Carter's presidency was their first major coup with the president and many members of his administration being Trilateralists, including Zbigniew Brzezinski, his national security advisor and the first director of the Trilateral Commission.

Recasting the Rise of Nazi Germany Analysis of The Patriot II Act

 
From: Timothy H. Edgar, ACLU Legislative Counsel
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/patriot2overview31mar03.shtml
February 14, 2003
Section-by-Section Analysis of Justice Department draft “Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003,” also known as “PATRIOT Act II”

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has been drafting comprehensive anti-terrorism legislation for the past several months. The draft legislation, dated January 9, 2003, grants sweeping powers to the government, eliminating or weakening many of the checks and balances that remained on government surveillance, wiretapping, detention and criminal prosecution even after passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, Pub. L. No. 107-56, in 2001.
Among its most severe problems, the bill
Diminishes personal privacy by removing checks on government power, specifically by
Making it easier for the government to initiate surveillance and wiretapping of U.S. citizens under the authority of the shadowy, top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. (Sections 101, 102 and 107)
Permitting the government, under certain circumstances, to bypass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court altogether and conduct warrantless wiretaps and searches. (Sections 103 and 104)
Sheltering federal agents engaged in illegal surveillance without a court order from criminal prosecution if they are following orders of high Executive Branch officials. (Section 106)
Creating a new category of “domestic security surveillance” that permits electronic eavesdropping of entirely domestic activity under looser standards than are provided for ordinary criminal surveillance under Title III. (Section 122)
Using an overbroad definition of terrorism that could cover some protest tactics such as those used by Operation Rescue or protesters at Vieques Island, Puerto Rico as a new predicate for criminal wiretapping and other electronic surveillance. (Sections 120 and 121)
Providing for general surveillance orders covering multiple functions of high tech devices, and by further expanding pen register and trap and trace authority for intelligence surveillance of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents. (Sections 107 and 124)
Creating a new, separate crime of using encryption technology that could add five years to any sentence for crimes committed with a computer. (Section 404)
Expanding nationwide search warrants so they do not have to meet even the broad definition of terrorism in the USA PATRIOT Act. (Section 125)
Giving the government secret access to credit reports without consent and without judicial process. (Section 126)
Enhancing the government’s ability to obtain sensitive information without prior judicial approval by creating administrative subpoenas and providing new penalties for failure to comply with written demands for records. (Sections 128 and 129)
Allowing for the sampling and cataloguing of innocent Americans’ genetic information without court order and without consent. (Sections 301-306) Permitting, without any connection to anti-terrorism efforts, sensitive personal information about U.S. citizens to be shared with local and state law enforcement. (Section 311)
Terminating court-approved limits on police spying, which were initially put in place to prevent McCarthy-style law enforcement persecution based on political or religious affiliation. (Section 312)
Permitting searches, wiretaps and surveillance of United States citizens on behalf of foreign governments – including dictatorships and human rights abusers in the absence of Senate-approved treaties. (Sections 321-22) Diminishes public accountability by increasing government secrecy; specifically, by authorizing secret arrests in immigration and other cases, such as material witness warrants, where the detained person is not criminally charged. (Section 201)
Threatening public health by severely restricting access to crucial information about environmental health risks posed by facilities that use dangerous chemicals. (Section 202)
Harming fair trial rights for American citizens and other defendants by limiting defense attorneys from challenging the use of secret evidence in criminal cases. (Section 204)
Gagging grand jury witnesses in terrorism cases to bar them from discussing their testimony with the media or the general public, thus preventing them from defending themselves against rumor-mongering and denying the public information it has a right to receive under the First Amendment. (Section 206)
Diminishes corporate accountability under the pretext of fighting terrorism; specifically, by granting immunity to businesses that provide information to the government in terrorism investigations, even if their actions are taken with disregard for their customers’ privacy or other rights and show reckless disregard for the truth. Such immunity could provide an incentive for neighbor to spy on neighbor and pose problems similar to those inherent in Attorney General Ashcroft’s “Operation TIPS.” (Section 313)
Undermines fundamental constitutional rights of Americans under overbroad definitions of “terrorism” and “terrorist organization” or under a terrorism pretext; specifically by stripping even native-born Americans of all of the rights of United States citizenship if they provide support to unpopular organizations labeled as terrorist by our government, even if they support only the lawful activities of such organizations, allowing them to be indefinitely imprisoned in their own country as undocumented aliens. (Section 501)
Creating 15 new death penalties, including a new death penalty for “terrorism” under a definition which could cover acts of protest such as those used by Operation Rescue or protesters at Vieques Island, Puerto Rico, if death results. (Section 411)
Further criminalizing association – without any intent to commit specific terrorism crimes – by broadening the crime of providing material support to terrorism, even if support is not given to any organization listed as a terrorist organization by the government. (Section 402)
Permitting arrests and extraditions of Americans to any foreign country – including those whose governments do not respect the rule of law or human rights – in the absence of a Senate-approved treaty and without allowing an American judge to consider the extraditing country’s legal system or human rights record. (Section 322)
Unfairly targets immigrants under the pretext of fighting terrorism; specifically by undercutting trust between police departments and immigrant communities by opening sensitive visa files to local police for the enforcement of complex immigration laws. (Section 311)
Targeting undocumented workers with extended jail terms for common immigration offenses. (Section 502)
Providing for summary deportations without evidence of crime, criminal intent or terrorism, even of lawful permanent residents, whom the Attorney General says are a threat to national security. (Section 503)
Completely abolishing fair hearings for lawful permanent residents convicted of even minor criminal offenses through a retroactive “expedited removal” procedure, and preventing any court from questioning the government’s unlawful actions by explicitly exempting these cases from habeas corpus review. Congress has not exempted any person from habeas corpus -- a protection guaranteed by the Constitution -- since the Civil War. (Section 504)
Allowing the Attorney General to deport an immigrant to any country in the world, even if there is no effective government in such a country. (Section 506)
Given the bipartisan controversy that has arisen in the past from DOJ’s attempts to weaken basic checks and balances that protect personal privacy and liberty, the DOJ’s reluctance to share the draft legislation is perhaps understandable. The DOJ’s highly one-sided section-by-section analysis reveals the Administration’s strategy is to minimize far-reaching changes in basic powers, as it did in seeking passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, by characterizing them as minor tinkering with statutory language designed to bring government surveillance authorities, detention and deportation powers, and criminal penalties “up to date.”
This ACLU section-by-section analysis of the text of the legislation, however, reveals that the DOJ’s modest descriptions of the powers it is seeking, and the actual scope of the authorities it seeks, are miles apart. The USA PATRIOT Act undercut many of the traditional checks and balances on government power. The new draft legislation threatens to fundamentally alter the constitutional protections that allow us as Americans to be both safe and free. If adopted, the bill would diminish personal privacy by removing important checks on government surveillance authority, reduce the accountability of government to the public by increasing government secrecy, further undermine fundamental constitutional rights of Americans under an already overbroad definition of “terrorism,” and seriously erode the right of all persons to due process of law.
Our detailed section-by-section analysis follows.
Title I – Diminishing Personal Privacy by Removing Checks on Government Intelligence and Criminal Surveillance Powers
Title I amends critical statutes that govern intelligence surveillance and criminal surveillance. Both forms of surveillance are subject to Fourth Amendment limitations. See Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967) (criminal surveillance); United States v. United States District Court (“Keith”), 407 U.S. 297 (1972) (intelligence surveillance). Yet while traditional searches are governed by warrant procedures largely drawn from the common law, wiretapping and other forms of electronic surveillance are governed by standards and procedures embodied in two federal statutes that respond to Katz and Keith – Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, 28 U.S.C. §§ 2510-22, which governs surveillance of criminal suspects, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), 50 U.S.C. §§ 1801-63 which governs surveillance of foreign powers and agents of a foreign power for intelligence purposes.
Making it easier for the government to initiate surveillance and wiretapping, including of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents, through the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Sections 101-111). The draft bill’s proposed amendments to FISA attack key statutory concepts that are critical to providing appropriate limits and meaningful judicial supervision over wiretapping and other intrusive electronic surveillance for intelligence purposes. These limits were approved by Congress in 1978 because of a history of abuse by government agents who placed wiretaps and other listening devices on political activists, journalists, rival political parties and candidates, and other innocent targets. These so-called “national security wiretaps” and other covert surveillance were undertaken without any court supervision and without even the slightest suspicion that the targets of such surveillance were involved in criminal activities or were acting on behalf of any foreign government or political organization. This pattern of abuse culminated in the crimes of Watergate, which led to substantial reforms and limits on spying for intelligence purposes.
FISA represented a compromise between civil libertarians, who wanted to ban “national security wiretaps” altogether, and apologists for Presidential authority, who claimed such unchecked intelligence surveillance authority was inherent in the President’s Article II power over foreign relations. The Congress chose to authorize intelligence wiretaps without evidence of crime, subject to a number of key restraints. One of these restraints, separating intelligence gathering from criminal investigations, has been significantly weakened by the USA PATRIOT Act. The USA PATRIOT Act abolished the “primary purpose” test – the requirement that FISA surveillance could only be used if the primary purpose of surveillance was gathering of foreign intelligence, and not criminal prosecution or some other purpose.
The draft bill eliminates or substantially weakens a number of the remaining constraints on intelligence surveillance approved by Congress. Taken as a whole, these changes go a long way to undermine limits on intelligence surveillance essential to preserving civil liberties and to preventing a repeat of the wiretapping abuses of the J. Edgar Hoover and Watergate eras.
Authorizing the government to initiate wiretaps and other electronic surveillance on Americans who have no ties to foreign governments or powers (sec. 101). This section would permit the government to obtain a wiretap, search warrant or electronic surveillance orders targeting American citizens and lawful permanent residents even if they have no ties to a foreign government or other foreign power. Under FISA, the government need not show, in many circumstances, probable cause that the target of a wiretap is involved in any criminal activity. FISA requires an alternate showing – probable cause that the target is acting on behalf of a foreign government or organization, i.e., a “foreign power.” Section 101 of the draft bill eliminates this requirement for individuals, including United States citizens, suspected of engaging in “international terrorism.” It does so by redefining individuals, including United States citizens or lawful residents, as “foreign powers” even if they are not acting on behalf of any foreign government or organization. The “foreign power” requirement was a key reason FISA was upheld in a recent constitutional challenge. See In re Sealed Case No. 02-001, slip op. at 42 (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Ct. of Rev. Nov. 18, 2002) (while FISA requires no showing of probable cause of crime, it is constitutional in part because it provides “another safeguard . . . that is, the requirement that there be probable cause to believe the target is acting ‘for or on behalf of a foreign power.’”)[1]
Permitting surveillance of the lawful activities of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents if they are suspected of gathering information for a foreign power (sec. 102). United States citizens and lawful permanent residents who are not violating any law should not be subject to wiretapping or other intrusive electronic surveillance. The FISA contains dual standards for non-U.S. persons and for U.S. persons with respect to surveillance of “intelligence gathering activities,” i.e., the gathering of information for a foreign government or organization. These standards reflect the judgment of Congress that U.S. persons should not face electronic surveillance unless their activities “involve or may involve” some violation of law (as, for example, would certainly be the case with respect to any activity in furtherance of terrorism or other crime). For non-U.S. persons, this showing does not have to be made, i.e., the gathering of information by foreign persons for foreign powers is enough to trigger FISA. The draft bill (at section 102) applies the lower standard to U.S. persons.
Lawful gathering of information for a foreign organization does not necessarily pose any threat to national security. This amendment would permit electronic surveillance of a local activist who was preparing a report on human rights for London-based Amnesty International, a “foreign political organization,” even if the activist was not engaged in any violation of law. By eliminating this need to show some violation of law may be involved before authorizing surveillance of U.S. persons, Congress could well succeed in rendering FISA unconstitutional, by eliminating another key reason FISA was upheld in a recent court challenge. See In re Sealed Case No. 02-001, slip op. at 42 (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Ct. of Rev. Nov. 18, 2002) (holding that FISA surveillance of U.S. persons meets Fourth Amendment standards in part because a surveillance order may not be granted unless there is probable cause to believe the target is involved in activity that may involve a violation of law).
Permitting the government, under some circumstances, to bypass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court altogether (Sections 103, 104). Section 103 gives the Attorney General the power to authorize intelligence wiretaps and other electronic surveillance without permission from any court, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, for fifteen days, after an attack on the United States or force authorization resolution from the Congress. Under existing federal statutes, a formal declaration of war by the Congress triggers a host of civil liberties consequences, including authorization by the Attorney General to engage in intrusive electronic surveillance for up to fifteen days without any court order at all. The draft bill expands this power dramatically by eliminating judicial review for any surveillance under FISA for a period up to fifteen days pursuant to (1) an authorization of force resolution by the Congress or (2) a “national emergency” created by an attack on the United States. For surveillance under the latter circumstance, no action by Congress would be required. Once the President has unilaterally decided such an attack has occurred, the Attorney General could unilaterally decide what constitutes an “attack” on the United States, creating an emergency that justifies what would otherwise be plainly illegal wiretaps.
DOJ’s rationale for this change is that declarations of war are rare and the statute should be updated to reflect this. This argument fundamentally misconstrues the purpose of this provision. The normal FISA process, including review by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, was Congress’s attempt to impose meaningful limits over national security surveillance conducted without a formal declaration of war and for continuing threats that cannot easily by defined by reference to traditional war powers. To use Congress’ grant of surveillance authority following a declaration of war as an argument to permit surveillance even in the absence of such action by Congress is a fundamental intrusion on Congress’s war powers.
The draft bill (at section 104) also expands special surveillance authority, available for up to a year with no court order at all, for property “under the open and exclusive control of a foreign power” by permitting eavesdropping on “spoken communications.” This expansion of authority leaves intact the current requirement that such surveillance can go forward only if the Attorney General certifies under oath that “there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party.” Still, the new authority would plainly involve eavesdropping on communications protected by the Fourth Amendment, as it would inevitably result in listening – without any court order – to the conversations in the United States of anyone who might be using telephones, computers, or other devices owned by a foreign government, political organization, or company owned by a foreign government.
There are serious questions about whether the secret review of surveillance orders by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which by its nature can only hear the government’s side of the case, is effective in protecting Americans’ civil liberties. These amendments would bypass judicial review under FISA altogether.
Sheltering federal agents engaged in illegal surveillance without a court order from criminal prosecution if they are following orders of high Executive Branch officials (Section 106). This section would encourage unlawful intelligence wiretaps and secret searches by immunizing agents from criminal sanctions if they conduct such surveillance, even if a reasonable official would know it is illegal, by claiming they were acting in “good faith” based on the orders of the President or the Attorney General. In order to ensure that FISA was successful in bringing national security surveillance under the rule of law, Congress not only provided a process for legal intelligence surveillance, but also imposed criminal penalties on any government agent who engages in electronic surveillance outside that process. Congress also provided a “safe harbor” for agents who engaged in surveillance that was approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, even if such surveillance was not in fact authorized by FISA. The draft bill (at section 106) substantially undercuts the deterrent effect of criminal sanctions for illegal wiretaps or electronic surveillance by expanding the “safe harbor” to include surveillance not approved by any court, but simply on the authorization of the Attorney General or the President.
Of course, the very spying abuses FISA was designed to prevent were undertaken with the authorization of high-ranking government officials, including the President. For example, President Nixon authorized just such a covert search of the Brookings Institution, whom he and his staff suspected of possessing classified information that had been leaked to the press. As described by Nixon biographer Richard Reeves:
Nixon sat up. “Now if you remember Huston’s plan [to engage in covert surveillance] . . .”
“Yeah, why?” Haldeman said.
Kissinger said: “But couldn’t we go over? Now, Brookings has no right to classified–”
The President cut him off, saying, “I want it implemented. . . . Goddamit get in there and get those files. Blow the safe and get them.”[2]
Any government official acting within the scope of his employment already enjoys “qualified immunity” from charges of violating Fourth Amendment or other constitutional rights – i.e., an official cannot be punished or held civilly liable if a reasonable government official would not have known his or her conduct was illegal. See Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982). Providing additional protection to government officials who engage in wiretaps or searches without a court order, where a reasonable official would know those wiretaps or searches were clearly illegal, would take away any incentive for such officials to question an illegal authorization by the President, Attorney General or other high official.
Further expanding pen register and trap and trace authority for intelligence surveillance of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents beyond terrorism investigations (Section 107). This section allows the government to use intelligence pen registers and trap and trace surveillance devices to obtain detailed information on American citizens and lawful permanent residents, including telephone numbers dialed, Internet addresses to which e-mail is sent or received, and the web addresses a person enters into a web browser, even in an investigation that is entirely unrelated to terrorism or counterintelligence. In so doing, it erodes a limitation on this authority that was part of the USA PATRIOT Act.
The standard for obtaining a pen register or trap and trace order is very low, requiring merely that a government official certify that the information it would reveal is “relevant” to an investigation. Under section 216 the USA PATRIOT Act, the government was given new power to obtain this sensitive information for Internet communications merely by making this certification. This expansion was a serious erosion of meaningful judicial oversight of government surveillance because it expanded the authority to get court orders for pen registers and trap and trace devices in a way that permitted the government to access far more detailed content than was available before such authority was extended to the Internet.
For United States citizens and lawful permanent residents, Congress limited the new authority to terrorism and counterintelligence investigations. This section would remove that limitation, opening the door to expanded government surveillance of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents under controversial government law enforcement technologies like CARNIVORE and the Total Information Awareness Pentagon “super-snoop” program whose development Congress just voted to limit.
Providing cleared, appointed counsel for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (Section 108). While we welcome the provision providing for an appointed, cleared counsel to argue in favor of a ruling of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court when the government appeals its decisions, it should not substitute for participation, in appropriate cases, by interested civil liberties organizations. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approves government orders for electronic surveillance and physical searches under FISA. It meets in secret and never hears from anyone other than the government officials seeking its approval. If an order is denied, the government has the right to seek review of that denial in a special three-judge court of appeals, called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review. No one can appeal the approval of a surveillance order, as the target of the surveillance is not notified. Instead, the only challenge to an approved order would occur later, if the information obtained is to be used in a criminal prosecution, in a suppression motion before the district court. If the information is used only for intelligence purposes, there is never an opportunity to challenge the lawfulness of an order approving surveillance.
This section seeks to remedy the problems inherent in a one-sided proceeding, at least with respect to appeals before the Court of Review, by permitting the court to appoint an advocate with security credentials to defend the decision reached in the initial hearing before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. While the ACLU welcomes this effort to inject an adversary process into the Court of Review’s proceedings, it warns that appointing a cleared lawyer should not be a substitute for independent advocacy by civil liberties or other interested organizations. Organizations independent of the government should be permitted to file briefs amicus curiae and, in appropriate cases, to participate in oral argument as interveners on behalf of Americans who may face increased surveillance as a result of an interpretation of FISA being urged by the government. For this reason, Congress should adopt legislation providing clear procedures that require the publication of opinions by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the Court of Review, with redactions for classified information.
Providing new contempt powers for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court without sufficient due process (Section 109). This section seeks to give the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court the power to enforce its judgments through explicit contempt powers. While the ACLU does not object to the enforcement of lawful court orders, the draft bill does not specify a means by which parties seeking to challenge an order of the court can vindicate their rights, such as by a motion to quash. If the court is to be given this authority, both the Fourth Amendment and due process require a mechanism, which currently does not exist, for a party facing a possible contempt sanction to appear before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and be heard, prior to the imposition of any sanctions.[3]
Using an overbroad definition of terrorism that could cover tactics used by some protest groups as a predicate for criminal wiretapping and other surveillance under Title III (Sections 120, 121). Current law provides, at 18 U.S.C. § 2516, a list of “predicate offenses” that permit the government to conduct wiretaps and other intrusive surveillance. The list is quite lengthy, but reflects the judgment of Congress that electronic surveillance is a particularly intrusive investigative method that is not appropriate for all criminal investigations but should be reserved only for the most serious crimes.
Title 18 already provides that any terrorism crime defined by federal law is a predicate for Title III surveillance. See 18 U.S.C. § 2516(q) (providing that any violation of sections 2332, 2332a, 2332b, 2339A, or 2339B is a predicate offense for Title III surveillance). The draft bill, however, extends the predicate even further, to cover offenses that are not defined as terrorism crimes under federal law, but do fit the definition of either international or domestic terrorism, i.e., they involve acts that are a violation of federal or state law, are committed with the intent of affecting government policy, and are potentially dangerous. See 18 U.S.C. § 2331. It is this broad definition that sweeps in the activities of a number of protest organizations that engage in civil disobedience, including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Operation Rescue. Since true crimes of terrorism are already predicates for Title III surveillance, providing this authority is not necessary to listen to the telephone conversations and monitor the e-mail traffic of terrorist groups. To ensure Title III wiretaps are not used to monitor the activities of protest organizations, Congress should reject this provision and should also amend the definition of “terrorism.”
Creating a new category of “domestic security surveillance” that relaxes judicial oversight of electronic surveillance of Americans engaged in entirely domestic activity (Section 122). This section authorizes looser standards for judicial oversight of wiretaps of electronic surveillance orders of Americans for entirely domestic activity under a new theory of domestic intelligence gathering. Intelligence-based surveillance and criminal surveillance are conducted under different rationales, but both are subject to Fourth Amendment protections. See Katz and Keith, supra. Title III, which governs criminal surveillance, provides significantly more robust protections than those afforded for surveillance of foreign intelligence conducted in the United States pursuant to FISA. Title III requires more frequent and continuing supervision of the surveillance order by the authorizing judge, and subsequent notice to the target of the surveillance order unless the government shows adverse results would occur if notice were given.
Title III governs electronic surveillance in domestic criminal and terrorism cases; the looser intelligence standards provided by FISA, including the ability to conduct surveillance in virtually complete secrecy, have always been reserved for “agents of a foreign power.” The proposed amendment would fundamentally redefine domestic intelligence gathering through wiretaps and other intrusive surveillance to include entirely domestic security investigations. In so doing, DOJ claims it is accepting the “invitation” of the Supreme Court in Keith to devise specific standards for domestic intelligence investigations. It is far from clear the Supreme Court ever issued such an “invitation” because of the ambiguity of the term “domestic intelligence.” FISA is, in one sense, a purely domestic intelligence gathering power; it governs gathering of intelligence on United States soil and authorizes surveillance of United States citizens. Under this understanding of “domestic intelligence,” Congress has already provided far looser standards for such surveillance than it has for criminal investigations.
In any event, the draft bill’s redefinition of intelligence creates what is in essence a twilight zone between the criminal standards provided in Title III and the foreign intelligence standards for targets involved with “foreign powers” in FISA. That twilight zone, as conceived by the draft bill, has significant implications for Americans’ right to privacy. Under the DOJ’s proposed standards, for domestic terrorism, the normal time period for domestic surveillance orders under Title III would triple from 30 days to 90 days, or, in the case of pen registers and trap and trace devices, from 60 days to 120 days; the judge would be prevented from requiring more frequent reports than once every 30 days, limiting the judge’s ability to provide meaningful supervision, and absolute secrecy could be imposed on the government’s claim of harm to the “national security,” a standard that provides no meaningful judicial check.
Providing for general surveillance orders covering users of high technology devices with multiple functions, thus lowering the bar to surveillance (Section 124). This section would, in some cases, relieve the government from showing probable cause that would justify reading a person’s e-mail if it had shown probable cause that a person’s telephone conversations would be relevant to criminal activity. It authorizes a general warrant that, in the physical world, would allow officers who could show probable cause to search only one drawer of a desk to obtain a court order allowing a search of the entire building.
The proposed change would erode the privacy rights of users of multi-function devices. Multi-function devices represent an important advance in communications technology. Such devices can combine the functions of a telephone, fax machine and computer with Internet access, or those of a mobile phone and text messaging service. Another example is the popular TiVo video storage device which both records television programs received through a cable or satellite system and communicates a user’s preferences through a computer modem.
Unfortunately, the draft bill continues a DOJ trend of using advances in technology to justify eroding privacy standards. While technology is constantly changing, the principles of the Constitution remain constant. Specificity is a basic requirement for any constitutional judicial process permitting government searches or seizures. The Fourth Amendment states that “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.” The fact that the government can show probable cause to monitor e-mail, for example, does not mean that it should also have authority to listen to the target’s telephone conversations. Of course, if the government can satisfy the probable cause or other application standard with respect to all of the functions of a device, there is no reason it cannot be granted approval to monitor those functions in a single order. However, the draft bill would make approval for each function automatic, providing that “communications transmitted or received through any function performed by the device may be intercepted and accessed unless the order specifies otherwise . . .”
In addition, an order that covers, for example, a personal computer that carries voice or data transmission, also permits “upon a showing as for a search warrant . . . the retrieval of other information (whether or not constituting or derived from a communication whose interception the order authorizes).” While somewhat oblique, this language would permit the seizure of any information stored on a computer’s hard drive if the government obtains a order to intercept communications through any of the computer’s communications functions and makes the required showing.
There is no reason that the purchase of new technology should diminish the user’s privacy. Whether one owns one device with several communications functions, or separate communications devices, the government’s obligations to show probable cause that the monitoring of communications or the seizure of data will provide some evidence of crime should be the same.
Expanding nationwide search warrants so they do not have to meet even the broad definition of terrorism in the USA PATRIOT Act (Section 125). The USA PATRIOT Act gave the government authority to issue nationwide search warrants in terrorism investigations, based on the extremely broad definition of domestic and international terrorism contained in 18 U.S.C. § 2331. This definition covers any violation of law, state or federal, that involves “acts dangerous to human life” and is committed with the requisite intent. The draft bill (at section 125) expands the use of nationwide search warrants to cover any offense listed as a federal terrorism crime under 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(g)(5)(B). In general, this is unlikely to be needed as the crimes listed as terrorism crimes are either violent offenses or at least “involve” dangerous acts. To the extent such offenses do not at least “involve” violence or dangerous acts, they should not be terrorism crimes at all and should not trigger special terrorism powers that are unavailable in order criminal investigations. If Congress grants additional authority for nationwide search warrants for certain offenses listed as terrorism crimes, its authority to get nationwide search warrants under an overbroad definition of international and domestic terrorism should be curtailed, by, for example, eliminating that authority or amending the definition of terrorism.
Giving the government secret access to credit reports without consent and without judicial process (Section 126). This section would allow the government to secretly obtain anyone’s credit report without their consent and without any judicial procedure.
The government should not have access to sensitive personal information which has been collected for business purposes on the same basis as businesses, because the government’s powers – for example, to compel questioning before a grand jury, arrest, deport, or incarcerate – are far greater than the powers of any business.
In any event, the draft bill does not, as the heading states, provide “equal access” for government to such reports; rather, the statute greatly expands access to credit reports by authorizing the government to obtain these reports without consent, notice to the person to whom the credit report pertains, and without a court order. Credit reports are available to business with a “legitimate business need” but only with the consent of the person whose credit report is being examined, such as when that person applies for a loan or a job.
Anyone who has applied for a job or a mortgage and encountered a problem because of a false credit report – which could the result of identity theft, simple error, or malice – knows how difficult it can be to get errors corrected. Under this provision, however, the consequences of an erroneous credit report are far more serious than when credit reports are used for business purposes. Under this provision, because credit reports can be obtained without notice or consent, there is no opportunity for the person to contest an erroneous report.
Creating new terrorism “administrative subpoenas” and providing new penalties for failure to comply with written demands for records that permit the government to obtain information without prior judicial approval (Sections 128 and 129). Under these sections, government can demand – and enforce its demands through civil and criminal penalties – documents and other information from a business, such as an Internet Service Provider, or any individual without prior court approval. Administrative subpoenas provide the government with the ability to compel production of documents or information without obtaining a court order. While such subpoenas can be challenged, after they are issued, through a motion to quash, such a motion must be brought by the party challenging the subpoena, who incurs the trouble and expense of challenging the subpoena.
The draft bill authorizes the use of administrative subpoenas and what the DOJ calls “national security letters” to obtain information in terrorism investigations. These sections reduce judicial oversight of terrorism investigations by relegating the role of the judge to considering challenges to orders already issued, rather than ensuring such orders are drawn with due regard for the privacy and other interests of the target. Furthermore, by granting the government power to compel production of records or other information, such as computer files, without first going to court, the draft bill will likely increase the administrative burden imposed on small businesses, particularly high-technology firms, who are facing ever-increasing demands for records in both civil cases and criminal investigations.
Title II – Diminishes Public Accountability and Due Process By Increasing Government Secrecy
Authorizing secret arrests in immigration and other cases where the detained person is not criminally charged (Section 201). After September 11, 2001, well over a thousand persons whom the government said were connected to its terrorism investigation were detained on immigration charges or material witness warrants without the government revealing who they were or other basic information about their arrests that has always been available to the public and the press. Never before had our government sought to detain persons within the United States in secret; a public process for depriving any individual of liberty is an essential component of the rule of law in a democratic society. As Alexander Hamilton made clear in the Federalist papers more than two centuries ago, a policy that allows “confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten” is a “dangerous engine of arbitrary government.”[4] “The requirement that arrest books be open to the public is to prevent any ‘secret arrests,’ a concept odious to a democratic society . . . .” Morrow v. District of Columbia, 417 F.2d 728, 741-42 (D.C. Cir. 1969).
The government’s policy of secret arrests came under fire in both federal and state court in lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil liberties and press freedom groups. So far, every court to reach the merits of the argument has agreed that the government’s secret arrests policy is not supported by law, is not necessary to protect national security, and violates fundamental principles reflected in state and federal open records laws.[5] When confronted with the ruling in New Jersey state court, the DOJ responded not by complying or appealing the ruling to a higher court, but by issuing a regulation preempting that state’s law. It has now chosen to ask Congress to cut short the federal lawsuit in the much the same way.
Threatening public health by severely restricting access to crucial information about environmental health risks posed by facilities that use dangerous chemicals (Section 202). This section would deprive communities and environmental organizations of critical information concerning risks to the community contained in “worst case scenarios” prepared under federal environmental laws. Under section 112(r) the Clean Air Act, 47 U.S.C. § 7212(r), corporations that use potentially dangerous chemicals must prepare an analysis of consequences of the release of such chemicals to surrounding communities. This information is absolutely critical for community activists and environmental organizations seeking to protect public health and safety, and the environment, and by ensuring compliance by private corporations with environmental and health standards and alerting local residents to the hazards to which they may be exposed.
The proposed amendment (sec. 202) severely restricts access to such information, limiting such access to reading rooms in which copies could not be made and notes could not be taken, and excising from the reports such basic information as “the identity or location of any facility or any information from which the identity or location of the facility could be deduced.” “Official users” are given greater access, but these users only include government officials, and government whistleblowers who reveal any information restricted under this section commit a criminal offense, even if their motivation was to protect the public from corporate wrongdoing or government neglect.
Harming fair trial rights for American citizens and other defendants by limiting defense attorneys from challenging the use of secret evidence in criminal cases (Section 204). This section would inhibit the ability of the accused to defend themselves against criminal charges based in part on classified information. The Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), 18 U.S.C. App. 3 §§ 1-16, provides a special procedure to govern an extraordinary situation – where the government seeks to use information in a criminal case which is classified by Executive Order without revealing in open court any more information than is necessary to provide the defendant with a fair trial under the Sixth Amendment.[6]
CIPA entrusts to federal district judges the “gatekeeper” function of determining what classified information can be excluded from open court, what information can be given to the defense in summary form, and what essential information must be disclosed to the defendant to ensure his right to contest the accusations against him and to ensure that evidence the jury or other factfinder considers is reliable, having been tested in an adversarial proceeding. The judge has the power to consider a government request to delete information or substitute a summary in an ex parte proceeding, i.e., without the benefit of hearing from the defense. CIPA does not give the government a right to make its case in the absence of the defense; instead, the judge determines how much of the prosecution’s submission to examine ex parte and in camera, i.e., in secret. The proposed amendment (sec. 204) would seriously undermine the judge’s initial gatekeeping role by compelling a judge, at the request of the prosecution, to determine whether and how to redact classified information without the benefit of an adversary hearing. In other words, the amendment would take away the judge’s authority, under current law, to hear defense objections to a prosecution request for authorization to delete specified items of classified information from documents relevant to the defense’s case.
CIPA strikes the right balance between the government’s national security interests and the defendant’s right to see the evidence against him or her. This amendment undermines that balance.
Gagging grand jury witnesses in terrorism from discussing their testimony with the media or the general public, thus preventing them from defending themselves and denying the public information it has a right to receive under the First Amendment (Section 206). This section would gag grand jury witnesses so that they could not publicly respond to false information about them leaked to the press. Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure imposes a general obligation of secrecy requiring attorneys and grand jurors to refrain from commenting on “matters occurring before the grand jury.” In theory, grand jury secrecy is imposed primarily to protect the reputation of individuals who become subject to a grand jury investigation. In practice, such secrecy does not always afford much protection, as law enforcement officials who leak information to reporters in violation of Rule 6(e) are rarely discovered and prosecuted.
Grand jury secrecy is not imposed on witnesses, who are free to speak about their testimony to friends, associates or to the media. In practice, this limitation is essential to afford targets of a grand jury investigation the opportunity to defend themselves against leaked accusations and media speculation. Under the proposed amendment (section 206), witnesses in terrorism investigations could be unfairly smeared in the media and be deprived from the ability to defend themselves under pain of a criminal sanction.
Title III – Diminishing Personal Privacy by Removing Checks on Local Police Spying; Undermining Genetic Privacy; Removing Checks on Foreign-Directed Searches and Arrests, Even for Dictatorships; Sharing Sensitive Immigration Information With Local Police
Allowing for the sampling and cataloguing of innocent Americans’ genetic information without court order and without consent (Sections 301-306). The proposed bill authorizes collection of genetic information of persons who have not been convicted of a crime for terrorism investigation purposes, and the entering of that sensitive information into a database. At a minimum, such collection should not be permitted on persons who have not be convicted of serious crimes unless a judge decides to permit such collection by issuing a court order on the basis of probable cause to believe the information will assist in a criminal investigation. Furthermore, personal genetic information must be destroyed within a reasonable time, such as when a suspect is cleared, to ensure it is not available for misuse by the government or private industry at a later date.
Drawing a DNA sample involves an intrusion on personal privacy that is far more invasive than simply taking a fingerprint. A fingerprint is useful only as a form of identification. By contrast, a DNA sample includes such intimate, personal information as the markers for thousands of diseases, legitimacy at birth, or (as science advances) aspects of an individual’s personality such as his or her temperament. In addition, this personal information is not unique to the individual alone, but also provides clues to the genetic traits of everyone in that individual’s bloodline. Genetic discrimination is not merely a distant artifact of the discredited eugenics movement of the first half of the Twentieth Century, but is widespread today among private employers, and is (in most states) perfectly legal.[7]
The potential misuse of DNA information contained in a database requires careful safeguards before such information is collected, and concerning the storage of such information. For example, no forensic purpose is served by saving the DNA itself, as opposed to just the information contained in the DNA that proves identity. The proposed legislation fails to include such safeguards.
Permitting, without any connection to anti-terrorism efforts, sensitive personal information to be shared with local and state law enforcement; opening sensitive visa files to local police (Section 311). This section would authorize the sharing of sensitive consumer credit information and educational records with state and local officials without any limits and without any connection to a terrorism investigation. While sharing of sensitive information in the possession of the federal government should be permitted in some circumstances to accomplish anti-terrorism objectives, such records should not be disseminated broadly for other purposes. The draft legislation contains no requirement that sharing of sensitive information with state and local officials be limited to anti-terrorism investigations; instead, such information can be shared simply “to assist the official receiving that information in the performance of official duties of that official.” Special authority to share sensitive personal records should not be granted so blithely.
The draft legislation also provides for sharing of sensitive visa information with state and local officials, including state and local law enforcement, on a broad basis, without requirement that such sharing of information be connected to anti-terrorism investigations. In authorizing such sharing of sensitive immigration files, DOJ is at odds with the views of many state and local police departments, who fear involvement in immigration enforcement matters may undermine their ability to establish the trust and confidence of immigrant communities. Absent such trust, many local and state police are concerned that members of immigrant communities will fear contacting the police if they are a victim of crime or a witness to crime.[8]
DOJ also appears to be at odds with the White House, which has assured the public that the Bush Administration was not interested in expanding the role of state or local law enforcement in immigration matters except with respect to terrorism investigations. As White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez made clear last year, “Only high-risk aliens who fit a terrorist profile” would be placed in the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database, which is available to state and local law enforcement officials, and the Administration’s conclusion that state and local police had “inherent authority” to arrest such persons was limited to this group of non-citizens.[9] Such a narrow policy would be completely undermined by the adoption of this broad language.
Terminating court-approved limits on police spying designed to prevent McCarthy-style law enforcement persecution based on political or religious affiliation (Section 312). In the name of “intelligence gathering,” police departments in many cities spied on innocent members of the public who were active in churches, community groups and political organizations. Federal courts, responding to civil rights lawsuits urging an end to such spying, issued decrees prohibiting this spying absent some reason to believe those individuals were involved in criminal or terrorist activity.
Police spying on political and religious activity is not a relic of some distant past. Recently, citizens in Denver, Colorado, were shocked to learn that the Denver Police Department had kept approximately 3,048 illegal files on peaceful protest groups including Amnesty International and the Nobel Peace Prize-winning American Friends Service Committee. The file on the American Friends Service Committee labeled them a “criminal extremist” group. The files pre-dated September 11, 2001, and were not collected as a response to the terrorist attacks.
The draft bill ends these decrees using language patterned after the Prison Litigation Reform Act. Eliminating these sensible, court-approved limits on local police spying would chill dissent, making Americans afraid to join protest groups and activist organizations, attend rallies, or express their views on controversial policies such as abortion or the war in Iraq.
Loosening sensible protections on police monitoring of political and religious activity will not make us safer from terrorism. During the years the FBI illegally spied on individuals exercising their rights under the First Amendment, including such civil rights leaders as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., resources were diverted and not a single instance of violence was prevented. Freeing local police to spy on innocent individuals is not likely to be any more productive. It only makes us less safe as resources are diverted from more productive investigations, and less free, as individuals find themselves entered into a police database for activities that are constitutionally protected.
Granting immunity to businesses that provide information to the government in terrorism investigations, even if their actions are taken with disregard for their customers’ privacy or other rights and show reckless disregard for the truth (Section 313). This section would prevent a person harmed by a business’s disclosure of information about them, including false information, from holding the business accountable. It would encourage false terrorism tips that could result in ruined reputations, lengthy detentions and even violence. Under this section, a business is given immunity from liability if it shares information voluntarily with the government, based on merely on its “reasonable belief” that its actions would help the government prevent or investigate terrorism.
This section resurrects many of the same problems with Operation TIPS that led Congress to ban that program last year. Enormous controversy was sparked by the Bush Administration’s Operation TIPS plan to enlist businesses with access to private homes or otherwise able to obtain sensitive personal information without any court supervision. Under the plan, utility operators or others would be encouraged to report “suspicious activity” through a special federal hotline, where the reports would be placed in a central computer database. The program was rife with potential for abuse, including the reporting of false or erroneous information, and the concern that businesses and private individuals would allow their private prejudices to determine who qualifies as “suspicious.” When Congress learned of “Operation TIPS” and considered its potential dangers, it banned the program in legislation creating the new Department of Homeland Security. See Homeland Security Act of 2002, § 880, Pub. L. No. 107-296, 116 Stat. 2135, 2245 (2002).
The draft legislation poses many of the same dangers as the government’s earlier, more elaborate private spying program. False information can ruin a person’s reputation, lead to an erroneous arrest and even to violence. Those who are subject to such false reports should have legal recourse if the business or individual responsible for making the report acted irresponsibly. Defamation is the most likely legal action resulting from a false tip to law enforcement. Further protection for defamation defendants would weaken the incentive for a business to think twice before using a false tip to law enforcement to settle a private score or indulge in invidious discrimination. The proposed language paradoxically would increase the incentive for reports of information of dubious validity, diverting law enforcement from more serious potential crimes.
Granting additional immunity is unnecessary because there is already ample protection in state law against frivolous lawsuits. Truth is always a defense to defamation and states also generally provide a qualified privilege against defamation claims involving reports to law enforcement even where the information proves to be false, protecting a defendant against liability unless malice can be shown. See, e.g., Restatement (Second) of Torts §§ 598, 600.
Permitting searches, wiretaps and surveillance of United States citizens on behalf of foreign governments – including human rights abusers – in the absence of Senate-approved treaties (Sections 321-22). This section would authorize the DOJ to help foreign governments – including those that systematically abuse human rights and do not respect the rule of law – invade Americans’ privacy even when the United States Senate has failed or refused to approve a treaty allowing such assistance with such a government. Under current law, the United States does not engage in covert surveillance or issue search warrants on behalf of foreign nations unless the Senate has approved a mutual legal assistance treaty. If a foreign nation with which the United States does not have such a treaty requires information from a United States citizen or resident for its own judicial process, it may still obtain that information by asking the assistance of a United States district court in issuing an order to take testimony or obtain “a document or other thing” under 28 U.S.C. § 1782, but it may not issue search warrants or certain surveillance orders. This limitation ensures that that the Senate consents to more intrusive surveillance on behalf of a foreign nation before Americans’ privacy can be invaded at the behest of a foreign government. The draft bill (at section 321) sweeps aside this sensible limitation altogether.
These limitations on foreign-directed searches, wiretaps and surveillance orders do not need to substantially impede the investigation and prosecution of terrorism, as Congress has provided “universal jurisdiction” over many serious terrorism offenses. In other words, such offenses are a crime under United States law and subject to U.S. jurisdiction even if committed in a foreign nation. For such offenses, a United States Attorney could obtain the full panoply of searches and surveillance orders to aid in the investigation of that crime, even if such a crime was also being investigated by a foreign nation under its own laws. Such information could then easily be shared with the foreign nation, under information sharing provisions approved by Congress in the Homeland Security Act. See Homeland Security Act of 2002, §§ 891-99, Pub. L. No. 107-296, 116 Stat. 2135, 2252-58.
Permitting arrests and extraditions of United States citizens and other persons to a foreign country in the absence of a Senate-approved treaty and without judicial inquiry into the extraditing country’s human rights record (Section 322). Among other things, this section allows, on the determination of the Attorney General, a United States citizen or other person to be sent to a foreign dictatorship to be prosecuted even if an American judge would find that the extradition request was made on account of his or her race, nationality or political opinions. It allows the government to send Americans and others abroad to face foreign criminal charges in foreign criminal courts for a host of charges without any of the protections that normally appear in Senate-approved extradition treaties, and strips any judge hearing an extradition request of the authority to consider the fairness of the requesting country’s judicial system or its human rights record.
Section 322 authorizes extradition in the absence of an extradition treaty or in excess of limits imposed by existing extradition treaties. Extradition involves arresting an individual, including a United States citizen, because a foreign government accuses that person of violating a foreign law. It is subject to basic constitutional limitations. See, e.g., Valentine v. United States ex rel. Neidecker, 299 U.S. 5, 8 (1936) (holding that extradition may take place only in accordance with law because of “the fundamental consideration that the Constitution creates no executive prerogative to dispose of the liberty of the individual”). One important safeguard that protects Americans from facing trial in a potentially unfriendly nation, or in a nation that does not respect fundamental fair trial principles or abuses human rights, is the requirement that such extradition take place where the Senate has, by ratifying an extradition treaty, approved of the practice of a foreign nation sufficiently to permit such extradition.
Another, critical safeguard is the requirement of judicial supervision of extradition requests. This section expressly prohibits the judge from considering any of the following:
“humanitarian concerns,”
“the nature of the judicial system of the requesting foreign government,” and
“whether the foreign government is seeking extradition of a person for the purpose of prosecuting or punishing the person because of race, nationality or political opinions of that person.”
Under this legislation, an American can be sent abroad to face trial under before the courts of a foreign dictatorship, and an American judge has no ability under the statute to even inquire as to the fairness of that country’s court system or the reasons behind its criminal accusations.
Current basic due process and constitutional limits on extradition do not need to substantially impede the prosecution of terrorism, as Congress has provided “universal jurisdiction” over many serious terrorism offenses. In order words, such offenses are a crime under United States law even if committed in a foreign nation. For such offenses, a United States Attorney could charge a person suspected of a terrorism crime committed in a foreign nation if the United States lacked an extradition treaty.
Title IV –Undermining Fundamental Constitutional Rights Of Americans Under Overbroad Definitions Of “Terrorism” And “Terrorist Organization”; Reducing Due Process in Administrative Proceedings for Pilots; Undermining Financial Privacy and Due Process
Further criminalizing association – without any intent to commit specific terrorism crimes – by broadening the crime of providing material support to terrorism, even if support is not given to any organization listed as a terrorist organization by the government (Section 402). Under this section, a person who provides “material support” for “terrorism” as defined under the USA PATRIOT Act, could face a conviction, and lengthy prison terms, even if they did not provide any support for an organization listed as a terrorist organization. The definition of terrorism is not linked to any specific crimes, but covers all dangerous acts that are a violation of any federal or state law and are committed to influence government policy. See 18 U.S.C. § 2331. The definition arguably covers some protest activities, such as those used by Operation Rescue or by protesters in Vieques Island, Puerto Rico, as such tactics involve dangerous acts that are a violation of law and are committed to influence the government.
This section modifies the requirement to the crime of providing material support for terrorism, 18 U.S.C. § 2339A, which is a separate crime from providing material support for a designated terrorist organization, 18 U.S.C. § 2339B. Under current law, a person, including an American citizen, can only be prosecuted for providing material support for terrorism if the support is provided with the intent to further one of a list of terrorism crimes. A person can be prosecuted for providing resources to a terrorist organization that is designated by the government under the much broader definition of terrorism that arguably covers some protest groups, but only if such an organization has been designated as an international terrorist organization by the Secretary of State. See 18 U.S.C. § 2339B. In each case, the person effectively has some notice that what they are doing is prohibited: either the activity they support is a crime or the group whose lawful activities they would support has been publicly designated a terrorist organization. The amendment takes away this notice by permitting prosecution for providing support for the activities of an undesignated organization.
Groups such as Greenpeace arguably could be designated an international terrorist organization, because of the overbroad definition, but the government has not so designated them. Under this provision, however, the determination of whether to apply the terrorism definition to protest groups belongs not with high Executive Branch officials, but to the prosecutor who chooses to invoke the new criminal definition.
Creating a new, separate crime of using encryption technology that could add five years or more to any sentence for crimes committed with a computer (Section 404). Under this section, any federal felony committed with encryption technology that is now commonly part of computer software could be punished by an additional five years (or more, for a repeat offense.) The criminal conduct will not be any different; the only reason for additional penalties will be that the defendant used a certain technology to commit the offense. Here again, the DOJ’s description of the crime differs from the language proposed in the draft text. DOJ says it makes it a separate federal crime for a person to “knowingly and willfully use[] an encryption technology to conceal any incriminating communication . . . .” However, the draft text contains no requirement that the defendant intend to conceal anything; the crime is complete if the defendant intentionally uses an encryption technology in the commission of a crime. Thus, a simple fraud crime could, if committed using garden-variety encryption technology available with most standard web browsers, carry an additional jail term of up to five years regardless of whether the defendant intended to conceal his activity by using encryption.
Shifting burden of proof to defendant to obtain pretrial release for a laundry list of terrorism crimes (Section 405). Under this section, the right to bail, protected by the Eighth Amendment, is denied for a host of crimes said to be likely to be committed by terrorists unless the defendant is able to overcome the presumption created by the statute. A major reason for the Constitution’s prohibition against excessive bail is that defendants are presumed innocent until and unless they have been convicted in a court of law. Despite this, under certain circumstances, the Constitution permits pretrial detention. In general, the government must establish, by clear and convincing evidence, that no release conditions can adequately ensure the appearance of the defendant at trial or the safety of the community.[10]
There is no reason to exacerbate the constitutional problems posed by the presumption against pretrial release for some drug crimes by expanding that presumption to additional crimes. Before the government imprisons a person who has not been convicted of any crime, the government must bear the burden of establishing that the defendant is a flight risk or a danger to the community. This should not be hard to convince a court with respect to true terrorism defendants; there is no need to apply a pretrial detention presumption to a laundry list of offenses that are simply said to be likely to be committed by terrorists.
Imposing potentially life-long supervision and eliminating statute of limitations for nonviolent crimes listed as terrorism crimes, even where they create no risk of death or serious injury (Sections 408 and 410). Under section 408, a defendant who has served his or her sentence for a nonviolent crime listed as a terrorism crime could face life-long supervision, and possible reincarceration if those supervision conditions are violated, even if the crime for which he or she was convicted posed no risk of death or even serious injury. Likewise, section 410 removes entirely the statute of limitations for such nonviolent offenses. Under the USA PATRIOT Act, certain severe consequences follow from the commission of certain terrorism crimes, including the potential for life-long supervision, even after serving a full criminal sentence. In drafting the USA PATRIOT Act, Congress provided for a modest and very sensible limitation for such consequences – they only follow where the offense results in, or creates a foreseeable risk of, death or serious injury.
Indeed, it is not clear why any offense that would not at least create a risk of serious injury deserves to be labeled terrorism at all. The draft bill (at sections 408 and 410) eliminates this sensible restriction, by applying the severe consequence of lifetime supervision and removal of the statute of limitations even for crimes which do not create even a risk of death or serious injury. While DOJ uses the example of a computer crime causing severe financial damage or the provision of material support to an organization labeled as terrorist, it does not explain why such actions, if they truly were serious enough to be considered terrorism under a common sense rather than a legal definition, would not easily meet the requirement of causing at least a risk of serious injury.
Creating 15 new death penalties, including a new death penalty for “terrorism” under a definition which could cover acts of protest such as those used by Operation Rescue or protesters at Vieques Island, Puerto Rico, if death results (Section 411). The draft bill dramatically expands the death penalty, creating fifteen separate new death penalty crimes by defining a new death sentence that sweeps in the remaining crimes listed as federal crimes of terrorism in 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(g)(5)(B) that do not provide for the death penalty. Among others, these include the provision of material support for the lawful activities of an organization labeled a terrorist organization by the government, 18 U.S.C. § 2339B. While the DOJ labels this provision as providing for the death penalty for terrorist “murders,” there is no language in the text that requires any showing by the government of an intent by the defendant to kill; it is sufficient that death results from the defendant’s actions.
Even more troubling, the draft bill is not content to create fifteen new death penalties, but also contains language that sweeps in any violation of state or federal law that is committed under the definition of domestic or international terrorism contained in 18 U.S.C. § 2331. As a result, activities that (1) involve “acts dangerous to human life,” (2) are a violation of any state or federal law, and (3) are committed in order to influence government or the population by intimidation or coercion become death-penalty eligible if death results. Arguably, this definition could fit some protest activities, such as those used by Operation Rescue, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or Greenpeace. For example:
If protesters at Vieques Island, Puerto Rico, a military bombing range unpopular with local residents, cut a fence to trespass on the military’s bombing range, and a bomb killed one of the demonstrators, a prosecutor could charge the survivors with a eligible crime for which the sentence could be death.
If Greenpeace activists attempted to block an oil tanker entering a port to protest the company’s safety record, and a member of the tanker’s crew drowned attempting to ward off the activists’ boat, the protesters could be charged with a crime for which the sentence could be death.
If an Operation Rescue anti-abortion demonstration succeeded in blocking a woman seeking follow-up treatment for complications following her abortion, and the woman died, the protestors could be charged with a crime the sentence for which could be death.
Under this provision, protesters could be charged with the death penalty as the result of a tragedy. While dangerous protest tactics can be punished under the law, they are not terrorism and should not be treated as if they were.
Reducing due process for pilots accused of posing a security threat (sec. 409). While the government has authority to revoke a pilot’s license on a sufficient showing that the pilot presents a risk to air security, such denials must be accompanied by a fair opportunity for the accused pilot to be heard in an administrative hearing and to have judicial review of any final determination. The draft bill’s procedures for revoking pilot licenses are deficient in this respect. They do not clearly provide for an administrative hearing (as opposed to an administrative determination), and judicial review is provided only through a direct appeal to the United States Courts of Appeals, who are unlikely to have the time or resources to conduct a thorough review of the administrative record.
Further undermining privacy in financial transactions and due process in asset forfeiture and other civil proceedings (subtitle B; secs. 421-28). Continued amendment of money laundering and asset forfeiture laws have resulted in a serious erosion of financial privacy and of due process rights in asset forfeiture and other proceedings. These sections continue that trend:
Section 421 multiplies by five times the maximum civil penalty for violating economic sanctions or trade embargoes from $10,000 to $50,000. This provision would severely penalize the thousands of Americans who travel to Cuba every year (often without fully appreciating that their travel is prohibited). It would also penalize physicians or other activists who wish to protest our sanctions on other countries, such as Iraq, by bringing medicine or other humanitarian aid to those nations in violation of such an embargo.
Section 422 targets “hawalas” – traditional money transfer systems used for entirely legitimate reasons in many Muslim cultures – by undermining key concepts of the money laundering statutes. Under this provision, money can be deemed “laundered” even if the funds involved are not proceeds of a crime.
Section 423 further undermines due process for organizations unfortunate enough to be labeled as “terrorist organizations” by the government, by depriving them of the ability to defend their status as legitimate charities in a proceeding to revoke their tax-exempt status.
Section 427 and 428 expand civil asset forfeiture – a procedure rife with due process problems that the government can use to seize property without proving that the owner is guilty of any crime and without a pre-seizure hearing. Under this provision, the assets of a protest group that arguably fits the USA PATRIOT Act’s overbroad definition of terrorism could be more easily seized by the government, and the use of secret evidence is explicitly authorized to permit such seizures.
Title V – Stripping Americans of All Their Rights as U.S. Citizens; Unfairly Targeting Immigrants Under the Pretext of Fighting Terrorism
Stripping even native-born Americans of all of the rights of United States citizenship if they provide support for “terrorism,” allowing them to be indefinitely imprisoned in their own country as undocumented aliens. (Section 501). This section would permit the government to punish certain criminal activity by stripping even native-born Americans of U.S. citizenship, thereby depriving them of any nationality at all and potentially relegating them forever to imprisonment as undocumented immigrants in their own country. Among the activities that could be punished this way are providing material support for an organization – including a domestic organization – labeled as a terrorist organization by the government, even if the support was only for the lawful activities of that organization.
The Fourteenth Amendment provides that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” While Americans do have the right to give up their citizenship in the United States, the Constitution does not give Congress any power to take away from an American his or her status as a citizen even for participating in crime in time of war. See Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86 (1958) (conviction by court martial of crime of desertion during World War II could not constitutionally lead to loss of citizenship, even though crime was committed voluntarily). Rather, as the Supreme Court has made clear, every citizen of the United States enjoys “a constitutional right to remain a citizen . . . unless he voluntarily relinquishes that citizenship.” Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967) (citizenship could not be forfeited merely by voting in foreign election without the requisite intent to abandon U.S. citizenship).
While DOJ is correct to observe that certain voluntary acts, such as serving in a foreign army, can serve to terminate U.S. citizenship, these “expatriating acts” must indicate some desire to show an affinity with a foreign sovereign. Only acts that indicate such a desire to relinquish American nationality can be made the basis for a finding that strips an American of his or her citizenship. See Vance v. Terrazas, 444 U.S. 252, 262 (1980).
Moreover, it is the government’s burden to establish that the expatriating act was committed with the intent of relinquishing citizenship, a showing this section attempts to short-circuit. See id. at 261 (holding that the “trier of fact must . . . conclude that the citizen not only voluntarily committed the expatriating act prescribed in the statute, but also intended to relinquish his citizenship.”) Expatriating acts are not defined by reference to how repugnant or offensive they are, or by whether they constitute serious crimes, but by whether they show the individual has an intent to attach himself or herself to another sovereignty. Thus, while serving in a foreign army or voting in a foreign election may indicate an intent to abandon American nationality, the commission of a series of grisly murders, or the control of a vast criminal enterprise plainly do not, although the former are legal while the latter are serious crimes.
Providing support to a terrorist organization, which possesses no sovereignty under international law, is a crime, see 18 U.S.C. § 2339A, but plainly does not indicate that the individual desires to attach himself or herself to the allegiance of a foreign nation or to abandon U.S. citizenship in the way that, for example, serving in a foreign army might. Indeed, expatriation in the draft bill is not even limited to providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations, as wholly domestic organizations can be designated as terrorist organizations under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(3). In addition, expatriation could result from support of organizations “engaged in hostilities” against the “national security interests” of the United States – which could mean anything -- not just against the United States or its people. Finally, the draft bill would allow expatriation even for support of the lawful, humanitarian activities of an organization that the United States has labeled a “terrorist organization,” which belies DOJ’s analogy of supporting terrorism by serving in a foreign army engaged in hostilities against the United States.
Targeting undocumented workers with extended jail terms for common immigration offenses (Sections 502 and 505). Under the pretext of fighting terrorism, this section – which applies to low-level, garden variety immigration offenses that have nothing to do with terrorism at all – unfairly targets undocumented workers. The United States census revealed that more than seven million undocumented immigrants are living in the United States. At present, the United States is engaged in negotiations with Mexico in part to decide whether to permit greater numbers of temporary workers to come to the United States legally, and whether such a program would also provide a path to legal status for undocumented Mexicans or other undocumented immigrants.
Under the pretext of fighting terrorism, this section short-circuits the national debate over immigration policy by substantially increasing penalties for a number of very common immigration crimes often committed by undocumented immigrants. These include unlawful entry (INA § 275(a)(1)), reentry after removal (INA § 276), and failing to register with the immigration authorities (INA § 264(e)). The draft bill (at sec. 505) also provides that the offense of failing to depart after a deportation order (INA § 243) is a continuing offense – meaning that, in practice, no statute of limitations will apply. Increasing these penalties now would almost certainly not prove an effective deterrent to illegal immigration, as the threat of penalties for illegal immigration has never been sufficient to outweigh the causes of immigration including the pull of economic opportunity and the conditions in the home country, but could frustrate our relations with Mexico and other important U.S. allies seeking to negotiate a new framework for immigration policy.
Providing for summary deportations, even of lawful permanent residents, whom the Attorney General says are a threat to national security (Section 503). Under this provision, any immigrant, including longtime lawful permanent residents, may be expelled from the United States on the unilateral determination of the Attorney General that they are a threat to “national security,” which is defined as “the national defense, foreign relations, or economic interests of the United States.” INA § 219(c)(2). A person facing removal under this section will be separated from his or her family and community without ever being able to effectively answer the government’s true reasons for labeling him or her a security risk.
Immigrants and other non-citizens involved in terrorism are deportable under current law,[11] and suspected terrorists are subject to mandatory detention during any immigration or criminal proceedings.[12] The purpose of this amendment is to eliminate due process entirely for immigrants, including lawful permanent residents, accused of crimes or terrorism by permitting their expulsion merely on the Attorney General’s fiat. It is based on the fundamentally flawed notion that non-citizens in the United States do not possess the right to fair treatment under the law, a notion that the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected. See Zadvydas v. Davis 533 U.S. 678, 693 (2001) (reiterating long-standing constitutional rule that “the Due Process Clause applies to all ‘persons’ within the United States, including aliens, whether their presence here is lawful, unlawful, temporary, or permanent”).
The proposal is another DOJ initiative that flies in the face of President Bush’s stated opposition to the use of secret evidence in immigration proceedings on the basis that fair treatment should be afforded everyone in America. Under the proposal, a non-citizen, including a lawful permanent resident, accused of posing a risk to national security could be detained and deported without having committed any violation of law and without ever knowing the basis of the accusation against him or her. The provision would essentially authorize a repeat of the “Palmer raids,” a discredited episode in the 1920s that involved widespread mass deportations and widespread abuse of the rights of law abiding Russian and other immigrants during a wave of anti-immigrant and nativist hysteria.
DOJ originally asked for this summary deportation power shortly after September 11 in its initial drafts of the USA PATRIOT Act. It was firmly rejected, on a bipartisan basis, by a Congress deeply concerned about the use of secret evidence and core due process in immigration proceedings. It should be rejected again.
Completely abolishing fair hearings for lawful permanent residents convicted of even minor criminal offenses through a retoractive “expedited removal” procedure, and preventing any court from questioning the government’s unlawful actions by explicitly exempting these cases from habeas corpus (Section 504). Under this new “expedited removal” provision, any immigrant who was convicted even of a minor criminal offense long ago could be deported under a special procedure that provides for no immigration hearing at all and restricts the federal courts from questioning whether the government’s actions are within the law. The expedited removal provision, which currently applies only to some classes of undocumented immigrants, would now apply to all immigrants, including lawful permanent residents. “Expedited removal” would be available for crimes which are called “aggravated felonies” (and other crimes) but can be as minor as a shoplifting offense for which a suspended sentence of one year or more is imposed. No discretionary relief is available, regardless of the compelling humanitarian circumstances of any particular case, and the provision applies retroactively. The provision also unconstitutionally exempts these cases entirely from habeas corpus, 28 U.S.C. § 2241, which protects the right of all persons in custody – including immigrants – to a judicial determination of the legality of the government’s actions.
In 1996, Congress adopted harsh laws that greatly expanded the number and types of crimes that could lead to automatic deportation – i.e., deportation without any possibility to even apply for discretionary relief from the Attorney General. At that time, DOJ went even further than Congress, arguing that the law applied retroactively, so that even immigrants who had been granted relief for crimes committed years or decades earlier and had turned their lives around would now face automatic deportation. DOJ also argued that its controversial retroactive interpretation of the law could not be questioned by any federal court, including the Supreme Court.
In 2001, the Supreme Court firmly rejected DOJ’s position, finding both that Congress had not intended the 1996 immigration laws to apply retroactively and that restrictions on judicial review still left intact the federal court’s power to correct unlawful government action through a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2241. See INS v. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. 289 (2001). (“Judicial intervention in deportation cases is unquestionably required by the Constitution.”) At the same time, in Congress, a growing number of members of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, began to reconsider the scope of the 1996 laws, culminating the decision of the House Judiciary Committee in 2002 to approve H.R. 1452, the Family Reunification Act, which would restore discretionary relief for some lawful permanent residents accused of relatively minor offenses, particularly if they had come to the United States at an early age.
The draft bill would seriously undermine fair treatment of lawful permanent residents. It would deny fundamental due process in immigration proceedings by completely eliminating an actual hearing. It would disregard the Supreme Court’s St. Cyr ruling, stripping the judiciary of its core functions in such cases.
The provision attempts to insulate the Attorney General’s “expedited removal” decision from judicial review by taking a step never taken by Congress since the Civil War – expressly denying access to habeas corpus, 28 U.S.C. § 2241, to prevent the federal courts from correcting unlawful actions by the immigration authorities. Because of the jurisdiction provided by by 28 U.S.C. § 2241, the Supreme Court in St. Cyr was able to consider the merits and found that Congress had not intended to apply the 1996 laws retroactively. This court-stripping provision violates the Constitution, because the Constitution protects habeas corpus – the Great Writ that keeps detention within the boundaries of the rule of law.[13]
Expanding the Attorney General’s authority to designate a country to which an immigrant could be deported, and permitting such deportation even if there is no effective government in such a country (Section 506). This section would authorize the Attorney General to dump immigrants ordered removed in any country in the world, and even to areas which are lawless and have no governing authority whatsoever. This section would have a devastating effect on Somalis and other Africans. While the world’s attention is focused elsewhere, a tragedy of extraordinary proportions has been building in Africa, where in Somalia, for example, effective government has broken down as rival armed groups vie for power. For this reason, a federal district court is now entertaining a plea from Somalis to halt deportations to that country. The Immigration and Nationality Act does not provide for forced deportation of anyone to a country or region that lacks any form of government, nor should it. Deportation should not be a death sentence, as such deportation could easily become. Nor is it good foreign policy to simply dump into lawless regions non-citizens ordered removed from the United States because such a policy that will simply exacerbate the severe challenges facing such areas of the world.
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ENDNOTES
[1] This and other similarities to criminal wiretap requirements were essential to the review court’s holding that “FISA as amended is constitutional because the surveillances it authorizes are reasonable.” Id. at 56. The ACLU does not agree with that conclusion, but simply notes that even a court with the broadest view of the government’s surveillance power has found the requirement that the government show probable cause that a target is acting for a foreign power is constitutionally based.
[2] Richard Reeves, PRESIDENT NIXON: ALONE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 335 (2001). The plan was apparently not implemented, despite President Nixon’s order, but certainly contributed to the pattern of abuse that finally lead to the Watergate break-in and cover up.
[3] In the absence of such a process, a party could well be barred from challenging the lawfulness of the underlying order in any proceeding to enforce contempt sanctions. See Walker v. City of Birmingham, 388 U.S. 307, 317 (1967) (holding civil rights marchers could not challenge the lawfulness of an injunction forbidding a peaceful march in proceedings to enforce contempt sanctions).
[4] THE FEDERALIST No. 84 (Hamilton) (emphasis in original) (quoting 1 Blackstone, COMMENTARIES ON THE LAWS OF ENGLAND 335).
[5] See American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey v. County of Hudson, No. HUD-L-463-02 (N.J. Super. Ct. Law Div. April 12, 2002), rev’d on other grounds, 779 A.2d 629 (N.J. Super. App. Div. 2002); Center for National Security Studies v. United States Dep’t of Justice, 215 F. Supp. 2d 94 (D.D.C. 2002) (appeal pending before D.C. Circuit).
[6] “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; [and] to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor . . . .” U.S. Const. amend. 6.
[7] See Testimony of Barry Steinhardt, Associate Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, Before the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Crime, March 23, 2000 (reporting an American Management Association survey in 1997 that reported that six out of ten employers responding use genetic screening information for employment purposes.)
[8] The National Immigration Forum has posted on its website a list of statements by local and state police from across the country, all opposing any attempt to enlist them in the enforcement of immigration laws. See Opposition to Local Enforcement of Immigration Laws, updated October 1, 2002, available at: http://www.immigrationforum.org/currentissues/articles/100102_quotes.htm
[9] See Letter from White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzalez to Migration Policy Institute, June 24, 2002, available at: http://www.migrationpolicy.org/files/whitehouse.pdf
[10] See United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 751 (1987) (holding that pretrial detention is constitutional “[w]hen the Government proves by clear and convincing evidence that an arrestee presents an identified and articulable threat to an individual or the community”).
[11] See INA § 237(a)(4)(B) (“Any alien who has engaged, is engaged, or at any time after admission engages in any terrorist activity . . . is deportable.”)
[12] USA PATRIOT Act, § 412, Pub. L. No. 107-56, 115 Stat. 321 (2001), codified at INA § 236A.
[13] Another court-stripping provision, in Section 504(d), would give the government power to deport people before a federal judge could hear their challenges, even where the law clearly allows judicial review, by posing serious barriers to the judge's ability to stay deportation while considering the case. The provision would overturn rulings of four federal appeals courts that found that the very stringent standard that applies for a judge to grant a request to stop deportation altogether under by INA § 242(f)(2) does not apply to a court’s ability to temporarily delay deportation while it considers the case. See, e.g., Mohammed v. Reno, 309 F.3d 95 (2d Cir. 2002) (on appeal from habeas review of removal order); Beijani v. INS, 271 F.3d 670 (6th Cir. 2001); Andreiu v. Ashcroft, 253 F.3d 477 (9th Cir. 2001) (en banc); Lal v. Reno, 2000 WL 831801 (7th Cir. June 26, 2000) (unpublished); but see Weng v. Attorney General, 287 F.3d 1335 (11th Cir. 2002). As one court noted, in rejecting the interpretation the DOJ is now seeking to enact in this legislation, “This would effectively require the automatic deportation of large numbers of people with meritorious claims, including every applicant who presented a case of first impression.” Andreiu, 253 F.3d at 48