CBP, DHS Using Quasi-Scientific Guesswork To Turn Adult Immigrants Into Minors

from the and-vice-versa dept

Our nation's immigration agencies wield a considerable amount of power. So much power, in fact, that they're free to dump incoming immigrants off the space-time continuum at will. If a CBP officer decides a person isn't the age they say they are, they can alter the person's age so it matches the officer's beliefs.

How does the CBP accomplish this neat little trick? Well, oddly, it involves X-rays. A recent episode of This American Life details the surreal nature of this CBP-induced time warp -- one it inflicted (repeatedly!) on a 19-year-old Hmong woman coming to the United States to reunite with her fiance.

Yong Xiong was questioned by Customs officers at the Chicago airport. The CBP officer thought she was being trafficked and didn't believe the birth date on her passport. After a round of questioning meant to determine whether or not Yong was being trafficked, the CBP officer arrived at the conclusion she was, despite the officer marking "No" on ten of the eleven trafficking indicators.

So, how does the CBP try to determine someone's age when officers don't believe the person or the documents in front of them? They call in a dentist. Yong's teeth were x-rayed to determine her age. This may involve science on the front end, but the back end is mainly educated guesswork.

From This American Life's Nadia Reiman:

The dentist took the X-ray. No one would talk to me on the record about this, but because it's the government, there is a massive paper trail. And not just in Yong's case. I'm going to go deep on these tooth X-rays for a second, so bear with me. They're used in all kinds of immigration cases, not just trafficking. And a lot rides on the results. If you're under 18, you have more protections. You get put into a shelter instead of a detention center. It's harder to get deported.

But tooth X-rays are just not a very precise way to determine someone's age. The way it works is they measure how developed the roots of your molars are, and then based on that, the dentist can determine your age, but only within a range, usually around five years. So these X-rays can't tell you the difference between a 17-year-old and a 19-year-old. The same teeth might belong to a 15-year-old or a 20-year-old.

In Yong's case, the CBP was sure she was being trafficked. Since the officer already thought that, the CBP leaned toward the lower end of the dentist's estimate.

In the documents, the dentist writes, quote, "The range of possible ages is 14.76 to 19.56 years." In other words, it's totally plausible that Yong could be 19 as she's been saying.

Instead of accepting this as evidence that might back the birth date on Yong's passport, the CBP agent gave her a new birth date: January 1, 2000. This instantly turned Yong into a minor and the CBP placed her in a juvenile shelter. She continued to tell staff and counselors she was 19 and needed to head to Minneapolis to meet with her family and fiance. The staff told her they couldn't do anything about this because the paperwork said she's a minor.

This isn't true. They are able to make changes to these dates, but no one at this detention center was willing to do that. Well... they weren't willing to change her birth date to make her an adult again. Instead, as Yong approached her fake 18th birthday -- January 1, 2018 -- the DHS decided to make her even younger:

It turns out ORR [Office of Refugee Resettlement] resubmitted the X-rays of Yong's teeth to a second dentist who concluded Yong could be anywhere between 15 and 20 years old. After which, ORR did change her birth date. But they used the lowest end of the range possible. The documents say DHS, the agency that oversees everything related to immigration, told them to. Her new, new birth date is now September 1, 2002.

A wrist X-ray was performed to determine "bone age." The results said Yong was most likely 18. The doctor interpreting them for the DHS decided this simply wasn't true and issued a conclusion saying Yong is 15, but with "advanced bone age."

After 14 months in a juvenile detention center, Yong is finally released by the DHS… as a minor, into the custody of her aunt. A couple of weeks later, the DHS stated to her lawyer it would no longer "contest" the "contents" of her passport. The single contested "content" was Yong's true birth date. The US government graciously allowed Yong to become 22 again, after 14 months of treating her like a teenager.

Yong is not an isolated case. The DHS routinely uses wide-ranging estimates to arbitrarily assign birth dates to immigrants and asylum seekers. For whatever reason, CBP tends to add years to males and subtract them from females. This results in people like Yong being treated as minors for months or years. In other cases, it turns unaccompanied minors into adults and places them in adult detention facilities.

This report from The Conversation detailing the x-ray "aging" of two unaccompanied teens says CBP's reliance on this process is illegal.

Federal law dictates that X-rays in cases where adult age is not obvious be used only in concert with other methods, such as verification of documentation and interviews. This makes sense because X-rays only provide orienting information rather than a definitive answer.

The recent court cases demonstrate that ICE has broken the law by exclusively relying on X-rays for age determination, ruling that the teens be released back into ORR’s custody as minors. Are these cases isolated or illustrative of a bigger problem? A 2008 report by the Office of Homeland Security found that it was not only unclear how often ICE needed to resort to X-rays to assist with age determination, but unknown how common it was for them to rely solely on X-ray results. Without accurate numbers, there is no way to know how widespread the practice is or how to improve the process.

Nothing has improved since then. And part of the reason nothing has improved is that the same Congress that expressed concern about the DHS's reliance on X-rays to determine immigrants' ages pushed the DHS to continue to rely on the X-rays.

In 2007 and again in 2008, the House Appropriations Committee called on the Department of Homeland Security to stop relying on forensic testing of bones and teeth. But it was the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 that declared age determinations should take into account “multiple forms of evidence, including the non-exclusive use of radiographs.”

Apparently, the "non-exclusive" part of the law is being ignored. Nothing but an X-ray and a CBP officer's hunch turned 19-year-old Yong Xiong into a 17-year-old. And nothing but an X-ray made her even younger... even as she aged 14 months right in front of the government's eyes.

Filed Under: age detection, cbp, dentists, detention, immigration, minors, x-rays

ICE Rigged Its Vetting Tool To Make Sure It Can Always Keep Immigrants Locked Up

from the dick-move-upon-dick-move dept

As the rhetoric has amped up around immigration enforcement, so have the tactics. ICE was never anyone's idea of a good time, but its actions have become much more aggressive, thanks to this administration's steady stream of anti-immigrant sentiment. While not supporting the criminal activity engaged in by its informants, ICE is performing warrantless raids, deporting critics, and claiming helping undocumented children is a criminal offense.

Now, it's getting its software to pitch in. Reuters reports ICE is detaining more people than ever, keeping them imprisoned while their court cases -- which may take years to adjudicate -- are pending. Up until recently, ICE would make a determination on the risk level of detainees, allowing some to post bond and stay with their families while their court cases played out.

That's no longer the case. The system ICE uses to make this determination -- detain/release -- is still being used. But the info fed into it no longer matters. Thanks to Trump's orders, there's no determination being made. The software is a facade that spits out a single answer, no matter what info its given.

To conform to Trump’s policies, Reuters has learned, ICE modified a tool officers have been using since 2013 when deciding whether an immigrant should be detained or released on bond. The computer-based Risk Classification Assessment uses statistics to determine an immigrant’s flight risk and danger to society.

Previously, the tool automatically recommended either “detain” or “release.” Last year, ICE spokesman Bourke said, the agency removed the “release” recommendation, but he noted that ICE personnel can override it.

This caused detentions to triple in 2017. And the software, which is supposed to perform a risk assessment, no longer does anything at all. It may be overridden by ICE personnel, but why would any ICE employee bother? The president made it clear he wants immigrants locked up or kicked out. A rigged machine makes it easy to ignore mitigating factors in favor of treating everyone as the "worst of the worst" ICE is actually supposed to be targeting.

At this point, it makes no sense to even have the system running. ICE may as well drop the charade and just detain everyone. The discretion was built into the system, but that's been removed. That leaves everything up to the discretion of ICE officers, who have zero motivating forces pushing them towards more lenient behavior.

This is another small step towards diminishing the protections of the Constitution. The government operates a system that pretends to offer a fair balancing of relevant factors, but has secretly removed one of the two options immigrants are supposed to have. Couple this with President Trump's tweet about stripping away the last vestiges of due process at the border and you have a government progressively undermining the rights that actually make America great.

Filed Under: algorithms, detain, detention, ice, release, risk

FBI's Bust Of Black Open Carry Advocate Predicated On An InfoWars Video Ends In Dismissed Indictment

from the making-its-terrorism-investigations-look-solidly-grounded dept

The FBI's throwback to its Martin Luther King Jr.-watching heyday has reached the first stop on its way to its eventual nadir. Deciding backlash against violence perpetrated by law enforcement officers had resulted in too many frightening African Americans organizing, the agency decided to place "Black Identity Extremists" under surveillance, claiming this made-up group would "likely" engage in violence against police officers.

So far, the agency has yet to secure a prosecution under this theory of extreme blackness. But it has managed to severely disrupt the life of at least one black male.

Rakem Balogun thought he was dreaming when armed agents in tactical gear stormed his apartment. Startled awake by a large crash and officers screaming commands, he soon realized his nightmare was real, and he and his 15-year-old son were forced outside of their Dallas home, wearing only underwear.

Handcuffed and shaking in the cold wind, Balogun thought a misunderstanding must have led the FBI to his door on 12 December 2017. The father of three said he was shocked to later learn that agents investigating “domestic terrorism” had been monitoring him for years and were arresting him that day in part because of his Facebook posts criticizing police.

"Domestic terrorism" is one of the narratives the FBI trotted out during this abortive investigation and prosecution. The facts leading to Balogun's arrest are almost literally unbelievable. His surveillance is believed to be part of the FBI's recent "Black Identity Extremists" focus. Balogun (born Christopher Daniels) is a black open-carry advocate residing in Texas, where this practice is legal. He attended a protest in Austin, Texas -- one featuring black open carry advocates like himself. Apparently, the FBI decided it needed to play to edges of reality to build a case against the activist.

Daniels, a founding member of both Guerilla Mainframe and the Huey P. Newton Gun Club, groups that promote weapons training, fitness, and community service among African Americans, first came under FBI scrutiny in 2015 when he appeared in videos participating in an open-carry rally against police brutality. Footage of the demonstration aired by the right-wing conspiracy website InfoWars showed demonstrators chanting “oink oink bang bang” and “the only good pig is a pig that’s dead.”

The InfoWars video drew the FBI’s attention to Daniels’ social media accounts, according to court documents, where he published what they deemed to be comments advocating for “violence toward law enforcement.”

The FBI admitted the comments it reviewed did not actually advocate for violence against police officers, nor did they contain threats from Daniels himself. But what was the agent supposed to do? Stop looking for reasons to fulfill the FBI's "BIE" fantasy?

Nope, instead the FBI raided Balogun's house to arrest him for possession of a handgun, supposedly because it violated restrictions placed on Balogun following a misdemeanor domestic assault conviction in 2007. This bullshit charge doesn't explain why it took the FBI two years from the viewing of the video (a goddamn InfoWars video, at that) to make its move.

The court tossed the indictment -- two years and one InfoWars video in the making -- because the alleged criminal act wasn't actually a real criminal act.

The indictment was dismissed May 1, when a district court in Texas determined “domestic assault” as codified by Tennessee law does not fit the federal definition of domestic violence that would prohibit him from owning a firearm. Daniels was ultimately released from custody two days later.

But that was two days after Daniels spent six months in jail for a charge the FBI offered up because it couldn't find what it was really looking for: a "Black Identity Extremist" calling for violence against cops. The government couldn't get what it wanted, but rather than call the investigation to a halt, it kept digging around in the federal and state rule books to find anything to use against Balogun. "Rule of law" is a joke -- and so is every government official echoing this empty phrase as the FBI pursues bullshit investigations and handcrafts terrorism suspects for easy prosecutions.

Filed Under: arrests, black identity extremists, civil liberties, civil rights, detention, fbi, open carry, rakem balogun, texas

UK Appeals Court Says UK Terrorism Act's Detention Clause Violates Press Freedoms

from the good-to-see dept

As you may recall, back in 2013, soon after the Snowden revelations, the UK detained David Miranda at Heathrow Airport and took a bunch of his electronics, as he was flying through (from Germany on his way back home to Brazil). Miranda is Glenn Greenwald's partner, and the claim by the UK was that in Berlin he had picked up copies of Snowden documents. The UK claimed that the detention was okay under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, which allows for detaining terrorists, not journalists. But the UK said that it was okay, because it classified publishing Snowden documents as an act of terrorism.

Miranda sued in the UK, arguing that his rights were violated. Almost two years ago, a court ruled that the detention was lawful. Miranda appealed, and in an important ruling this morning, the appeals court said that, while Miranda's detention may have been lawful, Schedule 7 is incompatible with human rights, with regards to protecting journalists, and could be subject to abuse (even if it says that Miranda's detention wasn't necessarily abusive). The court more or less ruled that the authorities acted within reason, given the existing law, but a specific part of the law, regarding how it handles journalists, was a problem with regards to the guarantees for a free press.

Reading through the full 36-page ruling is worthwhile. The ruling is a victory for those concerned about abuses against journalists under the Terrorism Act -- but only a fairly narrow one. For example, the court does note that publication can "amount to an act of terrorism" if the publication "endangers a person's life" and the person publishing "intends it to have that effect." I can understand why someone might make that argument, but it still seems troubling to argue that any form of expression alone is an "act of terrorism."

Where the court disagrees with the government's claims, is in noting that Schedule 7 conflicts with Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees freedom of expression (not nearly as broadly as the US's First Amendment, but at least somewhat), because it could be read to force journalists to give up sources, potentially harming a free and open press:

The central concern is that disclosure of journalistic material (whether or not it involves the identification of a journalist’s source) undermines the confidentiality that is inherent in such material and which is necessary to avoid the chilling effect of disclosure and to protect article 10 rights. If journalists and their sources can have no expectation of confidentiality, they may decide against providing information on sensitive matters of public interest. That is why the confidentiality of such information is so important. It is, therefore, of little or no relevance that the Schedule 7 powers may only be exercised in a confined geographical area or that a person may not be detained for longer than nine hours. I accept that the fact that the powers must be exercised rationally, proportionately and in good faith provides a degree of protection. But the only safeguard against the powers not being so exercised is the possibility of judicial review proceedings. In my view, the possibility of such proceedings provides little protection against the damage that is done if journalistic material is disclosed and used in circumstances where this should not happen. An important rationale for the principle of legal certainty that underpins the concept of “prescribed by law” is that there should be adequate safeguards against arbitrary decision-making. Unlike the position in relation to article 5 and 8, the possibility of judicial review proceedings to challenge the rationality, proportionality and good faith of a decision to interfere with freedom of expression in cases involving journalistic material cases does not afford an adequate safeguard.

Given that, the court rules that Schedule 7 is currently "incompatible" with article 10, and thus the UK Parliament needs to change the law to fix that problem. The court does point out that there may be some easy fixes:

The most obvious safeguard would be some form of judicial or other independent and impartial scrutiny conducted in such a way as to protect the confidentiality in the material.

So it appears that the UK could fix this deficiency pretty easily -- but in a way that would better protect journalists. I recognize that there are a number of statements and press releases that are excited about this ruling, but it does appear to be a bit of an overstatement. Yes, finding problems with Schedule 7, especially as it relates to journalists, is a big deal. But the concerns seem to be pretty narrowly focused, and open to a rather quick fix by the UK Parliament. A stronger ruling would have been better, but at least the court recognized some problems with the current setup of the law with respect to press freedoms.

As for what happens next? The UK could challenge the ruling at a higher level. Or it could change the law, as suggested by the court. Or it could ignore the ruling, which would lead to a European challenge. So this isn't necessarily over yet....

Filed Under: article 10, david miranda, detention, free press, human rights, journalism, schedule 7, terrorism act, uk

Chicago's Secret Homan Square Detention Facility Way Worse Than Anyone Thought

from the chitanimo-bay dept

Back in February, we brought you the delightful news that the Chicago police department was rather broadly known to be operating what was essentially a CIA-style black site within the neighborhood of Homan Square. This facility, located in a rough West Side neighborhood of the city, featured such practices as off-the-books detention, lawyer-less interrogations, and the occasional fatality. This place, where detainees would disappear for hours or days, seemed to be a vacuum of civil liberties and instead operated under the theory that Chicago police were rulers over all, and were owed whatever they demanded. The original Guardian link detailed a number of witness stories from those who had been detained at Homan Square, but very little information was available about exactly how widely the facility was being used.

Thanks to the Guardian's FOIA efforts, however, we have some clarity on how much Homan Square is used and how the police detain people there, and, well, it's extremely chilling to anyone with a modicum of interest in civil liberties.

At least 3,500 Americans have been detained inside a Chicago police warehouse described by some of its arrestees as a secretive interrogation facility, newly uncovered records reveal. Of the thousands held in the facility known as Homan Square over a decade, 82% were black. Only three received documented visits from an attorney, according to a cache of documents obtained when the Guardian sued the police.

Despite repeated denials from the Chicago police department that the warehouse is a secretive, off-the-books anomaly, the Homan Square files begin to show how the city’s most vulnerable people get lost in its criminal justice system.

I wasn't a math major, but three out of thirty-five hundred detainees receiving visits from counsel is something like not-enough-percent. And before anyone goes off on the dangers of the West Side of Chicago or goes off prospecting for dirt on those detained, a review of the charges against many of those detained at Homan Square are laughably mundane. And that's when charges were filed to begin with.

Documents indicate the detainees are a group of disproportionately minority citizens, many accused of low-level drug crimes, faced with incriminating themselves before their arrests appeared in a booking system by which their families and attorneys might find them.

The CPD response to this, even after the initial story broke months ago, has been that Homan Square isn't a black site, it's simply an undercover base for Chicago police, which, you know, you say tomato, I say black site. Either way, the city's long-running denial maintains that all those arrested are indeed processed through the booking system and can be found by attorneys and families, except the detainees at Homan Square aren't arrested until they're booked at another station, so that doesn't mean anything at all. The Guardian's review of the records show that most of these detentions have occurred under the watchful gaze of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, most of those eventually charged with a crime were charged with anything from traffic violations to drug possession, and under ten-percent of detainees were white, despite whites making up a third of the city's population. And these records only go back to 2004. Homan Square has been in operation since 1995.

After the facts are presented, the article includes the usual quotes from civil rights leaders who lament their own lack of surprise at all of this and who wonder blissfully if anyone will do anything about Homan Square this go around. To hell with that. If you have a brain cell to spare on civil rights for an entire city's population, this ought to both shock you and make you very, very angry.

Filed Under: chicago, detention, due process, homan square, police, rights

The Guardian Details The Horrors Of Chicago Police's 'CIA-Style Black Site'

from the chitanamo dept

As someone who has lived in or near Chicago my entire life, it's been a long-standing source of amusement to hear outsiders' perceptions of the city relayed back to me. Whether it's our neverending association with Al Capone, the strange obsession with our casserole-style pizza, or the perception that our sports fans are meatball worshippers at the altar of Mike Ditka, so much of what people think of us just isn't particularly true.

Unfortunately, the perception of how our police force cares to operate here is also largely incorrect: it's so much worse than you think. If you thought it was all corruption and laziness from some (and I stress some) of Chicago's finest, you don't know the half of it, because the other half is the pure denial of the basic rights we are supposed to have when dealing with our protectors. The recent work done by The Guardian in detailing how Chicago police operated a CIA-style black site ought to chill the bones of anyone planning on being anywhere near my beloved city.

The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units. Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights. At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square “interview room” and later pronounced dead.

The practices undertaken at the Homan facility are alleged to include detaining people without documenting their arrest, beatings, keeping detainees shackled for hours at a time, refusing attorneys for detainees access to the facility, and detaining people while refusing them legal counsel for up to a full day. These practices, by the way, weren't reserved for the mature, but were happily visited upon minors, because when you're going to go evil there is no point in half-assing it. Do these types of practices sound familiar to you? Would it help if the detainees were in orange jumpsuits and had the tan of a Cuban sun upon their skin? You get the point.

So, what types of hardened criminals find themselves disappeared at the Homan Square Gitmo?

Brian Jacob Church, a protester known as one of the “Nato Three”, was held and questioned at Homan Square in 2012 following a police raid. Officers restrained Church for the better part of a day, denying him access to an attorney, before sending him to a nearby police station to be booked and charged.

“Homan Square is definitely an unusual place,” Church told the Guardian on Friday. “It brings to mind the interrogation facilities they use in the Middle East. The CIA calls them black sites. It’s a domestic black site. When you go in, no one knows what’s happened to you.”

Church was held at the facility for just under 24 hours, most of that time spent cuffed to the furniture there. Though he had immediately asked to call legal counsel, this request was denied. Neither he nor the 11 other protestors that were taken there were allowed to see legal counsel until finally Church's, and only Church's, lawyer was allowed in after 20 or so hours. Prior to that, police had been questioning him illegaly. Because of the well-publicized nature of the protestor's detention, lawyers had been searching for him for hours. The reason Church couldn't be found wasn't a bug, though. It was a feature.

Though the raid attracted major media attention, a team of attorneys could not find Church through 12 hours of “active searching”, Sarah Gelsomino, Church’s lawyer, recalled. No booking record existed. Only after she and others made a “major stink” with contacts in the offices of the corporation counsel and Mayor Rahm Emanuel did they even learn about Homan Square.

They sent another attorney to the facility, where he ultimately gained entry, and talked to Church through a floor-to-ceiling chain-link metal cage. Finally, hours later, police took Church and his two co-defendants to a nearby police station for booking. After serving two and a half years in prison, Church is currently on parole after he and his co-defendants were found not guilty in 2014 of terrorism-related offenses but guilty of lesser charges of possessing an incendiary device and the misdemeanor of “mob action”.

And yet, as ridiculous as it sounds, Church and the other protestors got off lucky.

On February 2, 2013, John Hubbard was taken to Homan Square. Hubbard never walked out. The Chicago Tribune reported that the 44-year old was found “unresponsive inside an interview room”, and pronounced dead. The Cook County medical examiner’s office could not locate any record for the Guardian indicating a cause of Hubbard’s death. It remains unclear why Hubbard was ever in police custody.

It's quite a shame that we can't ask Mr. Hubbard because he died within the facility where lawyers are refused entrance, where detainees are kept out of the record books, and where the police appear to operate with impunity. Now, it's roughly around here where you're thinking one of two things. Some of you are thinking that such a claim as this is so outlandish that there's very little chance that it's true. Others must be thinking that the accusations of abuse and the denial of rights are rare mistakes made by a tiny percentage of officers. Too bad this secret wasn't all that secret.

“It’s sort of an open secret among attorneys that regularly make police station visits, this place – if you can’t find a client in the system, odds are they’re there,” said Chicago lawyer Julia Bartmes.

Chicago civil-rights attorney Flint Taylor said Homan Square represented a routinization of a notorious practice in local police work that violates the fifth and sixth amendments of the constitution.

“This Homan Square revelation seems to me to be an institutionalization of the practice that dates back more than 40 years,” Taylor said, “of violating a suspect or witness’ rights to a lawyer and not to be physically or otherwise coerced into giving a statement.”

Keep in mind the references to Gitmo and CIA black sites overseas and then juxtapose that to the ongoing militarization of domestic police within our borders, and the picture becomes a clear warning against allowing the practices of our military and spy organizations to trickle into our domestic police departments. Will the outside world pressure Chicago into giving up the abuse? Unlikely. The outside view of my city is often wrong, but there's no doubting the popular assertion that Chicago is a machine, and the police department represents a powerful cog in that machine, one with a great deal of torque and few placed within which to shove a brick that will keep it from turning.

Filed Under: black site, chicago, chicago pd, cpd, detention, due process, homan square, police

SWAT Team Shows Up In Ferguson, Detains Reporters Live Tweeting Their Actions

from the incredible dept

We've been debating internally whether or not to cover the mess that is currently going on in Ferguson, Missouri. There has been plenty of attention paid to the protests and the failures by police there -- and we frequently cover problems with police, as well as the militarization of police, which was absolutely on display in Ferguson (if you've been under a rock, police killed an unarmed teenager there last week, leading to protests over the past few days -- and the police have been handling the situation... poorly, to say the least). However, the situation was changing so rapidly, it wasn't entirely clear what to cover. The pictures from Ferguson of a very militarized police force were disturbing, and we've been thinking about writing something on that (and we may still). However, this evening, things got even more ridiculous, as not only did the SWAT team show up, but it then arrested two of the reporters who had been covering the events: Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post and Ryan Reilly of the Huffington Post. Both had been vital in getting out the story of what was happening on the street.

Here are a few of their tweets (prior to being arrested):

I counted 70+ SWAT officers. Guns trained on crowds. Insanity. pic.twitter.com/stev2G6v4b

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 13, 2014

Overkill in #Ferguson. Officer won't answer my question about why this is needed. pic.twitter.com/iSPsP1Rxa1

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 13, 2014

This exchange-> RT @AntonioFrench: State Senator asks the #Ferguson police chief if she's going to be gassed again. https://t.co/bXTjTbc7kM

— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) August 13, 2014

And then, soon after those and other tweets, another reporter, Jon Swaine from the Guardian, reported that he saw two reporters detained by police in a McDonalds:

Two reporters just cuffed and put in cop can outside Ferguson McDonald's where @WesleyLowery said he and @ryanjreilly were working

— Jon Swaine (@jonswaine) August 13, 2014

Lowery and Reilly each had live tweeted the police entering the McDonald's, followed by a long silence from their accounts:

Police come into McD where me and @ryanjreilly working. Try to kick everyone out.

— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) August 13, 2014

SWAT just invade McDonald's where I'm working/recharging. Asked for ID when I took photo. pic.twitter.com/FOIsMnBwHy

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 13, 2014

A fourth reporter on the scene, Matt Pearce of the LA Times, contacted the police chief about the situation, who was apparently surprised at the turn of events and said he'd order them released:

I just called Ferguson police chief to ask about @WesleyLowery and @ryanjreilly, told him what I knew. His response: "Oh, God."

— Matt Pearce (@mattdpearce) August 14, 2014

I just talked to the Ferguson chief again about Wes and Ryan. "I told them to release them," he said of the riot command.

— Matt Pearce (@mattdpearce) August 14, 2014

Ferguson chief tells me @WesleyLowery and @ryanjreilly's arresters were "probably somebody who didn't know better."

— Matt Pearce (@mattdpearce) August 14, 2014

Soon after, both Lowery and Reilly tweeted about their experiences, which were not exactly pleasant.

Officers slammed me into a fountain soda machine because I was confused about which door they were asking me to walk out of

— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) August 14, 2014

Detained, booked, given answers to no questions. Then just let out

— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) August 14, 2014

Also Ryan Reilly of Huff Po. Assaulted and arrested

— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) August 14, 2014

@ryanjreilly and @wesleyLowery have been arrested for "not packing their bags quick enough" at McD's #Ferguson

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 14, 2014

Unfortunately my last Vine featuring the officer who assaulted me was deleted when other my phone died.

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 14, 2014

I'm sure that we'll have more on this whole thing, but as GideonsTrumpet notes, Lowery and Reilly were technically detained, not arrested, "which is far more insidious" because there's no accountability. No charges to challenge. Nothing. It's just a way to silence the press who were diligently getting the word out there on what they were doing.

There are all sorts of very questionable activities going on in Ferguson, including intimidation and threats against the protestors exercising their right to assembly and free speech. Detaining reporters in the middle of that is just the latest in a long string of "fuck your constitutional rights" by the (very heavily militarized) police down there.

Filed Under: arrests, assembly, detention, ferguson, free speech, freedom of the press, journalism, michael brown, police, protests, ryan reilly, swat teams, wesley lowery
Companies: huffington post, washington post

UK Court Rules Miranda Detention At Heathrow Airport Was Lawful, But Questions Remain About What Was Seized

from the journalism-equals-terrorism dept

A UK Court has ruled that the nine-hour detention of Glenn Greenwald's partner David Miranda, and the seizure of his electronic equipment, was lawful and proportionate, and did not breach freedom of expression rights in Europe:

Three high court judges have dismissed a challenge that David Miranda, the partner of the former Guardian journalist, Glenn Greenwald, was unlawfully detained under counter-terrorism powers for nine hours at Heathrow airport last August.

The judges accept that the stop and seizure of computer material was "an indirect interference with press freedom" but says this was justified by legitimate and "very pressing" interests of national security.

The three judges, Lord Justice Laws, with Mr Justice Ouseley and Mr Justice Openshaw, conclude that Miranda's detention at Heathrow under schedule 7 of the Terrorism 2000 Act was lawful, proportionate and did not breach the European human rights protections of freedom of expression.

Reading the full judgment (pdf), it's clear that the judges believed that national security outweighed the issues of press freedom, which the judges acknowledged. As well as proportionality, the other key question the judges had to address was whether schedule 7 of the UK Terrorism 2000 Act actually applied in this situation. It might seem surprising that they decided that it did, since Miranda was carrying documents for the purpose of journalism -- hardly what most people regard as terrorism. But the judges came to this conclusion because of the very broad framing of the UK's Terrorism 2000 Act, which says:

(1) In this Act 'terrorism' means the use or threat of action where --

(a) the action falls within subsection (2),

(b) the use or threat is designed to influence the government or an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and

(c) the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause.

Subsection (2) includes:

(c) endangers a person's life, other than that of the person committing the action,

(d) creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public

The court seems to have been persuaded by the UK government's statements that the material carried by Miranda could put lives at risk if disseminated, even though the documents were encrypted "very heavily". No evidence was offered that Miranda had leaked anything to anyone -- unlike GCHQ, say, which had allowed its top secret materials to be seen by many individuals in the US, one of whom was Edward Snowden.

Speaking of encryption, there's a mystery here. Throughout the judgment, there is a reference to "approximately 58,000 highly classified UK intelligence documents". This figure comes from Oliver Robbins, Deputy National Security Adviser for Intelligence, Security and Resilience in the UK government's Cabinet Office, who stated that:

the encrypted data contained in the external hard drive taken from the claimant contains approximately 58,000 highly classified UK intelligence documents. Many are classified SECRET or TOP SECRET. Mr Robbins states that release or compromise of such data would be likely to cause very great damage to security interests and possible loss of life.

The question is: how did he know there were 58,000 GCHQ documents if the hard drive was encrypted? Miranda is quoted in the judgment as saying he was "unable to open it himself": did GCHQ manage to break the encryption, perhaps with some help from its friends at the NSA? Or did it already know what Snowden had copied, and assumed all those documents were on the hard drive? Or perhaps it just made up those figures; some clarification from Glenn Greenwald would be welcome here.

Meanwhile, we're left with an awful result for freedom of the press in the UK. Miranda's lawyers have said that they have applied for permission to take the case to the Court of Appeal:

Despite recognising that the proper functioning of a modern participatory democracy requires that the media be free, active, professional and enquiring, this judgment leaves little room for responsible investigative journalism which touches on national security issues. Journalism is currently at risk of being conflated with terrorism. Therefore, our client has no option but to appeal. In the meantime, whilst the courts consider our appeal, we understand that journalists are making alternative travel plans to safeguard their material, sources and confidential working systems when they have to travel via the UK. The Government should be very concerned about this and the message it sends internationally.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: david miranda, detention, ed snowden, glenn greenwald, heathrow, schedule 7, uk

Homeland Security Is An Embarassment With The Way It Treats US Citizens At The Border

from the this-needs-to-stop dept

A few months back, we wrote about the horrific treatment by Homeland Security's Customs and Border Patrol agents of On the Media producer Sarah Abdurrahman and her friends and family at the border. They were all US citizens and yet were detained for many hours for no reason, had their electronics seized and were generally treated terribly. Homeland Security has refused to explain why it stopped them -- though, the obvious answer is that they were Muslim. There is now a similar story from Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, the Emmy-nominated producer and host of Huffpost Live (full disclosure: he once had me on his show), discussing how he gets detained every time he returns to the country. This time, he was just coming back from the World Economic Forum at Davos, and he was given a document with a big X over his face and sent to a "special" line: As he notes, the room was... full of "brown" people:

At the door, an Egyptian-American woman greeted me, "Al Salaam Aleykum," she said. I reluctantly responded "Wa Aleykum Al Salam," though I was hardly feeling at peace. The room was filled with rows of seats and several DHS officers with colorful folders (red, yellow, green, blue) lined up in front of them with passports and travel documents. The juxtaposition of the colorful folders with the rows of mostly brown people filling the seats was suspect in itself.

"Omar Mubarak... Juan Diaz... Sayed Hussain," the officers called us one by one.

I couldn't help but feel as though JFK itself was a bit racist.

And, just as Sarah and her family and friends discovered, despite being US citizens, DHS treats them all like criminals:

After a 14-hour trip, I wanted to stretch my legs. So I stood up, anxious to find myself back in the room, especially after having written to the DHS. "Take a seat," the officer at the door sternly said to me. I told him I wanted to stretch my legs after the long flight. He told me I wasn't allowed to stand up. You are also not allowed to use your phone or electronic equipment. I was also slightly surprised to find as many children in the room as there were cameras.

"Sir, I'm a U.S. citizen who wants to stand while being detained. Am I not allowed to stand?" I said, pointing to the Asian man and Pakistani woman standing with their toddler strapped to the man's chest. Anyway, there were only two empty seats in the room with a capacity of 60.

"Sit down!" he repeated for the sixth time, and came and confiscated my phone, which I was using to try to text my coworkers who were waiting to share a car home.

Like Sarah, DHS won't provide any information as to why he was detained. And it clearly wasn't random, seeing as this is the third time in a row it has happened. While he has applied to have his name removed from the list, as we noted with the lawsuit involving Rahinah Ibrahim, DHS seems to have no interest in correcting its mistakes until forced to do so.

Frankly, this is disgusting. It's sickening that we are treating American citizens this way as they attempt to return home. Homeland Security and the US government seem to have dropped all pretense of freedom if you happen to be brown, Muslim or have an Arabic name (and just imagine those who hit on all three). This is not what this country is supposed to stand for -- and the fact that we now have two very similar stories from prominent journalists, and DHS continues to respond by saying absolutely nothing, is even more disgusting. With On the Media, they've been trying to pressure Congress to investigate the matter, but to date, no one in Congress seems to want to take on this issue, which is a real shame.

Filed Under: ahmed shihab-eldin, customs and border patrol, detention, homeland security, profiling, sarah abdurrahman, us citizens

Rep. Peter King's Office Suggests NPR Producer Lied About Being Detained At Border By DHS

from the gotcha-moment dept

We've written a few times now about how a producer for On the Media, Sarah Abdurrahman and many of her friends and family (all of whom are American citizens), were detained by US customs and border patrol (CBP) officials at the US Canadian border for many hours with no explanation. Their treatment was horrific, and worse, no one at DHS seems to have any interest in explaining what happened or why. On the Media then created a cool crowdsourcing tool asking people to call their Congressional representatives to try to get answers.

The latest report involves some of the people who have called and what sort of response they got back. Not surprisingly, so far, not much has come of the effort, as no one in Congress seems particularly interested. However, I did want to call out one particular interaction, involving Rep. Pete King's "new media guy" who a caller reached. The caller, Philip Elmer-Dewitt, explained Sarah's story, and King's staff apparently got confrontational. According to the caller:

And he said:

"Why should I believe this just because someone reported it?"

And I kinda got my back up and said:

"So, are you calling the NPR producer a liar?"

And he said:

"Oh! So you got your 'gotcha moment' now!"

And he was a little hostile, so I backed off a bit and said:

"No, it's a journalistic experiment. We're trying to elicit information. We're trying to learn what the policy is."

But, basically his answer was that Sarah should call her representative and that's all there was to it.

Of course, it's worth remembering that Rep. Pete King famously was very supportive of IRA terrorists, but now argues that Ed Snowden and Glenn Greenwald are "traitors" and even that Greenwald should be prosecuted (based on completely false claims that King appears to have made up himself). He's also claimed that calling the NSA's activities "snooping" or "spying" amounts to slander. Now, apparently, his staff are getting confrontational with constituents asking rather basic questions about how DHS is treating American citizens at the border. Makes you wonder whom Rep. Peter King actually thinks he's representing.

Filed Under: cbp, customs and border patrol, detention, dhs, journalism, oversight, peter king, sarah abdurrahman