Canadian And American Politicians Use Ottawa Shootings As Excuses To Demand More Surveillance, Greater Policing Powers

from the more-arrests dept

As you may have heard, an apparently mentally unstable guy shot up the Canadian Parliament earlier this week, killing a soldier, before being shot dead himself. The attack certainly raises some questions -- about dealing with mental health, about security at the Parliament and probably a few other things as well. However, police state/surveillance state apologists have seen the window to expand their own powers and are taking it. It starts with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who wasn't shy about using this one-off incident as an excuse to massively expand the surveillance and police state:

“Our laws and police powers need to be strengthened in the area of surveillance, detention and arrest,” the Prime Minister told the House of Commons. “They need to be much strengthened. I assure members that work which is already under way will be expedited.”

So, not only will they expand the police and surveillance state, but they'll do it in an "expedited" fashion as a kneejerk response to one guy shooting up the Parliament. That seems like a recipe for bad decision making and the erosion of the rights of the public.

Oh, and some other Canadian politicians are already looking for ways to use this as an excuse to attack free speech online, because obviously that's the real problem here:

There is frustration in government, and among law enforcement agencies, that the authorities can’t detain or arrest people who express sympathy for atrocities committed overseas and who may pose a threat to public safety, one Conservative MP said. “Do we need new offences? If so which?”

Sources suggest the government is likely to bring in new hate speech legislation that would make it illegal to claim terrorist acts are justified online.

Down here in the US, at least it's not the President saying this kind of crap, just well-known terrorist appeaser Rep. Peter King who has declared that the Ottawa shootings mean that the US needs to start spying on all the Muslims to find out which ones are radicalized. I wonder how King would react to someone saying that, based on that, we should also spy on "all the Irish to find out which ones are radicalized." Or, you know, perhaps he wouldn't like that so much, seeing as he has a rather long history supporting Irish terrorists, and such surveillance might turn up something he wouldn't like.

King, by the way, also attacks the "morons" at the NY Times and the ACLU for daring to push back against the NYPD's program of spying on Muslims. That now disbanded program, by the way, cost a ton and generated exactly zero leads. And yet, suddenly King thinks bringing it back is the answer?

This, unfortunately, is the ridiculous cycle of kneejerk defenders of the police and surveillance state. Privileged folks, in power, who use any excuse whatsoever to push for ever increasing power, and ever fewer rights by the public. It's a culture of control, paranoia and fear. These people aren't leaders, they're cowards in leadership positions.

Filed Under: canada, ottawa, peter king, police, police state, shootings, stephen harper, surveillance, surveillance state

Pulitzers Make Rep. Peter King Mad

from the he-never-got-a-pulitzer-for-appeasing... dept

Rep. Peter King has made it clear that he will stop at nothing to attack anyone who thinks Ed Snowden did something useful. He was one of the first to call for the reporters who revealed the NSA's surveillance to be prosecuted and has no qualms about lying to get his way. He's even gone so far as to argue that anyone who claims the NSA is "spying" or "snooping" is committing slander.

His main beef is his supposed belief that Snowden and anyone reporting on the facts he revealed are somehow "appeasing" terrorists. Of course, that's quite ironic, given King's history as a major terrorist appeaser in supporting the IRA decades ago, even as they were blowing up buildings that resulted in death and injury to many.

However, it's long been clear that King has no self-awareness and no understanding of his own hypocrisy. Within minutes of the Pulitzers announcing that one of its prizes was being given to the publications that reported on the Ed Snowden documents, King angrily tweeted his disgust:

Awarding the Pulitzer to Snowden enablers is a disgrace

— Rep. Pete King (@RepPeteKing) April 14, 2014

Notice that King refers to two respected news publications and countless journalists as "enablers" rather than journalists. There's only one person who's a disgrace in this situation and it's Rep. Peter King. Someone might want to send him a copy of the First Amendment, and its parts about freedom of the press. King seems to have forgotten his oath to uphold that part of the Constitution.

Filed Under: appeasers, ed snowden, first amendment, journalism, peter king, pulitzers, terrorism

Rand Paul Files Lawsuit Against The NSA While Peter King Questions His Party's Loyalty To The Surveillance State

from the NSA-swiftly-shooting-up-'America's-favorite-defendant'-chart dept

Shortly after the first Snowden leak back in June of last year, Sen. Rand Paul threatened to file a class action lawsuit against the government for its surveillance of American citizens. This move, while interesting, seemed to be less useful than actually trying to reform the NSA using the legislative process. Nonetheless, Paul was apparently serious and has officially filed his lawsuit in the DC federal court, naming President Obama, NSA head Keith Alexander, ODNI Director James Clapper and FBI Director James Comey as defendants.

“There’s a huge and growing swell of protest in this country of people who are outraged that their records are being taken without suspicion, without a judge’s warrant and without individualization,” Paul said at a news conference outside the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia…

“I’m not against the NSA, I’m not against spying, I’m not against looking at phone records,” Paul said. “I just want you to go to a judge, have an individual’s name and [get] a warrant. That’s what the Fourth Amendment says.”

It seems like a simple enough requirement. Targeted warrants have long been used for investigations, and there's no reason to believe they simply don't work anymore. The nation's investigative and security agencies have just become accustomed to circumventing this aspect of the Fourth Amendment.

Rand Paul and an untold number of others will be represented by Ken Cuccinelli, former Virginia attorney general, who explains why Paul's lawsuit is different than the dozens of others that have been filed in the wake of Snowden's leaks.

“This case is, first of all, the only case that is strictly challenging the Fourth Amendment elements of the telephone metadata gathering,” Cuccinelli said. “Second of all, this will be certified later in the case as a class action, on behalf of all Americans. The other cases thus far are on behalf of individual plaintiffs … that does not provide relief for every American using telephones. This case will.”

This filing has prompted angry comments (of course) from terrorist appeaser (and current Congressman) Peter King ([sigh] of course.)

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) expressed anger Wednesday that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is slated to file a lawsuit against President Obama and other officials over National Security Agency surveillance…

“I think that has really hurt the country,” King said of the leaks on MSNBC. “That is why I am so angry that Rand Paul is bringing this lawsuit today.”

King went on to question whether his party should have Snowden sympathizers in its ranks.

“And let's just say as Republicans ... do we really want people in our party somehow saying they don’t know whether he is a patriot or not? ... Who actually put him in the same classification as the director of national intelligence?”

These questions presumably received no answer other than a saddened headshake from King himself. It looks as though there's only one way to be a Republican these days, and that's to be in total servitude to the surveillance state. Even questioning King's assertion that Snowden is a traitor is bad for America the Republican party King's normally boyishly exuberant outlook on life the current legislative majority, as envisioned by pro bono NSA flack, Peter King.

Filed Under: james clapper, james comey, keith alexander, nsa, odni, peter king, rand paul

Peter King Hates Your Civil Liberties; Flips Out About His Own Party Rejecting Unconstitutional Spying On Americans

from the is-this-guy-for-real? dept

If you asked Hollywood to come up with an extreme caricature of a crazed hawkish anti-civil liberties politician with a tenuous grasp on the facts, I don't think even they would come up with someone quite as crazy as Rep. Peter King. Rep. King sees terrorist threats absolutely everywhere -- so long as he believes they're coming from brown people. When it comes to IRA terrorists, he's a big supporter. But the brown kind? Well, to him, they require Americans to give up all civil liberties -- and dare any politicians point to the 4th Amendment? Well, apparently they're unfit for office.

So you have to imagine the sort of brain explosion he must have gone through on Friday, when his own damn party declared the NSA's activities unconstitutional, and demanded that they be stopped -- once again highlighting that King and his colleague Rep. Mike Rogers are on the fringe of the Republican Party: extremists who don't give a shit about the rights of Americans.

And, indeed, upon finding out that his own party actually respects the rights of Americans, King threw a verbal shit-fit, claiming that such respect for the American public is the equivalent of "signing our own death warrant as a party."

“We’re going to make the Democrats and Barack Obama the party of national security,” he said. “It’s signing our own death warrant as a party.”

That seems... unlikely on multiple levels of course. Study after study after study has shown that a very large percentage of the public is quite concerned about NSA overreach. They're less and less concerned about terrorist attacks, since about all that seems to keep happening is the FBI foiling its own plots. Similarly, while a growing number of liberals are supportive of the government wiping out civil liberties, that seems to be solely because "their guy" is in charge.

I'm honestly baffled as to King's play here. It's long been rumored that he's going to run for President in 2016. Does he honestly think that "fear the brown people" campaign is going to attract very many votes? What happened last week shows, again, that King is a fringe nutball, even within his own party.

Filed Under: civil liberties, nsa, peter king, republicans, rnc, surveillance

NSA Reform Reactions: Peter King Sick Of 'ACLU Types' While Mike Rogers Calls Plan 'Unworkable'

from the better-your-civil-liberties-violated-than-your-intelligence-agency-slightly-brui dept

Obama's will-this-do NSA reform plan left critics with plenty to say, even if it did manage to exceed expectations which were set at world-record-attempt-in-limbo height. The NSA's supporters, on the other hand, had plenty to say about it, mainly because it seemingly justified their pro-surveillance state position.

Rep. Peter King, who has called Ed Snowden a "terrorist appeaser," declared Rand Paul unfit to hold office and insinuated many Congress members may be talking to terrorists (and that's just this month!) took to the airwaves to voice his opinion on Obama's speech. As far as King can see, this whole lot of nothing was just what the nation needed.

"It was better than I expected it to be," said Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee who attended the White House announcement and a staunch defender of the NSA. "Basically the system stays intact, even on the metadata."

The only caveat King offered was that some of the specifics seemed a little arbitrary.

"I wouldn't have put any of these reforms in place, but having said that, I think they are the minimum of what he had to do, especially considering his base and where he's coming from," King said, pointing to the limits on tracing secondary and tertiary phone numbers. "I don't know what the constitutional or statutory reason for that is, why two is safer than three, but again, I think that was a way to calm down the ACLU types. That just seemed to me like a cosmetic compromise."

Those pesky "ACLU types" and their obsession with civil liberties and privacy. Just imagine the robust surveillance state we could have if we'd just rid ourselves of the few entities working day in and day out to preserve our Constitutional rights!

But he's right. The "hop" limitation isn't built on laws or statutes. It's an arbitrary number that projects a certain amount of visible restraint on the NSA's behalf. It could hop all it wanted to and likely get away with it, give or take a Snowden. In fact, the ODNI's latest batch of court orders shows that the NSA had already voluntarily dropped from four (or more) hops down to three as of 2010.

In addition, the Court understands from the Declaration of Lieutenant General Keith B. Alexander, Director of NSA (Ex. A to the Report of the United States filed in docket number BR on August 17,2009) that NSA has made a number of technical modifications that will prohibit a) from inadvertently accessing the BR metadata in [xxxxxxx]; b) from querying the BR metadata in [xxxxxxx] with non-RAS-approved identifiers; and c) from going beyond three "hops" from an identifier used to query the BR metadata in [xxxxxxx].

There was no "constitutional or statutory reason" for this reduction either. It was most likely a good faith effort to get back on Judge Walton's good side after he halted the 215 collections for "systemic abuse" that had occurred since the inception of the program. Likewise, Obama's choice to dial it back another hop is simply there to show that the program is indeed being "altered," however slightly. But we're back to trusting that the NSA is actually doing what it says it does and following instructions from the FISA court and the executive branch and limiting its contact chaining to the stated number of hops.

Mike Rogers, on the other hand, wasn't quite as gracious about Obama's NSA Reform Lite. After speculating wildly that Snowden is a Russian spy and simply incapable of right-clicking classified documents and saving them to USB drives without outside help, Rogers went on to do two things, both seemingly diametrically opposed. First off, he released this statement with Dianne Feinstein in support of the president's speech.

“Today President Obama gave a strong speech in defense of the need to collect and use intelligence in order to protect the nation and to prevent terrorist attacks around the world. We strongly agree with his comments in support and praise of the professionals in our intelligence community who do this work while upholding the civil liberties and privacy rights of all Americans."

Then he went on TV and furrowed his brow.

On CNN's "State of the Union," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (Mich.) expressed concern that the president's plan to weigh privacy issues and the government's role in collecting telephone metadata has "interjected a level of uncertainty and is having a whole bunch of us scratch our heads."

Hmm. When the only good reform is no reform, even minor reforms become majorly confusing. I'm sure Rogers is perplexed as to why his incessant, often nonsensical defense of the NSA has failed to end the "debate." I'm sure the president is also perplexed, having received a public statement from Rogers that literally said "great speech, Chief!" only to have every sentiment in it stripped away by the Congressman on live TV. (Or not. Politics and such.)

The furrow in Rogers' brow must have been deep enough to cut off oxygen to his brain, because he followed up his "concern" with this melange of surveillance tropes and baseless claims.

Rogers said the president's proposals represent big changes that could jeopardize efforts to keep the nation safe from attack.

He said that parts of the president's proposal are "unworkable" and questioned the president's call to look at whether the government or private sector should handle the bulk of the intelligence gathering.

The program has stopped hundreds of thousands of wasted FBI man hours chasing leads down rabbit holes, he said.

He argued that the program fills the gap "that we know we missed on the 9-11 attacks" and allows intelligence officials to dig more deeply into the details of communications.

"I just think we don't want to go to pre-9-11 because we haven't had an attack," he said.

There you have it. Not much changed for the NSA, program-wise, and yet we're now terrorist fodder. Rogers says Obama handed down "big changes," something absolutely no one (outside the NSA) agrees is true. It's mostly cosmetic changes and empty gestures that leave nearly every NSA program completely unscathed and it was all prefaced by a multi-paragraph love note to the intelligence community.

Since the leaks began, Rogers has devolved into a caricature -- a broadly-drawn surveillance statist that spouts talking points and sees terrorists lurking behind every civil liberty. Rogers maintains his hardline on protecting the NSA's status quo even when other intelligence cheerleaders are having a hard time finding much to complain about in Obama's "comprehensive" NSA "reform" "effort." He is no longer relevant to the debate. The only problem is his position at the head of the House Intelligence Committee, a platform that guarantees he will always be asked his opinion -- and from which he can undermine further reform efforts and stymie his fellow representatives' attempts at oversight.

Filed Under: mike rogers, nsa, peter king, reforms

Fearmonger Extraordinaire Rep. Peter King Accuses Sen. Rand Paul Of 'Fearmongering,' Says He Doesn't Deserve To Be A Senator

from the crazy-is-as-crazy-does dept

Today's daily dose of insanity from Rep. Peter King continues where he's left off before. Having already called Senator Rand Paul "a disgrace" for suggesting that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper ought to be prosecuted for lying to Congress, King decided to double down against Paul on Monday saying both that Paul doesn't deserve to be a Senator and accusing Paul of "fearmongering."

On being a Senator, King flat out said:

He doesn’t deserve to be in the United States Senate for spreading that type of misperception and absolute lies, to be honest with you.”

We'll remember that line, because we'll bring it up again in a bit.

In the meantime, sometimes I wonder if King has absolutely no self-awareness at all. Because immediately after he accuses Paul of fearmongering -- saying of Paul, "he's playing on some sort of... fearmongering" -- King immediately insists that if we did what Paul wanted (reining in the NSA), that it would allow terrorists to kill thousands of people. I'm not kidding. I'm sorry, but arguing for greater protections of privacy isn't fearmongering. Claiming that violating all our privacy to stop thousands of people from getting killed? That is fearmongering. King also accused Paul of being "a part of that hate America crowd." Nice of King to stoop so low that he's bordering on idiot McCarthyism. He also lies (remember that statement above?) in claiming that there is no evidence that the NSA abused its powers:

[Rand Paul is] trying to create this paranoia among Americans that the NSA is spying on everyone, the fact is he has not been able to cite one abuse by the NSA.

Except, of course, there have been plenty of abuses. Even the NSA admits it. King is either lying or completely uninformed. Oh, and it's not like he hasn't lied in the past. Remember, he was the Rep. who flat out lied about Glenn Greenwald to say that he should be prosecuted for threatening to reveal names of CIA agents (something Greenwald has never done).

So, uh, if fearmongering and lying mean you don't deserve to be in Congress, shouldn't fearmongering, lying Peter King step down? And, we didn't even need to bring up the fact that King used to support terrorists himself -- the white Irish kind, which he's apparently supportive of, rather than the brown Muslim kind that he dislikes. Oops.

King is apparently preparing to run for President in 2016 on what must be the "fuck the Constitution" platform. In just the past few months, he's openly mocked both the 1st and 4th Amendments. Beyond fearmongering and lying to the public, I'd argue that both of those are pretty good reasons why someone doesn't deserve to be in Congress, let alone be elected President.

Filed Under: nsa, peter king, rand paul, surveillance

Rep. Peter King Says NSA Should Spy On Congress, Because They Might Be Talking To Al Qaeda

from the or-the-IRA? dept

Every day, Rep. Peter King seems more and more like a TV villain politician. He's so... over the top in his crazy surveillance state opinions that it's almost difficult to believe he's real. Just take a stroll through his previous statements, in which he's attacked the NY Times for supporting Ed Snowden, whom he calls both a "traitor" and a "terrorist appeaser." He's said that it's a "disgrace" that anyone might call out the fact that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied to Congress. He's argued that it's "slander" to call the NSA's activities "spying." And he's argued that Glenn Greenwald should be arrested and prosecuted for reporting on Snowden's leaks.

His latest, it seems, is in response to Senator Bernie Sanders' simple question to the NSA, about whether or not it was spying on Congress (I'll note that Sanders appears to use "spying" in the manner in which King has previously insisted was "slander"). King was asked about Sanders' question, and argued that the NSA should be spying on Congress because they might be "talking to an al-Qaeda leader."

Specifically, after a very leading question from the Fox News reporter, King says:

I think members of Congress should be treated the same as everyone else. If a member of Congress is talking to an Al Qaeda leader in Iraq or Afghanistan, why should that member of Congress be any different from any person on the street?

While that might sound ridiculous at first, I guess if any member of Congress knows about talking to terrorist leaders, it would be Rep. Peter King. As we've pointed out multiple times, King was a very big supporter of a known terrorist group, the IRA, back in the 80s, supporting the group that was known for bombing a shopping center, killing six and injuring 90.

King goes on with this whopper:

What they're trying to suggest is that somehow the NSA is spying on members of Congress. They're not spying on anyone.

Anyone? Really? They're clearly spying on lots and lots of people, because that's the NSA's job. King goes on to pretend, again, that metadata is no big deal since it just shows phone numbers. So, I'm curious, will Rep. Peter King release his own phone records for the last year? After all, it's no big deal. Just the phone numbers he called, the times he called and how long he was on call. Just like the info the NSA collects, and which King insists is not secret.

Filed Under: bernie sanders, congress, metadata collection, nsa, peter king, section 215, spying

Terrorist Appeaser Peter King Blasts NY Times For Supporting 'Terrorist Appeaser' And 'Traitor' Ed Snowden

from the King-officially-out-of-stuff-to-add-to-the-'debate' dept

As we noted here earlier, the New York Times editorial board posted a piece in support of granting clemency to Ed Snowden. No sooner had the print dried than the usual suspects began shouting into the nearest open mic about how evil Snowden is. Rep. Peter King, presumably acting on behalf of his constituents, took to Fox News' airwaves to blast the New York Times for supporting the NSA whistleblower.

“Edward Snowden is either a traitor, or a defector, or both, and The New York Times is an accomplice,” King said in an appearance on Fox News. “They’re a disgrace. Their editors are a disgrace, and I wish they cared more about America than they did about the rights of terrorists’ appeasers.”

Well, if anyone has the background to be considered an expert on appeasing terrorists, it's Peter King. Of course, he delivered these remarks without any intended irony, but his intentions hardly matter given his past.

Here's a refresher.

Peter King worries about terrorists... but only if they're Muslim. He's perfectly fine with white Irish terrorists, seeing as he went on record during the 80s stating his support for the IRA, which notably bombed a shopping center during the Christmas season, killing six and injuring 90. He was very concerned about their civil rights. Those were his kind of terrorists. These ones, not so much.

King doesn't mind appeasing terrorists if they're white and Irish, but woe be unto those that cross his beloved intelligence agencies. King cares so much about America that he's willing to help turn it into a surveillance state. He'll continue to aid and abet the NSA in its overreach, civil liberties be damned. Why? Because the wrong kind of terrorists might otherwise find an opening to attack.

Realistically, the odds of being killed in a terrorist attack in the US are far lower than they are in other nations, even without the NSA compiling mountains of irrelevant data. It's even safer here than it is in the UK where King's favorite terrorists did their damage.

But that's not all King had to say. For seemingly the hundredth time, he repeated lies about the NSA's integrity.

“No one has found any violations [by the NSA} ... no phone calls are being listened to, no emails are being read,” he said, adding that close monitoring only applies to a handful of individuals following an “exhaustive” court process.

Hahahahahaha!!!

Oh, wait. He's serious. I wonder who this "no one" is who found all of these violations. In some cases, "no one" is the agency itself, which admitted to so many violations the "exhaustive" court temporarily yanked its metadata-hoovering privileges. Another "no one" caught analysts tracking love interests and listening in on military members' "pillow talk" during their phone conversations with loved ones back home. Oh, and then there was that one time when a certain "no one" dropped thousands of pages of documents into the hands of journalistic entities that offered proof that the NSA had done everything from scoop up location data (which it previously swore it never did) to intercept hardware in order to install backdoors and exploits. It also helped itself to pre-encryption content by siphoning data from overseas fiber cables, using the "not in the US" excuse to justify grabbing US citizens' data and communications. No abuse here, no sir. Just tons of extra-judicial exploration of the "edges of the box."

The NSA's defenders seem to have reached the limits of their imaginations. Every subsequent revelation makes it that much harder to defend the agency. At this point, many defenders are verging on self-parody. Many others (Michael Hayden, Peter King, Mike Rogers) have long since left that tipping point behind.

Honestly, who truly believes Peter King cares about America more than those who have exposed the treacherous actions of an agency whose oversight has failed to hold it accountable for years? Americans still have ideals, even if their supposed representatives don't. King, who spent years stumping for terrorists when not applying layer after layer of black paint to his prized pot now apparently envies the blackness of his imaginary foes' kettles.

There are many ways to care for America, most of which involve challenging the powers that be. King is one of those "powers," and his love of his country is the most insincere of all. His "love" asks for subservience from its countrymen, rather than accountability from its leaders. These leaders can make our country stronger, but that means they have to stop crippling their constituents and diluting their rights. We need courage, not bombastic flag-waving from a man so blinded by irrational hate he can't even see his own hypocrisy.

Filed Under: ed snowden, peter king, terrorist appeaser

Rep. Peter King Says It's A Disgrace To Call Out James Clapper For Lying To Congress

from the interesting-moral-barometer dept

Rep. Peter King's willingness to continually go to bat for the surveillance state, no matter how ridiculous he looks, is quite impressive. As you recall, King used to be a major terrorist supporter -- when those terrorists were his friends in the IRA -- but now acts as if the government should toss out the Constitution if it means some minor advantage in the war against terrorists from a different part of the world with slightly darker skin. King has argued that reporters ought to be prosecuted for reporting on government leaks, even if those leaks revealed unconstitutional programs. He flat out lied about Glenn Greenwald, and then argued that Greenwald should be arrested. He's claimed that calling the NSA's snooping and spying "snooping" and "spying" is a form of slander.

And now, it appears he's directly attacking others in Congress who see the world a bit differently. We pointed out that some in Congress are finally getting much more aggressive in calling for action of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lying to Congress. Recently, Senator Rand Paul made a claim that is perfectly valid: that James Clapper's lying to Congress was more damaging than anything Ed Snowden did.

“That Clapper is lying to Congress is probably more injurious to our intelligent capabilities than anything Snowden did,” Paul said on CNN. “Clapper has damaged the credibility of the entire intelligence apparatus and I’m not sure what to believe anymore when they come to Congress.”

So, how did King respond to this statement from someone in his own party? He went ballistic. He claimed that Senator Paul "disgraced his office" by calling out Clapper for lying to Congress.

"He disgraced his office and he owes Gen. Clapper an apology immediately."

Huh? Clapper himself has flat out admitted that he lied. Pete King appears to be telling everyone that it's okay to lie to Congress. Yes, the same guy who wants to prosecute journalists.

In all of this, I think there are a few people who have "disgraced his office," but Rand Paul is not one of them.

Filed Under: disgrace, james clapper, lying, nsa, nsa surveillance, peter king, rand paul

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