One of the greatest problems in talking about the police state is that all such discussion of the subject is hampered by the lack of a clear-cut definition. Given the public’s own ignorance of the true nature and function of a police state, story after story after story of intolerable levels of official oppression, secret illegal surveillance, and increasingly sophisticated technology for tracking, apprehending, incapacitating and even killing dissenters can be dismissed because these stories are reported one at a time, in a contextless and therefore meaningless way that invites the interpretation that these stories are only warnings of what is to come instead of sign posts of a reality that is already here.

Those who seek to sow discord amongst the potential opposition to the growing control of the state over every aspect of the public’s lives can confuse and distract those opponents by engaging them in endless dialogues fretting about what a police state is, and whether our society is becoming one. Distracted in this way, the public can be tricked into believing that the police state is some imaginary future possibility, one that will only be realized when menacing troops in brown shirts, red arm bands and jack boots goose step people into internment camps against their will.

This is our EyeOpener Report by James Corbett, presenting the police state as a present reality rather than a future possibility, the distraction of the public by design, the need to look at the decades-long history documenting the step by step construction of our current system in order to recognize, understand and acknowledge our current police state status, and finally, the real key to dismantling our current police state.

Watch the Preview Here:

Watch the Full Video Report Here:

*The Transcript for this video is available at Corbett Report: Click Here

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Now it is confirmed and official: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirms that it intends to develop guidelines for how officials go about collecting intelligence from the sites. Yes. The Department of Homeland Security is not going to take a second seat to the FBI or NSA. It is flexing its muscles. It is stomping its feet, and it is determined to get its way. It is all set and ready to create its own policies and operations for monitoring social network media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook:

Caryn Wagner, undersecretary of the DHS, told an audience Monday at the National Symposium on Homeland Security and Defense in Colorado Springs that the agency began to draw up guidelines for monitoring social networking sites after the sites were heavily used during government uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa this year.

According to an Associated Press report Tuesday, federal agents are still mulling over how to best pull intelligence from social media sites and determine whether it is valid or Web chatter.”We’re still trying to figure out how you use things like Twitter as a source,” said Wagner, according to the AP report. “How do you establish trends and how do you then capture that in an intelligence product?”

…

Oh, let’s add this idiotic comment by Dan Olds, an analyst with the Gabriel Consulting Group as well:

“Some users might be disturbed, but what would they expect?” Olds asked. “The info they post online is essentially in the public domain in most cases and it’s easy to understand why the government would look for any edge they can find vs. terrorists.”

…

Please, someone contact this ‘yoyo’ and ask him: Since when does the government distinguish between public domain, private and those that fall in the middle? Is he high on something? Or maybe shows signs of an onset of dementia? Hello?

Let’s see: NSA has been tapping all our communications-phone, e-mail, fax …for almost a decade now with no warrants, no legal rights, in fact by directly challenging the Constitution and privacy laws. So does this dude consider the airwaves, all land lines, internet accounts and servers … all as public domain, thus totally naked and open for government grab?

Same goes for the FBI. They can sit down and type up a letter for themselves and use it as a license to grab people’s mail, GPS, even access to their homes. Does that self-granted violation right make these private properties public domain? As far as I know there is not much left that is considered private domain, and doesn’t that make this public domain issue a moot point?

Come on, I am asking you! With the NSA’s limitless spying authority on all American citizens, with the FBI’s limitless search and seizure powers, with the PATRIOT ACT, with our bodies-arses open to grab in airports (and soon on highways), what do we have  left that is considered private-personal domain?! Everything is public domain, so why even distinguish anymore?!

I think it is time to bring back the carrier pigeons and falcons. Some business-minded people should use this opportunity to make a few bucks and provide the public with an alternative to communicate privately. We’ll roll our messages, tie’em to their legs and hope our word will get to the ‘intended’ recipient privately; unread and untouched by the preying eyes of the NSA, DHS, FBI and who knows who else …

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Nick (Nicholas) Merrill joins us to recount his ‘surreal’ experience as the first American to stand up and challenge the FBI’s National Security Letters, living under FBI gag orders for the past six years, and being identified only as ‘John Doe’ in court documents. Mr. Merrill relates what made him resist the FBI order, and dicusses the unconstitutionality of these practices- government warrantless surveillance and searches, and violations of American’s liberties and privacy. He talks about the implications of the issuance of 50000 FBI national security letters per year seeking information on ordinary Americans and US businesses, our nation’s descent towards a police state, the importance of speaking out and resisting these government practices that violate our constitutional rights, our moral obligation to protect our liberties and privacy as a nation, his goals to raise public awareness on these issues, and ways to deal with them through his recently established nonprofit organization, and more!

Nick Merrill is the founder of Calyx Internet Access and the Calyx Institute. He was the first person to file a constitutional challenge against the National Security Letters statute in the USA PATRIOT Act. After receiving a National Security Letter from the FBI, he sued the FBI and DOJ and became the plaintiff in the lawsuit Doe v. Ashcroft filed on behalf of a formerly unknown ISP owner by the ACLU against the U.S. federal government. Mr. Merrill never complied with the FBI’s NSL request, and eventually – several years into the lawsuit – the FBI decided it no longer wanted the information it had demanded and dropped its demand for records. However for several years after dropping the demand, the FBI continued to prevent him from publicly speaking about the NSL, or even from being publicly identified as the recipient of the NSL. Because National Security Letters are accompanied by an open-ended, life-long gag order, Merrill was unable to be identified in court papers as the plaintiff in the case and instead was referred to as “John Doe”. In 2010, after more than 6 years, Nick Merrill was partially released from his gag order and allowed to reveal his identity, although he still cannot reveal what information the FBI sought from him.

Here is our guest Nick Merrill unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

In this urgent message delivered by ultra snail method of delivery due to restrictions placed upon our communication means (warrantless mass surveillance by our government targeting our telephone, text messages, e-mail, fax, and internet accessibility) we, American citizens, hereby urgently request that the recipients on the other side of the Atlantic and Pacific add our desperately repressed nation to their list of qualified political refugee nations and or raise their existing annual quota for US political refugees. We not only meet but surpass the United Nations 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees on the grounds of political opinion and membership and or participation in any particular social group or social activities.

We Americans, every single one of us, are treated as potential terrorists, are considered guilty with no way to prove otherwise. We all are subjected to round the clock surveillance (phone, e-mail, fax, text, internet accessibility; with internet activities soon to be monitored and restricted), and degrading physical probing-groping searches as mandatory requirements for our travel.

We United States Citizens have been deprived of expressing collective dissent even through the most peaceful means and pacifist manner. Our participation or membership in social groups or gathering that challenge illegal wars or anti humanitarian practices land us on our government’s never-defined ‘enemy & terrorist’ list, with consequences ranging from being prohibited from traveling by air, to having our homes raided and families intimidated by armed government militia, to being persecuted and thrown before a federal grand jury to face possible incarceration for our beliefs.

We now face prosecution, persecution , and even possible assassination for engaging in certain journalistic or Good Samaritan reporting of wrong-unethical-even illegal activities by those trusted with our nation’s health, wealth, and security. This situation now is being extended to those of us who may have read or disseminated information originally gathered and distributed by others. Today our whistleblowers are thrown behind bars, while our criminals who engage in robbing our taxpayers of billions of dollars, or, those who engage in torture and murder games are highly protected and handsomely awarded by our rulers.

We urge you to remember the Stasi and the suffocating repression suffered by the East Germans, and then, go ahead and multiply that by a four digit number of your choice. Any number will do, that is, as long as it has four digits. Our technology-enabled Stasis can tap and record hundreds of millions of communications. Our rulers’ mega corporate collaborators can pull the plug on hundreds of thousands of us with no recourse available or even imaginable. On top of all that, unlike those lucky East German-ers we don’t have a meager little wall to overcome, nor do we have a viable, trust-worthy, or sovereign enough neighbor nation next door to escape to.  Our frigid northern neighbor is as keen on outlaw style assassination as our ruthless rulers. As for our southern neighbor? First we’d have to make it to the other side of the border by surviving armed citizen-soldiers who can easily mistake those of us with dark hair for Mexicans to be hunted. Next, we have to survive the Mexican drug gang-police combination who may easily perceive us as competitors in their Narc-Territory. As you can see, the chances of our survival there are slim to none.

We implore you to grant us Americans ‘High Priority Political Asylum’ Status. At least consider a swapping arrangement whereby your high-level criminals, con artists, professional swindlers, and or psychotic serial torturers are sent here where they can find an agreeable working-practicing environment and unlimited government protection and rewards, and in exchange those of us in search of a reasonable degree of freedom and justice would be given asylum in your nations.

Urgently Awaiting Your Action & Assistance,

We the Freedom-Seeking Americans

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

This week we interviewed Mark Klein, the AT&T whistleblower; the interview should be posted in 3 or 4 weeks. I know you’re going to find it interesting and enlightening. Speaking of AT&T, check out our contributor Ishmael’s informative interview with Jeff Farias here.

I have a few noteworthy tidbits below. Don’t pay attention to their publication dates, since the issues, these cases and reports, are ‘timeless’ in nature.

Another Police State Government Villains & an Irate Minority Fighter Story

This week the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a privacy watchdog organization, released a comprehensive and eye-opening report on a bogus subpoena issued by a US attorney in Indiana to force Indymedia.us , an independent alternative news site to hand over all the data containing about their users who visited the site on a particular day. Not only that, consistent with other National Security Letters practices, the Justice Department issued gag order to prevent the site from speaking about the subpoena:

The report describes how, earlier this year, U.S. attorneys issued a federal grand jury subpoena to Indymedia.us administrator Kristina Clair demanding “all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us” for a particular date, potentially identifying every person who visited any news story on the Indymedia site. As the report explains, this overbroad demand for internet records not only violated federal privacy law but also violated Clair’s First Amendment rights, by ordering her not to disclose the existence of the subpoena without a U.S. attorney’s permission.

Because Indymedia follows EFF’s Best Practices for Online Service Providers and does not keep historical IP logs, there was no information for Indymedia to hand over, and the government withdrew the subpoena. However, as the report describes, that wasn’t the end of the tale: Ms. Clair wanted EFF to be able to tell the story of the subpoena and shine a light on the government’s illegal demand, yet the subpoena ordered silence. Under pressure from EFF, the government admitted that the subpoena’s gag order had no legal basis, and ultimately chose not to go to court to try to force Ms. Clair’s silence despite earlier threats to do so.

This is another story of our government villains determined to butcher the Constitution and speed up our descent towards a police state. This is another example illustrating how government abuses are thriving and expanding in secrecy. In this case, it took an irate, a determined, and a believer in Constitutional Rights, to get up and challenge the attempted despotism. In this particular case, the despotic villains backed down. But as EFF appropriately questions:

How often does the government attempt such illegal fishing expeditions through internet data? How many online service providers have received similarly bogus demands, and handed over how much data, violating how many internet users’ privacy? How many of those subpoena recipients have been intimidated into silence by unconstitutional gag orders?

Let’s hope the number of those who choose to speak up and fight back keeps increasing. But meanwhile, in addition to sitting and wishing and hoping, let us each be one of the irate minority who keeps on fighting until we become the majority, and the villains are restrained and ruled by we the people.

The Deceitful Media Pimping Tyranny

Freedom daily had a well-presented piece by James Bovard on the US media. I get tons of links and references everyday, and usually all I can do is a quick glance. With this one I was hooked after the first paragraph, and I’m sure those of you who’ve been visiting my site for a while would know why:

Why do politicians so easily get away with telling lies? In large part, because the news media are more interested in bonding with politicians than in exposing them. Americans are encouraged to believe that the media will serve as a check and a balance on the government. Instead, the press too often volunteer as unpaid pimps, helping politicians deceive the public.

And no, it is not because he uses my favorite adjective, pimp! Keep reading the article, because Bovard goes on providing some good and highly relevant examples and cases. Here is another right-on-target remark after he presents relevant cases supporting his view:

Deceit has become ritualized in U.S. foreign policy. From 2002 onwards, the White House Iraq Group spewed out false information that the New York Times and other prominent media outlets routinely accepted without criticism or verification. After many of the assertions were later discovered to be false, the White House and much of the media treated the falsehoods as irrelevant to the legitimacy of the U.S. invasion. The lack of attention paid to political lies is itself symptomatic of the bias in favor of submitting to rulers regardless of how much people are defrauded.

…

The pursuit of respectability in Washington usually entails acquiescing to government lies. Many if not most members of the Washington press corps are government dependents. Few Washington journalists have the will to expose government lies. That would require placing one in an explicitly adversarial position to the government. It is not that the typical journalist is intentionally covering up government lies, but that his radar is not set to detect such occurrences. Lies rarely register in Washington journalists’ minds because they are usually supplicants for government information, not dogged pursuers of the truth. Raising troublesome questions will not help you get any “silver platter” stories.

And finally his conclusion, the punch line, to which I wholeheartedly subscribe:

If Americans wish to retain the remnants of their liberty, they cannot trust the media to warn them about government tyranny. In order to recognize government deceit, there is no substitute for more citizens to make more effort to find the truth for themselves.

Don’t worry about the article’s November 5 date. It’s been relevant for many years, and will be relevant for the foreseeable future. So I encourage you to go read the piece, and come back

as an even more determined and irate minority!

 The Convergence of Interests: MIC & Members of Congress

Our friend and regular Boiling Frogs Post commenter Metem kindly sent this over a year old but way under-reported and highly important report my way, assuming I’d seen it already. Well, I had not, and although not surprised by its content, I am grateful to have it and share it with you here.

This article, Congress Invested in Defense Contracts, made it to the Project Censored top 25 censored stories for 2009-2010. It is based on a report issued by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which made public the fact that more than 151 members of Congress have up to $195 million invested in major defense contractors that are earning profits from the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:

When General David Petraeus, the top US military officer in Iraq, went to Capitol Hill to brief Congress in April of 2008, he was addressing lawmakers who had a lot more than just a political stake in the Iraq occupation. Along with their colleagues in the House and Senate, the politicians who got a status report from the general and the US ambassador to Iraq had millions of dollars of their own money invested in companies doing business with the Department of Defense (DoD).

Guess which lawmaker made it to the top of the list, became number one, with the most money invested in companies with DoD contracts? Someone I am not familiar with: Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ), with $49,140,000.

But the number two man is familiar to all. I bet many of you are guessing McCain or Lieberman. Well, that’s not the case. Number two happens to be Senator John Kerry (D-Mass), with up to $38,209,020. Just in case the comas cause this to be difficult to make out, that is more than 38 million dollars, my friends.

Here are a few others who made it into the top 10: Rep. Hayes, with $37+ Million; Rep. Sensenbrenner Jr., with $7+ M; Rep. Harman, with $6 +M; Rep. Upton, with $8+M; and Sen. Rockefeller, with $2 million dollars.

And the implications:

Forty-seven members of Congress (or 9 percent of all members of the House and Senate) in 2006 were invested in companies that are primarily in the defense sector. The average share price of these corporations today is nearly twice what it was in 2004. Lawmakers’ investments in these contracting firms yielded them between $15.8 million and $62 million in income between 2004 and 2006, through dividends, capital gains, royalties and interest, the Center found.

Companies with congressional investors received more than $275.6 billion from the government in 2006. The minimum value of Congress members’ personal investments in defense contracting firms increased 5 percent from 2004 to 2006, but because lawmakers are only required to report their assets in broad ranges, the value of these investments could have risen as much as 160 percent—or even dropped 51 percent.

The above data is only the personal gain minus ‘the lobby’ gain. There is more into this:

Lawmakers aren’t just benefiting from the defense sector personally, but also politically. In the first three months of 2009, the defense sector gave nearly $2 million to candidates, party committees and political action committees, with 57 percent of that going to Democrats. In the 2008 election cycle, the sector gave $23.5 million. Rep. John Murtha (D-Penn.), House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee chairman, has collected more money from the sector than any other lawmaker since 1989 at $2.6 million. Murtha has gotten some heat—and a lot of attention—this year for his connections to now-defunct lobbying firm PMA Group, which the FBI is investigating for allegedly violating campaign finance laws. The firm’s clients were primarily defense companies that sought earmarks from Murtha’s subcommittee.

This is the sorry state of those entrusted with the oversight of our government and its practices. So who has the oversight of these overseers? Who gets to watch for these kinds of mammoth conflicts of interests, and who gets to hold the overseers who’ve been given the authority to exercise accountability accountable? Last time I checked, that was ‘we, the people.’ Now when will we, the people, start exercising these rights? When will we say ‘it is time to kick out, haul out, some a..es from the place called the United States Congress? Just asking…

I don’t know what you think of our ex President Harry Truman; as with all our presidents he too came with a mixed bag of good and bad. For our discussion here it really doesn’t matter where we stand on Truman. On the other hand, the quote provides an excellent starting point for my Part III of the Makings of a Police State: National Security Letters. I wish we could bring President Truman back to life and ask him the following question:

Mr. President, if forcing only one American to shut his mind and close his mouth means that all Americans are in peril, what happens when thousands of good American citizens are forced to shut their mouths?

I wonder what his answer would be. Perhaps something like ‘…then all Americans are in real deep trouble!’ Or, ‘…then we are all doomed!’ Or maybe, ‘…then all Americans deserve it for not rising up and grabbing our pitchforks!’

If you think I am talking in riddles and hypotheticals, you are dead wrong, and can be thankful to our media for keeping you in the dark. Here is a documented statement on the state of our liberties when it comes to the government forcing us to shut our mouth when we see and witness evil & wrongdoing:

A federal appeals court may have slapped the Federal Bureau of Investigation last year for its misuse of gag orders to prevent discussion of government investigations conducted under the authority of National Security Letters, but that hasn’t slowed the feds very much. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, despite a court’s finding that such gag orders are constitutionally suspect and should be subject to judicial review, the FBI continues to muzzle recipients of the controversial letters, preventing them from participating in public debate over the Patriot Act and the security state.

National Security Letters are powerful tools that allow federal agents to obtain information about investigation targets from third parties, such as telephone companies, financial institutions, Internet service providers, and consumer credit agencies on their own say-so, without judicial review. Some 47,000 such letters were issued in 2005 alone, according to the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (PDF). The letters don’t receive much public discussion, probably because many of the recipients are also issued gag orders, forbidding them to discuss the experience.

Okay, let me preempt you before you rush and make wrong assumptions about who the recipients of these government gag orders are, before you start envisioning the stereotyped boogie-looking-men in shalvars with long flea-infested curly dark beards:

Unable to speak out about their experiences as the subjects of National Security Letters, recipients of such letters, including businesspeople and librarians, can only stand on the sidelines while the discussion is conducted in theoretical terms.

That’s right! We are talking about good ole ordinary American citizens like librarians, small business owners, and in some cases healthcare providers. Also, the 47,000 number mentioned above is only for the year 2005. In a report published by the Bill of Rights Defense Committee an Inspector General Report delivered to Congress found that there were 143,074 NS Letters requested in two years, between 2003 and 2005. And here is another fire-raising fact from the same report:

From the 143,074 NSLs requested, there was only 1 confirmed terrorism-related conviction.

That’s right. And each NSL may demand tens of thousands of records containing private information on Americans. So please do the math by multiplying 143, 074 with let’s say 1000 to be safe, and let it sink in. Now put that number next to the ‘1’ terrorism case they had, and try to come up with a single sane reason or justification for our government going after, demanding, obtaining and then keeping these records.

Okay, back to what our President Truman considered ‘being in peril.’ Let’s get a bit up close and personal with one of the thousands of NSL recipients. This one happens to be extraordinarily brave since we have his name. Thousands of other recipients are prohibited, or intimidated into think they are, from disclosing their identity – thanks to the Gag Provision imbedded in this unconstitutional police tool called NSL, handed to our federal police by our Congress. Let’s get a bit acquainted with the brave NSL and gag order recipient, a librarian named Peter Chase, through an article published by the Baltimore Sun:

“In 2005, Mr. Chase, the director of the Plainville, Conn., public library and then-vice president of a consortium of 26 Connecticut libraries, received an FBI demand for library patron records via a National Security Letter authorized under the Patriot Act. The FBI also imposed a gag order prohibiting him from speaking to anyone about the demand – including Congress, when the Patriot Act was up for reauthorization in 2005.

Now, thanks to the American Civil Liberties Union, Mr. Chase has finally won the legal battle and has torn the Bush administration’s tape from his mouth. So he’s speaking out, and this is what he has to say: “The government was telling Congress that it didn’t use the Patriot Act against libraries and that no one’s rights had been violated. I felt that I just could not be part of this fraud being foisted on our nation.””
…

Here is what I find the most disheartening, alarming, and simply frightening point in the above story: Peter Chase is one of only three brave Americans who have actually challenged the gag order imbedded in NSLs. Meaning what? Meaning of over 200,000 people who have received these unconstitutional police letters and the accompanying gag orders, ONLY 3 have found the courage, conviction, and real patriotism to stand up and challenge this assault on their constitutional rights and those of the entire nation. If this doesn’t rattle us Americans, the inhabitants of the land of the free, then may we deserve this and the highly probable worse to come.

Less than two months after the September 11 terrorist attack, while driven by panic and hysteria, our elected representatives rushed to enact the PATRIOT ACT, which was speedily, and conveniently, drafted by the Executive Branch. This unconstitutional set of laws handed our federal police and intelligence agencies unprecedented power to secretly and arbitrarily spy into Americans’ lives without any justification, any evidence of wrongdoing, or any oversight whatsoever.

Here are a few highlights on National Security Letters (NSL):

A National Security Letter (NSL) is a letter request for information from a third party that is issued by the FBI or by other government agencies with authority to conduct national security investigations. Government agency issues the request for information without prior judicial approval. Obtaining NSL requires no probable cause or judicial oversight. They also contain a gag order preventing the recipient of the letter from disclosing that the letter was ever issued. The non-disclosure rules have helped prevent the full extent of the NSL program from becoming known, as the FBI has systematically underreported to Congress the number of letters sent. Unlike other subpoenas and warrants, no approval from the Judicial Branch is required to issue an NSL. An NSL may be issued by “the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or his designee in a position not lower than Deputy Assistant Director at Bureau headquarters or a Special Agent in Charge in a Bureau field office designated by the Director” with no checks and balances in place until after the NSL has been delivered.

An internal FBI audit found that the bureau violated the rules more than 1000 times in an audit of 10% of its national investigations between 2002 and 2007. According to the September 9, 2007 New York Times report on the FBI’s use of NSLs to obtain broader information for data mining purposes, “In many cases, the target of a national security letter whose records are being sought is not necessarily the actual subject of a terrorism investigation and may not be suspected at all. Under the USA PATRIOT Act, the F.B.I. must assert only that the records gathered through the letter are considered relevant to a terrorism investigation.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/washington/09fbi.html?_r=1 )

In April, 2008, the American Civil Liberties Union alleged that the military was using the FBI to skirt legal restrictions on domestic surveillance to obtain private records of Americans’ Internet service providers, financial institutions and telephone companies. The ACLU based its allegation on a review of more than 1,000 documents turned over to it by the Defense Department in response to a suit the rights group filed in 2007 for documents related to national security letters.
…

The fear factor and the accompanying hysteria were the initial ingredients leading to the enactment of these laws befitting dictatorships and police states. The Bush-Cheney Administration’s war-mongering and absolute power-externally and internally, doctrine, kept the Patriot Act alive and in full implementation. The media fulfilled its significant role in promoting the fear-mongering which was, and is, the necessary ingredient in hushing the critics and hooraying the architects and implementers of the Patriot Act. Then came the President of Changes, and here is what he’s been doing to not only keep these unconstitutional police powers alive, but actually bolster them even further:

Last month, in a letter from the Justice Department to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Obama administration went on record supporting the extension of key provisions of the USA Patriot Act, including the provision that gives the government the power to subpoena library records of any individual. The sections that our president is so keen to keep alive and take even further; allow roving wire taps on multiple phones, access to business records, and a never-used provision to conduct surveillance of a non-U.S. citizen who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group.
…

This same president, while an Illinois State Senator, considered the PATRIOT Act shoddy and dangerous and pledged to replace it. Well, as with all his promises of ‘change,’ he has done a hundred eighty degree change on this one, and been advocating for the continuation and expansion of this draconian police-state tool. You can read my brief piece on President Obama’s PATRIOT ACT Advocacy here.

While the federal police and intelligence agencies snoop on ordinary Americans and slap them with gag orders (forced by fear to shut their mouths), the public outrage appears to be in very short supply. Well, when you think of it, if of the known 200,000 + recipients only 3 refuse to shut their mouth, what would be a reasonable expectancy for hundreds of millions of Americans who don’t think these police-state practices affect their lives whatsoever?

How in the world did we get here? With hundreds of thousands of Americans being forced to shut their eyes, minds, and mouths, are we all in peril? In real big trouble? Doomed? And if you are like me and answer ‘yes,’ where is the outrage translated into action? Are we still sitting and waiting for a lobby and interest driven Congress to act in our behalf? Do we hope to see a President’s changes on his promised changes do yet another 180 degree change and change this? Or have we given up all hope and chosen to sit on the sidelines with our mouths shut waiting to be totally doomed?

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Last month, in a letter from the Justice Department to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Obama administration went on record supporting the extension of key provisions of the USA Patriot Act, including the provision that gives the government the power to subpoena library records of any individual.

The sections that our president is so keen to keep alive and take even further; allow roving wire taps on multiple phones, access to business records, and a never-used provision to conduct surveillance of a non-U.S. citizen who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group.

Last week the Committee obliged and passed a bill to renew all of the PATRIOT powers that were set to expire at the end of the year.

Here is the reaction by one of the exasperated civil liberties groups, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF):

“…the Committee this morning voted to accept seven Republican amendments to the USA PATRIOT Act Sunset Extension Act to remove the few civil liberties protections left in the bill after it was already watered down at last Thursday’s Committee meeting. Surprisingly and disappointingly, most of those amendments were recommended to their Republican sponsors by the Obama Administration.”

Here is the section I have a bit, okay more than a bit, of a problem with: ‘Surprisingly.’ Surprisingly?! Don’t take me wrong. I am, and have been, a big supporter of EFF, and applaud their great work, especially in the case of NSA illegal eavesdropping. But Surprisingly? How could anyone be surprised with this move, when it is absolutely consistent with every single move this President has made since he took office? When it comes to the draconian State Secrets Privilege, he’s been advocating, using, and even pushing further this common law fit only for monarchs and kings. When it comes to secrecy and classification to cover up the deeds of those implicated in torture and rendition, this President has proven to be a relentless advocate. Same with this President’s support and advocacy of illegal wiretapping of Americans… Now why in the world would this move, his consistent efforts to expand executive branch power, meaning his power, to take away our civil liberties, to further our descend towards a police state, be a surprise to all these well-intended and well-informed legal communities? Am I missing something? If so, could someone please enlighten me? Because this is where I stand on this:

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, fool us three times, shame on all of us!

I am working on Part 3 of ‘The Makings of a Police State,’ which will cover the notorious National Security Letters. Stay Tuned.