Articles Tagged ‘Safe and Free’

NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union today filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit on behalf of 10 U.S. citizens and lawful residents who are prohibited from flying to or from the United States or over U.S. airspace because they are on the government’s “No Fly List.” None of the individuals in the lawsuit, including a disabled U.S. Marine Corps veteran stranded in Egypt and a U.S. Army veteran stuck in Colombia, have been told why they are on the list or given a chance to clear their names. One of the clients on the ACLU’s case was born and raised in Las Cruces, NM.

“More and more Americans who have done nothing wrong find themselves unable to fly, and in some cases unable to return to the U.S., without any explanation whatsoever from the government,” said Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. “A secret list that deprives people of the right to fly and places them into effective exile without any opportunity to object is both un-American and unconstitutional.”

The ACLU of New Mexico joined the national ACLU and its affiliates in Oregon, Southern California, and Northern California in filing the lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI and the Terrorist Screening Center in U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. The plaintiffs on the case are:

• Steven Washburn, a U.S. citizen born and raised in Las Cruces, NM and a U.S. Air Force veteran who was prevented from flying from Europe to the United States or Mexico; he eventually flew to Brazil, from there to Peru, and from there to Mexico, where he was detained and finally escorted across the border by U.S. and Mexican officials;
• Ayman Latif, a U.S. citizen and disabled Marine veteran living in Egypt who has been barred from flying to the United States and, as a result, cannot take a required Veterans’ Administration disability evaluation;
• Raymond Earl Knaeble, a U.S. citizen and U.S. Army veteran who is stuck in Santa Marta, Colombia after being denied boarding on a flight to the United States;
• Samir Mohamed Ahmed Mohamed, Abdullatif Muthanna, Nagib Ali Ghaleb and Saleh A. Omar, three American citizens and a lawful permanent resident of the United States who were prevented from flying home to the U.S. after visiting family members in Yemen;
• Mohamed Sheikh Abdirahman Kariye, a U.S. citizen and resident of Portland, Oregon who was prevented from flying to visit his daughter who is in high school in Dubai;
• Adama Bah, a citizen of Guinea who was granted political asylum in the United States, where she has lived since she was two, who was barred from flying from New York to Chicago for work; and
• Halime Sat, a German citizen and lawful permanent resident of the United States who lives in California with her U.S.-citizen husband who was barred from flying from Long Beach, California to Oakland to attend a conference and has since had to cancel plane travel to participate in educational programs and her family reunion in Germany.

According to the ACLU’s legal complaint, thousands of people have been added to the “No Fly List” and barred from commercial air travel without any opportunity to learn about or refute the basis for their inclusion on the list. The result is a vast and growing list of individuals who, on the basis of error or innuendo, have been deemed too dangerous to fly but too harmless to arrest.

“Without a reasonable way for people to challenge their inclusion on the list, there’s no way to keep innocent people off it,” said Nusrat Choudhury, a staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. “The government’s decision to prevent people from flying without giving them a chance to defend themselves has a huge impact on people’s lives – including their ability to perform their jobs, see their families and, in the case of U.S. citizens, to return home to the United States from abroad.”

“The right to move freely for work and to visit family members should never be denied without due process,” said Peter Simonson, Executive Director of the ACLU of New Mexico. “Because of secret no-fly lists, Las Cruces native and U.S. Air Force veteran Steven Washburn was put through a costly, distressing ordeal and to this day doesn’t know the reason why.”

In addition to Wizner and Choudhury, attorneys on the case are Kevin Díaz and cooperating attorney Steven Wilker with the ACLU of Oregon; Ahilan Arulanantham, Jennie Pasquarella and cooperating attorney Reem Salahi with the ACLU of Southern California; Alan Schlosser and Julia Harumi Mass of the ACLU of Northern California; and Laura Ives of the ACLU of New Mexico.

Newly-Released Judicial Opinion Explains Decision Ordering Release of Mohamedou Salahi

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 12, 2010
CONTACT: (505) 266-5915 Ext. 1003; mmccoy@aclu-nm.org

NEW YORK – A Washington D.C. federal court opinion ordering the release of Guantánamo prisoner Mohamedou Ould Salahi (sometimes spelled “Slahi”) and providing the reasons for the granting of his habeas corpus petition was made public Friday, April 9th. Federal District Judge James Robertson ruled on March 22 that the U.S. could not continue to detain Salahi, a Mauritanian citizen who has been in U.S. custody since 2001. Judge Robertson’s opinion was released today after undergoing a classification review; some portions were withheld as classified.

The American Civil Liberties Union joined attorneys Nancy Hollander and Theresa Duncan of the law firm Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Ives & Duncan P.A. and Linda Moreno of Linda Moreno P.A. in challenging Salahi’s detention, arguing that the government had no reliable evidence that he was part of al-Qaeda when he was seized in 2001.

“After subjecting Mr. Salahi to illegal renditions to three countries, brutal physical and psychological torture and almost daily interrogations for most of the nine years he has been in U.S. custody, the government could not even tip the scales ever so slightly to justify Mr. Salahi’s detention,” said Hollander, the lead attorney in the case. “It is well past time for him to go home.”

“As Judge Robertson’s opinion makes clear, the allegations that Mr. Salahi participated in the so-called Millennium Plot to attack the Los Angeles airport and recruited two of the 9/11 hijackers are not supported by any credible evidence,” said Duncan. “The truth is the government was wrong when it first detained him, wrong when it tortured him and is wrong in continuing to detain him.”

After Salahi was arrested in Mauritania on suspicion of ties to al-Qaeda, the U.S. government illegally rendered him to Jordan, where he was detained, interrogated and abused for eight months. He was then rendered to Bagram, Afghanistan and finally to Guantánamo, where he has been held in U.S. custody since August 2002.

“Salahi’s illegal detention for more than eight years without charge or trial embodies the most egregious abuses of Guantánamo,” said Jonathan Hafetz, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. “The district court’s decision invalidating that detention and ordering Salahi’s release is an important step towards restoring the rule of law.”

While at Guantánamo, Salahi was held in total isolation for months, kept in a freezing cold cell, shackled to the floor, deprived of food, made to drink salt water, forced to stand in a room with strobe lights and heavy metal music for hours at a time, threatened with harm to his family, forbidden from praying, beaten and subjected to the “frequent flyer” program, during which he was awakened every few hours to deprive him of sleep. The government falsely told him that his mother had been arrested and was being sent to Guantánamo. Salahi’s abuse was confirmed and well documented in a 2009 report by the Senate Armed Services Committee that investigated allegations of detainee abuse at Guantánamo.

Marine Corps Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, a military lawyer originally assigned to prosecute the case against Salahi in the military commissions, determined that Salahi’s self-incriminating statements were so tainted by torture that they couldn’t ethically be used against him. Couch told his supervisors that he was “morally opposed” to Salahi’s treatment and for that reason he refused to participate in the prosecution.

The original habeas challenge to Salahi’s unlawful detention was filed in 2005 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The Department of Justice is appealing Judge Robertson’s decision.

Lawyers on the case are Nancy Hollander and Theresa Duncan of Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Ives & Duncan P.A.; Linda Moreno of Linda Moreno P.A.; Jonathan Hafetz, Melissa Goodman and Jonathan Manes of the ACLU; Arthur Spitzer of the ACLU of the Nation’s Capital; Brahim Ould Ebety of Nouakchott, Mauritania; and Emmanuel Altit of Paris, France.

The ruling is available online at: www.aclu.org/national-security/salahi-v-obama-et-al-order

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The mission of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico is to maintain and advance the cause of civil liberties within the state of New Mexico, with particular emphasis on the freedom of religion, speech, press, association, and assemblage, and the right to vote, due process of law and equal protection of law, and to take any legitimate action in the furtherance and defense of such purposes. These objectives shall be sought wholly without political partisanship.

By Micah McCoy, Communications Specialist

If you’ve flown out of the Albuquerque Sunport recently, you may have noticed an addition to the arsenal of gadgets the TSA uses to screen passengers. Standing among the array of metal detectors and x-ray machines is one of forty whole-body imaging (WBI) scanners in use in airports throughout the country. In the wake of the recent Christmas Day bombing attempt by Northwest Airlines passenger Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, many politicians and pundits are loudly calling for these scanners to be put into widespread and routine use in all our major airports.

Advocates claim that routine body scans will reduce the chance of similar attacks occurring in the future. However, given our recent history of sacrificing civil liberties for what is often a false sense of security, let’s stop, catch our breath and think about this first. Specifically, is the non-targeted use of WBI scanners a real security solution worth compromising the privacy of millions?

WBI scanners produce strikingly graphic 3D images of a person’s body under their clothes, rendering their use tantamount to a “digital strip search.” These scans reveal the most intimate contours of the body, including details such as mastectomy scars, colostomy bags and adult diapers. Knowing that a government employee will virtually see them naked is bound to cause many passengers significant mental and emotional discomfort. The ethics of these digital strip searches are even more complicated where children are concerned. Fearing the possible violation of child pornography laws, the UK has already prohibited the scanning of anyone under age 18 outright.

The TSA attempts to address these privacy concerns by viewing scans remotely via closed circuit monitors, blurring faces, and deleting images immediately after screening. These precautions are a step in the right direction, but these scanned body images may prove to be too great a temptation for some TSA workers. If the Internet has taught us anything, it’s that people have an insatiable interest in the anatomy of others. Some of these images are sure to leak.

When we allowed the NSA to wiretap our phones, they illegally eavesdropped on the most private details of our personal lives. Are we certain that the TSA is any more trustworthy with the most private details of our bodies?

Leaving aside the privacy concerns inherent in these devices, their effectiveness is far from certain. For example, WBI scanners are unable to detect any items concealed inside a person’s body. Do we really believe that anyone who is willing to blow themselves up will not also be willing to smuggle explosives in their body cavities? The scanners also prove unreliable in detecting items molded to the body or hidden in folds of skin. Recent British studies suggest that they are less effective in detecting low density materials such as plastic explosives, powders and liquids—precisely the type of material Abdulmutallab smuggled sewn into his underpants.

With this evidence in mind, we need to seriously question whether the $150,000+ required to purchase a WBI scanner could be put to better use elsewhere. Experience has shown us that diligent law enforcement and good intelligence work are still the most effective methods of foiling terrorist plots. At the time of his attempted attack, Abdulmutallab was on watch lists in both the USA and UK. With better communication and follow-up, he could have been stopped long before he passed through airport security.

We were all unnerved and frightened by the close call on Christmas Day, but we must acknowledge that decisions made in moments of fear and anxiety are rarely the best. Before we relinquish more of our civil liberties—ground that, once ceded, is extremely difficult to regain—we must be certain that the wholesale use of WBI scanners is both an effective tool in preventing terrorist attacks and compatible with our nation’s values. The scanners don’t measure up on either count.

This article appeared originally in the opinion section of The Albuquerque Journal on January 17, 2010.

Real ID is dead. Thirty-six states currently do not meet compliance standards set by federal law, 14 of which have passed binding legislation prohibiting participation in Real ID. In all, twenty-four states have enacted bills or resolutions that oppose the Real ID Act. The people have spoken. Americans have a long and proud tradition of resisting government intrusion into their private lives, and Real ID is just that: a needless, ineffective and burdensome intrusion.

Over the past weeks, much has been made of the rapidly approaching compliance deadline for Real ID. The hand wringing stems from a concern that, come January 1st, 2010, New Mexicans may have to carry their passports if they wish to board a plane or enter a federal building. While this is a frightening prospect, the deadline is almost certain to be extended. With over half the states in non-compliance, suddenly forcing Americans to use their passports for internal travel during one of the year’s busiest travel times would throw airports and airlines into a state of chaos. Is DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano so foolhardy as to risk paralyzing the nation and further wounding an already reeling American economy?

Congress passed the Real ID Act in May 2005 without a single hearing in the Senate, ostensibly to provide Americans with greater security in the wake of the September 11th attacks. Rather than make America safer, Congress created a 20 billion dollar boondoggle (the cost of which would be borne by the states and individuals) that saddles the nation with a big burden and a small security return.

ID-based security is inherently unreliable. What do Timothy McVeigh, Ted Kaczynski and Major Nidal Hasan all have in common? They all would have had zero difficulty obtaining Real ID compliant cards. Bad actors will inevitably find ways of obtaining fraudulent cards and may already be eligible to acquire them by legitimate means. The idea that imposing the United States’ first-ever national identity card system will make us safer is founded on a false premise.

What Real ID would do is open the door to greater intrusions on individuals’ privacy and widespread identity theft. These de facto national identity cards could ultimately result in a situation where citizens’ movements inside their own country are monitored and recorded through these “internal passports”. Invasions of privacy will only increase as the purview of Real ID expands over time to encompass other activities necessary to participate in society. Simply look to how the role of drivers’ licenses has expanded beyond merely authorizing one to operate a motor vehicle.

Furthermore, Real ID and its slightly watered-down successor, PASS ID, call for an unprecedented amount of personal information to be collected, stored and consolidated in a system of interlinked databases. This amounts to a one-stop-shop for individuals’ personal information that will prove to be an irresistible lure to determined identity thieves, further exacerbating the fraud epidemic that already costs Americans billions every year.

Leaving aside the logistical nightmare, financial strain and security concerns they create, the bottom line is that Real ID and PASS ID limit the freedom of Americans. They place needless burdens on the constitutionally protected right to travel and various First Amendment guarantees by restricting access to federal buildings. These are all essential liberties we should never give up willingly. And certainly never for the sake of a law that provides so little benefit and creates the potential for so much harm.

Diane Wood, Policy Director
ACLU of New Mexico

(This letter first appeared 12/10/09 in the Opinions section of the Albuquerque Journal.)