Coincidence? You be the judge. What’s clear is that, as is typical of Bush’s operations, the program was run without regard to the law. The Christian Science Monitor:

The $42 million cutting-edge [ADVISE] system, designed to process trillions of pieces of data, has been halted and could be canceled pending data-privacy reviews, according to a newly released report to Congress by the DHS’s own internal watchdog.

Data mining to help fight the war on terror has become an accepted, even mandated, method to provide timely security information. The DHS operates at least a dozen such programs; intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense employ many others.

But ADVISE (Analy­sis, Dissemina­tion, Visu­ali­zation, Insight and Semantic Enhance­ment) was special. An electronic omnivore conceived in 2003, it was designed to ingest information from scores of databases, blogs, e-mail traffic, intelligence reports, and other sources, government documents and researchers say.

How reassuring. (And it would certainly work for domestic politics, too, eh?)

So, what could go wrong?  Read more 

If so, it’s very simple to understand the new experiences Americans are about to have in their new, unfree country (internal passports; preventive detention; satellite surveillance; et cetera.)

Just mentally substitute “extremist” for “drug courier,” and use the working definition that “extremist” means anybody who wrote the wrong kind of book (or reads it), wears the wrong kind of T-shirt, or has the wrong color of skin—or, with the devilish cunning so typical of extremists, conceals extremism behind a facade of reading the right books, wearing the right T-shirts, and being white.

The great advantage of this approach, from the perspective of teaching the American people how to be ruled, instead of governed, is that any one of us can be stopped for any reason at all at any time. Judge Pratt, dissenting (via Stitch in Haste (Dorf on law (U.S. v Hooper, 935 F.2d 484))) gives us a list:  Read more 

The Immigration Bill really, really sucks:

The American Civil Liberties Union today expressed grave concerns about the due process and privacy implications of the Senate immigration bill.
The proposed legislation would create a vast federal database to verify the work eligibility of all job applicants in America - including U.S. citizens; expand indefinite detention; and deny effective judicial review of Department of Homeland Security errors denying immigration status.

“The bill denies essential due process, seeks to overturn Supreme Court limits on detention and fails to guarantee meaningful judicial review,” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office. “Substantial changes must be made to ensure that the legislation adheres to the values of our country and our Constitution. Without effective judicial oversight, any new program enacted by Congress can be gutted by an overburdened, incompetent or hostile bureaucracy.”

The proposed legislation would require every job applicant in America to have their eligibility to work verified by the DHS, using the error-plagued Employment Eligibility Verification System (EEVS). EEVS creates a massive government database containing extraordinary amounts of personal information on everyone in America, tied to each individual’s Social Security number. If DHS makes a mistake in determining work eligibility, there will be virtually no way to challenge the error or recover lost wages due to the bill’s prohibitions on judicial review.

And, oh yeah, there’ll be a national identity card:  Read more 

Legal, illegal, they’re just brown people so who cares, right? But one part makes me wonder:

The paper confirms that the federal agents took an undisclosed number of people away in buses away to an undisclosed location.

Given that there may be tens of thousands of people in secret prisons, and given that our “fighting” forces are known to enjoy a little forced prostitution now and again, who here thinks it likely that the more attractive “illegals” will wind up servicing DHS officials? These days, it’s no stetch to wonder about it.

I promise you, the ones in South Shore and Boystown will always work perfectly, while the ones in certain lily-hued, properly religious neighborhoods will strangely malfunction whenever one of the Good Chicagoans is misled into temptation by a gay, black devil.

Julie Farby - All Headline News Staff Writer
Chicago, IL (AHN)-Chicago Mayor Richard Daley says that if Chicago wins the right to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, security and terrorism won’t be an issue because, by that time, there’ll be a surveillance camera on every corner.

During a meeting with the Sun-Times editorial board, Daley said, “By the time 2016 [rolls around], we’ll have more cameras than Washington, D.C. … Our technology is more advanced than any other city in the world — even compared to London — dealing with our cameras and the sophistication of cameras and retro-fitting all the cameras downtown in new buildings, doing the CTA cameras.”  Read more 

Palast:

September 11, 2006Not Greg and Matt
by Greg Palast

It’s true. It’s weird. It’s nuts. The Department of Homeland Security, after a five-year hunt for Osama, has finally brought charges against… Greg Palast. I kid you not. Send your cakes with files to the Air America wing at Guantanamo.

Though not just yet. Fatherland Security has informed me that television producer Matt Pascarella and I have been charged with unauthorized filming of a “critical national security structure” in Louisiana.  Read more