We're taking a wait and see attitude towards President Bush's immigration reform plan. Here are the necessary components according to the AILA (American Immigration Lawyers Association):

• Comprehensively reforms our immigration laws: Since many of the problems with the U.S.'s current immigration system are interrelated, reform must be comprehensive to successfully address our nation's needs. ...Our current system is characterized by families being separated for long periods of time and U.S. employers unable to bring in needed workers. People are forced to live an underground existence, hiding from the government for fear of being separated from their families and jobs. ....Our immigration system needs to be reformed so that legality is the norm, and immigration is legal, safe, orderly, and reflective of the needs of American families, businesses, and national security.

• Allows people already living and working in the United States to legalize their status: People who work hard, pay taxes, and contribute to the U.S. should be allowed to obtain permanent residence. This reform would stabilize the workforce of U.S. employers, encourage people to come out of the shadows to be scrutinized by our government, and allow immigrants to work and travel legally and be treated equally. Many have been here for years, are paying taxes, raising families, contributing to their communities and are essential to the industries within which they work. In order to unite families and keep them together, appropriate waivers must be available for grounds of inadmissibility and deportability.

An undocumented person does the right thing and gets deported:

Danny Sigui saw a murder unfold. He called 911 and testified as the key witness during the trial. In the process, he unwittingly alerted officials to his immigration status, and days later was arrested and jailed.

Should Ed Gillespie denounce this as hate speech?

The Rev. Fred Phelps wants his message on homosexuality ever-present in Topeka's Gage Park and memorialized on a park bench. Phelps sent Rogers Brazier, director of Parks and Recreation of Topeka, a $250 check and the memorial message he wants on the park bench. He wants it to read: "Matt Shepard in Hell. He Defied God's Law." He called the right to have a memorial park bench a "preaching opportunity."

Would John Ashcroft consider it protected speech under the First Amendment?

The ACLU says that the new fingerprinting system is likely to cause confusion and will continue to track Muslims and Arabs based on national origin.

"Contrary to assertions by the Homeland Security Department, the US VISIT program is an addition to -- not a substitute for -- the notorious special registration program that singled out Arab and Muslim men because of their national origin and that continues to subject them to special and confusing requirements," said Timothy Edgar, an ACLU Legislative Counsel. "Only one part of the special registration program -- the part that requires re-registration at local immigration offices -- was suspended last year. But, Arab and Muslim men are still subject to different requirements than other visitors."

[link via TomPaine's Take on the News]

Quarantining dissent: How the Secret Service protects Bush from free speech. This is truly outrageous. As one of TalkLeft's smart readers (whom we know personally) points out:

It is patently unconstitutional to treat persons who support the Administration differently from persons who oppose it. (And any security rationale is absurd: under this approach Osama bin Laden could be on the President's motorcade route if he he was smart enough to hold a sign that says he supported Bush, while the Pope would be barred if he held up a sign opposing the war). And, as is typical with this Administration, they just don't seem to care. It's also scary to think that the President is being kept isolated from any sense that there is opposition to him. But then again, he doesn't read the news papers either.

The author of the op-ed is James Bovard. We recommend reading his new book:
Terrorism and Tyranny

Instead of fighting the terrorist menace, the Bush administration's cosmetic gestures reward incompetence and establish dangerous legal precedents.it all comes down to a trampling of personal liberty and an end to privacy as we know it. From airport security follies that protect no one to increased surveillance of individuals and skyrocketing numbers of detainees, the war on terrorism is taking a toll on individual liberty and no one tells the whole grisly story better than Bovard.

By TChris

The Vegas traveler should no longer rely on the axiom, "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." When the FBI comes calling, Vegas hotels willingly disclose guest information. Seeking to compare hotel registration records to "a U.S. master list of suspected terrorists" in response to concerns associated with the elevated threat level during the holidays, the FBI encountered only one hotel that put up even token resistence. That hotel requested the issuance of a subpoena (known as a "friendly" subpoena), presumably to provide cover for hotel management if guests expecting anonymity were to complain.

As the ACLU points out, the free availability of private information to law enforcement agencies is troubling.

A representative of the American Civil Liberties Union said the demand for guest records, without any individual suspicion, infringed on the privacy of as many as 300,000 people "whose leisure activities are no one's business but their own."

The action also showed the FBI's expanded, post-Sept. 11 power to obtain personal records without judicial review or suspicion about an individual "may well be used to monitor ordinary Americans," said Timothy Edgar, the ACLU's legislative counsel.

The need for this sort of information might be legitimate, given a legitimate threat, but the ever-increasing power of law enforcement to obtain records that people generally regard as private, without judicial authorization, is unhealthy. Until that trend changes, remember ... nothing stays in Vegas any more.

Still think the Patriot Act and similar legislation won't be used against you? Then we hope you didn't go to Vegas for New Year's. The FBI ordered Las Vegas casinos and airlines to give them information on guests and travelers:

Las Vegas hotel operators and airlines serving McCarran International Airport are being required by the FBI to turn over all guest and passenger names and personal information, at least during the holiday period, several sources said Tuesday.

FBI spokesman Todd Palmer confirmed the federal action and said the requirement that the companies surrender customer information is a "normal investigative procedure."

As of now, they're not asking for your gambling winnings and losses, but they are asking for personal information:

Hotel operators who asked not to be identified said the information being provided to federal officials includes guest and passenger names, addresses and personal identification information, but not casino records or guest gambling information. ....the FBI in Las Vegas is receiving 100 percent cooperation from the gaming companies and airline operators.

Compliance is mandated by the legislation Bush signed into law Dec. 13--that had been passed by both houses of Congress.

Jeffrey Rosen, writing for Wired, discusses a non-privacy threatening identification card. He says that by stressing verification over identification, civil libertarians can rest easy.

But a privacy-friendly card is feasible if it follows one simple rule: verification, not identification. In other words, the card would confirm identity but wouldn't allow the government to pick you out of a crowd. There's a model: In 1995, Canadian entrepreneur George Tomko invented an innovative technology that made it possible to lock packets of data in encrypted files, using a fingerprint as a private key. After clearing a background check, the users of a Tomko-like card would receive a digitized packet of information that said, for example, they were cleared to cross a particular border. They'd download the parcel onto a card and lock it with a thumbprint.

Using this card at a border checkpoint, they'd swipe it and then provide a thumbprint. If the print decrypted the file, the system would verify their identity. Because the fingerprints wouldn't be stored in a central database, individuals would retain complete control over how much personal information was revealed. To maximize privacy, the system would keep no identifiable records of who had passed through, and it would not be linked with any other databases that might allow predictions of future behavior.

"Media mogul" Steven Brill (formerly the CEO of Court TV and Brill's Content Magazine) has a company, Verified Identity, that anticipates having a (not quite as privacy friendly) version of the card and turnstiles in place by February.

Rosen points out a crucial fact: There is no evidence that identity cards will make us safer:

Even with careful attention to privacy, an ID card might do little to prevent another terrorist attack. Bruce Schneier, one of the world's leading computer security experts, says that any identification system that relies on background checks creates three categories of people: trusted, untrusted, and trusted-but-malicious - people who aren't on watch lists but turn out to be terrorists anyway. As Schneier pointed out to me, Ted Kaczynski and Richard Reid would have qualified for V-IDs. Brill says that the pressure for ID cards will be overwhelming after the next attack, so a well-designed one is better than a desperate one. But rather than fixating on whether ID cards threaten privacy, civil libertarians and techno-positivists should explore security measures that might actually thwart terrorism. Otherwise, feel-good solutions could make us less safe in the end.

James Ridgeway of the Village Voice writes that police state tactics are transforming our nation. The most recent victims: the foreign press.

Every day, Ashcroft and Bush work the country toward something like martial law, though the administration has suffered setbacks, like last week's rulings by two federal appellate courts in Padilla v. Rumsfeld and Gherebi v. Bush. Both of those decisions, for now at least, hamper the government's ability to simply lock up suspects indefinitely. But the government has other targets and other ways of dealing with them. The most recent crackdown seems to be on the foreign press—the source of much of the substantial critique of its policies.

U.S. immigration authorities are detaining foreign correspondents on grounds they have not obtained special visas permitting them to operate here, reports the Associated Press. True, there is a law stipulating a special visa for journalists, but few have ever heard of it and it is seldom enforced. No more. No one ever told the visiting journalists it had suddenly been revived. As a result, immigration officials aren't allowing reporters from abroad to come in under ordinary 90-day tourist visa waivers.

Here's but one of Ridgeway's examples:

Peter Krobath, chief editor for the Austrian movie magazine Skip, was seized and held overnight in a cold room with 45 others who landed without visas. Is he an Osama follower? A disguised fedayeen from Saddam's clan? No. He is guilty of flying to the U.S. to interview Ben Affleck.

The Government's response:

An embassy official in Vienna insisted that the government was only acting in accordance with the letter of the law.

A mentally retarded teenager from Guinea has been freed after 3 years in detention.

Mr. Jarno, described by his lawyers as mentally retarded, had been held in an adult correctional facility in York, Pa., that also houses other illegal immigrants. He and his case became a symbol for the thousands of child immigrants who arrive alone in the United States and are then detained by immigration services.

Asa Hutchinson, under secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, signed the order--after pressure from Congress:

In a letter to Mr. Hutchinson in August, members of Congress contended that Mr. Jarno was a victim of "reprehensible mistreatment" by federal immigration officials.

Susan Benesch, a spokeswoman for Amnesty International U.S.A. in Washington, said: "We are delighted that Malik is finally out of detention, but of course remain concerned about any juveniles who are needlessly spending months and even years in detention. I hope that people will remember that while his case is especially heart-rending, there are so many others."

There are 500 detained immigrant children in the U.S. They are treated as detainees first, and children second. Among those who weren't so lucky: a 13 year old from Ghana, also detained three years, who lost his bid to stay in the U.S. this month and will be deported:

President Bush is expected to announce a new immigration plan in January--as a kick-off to his reelection campaign:

Lobbyists working with the White House said Bush is developing a plan that would allow immigrants to cross the border legally if jobs are waiting for them. The sources said the administration also wants to provide a way for some undocumented workers in the United States to move toward legal status.

Bush will try to make the plan more palatable to conservatives by including stricter entry controls, including increased use of technology at the border and steps toward better enforcement of current visa restrictions and reporting requirements, sources said.

Bush said at his year-end news conference last week that he was preparing to send Congress recommendations for an "immigration policy that helps match any willing employer with any willing employee." He said he is "firmly against blanket amnesty," or a mass legalization. An estimated 8 million undocumented people live in the United States. At least half of them are Mexican, authorities said.

Of course, this is geared towards getting the 2004 hispanic vote.

A leading Bush adviser said that, given the crucial swing vote Hispanics could provide next November, "the White House feels it's got to get its irons in the fire now."

This is a terrible idea. It figures it would be backed by law enforcement. We're talking about a proposed DNA databank in California.

The measure, championed by a Newport Beach, California, man whose brother and sister-in-law were murdered in 1980, would expand the range of crimes for which felons must submit DNA samples to the state's database to include nonviolent offenders, juveniles and uncharged suspects. The proposal has inflamed civil libertarians, who contend it flouts constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure, and has drawn the ire of public defenders who say it overburdens the cash-strapped state.

"Should we allow the government to engage in widespread searches?" Francisco Lobaco, the American Civil Liberties Union's legislative director, said. "It's the same concept as engaging in a non-consensual search of everybody leaving a mall because somebody has stolen something ... and putting that (information) in a database," Lobaco said.

....If voters approve the measure, it will allow California authorities to get DNA samples from everyone arrested or convicted on felony charges, as well as from misdemeanor sex offenders -- both adult and juvenile.

Let's hope the prohibitive cost of conducting 400,000 DNA tests a year will knock some sense into Californians. Isn't their budget crisis serious enough? Bruce Harrington, the sponsor of the bill--the man whose relatives were murdered--is a lawyer and real-estate developer who has already sunk $1.5 million into the measure. The state district attorneys association is supporting it and it may make it onto the November, 2004 ballot.

Laws should not be enacted out of grief or passion in response to a singular event--no matter how horrific.