Student Anti-Vietnam War Activism: Lessons Learned

Parent Cafe
1

<p>Hi, I’m doing a project on student anti-Vietnam War activism and curious about your thoughts on the following questions:</p>

<p>1) How did contemporaneous student anti-war activists learn from the 1960s experience? Are they more pragmatic, more violent, more idealistic, etc? I acknowledge that the level of activism also depends on the severity of issues being protested.</p>

<p>and</p>

<p>2) What did the government learn about how to better deal with student anti-war protestors? (since Kent State, the 1968 Democratic National Convention riots, the COINTELPRO investigation). For instance, you can discuss why the PATRIOT Act includes provisions dealing specifically with students.</p>

<p>FYI, I’ve already done the bulk of my research (probably 200 hours’ worth). I’m just curious what you think. I also apologize for sounding dumb in the other thread I created on Vietnam.</p>

<p>Thanks,
Gian</p>

2

<p>thanks for all the responses thus far…</p>

<p>btw, the USA PATRIOT ACT doesn’t actually have a clause dealing specifically with students. what i meant was that it has provisions that directly affect students’ rights to protest (i.e. the FBI can seize student library records, search dorms without anyone ever knowing).</p>

<p>EDIT: also, i’d like to use this opportunity to thank those who helped with the earlier stages of my project.</p>

3

<p>look up information about the government sending in “spies-infultraters” into the student groups and actually instegating actions, not just observing</p>

<p>and you need to be sure and talk about how the police, army, etc, actually made many situations so much worse- ie Kent State. Chicago Democratic Convention</p>

4

<p><a href=“i.e.%20the%20FBI%20can%20seize%20student%20library%20records,%20search%20dorms%20without%20anyone%20ever%20knowing”>quote</a>.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>If you want your paper to sound like research instead of propaganda, I suggest that you be careful in how you phrase things. For example, you imply that the FBI can just “decide” to search a dorm room without informing the students. That is not true. They must first get a search warrant from a judge who will require probable cause for a relationship to terrorism before issuing the warrant. This is no different than what they have had the power to do in fighting organized crime or drugs. The fact that students may be involved with protests would not be sufficient evidence of terrorist-related activity.</p>

5

<p>they can search a house, etc. without ever informing you that they have done so…so you can come home, and the FBI can have been there, look through your stuff, take pictures, copy things, go into your computer and you would never know, a judge may know, but that is it- how is that propaganda, its what has happened</p>

<p>Flawed FBI Probe Of Bombing Used A Secret Warrant
Conyers Seeks Wider Inquiry</p>

<p>By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 7, 2005; Page A03 </p>

<p>The Justice Department is acknowledging for the first time that the FBI used a secret search warrant to copy and seize material – including DNA samples – from the home of Brandon Mayfield, a Portland, Ore., man who was wrongly arrested and jailed last year in connection with the March 2004 train bombings in Madrid. </p>

<p>In statements and testimony this week, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and other Justice officials have also said that some of the special powers used to spy on Mayfield were strengthened by the USA Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism law facing fresh scrutiny from Congress.
Free E-mail Newsletters</p>

<p>"In a background briefing with reporters Tuesday, two senior Justice Department officials maintained that the FBI could have taken Mayfield’s belongings and conducted surveillance on him even without the Patriot Act because he was under suspicion in a prominent international terrorism case. </p>

<p>But Mayfield’s attorney said that may not be true, and the disclosures prompted Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) to ask the Justice Department’s inspector general to expand his ongoing investigation of the case. </p>

<p>Mayfield, a convert to Islam, was arrested May 6 after the FBI concluded that his fingerprint was on a bag of detonators connected to the bombings two months earlier in Madrid, which killed nearly 200 people. He was freed two weeks later, after the FBI admitted it had bungled the fingerprint analysis. Mayfield is suing the federal government. </p>

<p>The Justice Department previously declined to confirm Mayfield’s contention that his house had been ransacked in a covert search. </p>

<p>But in a March 24 letter to Mayfield, sent as part of the ongoing lawsuit, the department acknowledged that during clandestine searches of his home the FBI made copies of computer drives and documents, and that “ten DNA samples were taken and preserved on cotton swabs and six cigarette butts were seized for DNA analysis.” Authorities took approximately 355 digital photographs. </p>

<p>Finally, the letter said, “Mr. Mayfield is also hereby notified that he was the target of electronic surveillance and other physical searches authorized pursuant to FISA” – the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs such warrants and was expanded under the Patriot law. </p>

<p>Conyers wrote to Inspector General Glenn A. Fine yesterday that “it is a frightening prospect that an innocent person can have his home secretly searched, his DNA secretly taken and stored and his computer files raided by the federal government. Now the Bush administration apparently believes that Mr. Mayfield is not even entitled to know the extent to which his privacy has been invaded.” WashingtonPOst</p>

6

<p><a href=“http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/c-e/eland/2005/eland051005.htm[/url]”>http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/c-e/eland/2005/eland051005.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>The most pernicious PATRIOT Act provision up for renewal is section 215. Originally, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978 set up a secret court to approve Executive Branch search warrants in espionage and terrorism cases. The clandestine court, unlike other courts, never notifies people that the government was spying on them, hears only the government’s arguments, and publishes no information about its activities or the warrants approved or denied. Apparently, the FISA court has rejected only a few government requests for such warrants. The reasoning behind creation of the clandestine court was that a lower standard of evidence should apply in intelligence cases. (No matter that secret courts in a free republic are questionable at best and that the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment requires that government search warrants, without exception, be issued only on the high legal standard of probable cause that a crime has been committed.)</p>

<p>Before the PATRIOT Act, the FBI had to provide “specific and articulable facts giving reason to believe that the person to whom the records pertained” was a spy or terrorist and convince the FISA court to issue the clandestine warrant. Unless allowed to sunset, the PATRIOT Act allows the FBI to obtain a secret search warrant without demonstrating such facts and instead merely requires the agency to certify that the records are sought for a terrorism or espionage investigation. Upon FBI certification, the court must then issue the order, even if no facts are provided. In short, this provision of the PATRIOT Act eliminates the check of judicial review on the FBI.</p>

<p>Thus, the FBI can investigate anybody without “probable cause”—that is, citizens not suspected of crimes—and without having to show that the subject’s records are relevant to an investigation. In other words, the lower legal standards for intelligence collection of the secret court can now be applied to criminal investigations other than those for terrorism or espionage, further undermining the Constitution’s guarantee of a “probable cause” standard for search warrants.</p>

<p>The Executive Branch is using its expanded investigative authority zealously. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, government records show that the FISA court is secretly authorizing more surveillance than all other federal courts put together.</p>

<p>Section 215 is only one of many severe restrictions on civil liberties contained in the PATRIOT Act. For example, other provisions of the law—such as roving wiretaps and national, instead of local, jurisdiction for warrants for electronic evidence—appear to erode Fourth Amendment requirements that warrants specifically describe persons, places, and things to be searched. Not only should the sunset provisions of the Act be put to rest, Congress should repeal the entire law.</p>

<p>The purported tradeoff between civil liberties and national security is a false one. No need for dubious usurpations of freedom like the PATIOT Act would exist if the United States would avoid unnecessarily creating and inflaming anti-American groups overseas with its overly interventionist foreign policy. A more restrained policy abroad would better preserve both liberty and security at home.</p>

<p>Ivan Eland</p>

7

<p>

No, a judge more than “knows”; a judge has to APPROVE the warrant. You may want terrorists to to carryout their plotting while the FBI is handcuffed to prevent another attack, but I prefer to have our government perform its primary function - protect its citizens from attack.</p>

8

<p>but what are we fighting to protect if our RIGHTS are not protected? </p>

<p>Oh yeah, the Constitution and the Amendments, thats it!!! Right to privacy, right to free speech, right to not inccrimnate our selves, right to a trial by jury, right to a jury of your peers, right to vote, right to liberty and the purtsuit of happiness</p>

<p>To get rid of tyranny…</p>

<p>Secret Court Goes on Extra Duty
Friday, October 12, 2001
By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos</p>

<p>STORIES
• Senate Unanimously Passes Airline Security Bill</p>

<p>WASHINGTON<em>—</em>Every two weeks, in a secure, soundproof room at an undisclosed location in Washington, D.C., seven judges meet to decide the fate of dozens of federal wiretap and search warrant requests. </p>

<p>The targets of these warrants may not even know what’s happening to them, much less be able to defend themselves. The feds don’t even have to show probable cause. Everything is classified.</p>

<p>Now, this court is going to get a whole lot busier.</p>

<p>Under anti-terror legislation now pending before Congress, the FISA court, named for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that authorized it, would expand its jurisdiction from issues of national security — its sole scope now — to criminal investigations.</p>

<p>And that has some civil libertarians concerned. A broadened FISA would open the door for law enforcement to conduct secret searches and spy on Americans without the scrutiny of an open court. They wonder whether the debate over the proposal has been thorough enough.</p>

<p>“The seriousness of the issue demands that whatever is done be effective and focused without unnecessarily infringing civil liberties,” said Jim Dempsey, deputy director for the Center of Democracy and Technology, whose executive director testified before Congress last week on the issue. </p>

<p>“Unfortunately, there has been little time for deliberation,” he added.</p>

<p>Expanding the Search Limits</p>

<p>In normal criminal investigations, requests for wiretaps and search warrants are approved by a judge only after probable cause has been shown that a criminal act may have been committed or is being planned.* The target of a search warrant must also be notified of the search.</p>

<p>But the FISA court is different. Law enforcement needs only to identify the target of a warrant as being a foreign power or its agent, U.S. citizen or not. The searches the court approves are of the “black bag” type, meaning the target doesn’t have to be home or even aware that the search is being conducted.</p>

<p>All documents pertaining to the cases brought before the court are classified, and defendants are not able to challenge the evidence presented against them.</p>

<p>Since its debut in 1978, the FISA court has denied only one of the roughly 10,000 warrant applications sought by the feds. The court was already getting busy before Sept. 11. Yearly requests for warrants doubled from 509 in 1993 to more than 1,000 in 2000.</p>

<p>The number of FISA warrants issued would explode under legislation proposed by Attorney General John Ashcroft. He wants the new rules to allow speedier arrests of suspected terrorists. The same fast-track warrants would more than likely be tougher to get in a criminal court, Ashcroft says, costing authorities valuable time in their investigations.</p>

<p>But legal experts are dubious about expanding FISA’s scope.</p>

<p>“The [legislation] would allow government to use FISA for other than foreign intelligence gathering,” said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, who in the 1980’s brought cases before the FISA court on behalf of the National Security Agency.</p>

<p>“Under FISA, police do not have to establish a probable cause that a crime has been committed — in terms of the legal standard, FISA operates under a lowered standard. There are obviously concerns,” he said.</p>

<p>Measures of Restraint</p>

<p>U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth, chief of the seven-member FISA court, would not agree to be interviewed, but has bristled at accusations that the court rubber-stamps federal warrants. He challenged an American Bar Association audience in 1997 to come up with a better system.</p>

<p>And Lamberth has often been critical of the government from his bench. He is said to have censured an FBI lawyer in March for one FISA warrant request, according to The Washington Post, a censure that set off a department-wide investigation into the way the FBI was requesting the warrants.</p>

<p>Legislation expanding the FISA is currently stalled in the House and Senate. The bill’s critics in the House want a sunset provision that would rescind the broadened powers in two-years time. The critics say they approve of untying Ashcroft’s hands to stop terrorism, but worry about the long-range implications for Americans’ rights.</p>

<p>An expanded FISA “should be used as a means to allow necessary prosecution to get through with due speed,” said constitutional law expert Mark Fitzgibbons. “The sunset provision should not be used, however, as a short-term means to violate any due process guarantees or civil liberties.”</p>

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<p>I hope the above article wasn’t from that liberal press…</p>

10

<p>So as you can see, the serach warrants arent’ just for terrorists anymore…its for you and me</p>

11

<p>

I don’t know about you, but I know that I have no more fear of my house being entered as part of a legal search than I ever did. This capability has existed for many years - long before the Patriot Act and no one complained. One thing I do know - the probablity of me (and hopefully you) of being searched is far lower than the probablity of our or one of our loved ones being killed by a terrorist. Looking at the price to pay on each side of the equation, on one hand an agent might see my dirty underwear on the floor, on the other side, it’s - death. Guess which way i’m coming out on that one. Even if I thought my probablity of being searched left the realm of “absurdly low, too low to be even thought about” to that of “extremely unlikely”, I would rather have that than give the terrorists the ability to use our free society against us.</p>

<p>Question: are you against the sneak and peak provisions for just terrorists or for fighting organized crime as well? Should we perhaps set free all of the mobsters that were apprehended as a result of this provision?</p>

12

<p>I also have no problem with secret searches as needed.</p>

13

<p>Neither did the KGB.</p>

<p>Secret searches are sometimes necessary. The proposed revision to the so-called Patriot Act that would give the FBI the power to decide for themselves whether a secret search was necessary is way out of bounds. The aphorism is that people who sacrifice freedom for security wind up with neither…I tend to agree. I want a priori judicial approval of all secret searches and don’t think they should apply to run-of-the-mill criminal matters. Some of my ancestors fled a police state…I have no desire for my descendants to live in one.</p>

14

<p>

Where is this being proposed?</p>

<p>

as provided for in the Patriot Act</p>

<p>

which they don’t.</p>

15

<p>Same crap; different decade.</p>

16

<p>My original source was probably from a Libertarian who often forwards me stuff of interest from <em>his</em> newsletters. I am <em>Not</em> a Libertarian but useful information flows in many directions. But I get so many e-mails that I’ve probably deleted it. I have only a 100-Gig hard drive.</p>

<p>Following from an AP story that has some bearing, condensed to relevant paragraphs:</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>To be fair, other Senators, including, remarkably, Larry Craig are fighting for changes in the other direction. (Craig generally being as far-Right as Ghengiz Khan.) I had to choke at one commentator who said something like, “Republicans trust George Bush with all this power but how are they going to feel about Hillary?” </p>

<p>But the intentions of FBI Director Mueller, Attorney General Gonzales, and Prince of Darkness Cheney are pretty clear.</p>

17

<p>The first three paragraphs don’t seem to apply to searches of property. None the less, I would want to know the rationale and the safeguards being put in place before giving the FBI direct subpeona power.</p>

<p>The fourth paragraph is nebulous in not defining what “easier” means, but does still require judicial oversight. I think it means is that it will be easier for them to use existing powers for searches directed at terrorists as part of criminal proceedings against those terrorists. The original Patriot Act was set up to be more of a deterrant capability rather than a prosecutorial tool. As I read this, it allows the evidence collected to be used both for preventing terrorist acts as well as putting the terrorists behind bars where they can’t do more harm. That makes sense to me.</p>

<p>But, it is important to note that this is all considered “proposal” at this point; the existing Patriot Act does not go this far.</p>

<p>Edit:
Later, in the same AP article it says:

If that is the case, it sure seems that terrorism is a significantly more dangerous issue than health care fraud.</p>

18

<p>Sen Roberts views on the administrative subpoena:

<a href=“http://roberts.senate.gov/05-24-2005.htm[/url]”>http://roberts.senate.gov/05-24-2005.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

19

<p>Invoking “national security” as an override for anything and everything is dangerous slope and I think that enough of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, may now recognize that what was rushed through in the heat of 9/11 isn’t really a good precedent, despite the urgings of Mueller, Gonzales, et alia. This is, after all, the same adminstration that has tried to strip habeus corpus from citizens accused of terrorism.</p>

<p>Terroism is a legitimate threat deserving of strenuous responses. The threat of same is also used as a power grab by the executive and as a tool to keep the populace alarmed, e.g., the expensive but near useless (per GAO report) airport security measures and the color-coded “Alert” system.</p>

20

<p>One person’s “power grab” is another person’s saving the country. Just ask Lincoln who actually did suspend habeas corpus, but not to imprison terrorists, but to imprison political opponents and those who tried to interfere with army enlistments. Hmmm, I wonder where the Bush memorial will be placed in DC?</p>