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“Papers, Please” is Un-American

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When police in Corinth, Texas stopped Dorothy Bland to caution her against walking on the right side of the street (she was out to get some exercise with a “power walk”), Bland — a former newspaper editor and current dean of the University of Texas’s Mayborn School of Journalism —  felt that she had been racially profiled and said so from the bully pulpit of a column for the Dallas Morning News.

Dashcam video of the encounter seems to contradict the claim of racial profiling. It does, however, include a disturbing bit that we should all take more notice of:

One of the officers asks Bland “do you have your ID on you real quick so I can just …” When she says she doesn’t, he follows up with “do you mind if I get your name and date of birth real quick, so I can make sure I put it with the call?”

At this point, neither officer has asserted probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed, or that Bland is a criminal. They just want her information. Why?

The quick and dirty answer is not “to make sure I put it with the call,” whatever that means.

Rather it is “so I can run a check to find out if you are a criminal with outstanding warrants that would justify me putting you in cuffs and hauling you in, even though I have no reason whatsoever to think that might be the case.”

When I was a kid — and I’m not THAT old! — “papers please”  or “are your papers in order?” was a common Hollywood trope. When you saw it on film, you knew the person asking was an officer of the Gestapo in Nazi Germany or the police in the Soviet Union. In other words, you knew that the setting was a police state.

Over the years, it’s become commonplace for police to request, or even demand, government-issued identification from anyone and everyone they encounter, in any setting. It’s happened to me a number of times. For example, one time passing through one of those unconstitutional “DWI checkpoints,” the cop wanted IDs from everyone in the car, not just the driver.

The US government has spent the last 20 years or so turning its ID schemes into an internal passport system. It’s nearly impossible to travel commercially on a plane, train or bus without showing “papers.” Civilians who encounter police officers are treated as guilty of SOMETHING, until ID checks against government databases establish their innocence.

That may feel trivial, along the lines of “if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear,” but it’s of a piece with the transformation of American police departments into militarized occupying armies and of American government into an omnipresent, surveillance-oriented police state.

Among other bare minimum anti-police-state reforms, police officers should be required to have, and to openly state, probable cause before demanding “papers” from those they allegedly protect and serve.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Declaring War: It’s Not Just a Good Idea, It’s The Law

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The US Constitution confers upon Congress the legal power to declare war.

Or, to put it a different way, if Congress hasn’t declared war, then the United States is not, in any legal sense, AT war.

No, an “authorization for use of military force” is not a declaration of war. In fact, AUMFs come right out and SAY they’re not declarations of war (the sections that say so are referred to as “war powers reservation clauses”).

From these facts, it follows that each and every one of the 90,000 or so US combat deaths since the final casualty of World War II — a B-32 gunner named Anthony Marchione, killed over Japan in August of 1945 — as well as all “enemy” casualties in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and numerous smaller conflicts, were and remain war crimes. And that the politicians responsible are, yes, war criminals.

Now, US president Barack Obama has announced yet another count in the 70-year-long chain of criminal conspiracies to kill American military men and women, as well as foreign combatants and non-combatants. He plans to send US special operations troops into Syria, ostensibly to fight the Islamic State but also, and he’s not very coy about it, to overthrow Syria’s existing government.

Disclosure: Since leaving the US Marine Corps 20 years ago, I’ve personally become more and more anti-war in temperament. But even if I hadn’t, I’d like to think that looking back on seven decades of complete lawlessness as regards US military adventurism would lead me to the same conclusion.

If Congress isn’t willing to take the simple step of voting to declare war, why should the rest of us pretend that it has done so?

Why should ordinary Americans pick up the tab in blood and treasure for conflicts that can’t garner the plain, open, unqualified support of 218 US Representatives and 51 US Senators?

Why should ordinary Americans yield the extraordinary  powers and prerogatives war portends to politicians too craven to put the thing in writing and vote its passage?

No, I don’t believe requiring Congress to declare war before waging war will end war.

No, I don’t believe requiring Congress to declare war before waging war will make war less bloody or less horrifying or more humane.

But it might make them move a little more slowly and thoughtfully when it comes to condemning thousands, even millions, to violent death.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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CISA: Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Internet Liberty

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Well into the third decade of widely available Internet access for regular people, it’s getting more and more difficult to focus public attention on threats to our freedoms in cyberspace. We’re tired of having to constantly keep track of and squash the latest political and bureaucratic schemes to seize power over the Internet and what we do on it. And the politicians and bureaucrats are taking advantage of that fatigue, as we saw earlier this year when the Federal Communications Commission promulgated its “Net Neutrality” coup.

Now CISA (the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act) looks to be within weeks or even days of final passage by Congress. The US House of Representatives has already passed one version of the bill, and the Senate followed suit with another on October 27. Once the two houses reconcile their slightly different bills and take another vote, CISA will be on its way to President Obama’s desk for signature.

It’s time to shake off the fatigue, folks. Time to get on the horn to “your” congresscritters and tell them, in no uncertain terms, that you expect them to vote “no” on CISA when it comes back to the House and Senate floors for final approval.

The conceit behind CISA is that it’s a “cybersecurity” bill which merely makes it easier for tech companies to “share” information with the federal government as a way of countering cyber-attacks.  Good for everyone. Adequate privacy protections. Yada yada yada.

If you believe that line, I’d like to talk with you about a friend of mine who died recently — a Nigerian general who left $10 million in a bank account, and I could use your help getting it out.

If you’re interested in cybersecurity, the LAST entity you want to trust with ANY of your information, EVER, is the federal government. Remember, these are the guys whose Office of Personnel Management got hacked earlier this year, exposing the personal information of more than 20 million people … that we know of. The feds are to cybersecurity what Inspector Clouseau is to police procedure.

The real purpose of CISA is to make it easier for companies who cooperate with the illegal, unconstitutional domestic spying operations of the National Security Agency and other government agencies to get away with doing so. That’s it. That’s all. Nothing else.

CISA is the latest in a long line of actual and attempted Internet power grabs by the DC crowd. I know you’re tired of fighting these outrages. I know you’re tired of even hearing about them. But it’s important. Let’s put CISA down like the rabid dog it is, and put the politicians on notice that while we may be tired, we’re not asleep.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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