:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 4.14.2003 ::
:: Guilty until proven innocent ::
Intel engineer Mike Hawash is in solitary confinement in a federal prison in Sheridan, Ore.
From CNET News.com:
Declan McCullagh's latest column
On Mar. 20, the FBI arrested Hawash at gunpoint in Intel's parking lot near Portland for reasons that remain confidential. A 38-year-old American citizen with a wife and three children, he has not been charged with a crime.
The Hawash case is not an isolated situation. I wrote recently about how Attorney General Ashcroft wants more power to snoop on the Internet, observing private conversations by installing secret microphones, spyware and keystroke loggers. Combine that with the broad powers that the Justice Department received under the 2001 Patriot Act, and you've got a situation that concentrates a tremendous amount of surveillance power in a small group of federal police and prosecutors.
Hawash is being held as a "material witness" under a 1984 law that the Justice Department believes should let the government detain American citizens at will for an arbitrary length of time. A well-researched Washington Post article from last fall said the Justice Department has imprisoned at least 44 people, including seven U.S. citizens, under the same law, with some held for many months and possibly for more than a year.
posted by me
:: 8:33:00 AM [+] ::
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