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Saturday, January 15
Soldier Receives Shabby Treatment from Pentagon
by
Trish Nelson
on Sat 15 Jan 2005 02:23 PM CST
 Soldier Receives Shabby Treatment from Pentagon
MinutemanMedia
by Jim Hightower
(JAN 12, 2005) When
challenged directly by a crowd of America's troops about the Bushites'
ongoing damnable failure to provide adequate armor for our soldiers,
Pentagon chief Donnie Rumsfeld was momentarily speechless. As the
crowd murmured, Rummy said: "Now, settle down, settle down.
Hell, I'm an old man, it's early in the morning and I'm gathering my
thoughts here."
If
any of the Bushites need greater clarity on the scandalous way they
treat our soldiers, they need only visit Army Specialist Robert Loria
of Middletown, New York. Last February, he was in one of
Rumsfeld's unprotected Humvees when it was hit by a roadside bomb in
Iraq. [Loria was severely injured.] He spent months in rehab, trying to
learn how to live [with his injury]. Finally, just before this
Christmas, he was due to be released and return home when he was hit
with another bomb.
Rumsfeld's
Pentagon presented Loria with a bill for $1,700, claiming he'd
erroneously received family separation pay while in rehab, plus travel
expenses connected to his treatment. Also, they billed him for
some of the Humvee parts damaged in the bombing that [injured him].
Loria
was devastated, but the Army brass didn't care, demanding payment
before they would release him. Hello. The Halliburtons rip
off billions from us taxpayers, but the Pentagon is hounding the
grunts! "It's almost like I'm being abandoned," Loria said.
"Like, you did your job for us and now you are no use. That's how
it feels." Is that clear enough for you, Mr. Rumsfeld?
Thanks
to press coverage and intervention by some members of Congress, Loria's
nightmarish treatment by the Pentagon has finally ended. The Army
was forced to clear Loria's hokey debt and send him home.
But
why should a soldier who's made such an extreme sacrifice be treated so
shabbily in the first place? And how many others are getting the
same back of the hand?
Jim
Hightower is the best-selling author of "Thieves In High Places:
They've Stolen Our Country And It's Time To Take It Back," on sale now
from Viking Press. [Go to] jimhightower.com. You can also find Jim's column weekly at MinutemanMedia.Org.
 Join your fellow Iowans in the fight against media bias. Click here to join RapidResponse - Iowa.
Can the FBI Monitor Your Web Browsing Without a Warrant?
by
Linda Thieman
on Sat 15 Jan 2005 07:25 AM CST
 Can the FBI Monitor Your Web Browsing Without a Warrant?
EFFector Vol. 18, No. 2 January 14, 2005
EFF Demands Answers from DOJ about PATRIOT Act Surveillance
Washington,
DC - [Friday] the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FBI and other
offices of the US Department of Justice, seeking the release of
documents that would reveal whether the government has been using the
USA PATRIOT Act to spy on Internet users' reading habits without a
search warrant.
At
issue is PATRIOT Section 216, which expanded the government's authority
to conduct surveillance in criminal investigations using pen registers
or trap and trace devices ("pen-traps"). Pen-traps
collect information about the numbers dialed on a telephone but do not
record the actual content of phone conversations. Because of this
limitation, court orders authorizing pen-trap surveillance are easy to
get - instead of having to show probable cause, the government need
only certify relevance to its investigation. Also, the government
never has to inform people that they are or were the subjects of
pen-trap surveillance.
PATRIOT expanded pen-traps to include devices that monitor Internet communications.
But the line between non-content and content is a lot blurrier online
than it is on phone networks. The DOJ has said openly that the
new definitions allow pen-traps to collect email and IP addresses.
However, the DOJ has not been so forthcoming about web
surveillance. It won't reveal whether it believes URLs can be
collected using pen-traps, despite the fact that URLs clearly reveal
content by identifying the web pages being read. EFF made its
FOIA request specifically to gain access to documents that might reveal
whether the DOJ is using pen-traps to monitor web browsing.
"It's
been over three years since the USA PATRIOT Act was passed, and the DOJ
still hasn't answered the public's simple question: 'Can you see
what we're reading on the Web without probable cause?'" said Kevin
Bankston, EFF Staff Attorney and Bruce J. Ennis Equal Justice Works
Fellow. "Much of PATRIOT is coming up for review this year, but
we can never have a full and informed debate of the issues when the DOJ
won't explain how it has been using these new surveillance powers."
The law
firm of DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary assisted EFF in preparing the FOIA
request and will help with any litigation if the DOJ fails to respond.
FOIA request:
http://www.eff.org/cgi/tiny?urlID=378
For this release:
http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2005_01.php#002213
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