Secure Liberties Newsletter
TOP LINE
Although we’re used to watching bad horror movies this month — Treasury’s sanctions review is really, really bad. After nearly 10 months after the Biden admin announced it would undergo a comprehensive review on US sanctions policy, they released a 7-page document that didn’t evaluate past or current sanctions programs, contained boilerplate recommendations without specifics, and did not seriously grapple with negative humanitarian consequences or ineffectiveness of sanctions. In his hearing yesterday with the Senate Banking Committee, Deputy Treasury Secretary Adeyemo did not provide much info outside of what was in the 7 pages, and dodged some pretty simple questions (see this exchange with Sen. Ossoff). Needless to say, advocacy groups, who have been calling for comprehensive evaluation of US sanctions regimes along with meaningful reforms, are pretty disappointed.
Somebody in this camp ain’t what he appears to be: DEA approved 50+ covert surveillance requests (including undercover infiltration and aerial surveillance) targeting racial justice protests last summer, according to new documents released by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. We note the extensive use of FOIA exemption (b)(7)(E) in redacting the underlying documents, which the DOJ says covers “guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions if such disclosure could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law.”
A panel and fun fact: October 26 is the 20th anniversary of the Patriot Act (and we’re hosting a panel on it at 10:30 – RSVP here!). According to The Knot, that’s the China / Platinum anniversary. FYI, there are two China Initiative stories below.
AT HOME
The End…? Clearview AI, our last monster of the week, dropped its subpoenas of civil society critics, marking one of the quicker third acts in recent memory. Politico has the good news.
Scaling up: The FBI is using geofence search warrants at a degree not seen before to find insurrectionists, according to Wired. Google now discloses limited information about these controversial warrants, which use GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth signals to identify devices within the virtual geofence. Wired found “45 federal criminal cases that cite Google geolocation data to place suspects inside the US Capitol on January 6.”
Yet the punishment of an insurrection critic is raising eyebrows, after a Florida judge sentenced an antifascist activist, as The Intercept reports, “to 44 months in federal prison for social media posts that called for armed defense against possible far-right attacks.” That’s a lot more time than any insurrectionists have been sentenced to.
Strange and scary: Canadian company Enbridge “reimbursed” Minnesota cops $2.4m “for arresting and surveilling hundreds of demonstrators who oppose” its Line 3 pipeline, according to The Guardian.
Drone whistleblower Daniel Hale has been placed in a draconian “Communication Management Unit,” according to Defending Rights & Dissent. CMU’s “severely restrict the communications of individuals held in them,” and accordingly “Hale can only call or or write individuals with the approval of the Bureau of Prisons.” We recently covered Hale’s story in the context of those calling for his pardon.
Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt just bought-we-mean-hired natsec validator Michele Flournoy, former undersecretary of Defense for policy and DefSec contender. Schmidt’s launching the “Special Competitive Studies Project,” which will make natsec “recommendations” with an eye toward an AI-driven future. Speaking of Halloween, Henry Kissinger is giving it glowing reviews.
24 groups called on DOJ to drop charges against Julian Assange in the aftermath of blockbuster reporting by Yahoo News that CIA Directors Pompeo and Haspel considered assassinating and kidnapping him. Signers of the letter include the ACLU, Demand Progress Education Fund, and Freedom of the Press.
Pegasus fallout continues as Commerce issues new rule limiting sale of hacking tools to China and Russia, per WaPo. The rule takes effect in 90 days, but it remains to be seen if this will do the trick.
Following up on targeting immigrant activists: after DHS released a new memo with 5 sentences about “Guarding Against the Use of Immigration Enforcement as a Tool of Retaliation for the Assertion of Legal Rights,” advocates pointed out that the agency failed to address DHS’s own practice of retaliating against organizers. Those advocates include Immigrant Defense Project, Just Futures Law, and NYU Law’s Immigrant Rights Clinic.
Following through with restitution for one victim of the China Initiative: After a mistrial, a promise to retry him, and finally an acquittal, the University of Tennessee Knoxville offered Anming Hu his job back with back pay.
But China is still “the most important geopolitical threat we face in the 21st century,” according to CIA Director Burns as the CIA announced structural changes and a new China Mission Center. Reportedly, it’s goals include “better insight into human sourcing,” which sounds like informants… which sounds like more investigations into Americans with (often innocuous) connections to China being investigated in pursuit evidence than can be used to coerce informants. Which sounds like Anming Hu.
National Cyber Director Chris Inglis tells industry to “collaborate,” as Biden admin officials continue their not-yet-charming cybersecurity offensive.
ABROAD
After pushback, the Pentagon will offer compensation to families of the Aug. 29 US airstrike victims in Afghanistan. Last Friday the Pentagon announced it would be providing an unspecified compensation to the families of the 10 civilians killed in a US drone strike while the military was withdrawing from Afghanistan. This follows complaints by the family members and two letters sent to Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin by Senators Durbin and Leahy and Senator Warren and Rep. Khanna on the matter.
Biden admin “relabeling the same deeply flawed counterterrorism policy,” write Annie Shiel, Jordan Street, and Abigail Watson in Just Security in response to insights gleaned from a speech by Assistant to the President for Homeland Security Liz Sherwood-Randall in September. In the speech, Sherwood-Randall laid out three core principles to guide counterterrorism strategies in the future, but the remarks offer little indication of significant shifts from the past two admins. As the authors of the piece suggest, much of this supposedly new strategy doubles down on “over-the-horizon options” that would maintain lethal strikes outside of designated warzones, something over 113 organizations have called to end earlier this year. Saferworld’s podcast episode offers further insights.
Recent foreign policy votes in Congress hint at the influence of military contractor cash, a small study by Stephen Semler at Speaking Security reveals. The study looked at three recent House vote breakdowns among Democrats for amendments in the NDAA — Rep. Ocasio-Cortez‘s, that reduces Pentagon spending by 10%; Rep. Garamendi‘s, that defunds a program that would build more nuclear weapons; and Rep. Bowman‘s, that withdraws US troops in Syria unless a specific authorization is passed — and matched those offices with the amount of donation money by military contracting companies. The unsurprising result: offices that received more money were more likely to vote against those amendments, and vice versa.
Speaking of military contractors getting what they want, Senate Approps chair Leahy rubberstamped the 5% DoD budget increase approved by Armed Services earlier this year, which is more than what the Biden admin even requested. Andrew Lautz breaks it down further here.
New Iran poll shows that “maximum pressure” against Iran, continued by Biden, is predictably backfiring. The survey, conducted by Iran Poll and the University of Maryland’s Center for International and Security Studies, shows the Iranian public is more disillusioned with the JCPOA than in 2016, growing extremely skeptical that the US will live up to the deal’s obligations, and the majority of the respondents believe the Iranian government should hold firm in negotiations with the US. Coupled with a nearly 78% approval rating for Iran’s new President Ebrahim Raisi — who Western press considers more hardline than former President Rouhani — these polling numbers suggest that the current policy of maintaining Trump’s crippling sanctions and not re-entering into the agreement is not going as planned.
But new info shows that Iran offered a temporary solution to the diplomatic impasse, which Biden rejected. According to information gathered by Responsible Statecraft, Iran requested that the Biden administration accept a simple deal that would keep both parties in compliance with the JCPOA only for the remainder of Biden’s term as president. The offer, which came before the Iran’s June presidential elections, seemed to respond to Biden admin concerns of binding future administrations’ hands. However the overture was rejected, suprising Iranian negotiators and stalling forward progress in talks. We recommend reading the entire article for Trita Parsi’s excellent analysis of where things stand with negotiations as a whole.
WHAT’S HAPPENING?
Yemen at the Crossroads: Updates On the Humanitarian Crisis and What Congress Can Do About It (hosted by Friends Committee on National Legislation, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and Demand Progress) Tuesday, October 26 @ 3pm ET
RELEVANT, TOO
US sanctions policies desperately need accountability by Daniel Jasper & Gabe Murphy
After 20 years, it’s time to repeal the Patriot Act and begin to dismantle the surveillance state
Follow-up: Detainee can testify about his treatment at CIA black site, government tells justices
2 More Detainees Are Approved for Transfer Out of Guantánamo
BOTTOM LINE
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