Secure Liberties Newsletter
TOP LINE
New helicopter contract with Saudi Arabia flies in the face of Biden’s promised policy shift. The new $500bn deal signed by the Biden admin would provide support to the Royal Saudi Land Forces Aviation Command’s fleet of Apache helicopters, Blackhawks, and a future fleet of Chinook helicopters. The deal provides two years of training, the service of 350 US contractors, and two US government staff. The deal was first announced in September. Per The Guardian, it is very likely these helicopters have been used previously in Saudi’s offensive operations in Yemen, contradicting Biden’s supposed ending of US support for such operations.
As world leaders meet at COP26, Rep. Lee wants the DoD to own up to its own carbon footprint (which is massive). The clock has run out for the DoD to provide a detailed report on the Pentagon’s greenhouse gas emissions, as mandated by the FY2021 NDAA, despite releasing a climate risk assessment last month replete with warnings on climate change threats. Yesterday, Rep. Barbara Lee led 19 others in introducing a resolution that calls on the DoD to commit to strict reporting of greenhouse gas emissions from all domestic and overseas operations, including from contractors, and the manufacturing of equipment and weapons. It also calls on DoD to set annual emission reduction targets in line with the Paris Agreement. Researchers have estimated that the US military pollutes more than 140 separate countries.
AT HOME
Federal judge: Afghan militant at Guantánamo has been held illegally, in a ruling his lawyers describe as the first in 10 years. WaPo has the story, but two of the three opinions were classified and are still undergoing classification review.
Speaking of GTMO: Writing from a Guantánamo jury room, a military jury condemned the torture of a terrorist and urged clemency after sentencing Majid Khan to 26 years (one more than the minimum). The New York Times’s incredible Carol Rosenberg obtained the letter — some notable quotes, written by seven military officers:
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“This abuse was of no practical value in terms of intelligence, or any other tangible benefit to U.S. interests.”
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“Instead, it is a stain on the moral fiber of America; the treatment of Mr. Khan in the hands of U.S. personnel should be a source of shame for the U.S. government.”
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“Mr. Khan was subjected to physical and psychological abuse well beyond approved enhanced interrogation techniques, instead being closer to torture performed by the most abusive regimes in modern history.”
DHS is starting a new intelligence cell to track and predict groups of migrants, according to NBC News.
Activists, with ACLU of NoCal and EFF, are suing a sheriff for “illegally sharing millions of local drivers’ license plates and location data.” Marin County Sheriff Robert Doyle is allegedly conducting this surveillance with a network of cameras and then sharing it “with hundreds of federal and out-of-state agencies.” (Complaint here.)
CBP is in desperate need of transparency, oversight, and accountability, according to a new report from the Project on Government Oversight. From misconduct to abuse of surveillance powers, POGO makes a compelling argument here that the country’s largest law enforcement agency is also the least transparent and accountable. Indeed, POGO reports on an ethos that seems like it belongs in a paramilitary organization.
Boston unanimously passed a surveillance oversight ordinance, on the other side of years of work by groups like the ACLU and Restore the Fourth. Laws like this require police to keep municipal officials informed of what surveillance technologies they’re deploying in communities, give those councils and boards the power to deny deployment, and to regularly report on the surveillance.
ICE’s Algorithms are “Rigged by Design,” according to this in-depth article from Take Back Tech fellow Aly Panjwani.
Familiar for all the wrong reasons: WaPo covered the dangers of researching cybersecurity vulnerabilities in government websites (among others). Namely that disclosing them can make researchers targets of powerful politicians.
New issue brief from Restore the Fourth on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Here’s a summary thread.
We’re still not sure if there’s a there here, but conservative pushback about the infamous letter from the National School Boards Association that invokes the Patriot Act continues. We’re following this, but so far are skeptical about some of the lines of attack coming out of this.
Sen. Blumenthal pushed AG Garland on the use of the states secrets doctrine to shield 9/11 documents from victims’ families at the SJC oversight hearing last week, starting at 3:48:45 on C-Span. (Hat tip to Patrice McDermott at Government Information Watch.)
Is this good news or bad news? You tell us: an NSA official says 100+ companies have joined NSA cybersecurity collaboration, per WaPo.
ABROAD
Pentagon review claims no ‘misconduct or negligence’ in airstrike that killed 7 children. Yes, you read that right. Yesterday the Pentagon released a review looking at the August 29th airstrike that killed aid worker Zemari Ahmadi and 9 of his family members. The independent review (if you can call the Pentagon investigating itself independent) argues those responsible for launching the strike reached an incorrect but ultimately reasonable conclusion to bomb the family, given the interpretation of the information provided to them. We defer to our commentary to the responses by Dr. Steven Kwon, president of Nutrition and Education International (where Ahmadi worked), and Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project.
Relatedly, we’ve added two new books about drone warfare’s psychological, moral, and societal effects to our reading list: “Asymmetric Killing: Risk Avoidance, Just War, and the Warrior Ethos” by Neil Renic and “On Killing Remotely: The Psychology of Killing With Drones,” by Wayne Phelps. For more, check out Murtaza Hussain’s write-up in The Intercept.
Following Pegasus: the Biden admin just blacklisted the NSO Group after it determined, in the words of The Guardian, “the Israeli spyware maker has acted ‘contrary to the foreign policy and national security interests of the US.'” Chilling reporting previously revealed that Pegasus, the NSO Group’s controversial spyware product, had compiled information about the French president, journalists, and activists.
Iran and US to talk turkey after Thanksgiving. On November 29, Iran, US, UK, China, France, Germany and Russia are set to renew talks in Vienna on the JCPOA. Iranian officials have stated they want guarantees from the Biden Administration that the US won’t unilaterally withdraw from the agreement (again), and demand a reversal to Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions. As with previous rounds of talks, the US will participate indirectly.
But concrete, goodwill gestures by the US are needed to move diplomacy forward, say 47 organizations in a letter penned to President Biden on Tuesday. These include taking measures to ensure US sanctions don’t prevent Iran from acquiring vaccines or harm the Iranian healthcare system, as well as urging EU countries to increase funding to charities dealing with an influx of refugees from Afghanistan.
Central Asian countries not champing at the bit to host bases for US airstrikes. The Pentagon has so far been unable to reach agreements with nations surrounding Afghanistan to provide a launchpad for US counter-terrorism operations after withdrawing from the country, per WaPo.
For a glimpse into the US’s covert ‘forever war’ in Somalia, and the blowback it has produced, we recommend this piece in the New York Times.
WHAT’S HAPPENING?
11/4 @ 5 pm (Thurs) — No Weapons, Wars, or Walls! Divest from Militarism, Invest in Communities!
11/8 @ 11 am (Mon) — The Advisory Committee on Transparency is hosting a ‘lightning talk’-format webinar with transparency experts from across the political spectrum.
11/8 @ 12 pm (Mon) — The Center for Security, Race and Rights is hosting a (CLE-eligible) lecture on Hate Crimes, Terrorism, and the Framing of White Supremacist Violence.
11/9 @ 7 pm (Tue) — The Deadly Digital Wall webinar and report
11/10 @ 11 am and 2 pm (Wed) — The Fourth Amendment Center is hosting two free CLE webinars: “When Google Searches for You: Challenging Geofence Warrants,” at 11 am EST, and “Litigating ShotSpotter Evidence: The Science and the Law,” at 2 pm.
11/10 @ 1 pm (Wed) — Cato is hosting Nixon’s War at Home: The FBI, Leftist Guerrillas, and the Origins of Counterterrorism
11/16 @ 4 pm (Tue) — Just Futures Law is hosting Defund the Surveillance Dragnet: A Conversation on How We Ground Our Work in Our Abolitionist Values
RELEVANT, TOO
Halloween may be over the Patriot Act isn’t quite dead yet:
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ACLU: 20 Years Later, It’s Time to Move on From Mass Surveillance
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CDT: Rethinking Surveillance on the 20th Anniversary of the Patriot Act
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Sen. Wyden: 20 Years After the Patriot Act, America Must End Secret Law
How Biden is trying to rebrand the drone war
Reactions & analysis to the Assange extradition appeal with Chip Gibbons (Defending Rights & Dissent), Ryan Grim (The Intercept), Kevin Gosztola (Shadowproof), and Stefania Maurizi (Il Fatto Quotidiano)
SpyTalk podcast — Conspiracies of Dunces: Exploring “crazy coup plots and spy defectors in Venezuela” and a “disturbing new documentary about the deaths of Green Beret operatives in Niger.”
Climate Change with an American Face & “Get in Line or Get Out of the Way!” by historian Michael Franczak provides us with a sobering report from the COP-26 climate summit.
‘Squid Game’ invites Americans to binge on another, human Korea
Sanctions Review Fails to Review Sanctions: Congress Should Step In
BOTTOM LINE
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