Monday, August 02, 2010

Is negative opinion of Iraq/Afghan wars a crime?

U.S. Customs appears to think so.

Jacob Appelbaum, an American working with the Tor Project and a sometime-volunteer for Wikileaks, was stopped at the border by U.S. Customs while entering the United States from Canada, and detained for a couple of hours while being interrogated by Customs and by FBI agents. He did not answer their questions, but, rather, repeatedly requested access to his attorney.

The Wikileaks documents are all over a year old. There is no damage to national security from such out-of-date documents -- only a damage to the job security of the apologists for the Afghan war. And we can't have that, can we?

- Badtux the Security Penguin

4 comments:

  1. Sovok States of America, right there at the border. Canuckrainia is almost as bad if you're political in any way. Like when Amy Goodman of leftist radio fame got hassled because they were afraid she would talk bad about the Winter Olympics.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Officials from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the US Army then told him he was not under arrest but was being detained. They asked questions about Wikileaks, asked for his opinions about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and asked where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is, but he declined to comment without a lawyer present, according to the sources. He was not permitted to make a phone call, they said." "

    Is that even legal?

    ReplyDelete
  3. How does detained but not under arrest differ from kidnapping?

    Not allowed to make a phone call? Christ, id you ARE arrested you can do that.

    Wow. WASF.
    JzB

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nunya, JZB, it's called being a "material witness". During the Bushevik regime, people were kept in jail for *months* as a "material witness". The law basically allows you to be imprisoned as a "material witness" until your compelled testimony has been given at a grand jury proceeding or criminal trial, and basically allows the government to 'disappear' you without the right to an attorney since the Constitution only mentions the right to an attorney if you are the accused, not if someone else is the accused.

    So anyhow, this vile law allowing this was passed back during the Reagan years (thank you, Saint Ronnie the Fascist Raygun!), but wasn't widely applied until the Bushevik regime. So now you know...

    - Badtux the Law Penguin

    ReplyDelete

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