Portland may be first to pull out of FBI terrorism task force

[Viva_La_Revolution]

check out the last line of this excerpt:

PORTLAND, Ore. - Departing Mayor Vera Katz has postponed a vote on renewing city participation in an FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force while Mayor-elect Tom Potter and a city commissioner seek security clearance to review the agreement.
"He needs to have a better idea of what they're doing," said Nancy Hamilton, chief of staff for Potter, who is a former Portland police chief.

"He's hopeful they can accelerate his clearance," Hamilton said of Potter's request to the U.S. Justice Department.
Commissioner-elect Sam Adams also said he wanted access to task force information to be accountable to voters.

"If the joint terrorism task force gives me the security clearance to review the files, I will vote yes," Adam told The Oregonian. "If they don't give me the clearance, I will vote no."

He said the task force has done some good work, but said he has concerns about the Bush administration's positions on civil liberties.

more -http://www.katu.com/news/story.asp?ID=73600


:bounce:

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. hope he votes no

even if he is given security clearance!

[DBoon]

2. Security clearance effectively makes him a federal government agent

He can't share information with the rest of city government, certainly not with voters and uncleared elected officials.

What you have is locally-funded police staff answering only to the federal government, with no legal way to have public oversight.

One great thing about some local governments is the requirement that they operate in the open with full public accountability.

Homeland security is chipping away at this.

[Bono71]

3. Never thought about it that way...interesting point.

[rkc3]

4. By your thinking, the PD could beat the shit out of blacks

and have little or no recourse for their actions? Or could torture or indefinitely detain their inmates?

[DBoon]

6. If their actions involved classified work..

It would be really hard to prosecute. I would likely be a criminal offense to to publicize what happened.

That's why many big-name spy cases never go to trial - they would have to reveal classified material in court. Better to let the offender get off.

There will be even less civilian oversight over local police than there is now if this goes forward

[lawladyprof]

5. Homeland security is chipping away at a lot

I have sometimes made the statement that Americans cannot be proud of our vaunted constitutional protections/civil liberties if they are only suitable when the country does not face any threats. How can we feel superior to other countries or cultures for not having our system of law, due process and the like, when they were facing threats that the US appeared to be immune from? Were/are our beloved Constitution and our freedoms products of our moral superiority or merely the fact that we were safe?

[Voltaire99]

7. A fine point. And...

Clearly it is we who have exaggerated these protections and liberties beyond their actual value. Whether in the terrible hour of the Palmer raids, during the war years and the long slog through McCarthyism, in the Stasi of Hoover's FBI or in the depths of post-911 hysteria, not only the Bill of Rights but the separation of powers has proved fungible.

Our inflated view of these paper liberties and protections leads us to all kinds of fantasies (you name one: our sense of "superiority" to other nations and cultures). It is the task of the 21st century to stop romanticizing the American system. Rights and structures easily abrogated--too often by consensus!--are fictions. How dearly we now need open eyes.

[ginnyinWI]

8. Good for them

The states have to take back power on behalf of their citizens, since the federal government seems to care so little for individual rights!