July, 06 2011, 11:30am EDT
New Documents Reveal Behind-the-Scenes FBI Role in Controversial Secure Communities Deportation Program
FBI Views Secure Communities as First Step in “Next Generation Identification” (NGI) Surveillance Project to Amass Expansive Database of Personal Biometric Information
NEW YORK and WASHINGTON
Documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and the Cardozo Law School Immigration Justice Clinic show that the controversial Secure Communities deportation program (S-Comm), designed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to target people for deportation, is also a key component of a little-known FBI project to accumulate a massive store of personal biometric information on citizens and non-citizens alike.
According to the documents, S-Comm is "only the first of a number of biometric interoperability systems being brought online by the FBI 'Next Generation Identification' (NGI) project." NGI will expand the FBI's existing fingerprint database to add iris scans, palm prints, and facial recognition information for a wide range of people.
Jessica Karp of NDLON explained: "NGI is the next generation Big Brother. It's a backdoor route to a national ID, to be carried not in a wallet, but within the body itself. The FBI's biometric-based project is vulnerable to hackers and national security breaches and carries serious risks of identity theft. If your biometric identity is stolen or corrupted in NGI, it will be hard to fix. Unlike an identity card or pin code, biometrics are forever."
The misrepresentations ICE used to sell S-Comm to states have been well documented and are currently the subject of a DHS Office of the Inspector General investigation. But to date, the FBI's role in S-Comm has not been scrutinized, although the FBI has come under fire recently for adopting new, generalized policies that permit intrusive, suspicionless surveillance without adequate oversight.
Said Bridget Kessler of the Cardozo Law School Immigration Justice Clinic: "These documents provide a fascinating glimpse into the FBI's role in forcing S-Comm on states and localities. The FBI's desire to pave the way for the rest of the NGI project seems to have been a driving force in the policy decision to make S-Comm mandatory. But the documents also confirm that, both technologically and legally, S-Comm could have been voluntary."
Although the documents obtained raise many more questions than answers about the FBI's involvement in S-Comm and S-Comm's place in the broader NGI project, they do reveal the following key facts:
The CJIS Advisory Board, which oversees the FBI's criminal databases, passed a motion in June 2009 to recommend that the FBI convert S-Comm from a voluntary to a mandatory program at the local level. At that time - and as much as one year later - ICE was still representing S-Comm as voluntary to state and local officials.
The FBI's decision to support mandatory imposition of S-Comm was not driven by any legal mandate. In fact, the FBI considered making S-Comm voluntary, showing that it viewed opting out as both a technological possibility and a lawful option. The FBI chose the mandatory route not because of a statutory requirement, but for "record linking/maintenance purposes." In focusing on mundane record-keeping issues, the agency failed to weigh any of the considerations that have driven states and localities across the country to withdraw from S-Comm, including the program's impact on community policing, its association with an increased risk of racial profiling, and its failure to comply with its announced purpose of targeting dangerous criminals.
Both FBI and immigration officials have raised concerns internally that aspects of S-Comm may interfere with privacy and invade civil liberties. Notes from one meeting, for example, state that S-Comm "goes against privacy and civil liberties." In another series of emails, FBI officials raised concerns that state and local users of the FBI databases would be surprised to learn that the FBI was using their data to perform searches that the users had neither requested nor authorized.
DHS may be using S-Comm to gather and store data about U.S. citizens, too. One of the newly obtained documents indicates that US-VISIT, a component of DHS may have considered storing certain information about individuals in violation of their own internal requirements and privacy laws. This may include the retention of data about the lawful activities of even natural-born U.S. citizens.
Said Center for Constitutional Rights attorney Gitanjali Gutierrez, "These revelations should disturb us on multiple levels: the lies, the shadowy role of the FBI, the threats to citizens and non-citizens alike, and the rampant potential violations of civil liberties. This goes far beyond the irreparable S-Comm program and opens a window onto the dystopian future our government has planned. With so much at stake, this process must at all costs be transparent going forward."
To read our briefing guide, factsheet and related documents, please visit https://uncoverthetruth.org/foia-documents/foia-ngi/ngi-documents/. To read FOIA documents and information about the case NDLON v. ICE brought by CCR, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and the Cardozo Law School Immigration Justice Clinic, visit CCR's legal case page.
The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. CCR is committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.
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Booze Hound! Lina Khan, Not Done Yet, Targets Nation's Largest Alcohol Seller
"The FTC is doing what our government should be doing: using every tool possible to make life better for everyday Americans," said one advocate.
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Thursday sued Southern Glazer's Wine and Spirits, alleging that the nation's largest alcohol distributor, "violated the Robinson-Patman Act, harming small, independent businesses by depriving them of access to discounts and rebates, and impeding their ability to compete against large national and regional chains."
The FTC said its complaint details how the Florida-based company "is engaged in anticompetitive and unlawful price discrimination" by "selling wine and spirits to small, independent 'mom-and-pop' businesses at prices that are drastically higher" than what it charges large chain retailers, "with dramatic price differences that provide insurmountable advantages that far exceed any real cost efficiencies for the same bottles of wine and spirits."
The suit comes as FTC Chair Lina Khan's battle against "corporate greed" is nearing its end, with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announcing Tuesday that he plans to elevate Andrew Ferguson to lead the agency.
Emily Peterson-Cassin, director of corporate power at Demand Progress Education Fund, said Thursday that "instead of heeding bad-faith calls to disarm before the end of the year, the FTC is taking bold, needed action to fight back against monopoly power that's raising prices."
"By suing Southern Glazer under the Robinson-Patman Act, a law that has gone unenforced for decades, the FTC is doing what our government should be doing: using every tool possible to make life better for everyday Americans," she added.
According to the FTC:
Under the Robinson-Patman Act, it is generally illegal for sellers to engage in price discrimination that harms competition by charging higher prices to disfavored retailers that purchase similar goods. The FTC's case filed today seeks to ensure that businesses of all sizes compete on a level playing field with equivalent access to discounts and rebates, which means increased consumer choice and the ability to pass on lower prices to consumers shopping across independent retailers.
"When local businesses get squeezed because of unfair pricing practices that favor large chains, Americans see fewer choices and pay higher prices—and communities suffer," Khan said in a statement. "The law says that businesses of all sizes should be able to compete on a level playing field. Enforcers have ignored this mandate from Congress for decades, but the FTC's action today will help protect fair competition, lower prices, and restore the rule of law."
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Southern Glazer's published a statement calling the FTC lawsuit "misguided and legally flawed" and claiming it has not violated the Robinson-Patman Act.
"Operating in the highly competitive alcohol distribution business, we offer different levels of discounts based on the cost we incur to sell different quantities to customers and make all discount levels available to all eligible retailers, including chain stores and small businesses alike," the company said.
Peterson-Cassin noted that the new suit "follows a massive court victory for the FTC on Tuesday in which a federal judge blocked a $25 billion grocery mega-merger after the agency sued," a reference to the proposed Kroger-Albertsons deal.
"The FTC has plenty of fight left and so should all regulatory agencies," she added, alluding to the return of Trump, whose first administration saw
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Jayapal, who was one of 140 lawmakers to oppose the package, emphasized that the Pentagon has failed seven consecutive annual audits.
Despite being the only federal agency to never have passed a federal audit, said Jayapal, the Department of Defense "continues to receive huge boosts to funding every year. Our constituents deserve better."
As Common Dreams reported last month, more than half of the department's annual budget now goes to military contractors that consistently overcharge the government, contributing to the Pentagon's inability to fully account for trillions of taxpayer dollars.
The $883.7 billion legislation that was advanced by the House on Wednesday would pour more money into the Pentagon's coffers. The package includes more than $500 million in Israeli military aid and two $357 million nuclear-powered attack submarine despite the Pentagon requesting only one, and would cut more than $621 million from President Joe Biden's budget request for climate action initiatives.
Jayapal noted that the legislation—which was passed with the support of 81 Democrats and 200 Republicans—also includes anti-transgender provisions, barring the children of military service members from receiving gender-affirming healthcare in "the first federal statute targeting LGBTQ people since the 1990s when Congress adopted 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' and the Defense of Marriage Act."
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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Thursday that the legislation "has some very good things we Democrats wanted in it, it has some bad things we wouldn't have put in there, and some things that were left out," and indicated that he had filed cloture for the first procedural vote on the NDAA.
The vote is expected to take place early next week, and 60 votes are needed to begin debate on the package.
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Two Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden Thursday, urging him to place more checks on potential nuclear weapons use by mandating that a president must obtain authorization from Congress before initiating a nuclear first strike.
The letter writers, Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), argue that "such a policy would provide clear directives for the military to follow: A president could order a nuclear launch only if (1) Congress had approved the decision, providing a constitutional check on executive power or (2) the United States had already been attacked with a nuclear weapon. This would be infinitely safer than our current doctrine."
The two write that time is of the essence: "As Donald Trump prepares to return to the Oval Office, it is more important than ever to take the power to start a nuclear war out of the hands of a single individual and ensure that Congress's constitutional role is respected and fulfilled."
The Constitution vests Congress, not the president, with the power to declare war (though presidents have used military force without getting the OK from Congress on multiple occasions in modern history, according to the National Constitution Center).
During the Cold War, when nuclear weapons policy was produced, speed was seen as essential to deterrence, according to Jon Wolfsthal, the director of global risk at the Federation of American Scientists, who wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post last year that makes a similar argument to Markey and Lieu.
"There is no reason today to rely on speedy decision-making during situations in which the United States might launch first. Even as relations with Moscow are at historic lows, we are worlds removed from the Cold War's dominant knife's-edge logic," he wrote.
While nuclear tensions today may not be quite as high as they were during the apex of the Cold War, fears of nuclear confrontation have been heightened due to poor relations between the United States and Russia over the ongoing war in Ukraine, among other issues. Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree lowering the threshold for potential nuclear weapons use not long after the U.S. greenlit Ukraine's use of U.S.-supplied long range weapons in its fight against Russia.
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