Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Friday July 20 2018, @11:01PM   Printer-friendly
from the sue-or-be-suet? dept.

Rolling Stone:

When a U.S. citizen heard he was on his own country’s drone target list, he wasn’t sure he believed it. After five near-misses, he does – and is suing the United States to contest his own execution
...
With Reprieve’s help, Kareem did what the system asks a law-abiding American citizen with a grievance to do. He sued, filing a complaint in district court in Washington, D.C., on March 30th, 2017, asking the U.S. government to take him off the Kill List, at least until he had a chance to challenge the evidence against him.

The case, still unresolved more than a year later, has awesome implications not just for Kareem but for all Americans – all people everywhere, for that matter.

It’s not a stretch to say that it’s one of the most important lawsuits to ever cross the desk of a federal judge. The core of the Bill of Rights is in play, and a wrong result could formalize a slide into authoritarianism that began long ago, but accelerated after 9/11.

He needs to take the matter to Information Retrieval, but heaven help him if he doesn't get his receipt stamped first.

[Ed note: It's a long read, but provides extensive background on the US government's kill list development, implementation, and complications in trying to do anything about it.]


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Saturday July 21 2018, @12:22PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Saturday July 21 2018, @12:22PM (#710386) Journal

    We expect KGB-like behavior from Russia and countries like it. We fought countries like those in WWII and the Cold War, and the reason we fought them is because we did not want to end up like that, with secret police and repression.

    Now here we are, with several agencies that are more powerful and pervasive by orders of magnitude than the Gestapo, SS, KGB, or Stasi (or insert your totalitarian force of choice) ever were. And we're supposed to be a democracy, a nation of laws. Yet our leaders have all signed off on every horrible expansion of scope and power that those agencies have asked for, with no debate, in direct contravention of the Constitution we all know and love. So we're scratching our heads, wondering how such a thing has come to pass, that we should have woken up to a reality in place around us that is worse than the most breathless Hollywood Blockbuster ('Enemy of the State,' anyone?).

    That's why it's always "NSA, NSA, NSA, bad puppy," and why it must remain so until those people, and their colleagues in the CIA and FBI, are hanged. They are traitors to the Constitution, freedom, and their oaths to defend the same.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +4  
       Insightful=2, Informative=2, Total=4
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5