Surveillance

With several members of the RNC8 — the people charged with felonies in conjunction with planned protests at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul last month — heading to court today for hearings in their cases, the Friends of the RNC8 are asking supporters to phone three local officials today to urge that charges [...]

The Washington Post has a couple of extraordinary excerpts from Barton Gellman’s new book about Dick Cheney, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency. It’s a captivating read, detailing how the Vice President and his small cadre of allies drove the administration to the brink of a Constitutional crisis — with President Bush almost entirely in the [...]

As crews picked up after the RNC in downtown St. Paul Friday morning, a handful of local and national journalists went to City Hall and delivered 50,000 signatures pressuring St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and the city and county attorneys to immediately release journalists who were recently arrested in connection to convention protests and to [...]

Minneapolis City Council Members Gary Schiff and Cam Gordon issued a call this afternoon for an independent investigation of police actions during the Republican National Convention (RNC). Read their full statement below the jump.
Today’s call follows two earlier statements on RNC policing from city council corridors in Minneapolis and St. Paul. On Tuesday, Gordon and [...]

Between the four property searches conducted by authorities in prep for the RNC in Minneapolis and St. Paul this morning and last night, some members of the anarchist group called the RNC Welcoming Committee were found to be in possession of weapons and other devices that are used to disable buses, and five people have [...]

A state law enforcement center set up to collect, analyze and share suspicious activity reports has taken a step toward addressing some of the concerns raised about it by privacy and civil rights advocates. The governing board of the Minnesota Joint Analysis Center (MNJAC) unanimously voted on Monday to approve a new privacy policy for [...]

A post-9/11 intelligence agency created to collect and analyze suspicious activity reports from across Minnesota is operating without an important and widely used safeguard meant to check against inappropriate use of data. Most law-enforcement databases are protected with software that automatically keeps a record of every search that’s performed. That way supervisors can easily [...]

The Senate passed the FISA Amendments Act this afternoon by a 69-28 margin (roll call), and the record will show that Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar voted with the better angels of her liberal nature–if one only consults today’s record, that is. But two weeks ago, when it mattered, Klobuchar voted to effectively guarantee the bill’s [...]