[justratsinacoat]

And we can't forget its recent weakening! [0]

While my wiki link is barely two clicks away from yours, it's still important to highlight what's going on in re "public diplomacy information" now being deployable domestically; the language on the Smith-Mundt Act wiki page makes it sound like it's merely now being archived or something:

>The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (section 1078 (a)) amended the US Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 and the Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 1987, allowing for materials produced by the State Department and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to be released within U.S. borders for the Archivist of the United States.[1][2]

Another fun fact: this particular year's National Defence Authorization Act also contained the "Feinstein-Lee Amendment", which is the one that lets them detain US citizens indefinitely without charge for suspicion of ties to terrorism.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization...

[mzw_mzw]

I hope everyone here who is complaining about this isn't going to just turn right around and enthusiastically vote to re-elect the party which did it. But I'm pretty sure that's what is going to happen.

[__jal]

Say, which party hasn't done something despicable in the last, say, 100 years?

Remember that the Greens arguably gave us Baby Bush and the Libertarians have run unapologetic racists relatively recently.

I'm thinking the Progressive Dane Party may be your guiltless party. Or perhaps the New Black Riders Party. (At least until they get power, at which point they'll actually do something, at which point they'll get the opportunity to do something awful, which they almost certainly will, because that's what happens.)

[mzw_mzw]

I'm not saying there's any specific party you have to vote for. But if you don't vote against, they won't learn. "I hate that thing you did, but I'm voting for you anyway" translates to a politician as "You don't need to do anything to earn my vote and can betray me as often as you want."

[eyelidlessness]

> Greens arguably gave us Baby Bush

1. No they didn't. 2. Even if they had, it hardly makes sense to hold both the Green Party and the Republicans responsible for that.

[anigbrowl]

The whole point of the Feinstein-Lee Amendment was to prevent the government from detaining citizens indefinitely.

http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-relea...

[justratsinacoat]

If the government can strip your citizenship away because of their suspicions of your ties to terrorism (ie, extrajudicially (ie, arbitrarily)) , then do whatever they want with you because you're no longer under the aegis of the law, enshrining the right of citizens to not be detained indefinitely seems kinda toothless (hey, wasn't that the status quo before the War on Terror?). If they want to do this to a citizen, they can dispel the protection by making the target not a citizen anymore.

All this is especially troubling because, as noted below, the Constitution, and other human rights legislation, typically extends protection to "persons".

[jwtadvice]

This is correct.

But what's pointed out is that it only protects citizens. It clarifies, as there was a deadlock in the Senate over the issue before it, that non-citizens (other persons) or those no longer recognized as citizens (i.e. lost due to joining a foreign army or suspected of national security violations such as terrorism) do not have these protections.

The Constitution of course evaluates people as having these rights. It's a bit of a silly game to try to pretend that The Constitution is relevant today as it was written hundreds of years ago - but these differences are crucial. The placement of the boundary of habeus corpus - for all of the recent experimentation the United States has been doing with it - has been clarified by Lee-Feinstein as short of a protection for people and only a protection that extends to certain people under certain circumstances.

[dv_dt]

So, a person who is a citizen, could have their citizenship revoked for being a terrorist (by some definition) and then be detained indefinitely? Am I reading your, and the parent, comment correctly?

[jwtadvice]

Yes.

The amendment clarifies the boundaries of habeas corpus.

These boundaries apply only to particular people - namely those people with recognized US citizenship.

First, most of the human rights abused by the United States governments are non-Americans to begin with (let's put aside the penal system and some very sordid history with suppression of domestic civil rights groups for a second).

The amendment clarifies that foreign targets have no right to habeas corpus, a trial, to know even what they are being held for, etc. A very large contingency of innocent people suffer through this, but this isn't the comment to expound on it.

Second, the US can revoke citizenship of those it deems dangerous to national security (people like Snowden among them).

Take for instance the first result from searching "revoke citizenship join ISIS": http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/01/14/paris-lessons-us-m...

The criticism of the amendment is that the boundaries drawn do not respect the rights of "people" - only the rights of those for which it is convenient to respect (less than 4% of the people on Earth, and no serious dissidents, whistleblowers, etc).

[pbhjpbhj]

>”Article the seventh... No person shall [...] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; [...]." //

I guess that was revoked at some point? Notice it says person and not citizen.

[jwtadvice]

And other legislation that castrated domestic propaganda protections including NSPD-1 and NSPD-16 and NDAA 2015.

[dragonwriter]

> And other legislation that castrated domestic propaganda protections including NSPD-1 and NSPD-16

NSPD-1 and NSPD-16 are presidential directives, not legislation, and have no legal force to the extent that they conflict with actual legislation, including the statutory ban on domestically-directed propaganda.

[jwtadvice]

Agreed, but as you likely know they are directives to the entire executive apparatus that cause it to discover, and then pass, the legislation it needs (therefore it's inclusion next to NDAA).

They are similar in kind to the Executive Orders, for example the now infamous EO12333 that carved the legal space and interpretation within the US government to justify many information activities, including propaganda and it being the authority the NSA points to for many of its activities - including domestic and global surveillance.

Note the content of the aforementioned presidential directives declare authority to use Civil Affairs Information Support (military capabilities joined on civilian infrastructure) during moments of national emergancy - such as Hurricane Katrina but also used for civil unrest like Occupy Wall and Ferguson.