Destroying free speech by making the office a ‘no politics’ zone

* Story Highlights
* Huge interest across country in presidential race
* Experts: Politicking should not be done at the office
* Expert: Free speech is urban myth; government can’t limit, employers can
* Lawyer: Office like Thanksgiving dinner — politics could offend

(LifeWire) — At her previous job, Samantha Smith, was the lone conservative in a 10-person office — something her more liberal co-workers were happy to tease her about after she shared her views on hot-button issues like same-sex marriage and the Iraq war.

“[One April Fools Day] one of my co-workers sent an e-mail to the entire staff that called me Nancy Reagan and suggested I ‘pretend to be a Democrat for the day’ because that would be really funny,” says Smith, a registered Republican.

Because the Foxboro, Massachusetts resident liked her co-workers and the office was small, Smith says she stayed silent on the matter.

“I didn’t want to make waves,” says Smith, who’s now director of communications at an online gaming company. “But I thought, if we were a bigger company with an HR department, this would have never flown.”

Smith, 31, doesn’t debate her colleagues’ right to politick outside the workplace. “It’s fine if people want to talk about it over lunch and beers,” she says. “But I don’t think it should be done in the office.”

San Francisco employment lawyer Shanti Atkins agrees.

“When I get asked what you should share with coworkers or a supervisor, I always say, ‘It sounds really conservative, but I wouldn’t share beyond what you shared in the interview or what you shared when you met the parents of your spouse,’” says Atkins, president and CEO of ELT, a consultancy that educates employers about ethics and legal compliance.

“Especially during this election: you’ve got the first African-American presidential candidate, you’ve got the first female presidential candidate, and you’ve got the oldest presidential candidate. So you’ve got really hotly debated issues about race, gender, and age.”

Take It to the break room

Forty percent of Americans are following media coverage of the presidential contest “very closely,” and 84 percent of them are gabbing about it with family and friends, according to a March Pew Research Center phone survey of 1,000 adults nationwide.

Given how engaged the country is with the current political horse race, why wouldn’t we continue the conversation in the cubicle or conference room, touchy topics be damned? Whatever happened to free speech?

“(Free speech is) an urban myth,” at least as far as private sector companies are concerned, says employment attorney Kevin Zwetsch, who practices law with Fowler White Boggs Banker in Tampa, Florida. “Only the government is prohibited from restricting free speech.”

But it’s not your political views you should be worried about so much as disrupting the workday, Zwetsch says.

“Employers don’t want you talking, they want you working. They would control that whether it’s politics or religion or NASCAR or football.”

The key to talking politics at work, he says, is to save it for your coffee break and even then, keep the banter light and friendly.

Think twice before you canvass

There’s casually chatting about political candidates, and then there’s out-and-out canvassing for votes or donations.

“You should be very reluctant to be actively politicking or campaigning for someone at work,” Zwetsch warns. Many organizations have rules against such solicitation.

Daniel Drew, an eighth-grade teacher and political activist, had to steer clear of such activity when he ran for a state legislative seat in 2006 on the Democratic ticket — and lost — in what he describes as an ultra-conservative community.

“I was under strict instructions to not talk politics anywhere related to my job,” the 29-year-old Lehi, Utah resident says. And although his superiors were otherwise supportive of his political bid, many of his fellow teachers and students’ parents were anything but.

“Some parents and teachers told me that I should move to the East Coast or West Coast to be with my own kind,” he says. “It was awkward.” But he kept his mouth shut and shrugged it off “since people running for office have to take the good and the bad.”

Real estate lawyer Ian Wilder, 42, a Green Party activist who served as his state’s party co-chair from 2004 to 2006, keeps the peace in his five-person office by avoiding partisan topics altogether.

“It’s kind of like the Thanksgiving dinner,” the Babylon, New York resident says. “You really don’t want to bring up the thing that’s going to upset your cousin or your uncle.” VideoWatch Red and Blue family vacations »

Don’t take the bait

But what if you do your best to keep your politics close to the vest, only to be baited or preached to by a co-worker from the other side of the political aisle?

Atkins advises you pull your colleague aside, tell them they’re making you uncomfortable, and ask them to stop.

“This tends to address [more than 90 percent] of situations, before they escalate too severely,” she says.

If that doesn’t do the trick, or you’re uncomfortable confronting the person head on, talk to your boss or contact your company’s human relations department. If the person in question is your direct supervisor, seek out other superiors.

“If the person is your boss, nothing should stop you from what’s known as ‘out of channel’ reporting — talking to someone higher up who’s not your direct boss, but who can assist,” Atkins says.

In her case, Smith didn’t seek redress from her higher-ups. She didn’t have to. Instead, a solution came in the form of an unexpected job offer at another company. The new job is great, she says, and there have been no more ‘Nancy Reagan’ wisecracks.

“I can see that this company is probably going to be a little more by the book when it comes to things like politics at work,” Smith says.

CNN | Michelle Goodman | Wednesday, June 4, 2008

RFK Jr.: “They are destroying the Constitution”

Whistleblower: Cellular carrier giving FBI unfettered access

Computer security analyst Babak Pasdar says that a major mobile telecommunications carrier has a built-in backdoor that provides an undisclosed third-party with unfettered access to its internal technical infrastructure, including the ability to eavesdrop on all calls through its network. In an affidavit that describes the circumstances and basis for the allegations, Pasdar provides evidence which could indicate that the FBI is on the other side of the secret line, engaging in warrantless surveillance of mobile communications.

Pasdar discovered evidence of the backdoor when he was part of a rapid deployment team that was brought in to facilitate a large-scale network security hardware migration for the mobile carrier. During the migration, Pasdar was instructed not to migrate the traffic for one particular DS-3, which was referred to as the “Quantico Circuit” by consultants who worked closely with the carrier (the FBI Academy is based in Quantico, Virginia).

According to Pasdar, the consultants informed him that the Quantico Circuit is supposed to have no firewalls of any kind and no access control-it is given complete access to everything in the carrier’s internal network and there is no way to tell conclusively what has been accessed through it. The consultants indicated that they knew who was at the other end of the Quantico Circuit, but they refused to divulge this information to Pasdar.

When Pasdar insisted that the Quantico Circuit should at least have the minimum level of security access logging if not access control, the consultants called the company’s Director of Security, who threatened Pasdar, telling him that he would be replaced if he didn’t forget about the circuit and continue with the migration.

In the affidavit, Pasdar says that the absence of access control systems and basic access logging for the Quantico Circuit represents a deviation from industry-acceptable use scenarios and notes that such a serious breach of security would generally be considered a breach of organizational policy. He also points out that even the internal offices and systems of the carrier don’t have the same level of unfettered access to the network as the Quantico Circuit.

Although Pasdar has refused to name the carrier, and those working for the carrier who have knowledge of the Quantico Circuit’s user aren’t saying what they know, Wired’s Threat Level blog connected the pieces and points us to the 2006 wiretapping lawsuit against the telcos, which alleges that Verizon “has engaged and maintained and still does maintain a high speed data transmission line from its wireless call center to a remote location in Quantico, Virginia, the site of a U.S. government intelligence and military base.” The lawsuit also asserts that “the transmission line provided the Quantico recipient direct access to all content and all information concerning the origin and termination of telephone calls placed on the Verizon Wireless network as well as the actual content of calls.”

Providing any third party with unfettered network access to such a broad spectrum of sensitive consumer data would seem to constitute a very clear violation of the Communications Act, which broadly forbids disclosure of such information. The lack of access controls and logging undermines safeguards against abuse by enabling the recipient of the data to operate entirely outside the realm of accountability. This is particularly disturbing if the recipient of the Quantico Circuit is the FBI, because the agency has a long history of intelligence abuses and has been found to have a serious lack of meaningful internal oversight.

Ars Technia | Ryan Paul | March 6, 2008

House holds Bush confidants in contempt

House Votes to Hold Bush Confidants in Contempt in Prosecutor Purge Inquire

The House voted Thursday to hold two of President Bush’s confidants in contempt for failing to cooperate with an inquiry into whether a purge of federal prosecutors was politically motivated.

Angry Republicans boycotted the vote and staged a walkout.

The vote was 223-32 to hold White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers in contempt. The citations charge Miers with failing to testify and accuse her and Bolten of refusing Congress’ demands for documents related to the 2006-2007 firings.

Republicans said Democrats should instead be working on extending a law - set to expire Saturday - allowing the government to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mails in the United States in cases of suspected terrorist activity.

“We have space on the calendar today for a politically charged fishing expedition, but no space for a bill that would protect the American people from terrorists who want to kill us,” said Minority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio.

“Let’s just get up and leave,” he told his colleagues, before storming out of the House chamber with scores of Republicans in tow.

The vote, which Democrats had been threatening for months, was the latest wrinkle in a more than yearlong constitutional clash between Congress and the White House. The administration says the information being sought is off-limits under executive privilege, and argues that Bolten and Miers are immune from prosecution.

Democrats said they were acting to protect Congress’ constitutional prerogatives.

If Congress didn’t enforce the subpoenas, said Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat, it would “be giving its tacit consent to the dangerous idea of an imperial presidency, above the law and beyond the reach of checks and balances.”

The White House said the Justice Department would not ask the U.S. attorney to pursue the House contempt charges. However, the measure would allow the House to bring its own lawsuit on the matter.

It is the first time in 25 years that a full chamber of Congress has voted on a contempt of Congress citation, and the White House quickly pointed out that it was the first time that such action had been taken against top White House officials who had been instructed by the president to remain silent to preserve executive privilege.

“This action is unprecedented, and it is outrageous,” Dana Perino, Bush’s spokeswoman, said in a lengthy and harshly worded statement after the vote. “It is astonishing and deeply troubling that after months of delay on passing a bill that will help our intelligence professionals monitor foreign terrorists who want to kill Americans, the House has instead turned its attention to the silly, pointless, and unjust act of approving these contempt resolutions.”

If Democrats bring suit to press the contempt charges, Perino added, “they will be met with opposition at the courthouse door and at every step of the way.”

House Republicans argued that there had been no evidence of wrongdoing in the prosecutors flap, and called the vote a waste of time that would actually damage Congress’ standing.

“We don’t have evidence that we can give to the U.S. attorney. What we’re giving to him is the desire to continue a witch hunt which has produced up to today zero - nothing,” said Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah.

Under former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Justice Department officials consulted with the White House, fired at least nine federal prosecutors and kindled a political furor over a hiring process that favored Republican loyalists.

Bush’s former top political adviser, Karl Rove, has also been a target of Congress’ investigation into the purge of prosecutors, although Thursday’s measure was not aimed at him.

Fred Fielding, the current White House counsel, has offered to make officials and documents available behind closed doors to the congressional committees probing the matter - but off the record and not under oath. Lawmakers demanded a transcript of testimony and the negotiations stalled.

The contempt debate sparked an unusually bitter scene even in the fractious House. Democrats accused Republicans of marring the Capitol memorial for their fallen colleague Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., by interrupting it with a protest vote. GOP leaders shot back that it was Democrats who were responsible for dishonoring Lantos, by calling the House into session for the contempt debate before the service had ended.

It’s not clear that contempt of Congress citations must be prosecuted. The law says the U.S. attorney “shall” bring the matter to a grand jury.

In 1982, the House voted 259-105 in 1982 for a contempt citation against Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Anne Gorsuch, but the Reagan-era Justice Department refused to prosecute the case.

The Justice Department also sued the House of Representatives in that case, but the court threw out the suit and urged negotiation. The Reagan administration eventually agreed to turn over the documents.

The last time a full chamber of Congress voted on a contempt of Congress citation was 1983. The House voted 413-0 to cite former EPA official Rita Lavelle for contempt of Congress for refusing to appear before a House committee. Lavelle was later acquitted in court of the contempt charge, but she was convicted of perjury in a separate trial.

On Thursday, three Republicans joined 220 Democrats to support the contempt resolution, including Rep. Walter B. Jones of North Carolina, presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest of Maryland, who was defeated this week in a primary. One Republican, Rep. Jon Porter of Nevada, voted “present.”

AP | JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS | February 14, 2008

House stands up to Bush pressure for quick wiretap bill

A move to temporarily extend a controversial spy law hit a snag Wednesday, as the House voted to debate for three more weeks while failing to concurrently pass a temporary extension of a stop-gap measure.The president has vowed to veto any legislation updating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that does not essentially retroactively legalize his warrantless surveillance program and free phone companies from facing lawsuits. Read more

Senate Moves to Shield Telecoms on Eavesdropping

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate has approved new rules governing how the government eavesdrops on phone calls and e-mails.The vote in the Senate on Tuesday also grants legal immunity to telecommunications companies that helped the government eavesdrop on customers without court permission following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. President Bush had insisted on that retroactive protection.

The House passed its own version of the bill last year, but it didn’t include the immunity provision. Republican lawmakers now want the House to adopt the Senate bill to avoid any contentious negotiations that might arise if lawmakers had to work out the differences between the competing legislation.

The New York Times | February 12, 2008

Domestic Spying Program Could Aid Terrorists, Experts Say

Domestic Wiretapping Could Pose ‘An Awesome Risk’ to National Security

Although the Bush administration calls it a vital weapon against terrorism, its domestic wiretapping effort could become a devastating tool for terrorists if hacked or penetrated from inside, according to a new article by a group of America’s top computer security experts. Read more

American Liberty Teetering on Edge of Abyss

“Your papers please” has long been a phrase associated with Hitler’s Gestapo. People without the Third Reich’s stamp of approval were hauled off to Nazi Germany’s version of Halliburton detention centers.

Today Americans are on the verge of being asked for their papers, although probably without the “please.”

Thanks to a government that has turned its back on the U.S. Constitution, Americans now have an unaccountable Department of Homeland Security that is already asserting tyrannical powers over U.S. citizens and state governments. Headed by the neocon fanatic Michael Chertoff, the Orwellian-sounding Department of Homeland Security has mandated a national identity card for Americans, without which Americans may not enter airports or courthouses.

There is no more need for this card than there is for a Department of Homeland Security. Neither are compatible with a free society.

However, Bush, the neocons, Republicans, and Democrats do not want America to any longer be a free society, and they are taking freedom away from us just as they took away the independence of the media.

Free and informed people get in the way of power-mad zealots with agendas.

It is the agendas that are supreme, not the American people, who have less and less say about less and less.

George W. Bush, an elected president, has behaved like a dictator since Sept. 11, 2001. If “our” representatives in Congress care, they haven’t done anything about it. Bush has pretty much cut Congress out of the action.

In truth, Congress gave up its lawmaking powers to the executive branch during the New Deal. For three-quarters of a century, the bills passed by Congress have been authorizations for executive branch agencies to make laws in the form of regulations. The executive branch has come to the realization that it doesn’t really need Congress. President Bush appends his own “signing statements” to the authorizations from Congress in which the president says what the legislation means. So what is the point of Congress?

As for laws already on the books, the U.S. Department of Justice (sic) has ruled that the president doesn’t have to abide by U.S. statutes, such as FISA or the law forbidding torture. Neither does the president have to abide by the Geneva Conventions.

Other obstacles are removed by edicts known as presidential directives or executive orders. There are more and more of these edicts, and they accumulate more and more power and less and less accountability in the executive.

The disdain in which the executive branch holds the separate and equal legislative branch is everywhere apparent. For example, President Bush is concluding a long-term security agreement with the puppet government he has set up in Iraq. Prior to Sept. 11, 2001, when the president became The Decider, a defense pact was a treaty requiring the approval of Congress.

All that is now behind us. Gen. Douglas Lute, President Bush’s national security adviser for Iraq, says that the White House will not be submitting the deal to Congress for approval. Lute says Bush will not be seeking any “formal inputs from the Congress.”

“There is literally no question that this is unprecedented,” said Yale Law School Professor Oona Hathaway.

Bush can do whatever he wants, because Congress has taken its only remaining power - impeachment - off the table.

The Democratic Party leadership thinks that the only problem is Bush, who will be gone in one year. Besides, the Israel Lobby doesn’t want Israel’s champion impeached, and neither do the corporate owners of the U.S. media.

The Democrats are not adverse to inheriting the powers in Bush’s precedents. The Democrats, of course, will use the elevated powers for good rather than for evil.

Instead of having a bad dictator, we’ll have a good one.

Antiwar | Paul Craig Roberts | January 28, 2008

Court Nixes NASA Background Checks

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A federal judge blocked the government Friday from conducting background checks of low-risk employees at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory after an appeals court said the investigations threaten the constitutional rights of workers.U.S. District Judge Otis Wright issued the injunction after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed his earlier ruling and issued a sharp rebuke to the judge.

The higher court said the 28 scientists and engineers who refused to submit to the background checks faced “a stark choice - either violation of their constitutional rights or loss of their jobs.”

The workers sued the federal government, claiming that NASA was invading their privacy by requiring the investigations, which included probes into medical records and questioning of friends about everything from their finances to their sex lives.

If they didn’t agree to the checks, they were to be barred from the JPL campus and fired.

“We’re ecstatic,” workers’ attorney Dan Stormer said. “This represents a vindication of constitutional protections that all of us are entitled to. It prevents the government from conducting needless searches into backgrounds.”

NASA has argued that requiring employees to submit to the investigations was not intrusive and that the directive followed a Bush administration policy applying to millions of civil servants and contractors.

Every government agency was ordered to step up security by issuing new identification badges. Employees were required to be fingerprinted, undergo background checks and allow federal investigators access to personal information.

The plaintiffs have worked for many years at the labs that are run for NASA by the California Institute of Technology. JPL is known for its scientific explorations of space and study of Earth.

Veronica McGregor, a spokeswoman for Caltech and JPL, said Friday afternoon, “We are going to abide by any decisions made by the court.”

The decision written by Judge Kim Wardlaw reversed a ruling by Wright and sent the case back to him with orders to “fashion a preliminary injunctive relief consistent with this opinion.”

The higher court said Wright abused his discretion and committed several errors when he ruled that there was no merit to the claim that the scientists would suffer irreparable harm by signing the authorization forms.

It said that the lower court was wrong to conclude that the form which employees were asked to sign was “narrowly tailored.”

“This form seeks highly personal information using an open-ended technique including asking for ‘any adverse information which … may have a bearing on this person’s suitability for government employment,’” Wardlaw wrote. “There is nothing ‘narrowly tailored’ about such a broad inquisition.”

The decision appeared to reverse a ruling by Wright late Thursday dismissing Caltech as a defendant in the lawsuit. The 9th Circuit said any injunction must also apply to Caltech.

It said the case “raises serious questions as to whether the university has in fact now become a willful and joint participant in NASA’s investigation program, even though it was not so initially.”

At a hearing Friday, Wright entered the injunction and heard lengthy arguments on whether Caltech should be returned to its status as a defendant in the case. He declined to change his ruling on that issue but agreed to receive written submissions on the question, McGregor said.

None of the plaintiffs work on top-secret projects at JPL, which employs about 5,000 workers, but several are involved in high-profile missions, such as the Galileo probe to Jupiter and the Cassini spacecraft to Saturn.

AP | LINDA DEUTSCH | January 11, 2008

Just in time for Christmas: House Resolution 847

‘Tis the season for lots of things, among them politicians making sure we understand what the season really “means.”

House Resolution 847 “acknowledges and supports the role played by Christians and Christianity in the founding of the United States and in the formation of western civilization.”

Introduced by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) earlier this month, the resolution passed 372-9.

It makes a great read:

Whereas Christmas, a holiday of great significance to Americans and many other cultures and nationalities, is celebrated annually by Christians throughout the United States and the world;

Whereas there are approximately 225,000,000 Christians in the United States, making Christianity the religion of over three-fourths of the American population;

Whereas there are approximately 2,000,000,000 Christians throughout the world, making Christianity the largest religion in the world and the religion of about one-third of the world population;

The original version of the resolution included the text:

Whereas identify themselves as those who believe in the salvation from sin offered to them through the sacrifice of their savior, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and who, out of gratitude for the gift of salvation, commit themselves to living their lives in accordance with the teachings of the Holy Bible.

So what does the passage of this resolution actually mean?

Resolved, That the House of Representatives–

(1) recognizes the Christian faith as one of the great religions of the world;

(2) expresses continued support for Christians in the United States and worldwide;

• (4) acknowledges and supports the role played by Christians and Christianity in the founding of the United States and in the formation of the western civilization;
  (5) rejects bigotry and persecution directed against Christians, both in the United States and worldwide; and

(3) acknowledges the international religious and historical importance of Christmas and the Christian faith;6) expresses its deepest respect to American Christians and Christians throughout the world.

Separation of Church and State? I guess that doesn’t mean much of anything.

abroach.com | | December 24, 2007

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