by José de la Isla
Hispanic Link News Service

MEXICO CITY– Two military-grade weapons were found alongside the murdered body of U.S. Border Patrol agent in December. The guns were part of an arsenal ATF agents were presumably tracking but lost track of.

Evidently, similar weapons were allowed from Houston and Tampa.

About 2000 weapons were allowed illegal movement from Phoenix into drug-cartel hands in an odd, deadly intended entrapment operation to track how the guns moved into organized crime’s hands in Mexico, and showed up in crime scenes.

At the July 26 House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing, the intention was to trace the guns backwards, to find out which U.S. government officials knew what and when, because agents involved in operation Fast and Furious, as it was known, lost track.

The implausible reason for the operation in the first place is that crime scene investigators in Mexico would know where the weapons originated and in which crime syndicate’s hands they ended up—after the crooks caused mayhem.

The hearing, so far, seems to dwell on the number of weapons (2000, 1800 or 1600), but the more important unasked question is how many innocents were killed, wounded, injured or suffered through use of these weapons, like the murdered border agent.

This is a humanitarian matter. It is entirely plausible that many individuals were victims from those towns and villages that got shot up by organized crime. They could file wrongfuldeath and other lawsuits against each link in the chain of death and injury.

These types of suits should be brought — in Mexico, the United States and before international tribunals.

Also there is now good reason to ask U.S. State and Defense Department officials what really was the basis for their reports claiming failed state projections and pronouncements of destabilization before Fast and Furious.

Other concerns need investigation, such as the sale of weapons to cartel front organizations from State Department inventories, and shipments by organized crime from the same airport the DEA used in Texas. All this could be coincidental. But some plausible explanations are needed.

Conspiracy theorists will immediately jump the gun (excuse the pun). Others have ideological axes to grind. There is certainly material for them to chew on. For instance, Mexican authorities have made it public they were not informed about Fast and Furious.

Nor were ATF’s own agents in Mexico, nor cooperating agencies like the DEA, FBI, Mexican prosecutors Procuraduría General de la República and Agencia Federal de Investigación and the Policia Federal. But the possible reason why things fell apart, given in a Washington Post editorial, is the most untenable.

The paper laid out the lame bureaucratic excuse that operation Fast and Furious became a fiasco because ATF’s “budget has been repeatedly targeted by (the U.S. Congress) and often did not have the means to follow through.”

In other words, high paid government officials could not afford to make a two-cent Skype phone call to alert their own agents about the crooks having guns they could point at them. For another two pennies they could have alerted the Mexican authorities. Carlos Canino, head of ATF operations in Mexico, said at the congressional hearings, “I want to make it perfectly clear … at no time ever did I know that ATF agents were following known (or) suspected gun traffickers…Never, ever… would I imagine…that we were letting that happen.”

But it did happen. This caper should not get turned into something different than it is. It is about illegal gun trafficking, bureaucratic denouement, death, injury, mayhem, social instability. It is not about Houdini- like officialdom tricks so the issue disappears. Keep your eye on the ball for any new disclosures.

That’s my two-cents worth .

[José de la Isla, a nationally syndicated columnist for Hispanic Link and Scripps Howard news services, has been recognized for two consecutive years for his commen­taries by New America Media. His forthcoming book is “Our Man on the Ground.” Previous books include “DAY NIGHT LIFE DEATH HOPE” (2009) and “The Rise of Hispanic Political Power” (2003)].

— Yet, that same week in McAllen, a U.S. district judge in Texas sentence eight people to the maximum term as “buyer ants” for organized crime weapons and there was not budget issue here from competency acted out.

by Jorge Mújica Murias
mexicodelnorte@yahoo.com.mx

“Sanctuary” means, according to the dictionary, 1. Temple in which an image or remains of a saint are worshiped, as in the “the Sanctuary of Lourdes”; 2. Sacred or important valuable place, as in “the Pasteur Institute is a sanctuary of research; and 3. Place used as a refuge, to give protection or asylum, as in “terrorists were arrested at their sanctuary un South France”.

Just because it does not say it, the definition does not include something like “city or county in the United States were undocumented immigrants are free from La Migra”. I wish it said it…

But that’s the definition some people like to use, more inspired by good feelings than reality. And some others use it just to gain credibility among immigrants, promoting “sanctuary laws” without teeth. Some “sanctuary laws” I know of, particularly in Chicago, clearly say that “no authority shall collaborate with Immigration… unless Immigration specifically requests so…” and on and on.

And then it says, quite at the end, that no authority could be sanctioned because of not observing the law… and complaints regarding violations should be taken to … the authorities!

In a few words, the “sanctuary” where immigrants without papers are “safe” from La Migra just do not exist and do not protect, give asylum or refuge to no one.

Out of but really in

And the same is going on with the so called “opt out” of Secure Communities.

“With drums and orchestra it was announces last May that the state of Illinois was opting out of the Secure Communities program”, reports our colleague Fabiola Pomareda in La Raza newspaper. “Never the less, officers of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed they “keep working in Illinois and that the data base exchange continues, to identify undocumented immigrants”.

It could not be clearer. “Secure Communities is a federal program to share information, and the decisions on its operation are taken by the federal government only”, was told Fabiola by Nicole Navas, speaker for La Migra and person in charge of Secure Communities in Washington. “A state can not cancel its participation or ‘opt out’ after the government has already activated the program in the state”.

It is logical. Secure Communities is a data-share program between local police departments, Homeland Security (La Migra), and the FBI. When the local police offi cer arrests someone, fi ngerprints him or her and sends the info the FBI, La Migra gets a copy and boom!

The arrestee is marked as a bad guy, drunk, or plain stupid because his biggest problem was not to stop at a stop light, but he’s also marked as undocumented, and avoiding deportation then is a big big problem.

Even worse, La Migra can check the data bases data of local and state police “from a desk at the Court building or using a laptop in a Starbucks”, Fabiola was told the spokesperson of the Cook County Sheriff, Steve Patterson.

Let’s be clear then. Secure Communities is not a voluntary program for cities and counties, even “sanctuary” cities and counties, and no one can “opt-out” of it.

The solution for La ­Migra to stop arresting immigrant bread winners who had a drink and then drove, or workers who did not stop at the stop sign to get on time to their jobs, is to eliminate Secure Communities, not to create “sanctuary” cities and counties or make them “immigrant friendly”.

But there’s guy who, all together by himself and him alone, could eliminate Secure Communities. His name is Barack Obama and, for the time being, he lives in Washington, D.C.

Other politicians who talk and talk about “opting-out” of Secure Communities are just lying thru their teeth…

by Steve Watson
Infowars.com

Legislation that will force Internet providers to store information on all their customers and share it with the federal government and law enforcement agencies was significantly beefed at the last minute yesterday and approved by a U.S. House of Representatives committee.

Under the guise of protecting children from internet pornographers, the House Judiciary committee voted  19-10 to approve a bill that will require Internet Service Providers to store temporarily assigned IP addresses for future government use.

In addition, the bill was re-written yesterday to also include the enforced retention of customers’ names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers and bank account numbers. As Declan McCullagh of CNet reports, the panel rejected an amendment that would have clarified that only IP addresses must be stored.

“The bill is mislabeled,” said Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the panel. “This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It’s creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes.”

It represents “a data bank of every digital act by every American” that would “let us find out where every single American visited Web sites,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who led Democratic opposition to the bill. The Californian Representative described the legislation as a “mess of a bill” and a “stalking horse for a massive expansion of federal power”. Rep. Darrell Issa, RCalif., noted that the bill would open a Pandora’s box of government abuse.

“This is not about child porn. It never has been and never will be,” Issa said. “This is a convenient way for law enforcement to get what they couldn’t get in the PATRIOT Act.”

Advocates for the legislation include the National Sheriffs’ Association, which has said it “strongly supports” mandatory data retention. The bill has also attracted endorsements from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, as well as the FBI.

In a last ditch effort to derail the bill, the ACLU, along with dozens of other privacy watchdog groups penned a letter (PDF) to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith earlier this week, noting that “any data retention mandate is a direct assault on bedrock privacy principles.”

“The data retention mandate in this bill would treat every Internet user like a criminal and threaten the online privacy and free speech rights of every American, as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have recognized,” Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said.

“Requiring Internet companies to redesign and reconfigure their systems to facilitate government surveillance of Americans’ expressive activities is simply un-American. Such a scheme would be as objectionable to our Founders as the requiring of licenses for printing presses or the banning of anonymous pamphlets.” Bankston added.

“This is China-style law enforcement, treating everyone as a potential suspect and requiring the collection of personal information just in case it might later be useful to the government,” said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel for the Washington based Center for Democracy and Technology, in an interview with Bloomberg.

A fortnight ago, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) appealed before the House Judiciary Committee, asking that Congress recognize the fact that retaining identifying information would put at risk “99.9 percent of Internet users.”

EPIC President Marc Rotenberg pointed out that it is more prudent to seek data minimization rather than data retention, in the wake of increased risk of data breaches and identity theft. Rotenberg noted that enforced data retention would make ISPs more vulnerable to hackers, citing the LulzSec group, which recently claimed responsibility for temporarily shutting down a CIA website and other high-profile hacks.

“Minimizing stored user data reduces incentives for hackers to attack data storage systems by reducing the amount of data available to steal. Minimization also reduces the costs of data breaches,” Rotenberg said in prepared testimony. Rotenberg suggested that the data could be used to bring criminal charges that were unrelated to child pornography, noting that any mandatory retention of data would be accessible to police investigating any crime.

“Although this data retention requirement has been introduced as part of a bill focused on child sexual exploitation, there is no evidence to suggest that the majority of law enforcement requests for customer subscriber information relate to child protection cases.” Rotenberg argued.

The bill would also allow access to the data by attorneys litigating civil disputes in divorce, insurance fraud, and other cases that have nothing to do with the protection of children on the internet.

“It would give the government sweeping authority to mandate the collection and retention of personal information obtained by business from their customers, or generated by the business in the course of providing services, for subsequent examination without any reason to believe that information is relevant or necessary for a criminal investigation,” Rotenberg further testified. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., had proposed an   amendment to the bill that would have limited use of the data to child-pornography or terrorism cases, but it was withdrawn at the last minute, as Lamar Smith claimed that limiting the use of the information to childpornography investigations could “undermine current cases on other issues”.

Rep. Scott also attempted to add an amendment to allocate $45 million a year to pay for more than 200 additional federal investigators and prosecutors dedicated to child pornography cases. Clearly a real move to crack down on child porn peddlers was unwelcome, however, as this too was struck down by committee members who claimed the funding wasn’t available.

The legislation, with all it’s privacy stripping measures intact, will now be scheduled for a full House debate.

Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ ­Infowars.net, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.