“Use the system!”, they constantly implore. Well, I tried again. Last week I submitted a proposal to the city council, thinking that they had to assign everything that came in front of them to a committee for a public hearing. Turns out, they can “accept it as informational” and do nothing, and that’s what “the mayor” has decided to do with it. No public discussion will be had on my idea. They are not interested in hearing how violence and property crime can be drastically reduced, not to mention the amount of people in jail lowered. Nope! Just “accept it as informational”, ignore it, and move along with their usual “business”.
What a joke.
UPDATE: Another option, according to the clerk, is to get a councilor to schedule the item for discussion, so I will approach one and see what happens.
Randolph Holhut in the Windham County Commons reports that U.S. Representative Peter Welch, of Vermont, is cosponsoring a bill which would require law enforcement to obtain a warrant before using a person’s GPS information.
Because it’s easier than trailing someone in person and court approval is unnecessary, the FBI now commonly attaches GPS trackers to people’s cars. According to Wired, “The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in California ruled last year that using a GPS tracker was no different than physically trailing a suspect in public, and that such surveillance was not protected by the Fourth Amendment, even if agents placed the device on a suspect’s car while it was parked in his driveway.” (A dissenting judge argued that it was “straight out of George Orwell’s novel 1984”.) The devices have been found on the cars of environmental activists and college students.
an abandoned GPS tracker, courtesy of John Snyder and Wired.com
(One federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., however, ruled that the tracking is an unconstitutional invasion of privacy. The Obama administration, no friend of civil liberties, has asked the Supreme Court to overturn the decision.)
The bill, the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance (GPS) Act, would change this. It would also prevent companies, such as cell phone service providers, from sharing GPS data without prior consent. Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Representative Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, introduced it last month. (Wired has more.)
HB147, which expands the application of the death penalty in New Hampshire, unfortunately passed a few weeks ago— but not without a fight. Representative Steve Vaillancourt, a Republican from Manchester and a self-described “Free Stater before there was a Free State movement,” spoke passionately against the bill. You can see the speech 34 minutes into his latest episode of More Politically Alert:
(Vaillancourt mentions that a bill to abolish the death penalty passed the house during the last session. That bill, HB556, was introduced by Keene representative Steve Lindsey.)
The Union Leader reports that New Hampshire officials intend to cooperate with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in their effort to piggyback on the work of local law enforcement.
The initiative, eerily named “Secure Communities,” would check the fingerprints of everyone who is arrested against federal immigration databases. In the case of a match, the ICE is notified and the agency uses its discretion to decide how to respond.
The ICE says that its priority is the removal of convicted felons, but, according to ICE data, 28% of the 49,638 people deported between October 2009 and September 2010 as a result of Secure Communities were convicted of no crime whatsoever. Many others were charged only with misdemeanors. According to the Immigration Policy Center, “Examinations of ICE’s Secure Communities statistics reveals that those identified by Secure Communities include large numbers of individuals with no criminal history, individuals charged with (but not convicted of) crimes, and legal immigrants with prior convictions that make them deportable.”
The program currently operates in 1,315 counties in 42 states, and the ICE plans to have a Secure Communities presence in every state by the end of 2011, with total coverage by 2013. Yet they’ve already been rebuffed by state officials in Washington, D.C., Illinois, Minnesota, Washington, New York, and, just recently, in Massachusetts.
The Pew Research Center estimates that New Hampshire is home to 10 or 20 thousand undocumented immigrants, and the Immigration Policy Center estimates that they pay about $5 million dollars in state taxes every year. So when will New Hampshire join the opposition?
I went to the Manchester City Council meeting this evening, along with about 35 others in support of Manchester activists speaking out about the unjust arrests and stolen properties from Saturday evening. There were several differences in the way their meetings were held as opposed to Keene (such as the mayor didn’t say a word to anyone addressing him), and I must say I found their attitudes and overall demeanor disgusting and unprofessional.
At the meeting, anyone was allowed to speak about any topic of their choice for 3 minutes, but one had to sign up before the meeting began. An alderman/woman (aka city council member) then called people up one by one to speak. Not one alderman looked directly at the speaker, and in fact often rolled their eyes, ruffled through papers, or chatted amongst themselves. The mayor himself appeared tired and unwilling to listen to the citizens of Manchester voicing their concerns.
On the other hand, the people that spoke about Saturday’s arrests did a splendid job. They raised a lot of great points about how far is too far, police accountability, and using tax payers’ money to arrest people chalking and not showing identification (neither which are illegal). Many people that had their cameras or phones confiscated for “evidence” (why is beyond me as they have their own surveillance) spoke out and kindly asked the city council to tell the officers to return their property. The speakers were professional, eloquent, and I personally was very impressed! (more…)
