Hasta La Gadget!

WASHINGTON — An 86-year-old photographer and four other Americans who were entered into a massive “suspicious activity” database for innocent activities filed suit against the federal government on Thursday to challenge the legality of a practice that has never been found to have identified a single terrorist threat.

James Prigoff, a retired Levi Strauss and Sara Lee executive whose artwork has been exhibited by the Smithsonian Institution, was visited at his home in Sacramento by the FBI after he was stopped by private security guards in 2004 while taking pictures of a piece of public art called the Rainbow Swash, located on a natural gas storage tank in Boston.

“Given my age, I lived through the McCarthy era, so I know how false accusations, surveillance and keeping files on innocent people can destroy their careers and lives,” Prigoff said Thursday at a press conference in San Francisco. “I am deeply troubled that the SAR program may be recreating that same climate of false accusation and fear today.”

Prigoff said he was worried that he was “apparently in a government terrorism database for decades” and said the government “isn’t supposed to be tracking you if you’re not doing anything wrong.”

Another plaintiff in the lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus was the subject of a 2012 suspicious activity report because he was looking into flight simulators and because he was a convert to Islam.

Under the FBI’s eGuardian program, reports of suspicious activity collected by local police are vetted by so-called fusion centers. But the program has been hampered by the concerns of many local law enforcement organizations that don’t believe the program offers sufficient privacy protections. A 2013 government report found that the FBI does not track how many reports of suspicious activity led to arrests or helped ongoing investigations, and a 2012 Senate subcommittee probe found the country’s 78 fusion centers have not identified any terrorist threats.

See the complaint below:

Suspicious Activity Report Complaint

Corruption is a disaster for development. It wastes the resources that can build sustainable economies, guts confidence in government, and fuels inequality and conflict. So common sense dictates that massive global efforts to end poverty must find a way to fight corruption, or they will fail.

The world missed its last big chance to do this when it set the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the eight priority areas agreed by the United Nations back in 2000. They expire next year, meaning the international community now has a golden opportunity to correct this oversight when they set their goals for the next 15 years, known as the ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDGs).

Global Witness has seen the damage that corruption does time and again. Take the case of Nigeria’s missing billion dollars, which saw oil giants Shell and Eni pay the Nigerian Government $1.1 billion for one of West Africa’s biggest oil blocks in 2011. The money eventually went to a company controlled by the country’s former oil minister, Dan Etete. Etete had awarded the block to the company, which he secretly owned, while still in office and was now cashing in. The Nigerian people saw none of the money, which is more than half the total aid received that year and could have paid for 1.7 million girls to go to school for 5 years, in a country where 5.5 million girls are out of school.

There are plenty of other examples which speak to the need to address corruption as part of a joined-up development plan. Don’t just take our word for it either: a survey of millions of people around the world identified ‘honest and responsive government’ as priority #3 out of 16.

The need is clear and the people have spoken. But it is by no means guaranteed that corruption will be covered in the SDGs. The main reason is not that Member States aren’t aware of the issue or its impacts, but because corruption is seen as too political to deal with in this forum. Some are happier to keep pouring aid money into traditional development areas like education and health, than to ask tricky questions about what’s happening to the domestic resources like oil and mining revenues that should be building the schools and hospitals.

Next week, a group of countries will meet to finalise a shortlist of possible goals and targets for the formal negotiations taking place over the next year. Unfortunately, official statements and private murmurings suggest this sorry history could repeat itself, and corruption could again be written out of the SDGs entirely or addressed only in a superficial way.

Some anti-corruption targets have made it this far in the consultations. They include important commitments like: reducing illicit financial flows, corruption, and bribery; promoting access to information; and giving communities a say in natural resource management. But the devil is in the detail. The language is still very general, and currently lumped together with other important but not directly related issues.

There have also been worrying shifts in emphasis. Of course a vague commitment on access to information is good, but an earlier draft of the shortlist actually specified the kind of information that needed to be available, including government finances and contracting. This is important because it would mean citizens have access to the information they need to hold their government accountable for how money is managed and government contracts are awarded. When these things are done behind closed doors, it is much easier for corrupt officials and companies to siphon off public resources for their personal benefit (such as fast cars and flash property).

These decisions will impact the futures of millions of people over the next 15+ years. So this is our challenge to the U.N.: don’t turn a deaf ear on citizens because what they care about is considered politically or technically tricky. There is a lot of money and momentum behind these new goals, and this is a once in a generation chance that we can’t afford to get wrong.

There has been considerable discussion in recent days concerning the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Hobby Lobby’s challenge of the contraception provisions within the Affordable Care Act. There’s no shortage of provocative content within both the majority opinion and the spirited dissent penned by Justice Ginsburg … and there’s a great deal of room for partisans to disagree about whether this ruling represents a step forward or backward as it pertains to religious freedom.

To be sure, these are important issues and I am certainly among those who spend time analyzing decisions like this and debating the implications with my friends and colleagues.

But while we here in America continue the Hobby Lobby debate, there are religious freedom matters with serious life and death consequences elsewhere in the world right now, today, which also deserve your attention.

Working in the religious liberty field for the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists I encounter terrible, tragic stories on a regular basis. Some involve Adventist church members, some involve people of other faiths, some involve persecution of non-believers and virtually all of them involve egregious misuse of power by governments.

The world applauded last month when Meriam Yehya Ibrahim — who had been sentenced to death in Sudan for the “crime” of marrying a Christian man — was released from prison. That this case runs counter to almost every other trend in the religious liberty arena may go without saying. While a righteous outcome, it’s fair to say that Ms. Ibrahim, deemed a Muslim by the Sudanese government because she was born to a Muslim father (even though she herself says she never has been Muslim), was released in part due to intense pressure from foreign governments and human rights organizations.

Although still not free to leave Sudan, Ms. Ibrahim has, at least for now, been reunited with her husband and the child she delivered while in prison. However, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of others who remain wrongfully imprisoned or tortured or killed just because they believe differently than those in power.

It is unconscionable (yet somehow common) that an individual not be allowed to choose his or her own faith. And yet, as this case in Sudan has vividly reminded us, it often is illegal to try to do something as fundamental as change your religion. What higher power possibly could desire “coerced belief?”

In Burma right now, the Buddhist-majority government is considering a bill that would require people to request permission to change their faith. Many international human rights experts rightly deplore this potential law, noting the potential for discrimination against ethnic or religious minorities, as well as the poor. While those promoting the bill say it would make it easier for people to convert to a new religion (and again, there’s absolutely no good reason for government to have a hand in this at all), a review of the bill demonstrates otherwise, with severe criminal penalties for those who run afoul of the law. “Forcing someone to convert” comes with a prison sentence of up to a year. And “insulting another religion” would be punishable by between one and two years in prison.

It’s clear that freedom of speech, like freedom of religion, is on life support in too many corners of the world.

The case of Meriam Yehya Ibrahim and the pending anti-conversion law in Burma should serve as contemporary reminders for all of us about how important it is to not only remain vigilant, but — in the former case — the positive outcomes that sometimes can result when individuals and governments and NGOs come together and press for a just result. And it is yet possible that international pressure will force the Burmese government to scrap its deeply flawed bill … although there remain many other troubling restrictions on individuals’ rights to practice religion there.

Bringing this all back home — the Hobby Lobby decision certainly is an important one, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the Supreme Court. But legal cases that pass as important here in the U.S. pale in comparison to what’s happening in many other corners of the world where upstanding citizens too often are hauled off to jail simply for the infraction of “insulting” another religion. Yes, there are wrongs that happen here in the religious liberty arena and we should fight to right them where they exist, but we must never lose sight of the true tragedies so many of our brothers and sisters experience on a regular basis in places like Sudan, Pakistan, Iran and dozens of other countries.

That is where we must intently focus our energies and our prayers — and answer the call that God puts to us in Isaiah 1:17: “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed.” (NIV)

Breaking up is hard to do… except for these kids.

The eight wee wordsmiths below made us realize we missed a valuable lesson back in elementary school: the art of letting someone down easy. Thankfully, we have their breakup notes to learn from.

First things first: Assure your ex that there’s no one else.

Be sure to acknowledge how far you’ve come as a couple. One month = an eternity.

Be honest, you had some good times together! Pay tribute to those moments in your breakup letter.

But stress the fact that the two of you are never, ever, ever getting back together.

Damage control is a must.

Remind your ex what he’s still got going on in his life.

And don’t be afraid to drop the D-word: “dibors.”

Finally, leave your ex with some helpful relationship advice.

Seriously, git it together, Shawn.

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 The hardware wearable business is a tough gig, and today brings another reminder: Fitness and activity tracking startup Misfit has announced a new partnership with Beddit, a hardware maker that builds a smart sleep monitoring system. The Beddit deal brings a co-branded device to Misfit’s lineup of offering, allowing the Misfit app to now also track advanced sleep information. Beddit… Read More