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Ben Wizner
Ben Wizner (born 1971) is an American lawyer, writer, and civil liberties advocate with the American Civil Liberties Union. Since July 2013, he has been the lead attorney of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Education and personal life Wizner was born in 1971 in New Haven, Connecticut, and grew up on the campus of Yale University, where his father, Stephen Wizner, is a professor of law at Yale Law School and his mother is a dean. He has described being drawn to social justice work from at least as early as high school; after graduating Harvard College in 1993, he worked for an organization that provided legal assistance to homeless and near-homeless people. At New York University School of Law, he planned to work in legal services for impoverished communities, and on capital punishment cases. After graduating, he clerked for judge Stephen Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Career Wizner began working for the American Civil Libert ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Civil Liberty
Civil liberties are guarantees and freedoms that governments commit not to abridge, either by constitution, legislation, or judicial interpretation, without due process. Though the scope of the term differs between countries, civil liberties may include the freedom of conscience, freedom of press, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, the right to security and liberty, freedom of speech, the right to privacy, the right to equal treatment under the law and due process, the right to a fair trial, and the right to life. Other civil liberties include the right to own property, the right to defend oneself, and the right to bodily integrity. Within the distinctions between civil liberties and other types of liberty, distinctions exist between positive liberty/positive rights and negative liberty/negative rights. Overview Many contemporary nations have a constitution, a bill of rights, or similar constitutional documents that enumerate and seek to guarantee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prison Reform
Prison reform is the attempt to improve conditions inside prisons, improve the effectiveness of a penal system, or implement alternatives to incarceration. It also focuses on ensuring the reinstatement of those whose lives are impacted by crimes. In modern times the idea of making living spaces safe and clean has spread from the civilian population to include prisons, on ethical grounds which honor that unsafe and unsanitary prisons violate constitutional ( law) prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment. In recent times prison reform ideas include greater access to legal counsel and family, conjugal visits, proactive security against violence, and implementing house arrest with assistive technology. History Prisons have only been used as the primary punishment for criminal acts in the last few centuries. Far more common earlier were various types of corporal punishment, public humiliation, penal bondage, and banishment for more severe offenses, as well as c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of Human intelligence (intelligence gathering), human intelligence (HUMINT) and performing covert actions. As a principal member of the United States Intelligence Community (IC), the CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence and is primarily focused on providing intelligence for the President of the United States, President and Cabinet of the United States. President Harry S. Truman had created the Central Intelligence Group under the direction of a Director of Central Intelligence by presidential directive on January 22, 1946, and this group was transformed into the Central Intelligence Agency by implementation of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Al Qaeda
Al-Qaeda (; , ) is an Islamic extremist organization composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military targets in various countries, including the 1998 United States embassy bombings, the September 11 attacks, and the 2002 Bali bombings; it has been designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations Security Council, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union, India, and various other countries. The organization was founded in 1988 by Osama bin Laden and other volunteers during the Soviet–Afghan War. Following the withdrawal of the Soviets in 1989, bin Laden offered ''mujahideen'' support to Saudi Arabia in the Gulf War in 1990–1991. His offer was rebuffed by the Saudi authorities, which instead sought the aid of the United States. The stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia prompted bin Laden to subsequently wage ''jihad'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Republic Of Macedonia
North Macedonia, ; sq, Maqedonia e Veriut, (Macedonia before February 2019), officially the Republic of North Macedonia,, is a country in Southeast Europe. It gained independence in 1991 as one of the successor states of Yugoslavia. It is a landlocked country bordering Kosovo to the northwest, Serbia to the north, Bulgaria to the east, Greece to the south, and Albania to the west. It constitutes approximately the northern third of the larger geographical region of Macedonia. Skopje, the capital and largest city, is home to a quarter of the country's 1.83 million people. The majority of the residents are ethnic Macedonians, a South Slavic people. Albanians form a significant minority at around 25%, followed by Turks, Romani, Serbs, Bosniaks, Aromanians and a few other minorities. The region's history begins with the kingdom of Paeonia, a mixed Thraco- Illyrian polity. In the late sixth century BC, the area was subjugated by the Persian Achaemenid Empire, then ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Khalid El-Masri
Khaled El-Masri (also Khalid El-Masri and Khaled Masri, Levantine Arabic pronunciation: , ar, خالد المصري) (born 29 June 1963) is a German and Lebanese citizen who was mistakenly abducted by the Macedonian police in 2003, and handed over to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). While in CIA custody, he was flown to Afghanistan, where he was held at a black site and routinely interrogated, beaten, strip-searched, sodomized, and subjected to other cruel forms of inhumane and degrading treatment and torture. After El-Masri held hunger strikes, and was detained for four months in the " Salt Pit", the CIA finally admitted his arrest was a mistake and released him. He is believed to be among an estimated 3,000 detainees, including several key leaders of al Qaeda, whom the CIA captured from 2001 to 2005, in its campaign to dismantle terrorist networks. In May 2004, the U.S. Ambassador to Germany, Daniel R. Coats, convinced the German interior minister, Otto Schily, not ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp ( es, Centro de detención de la bahía de Guantánamo) is a United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Guantánamo, GTMO, and Gitmo (), on the coast of Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. Of the roughly 780 people detained there since January 2002 when the military prison first opened after the September 11 attacks, 735 have been transferred elsewhere, 35 remain there, and 9 Death in custody, have died while in custody. The camp was established by U.S. President Presidency of George W. Bush, George W. Bush's administration in 2002 during the War on terror, War on Terror following the September 11, 2001 attacks. Indefinite detention without trial led the operations of this camp to be considered a major breach of human rights by Amnesty International, and a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Const ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Torture
Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts carried out by the state, but others include non-state organizations. Torture has been carried out since ancient times. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Western countries abolished the official use of torture in the judicial system, but torture continued to be used throughout the world. A variety of methods of torture are used, often in combination; the most common form of physical torture is beatings. Since the twentieth century, many torturers have preferred non-scarring or psychological methods to provide deniability. Torturers are enabled by organizations that facilitate and encourage their behavior. Most victims of torture are poor and marginalized people suspected of crimes, although torture against political prisoners o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Extraordinary Rendition
Extraordinary rendition is a euphemism for state-sponsored forcible abduction in another jurisdiction and transfer to a third state. The phrase usually refers to a United States-led program used during the War on Terror, which had the purpose of circumventing the source country's laws on interrogation, detention, extradition and/or torture. Extraordinary rendition is a type of extraterritorial abduction, but not all extraterritorial abductions include transfer to a third country. The administration of President George W. Bush abducted hundreds of " illegal combatants" for U.S. detention, and transported detainees to U.S.-controlled sites as part of an extensive interrogation program that included torture. Extraordinary rendition continued under the Obama administration, with targets being interrogated and subsequently taken to the U.S. for trial. A 2018 report by the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament found the United Kingdom, specifically MI5 and MI6, to b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Targeted Killing
Targeted killing is a form of murder or assassination carried out by governments outside a judicial procedure or a battlefield. Since the late 20th century, the legal status of targeted killing has become a subject of contention within and between various nations. Historically, at least since the mid-eighteenth century, Western thinking has generally considered the use of assassination as a tool of statecraft to be illegal. Some academics, military personnel and officials describe targeted killing as legitimate within the context of self-defense, when employed against terrorists or combatants engaged in asymmetrical warfare. They argue that drones are more humane and more accurate than manned vehicles, and that targeted or "named killings" do not occur in any context other than a declared state of war. Scholars are also divided as to whether targeted killings are an effective counterterrorism strategy. Africa Targeted killings have also been used in Somalia, Kenya, Rwanda and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Surveillance
Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as closed-circuit television (CCTV), or interception of electronically transmitted information like Internet traffic. It can also include simple technical methods, such as Human intelligence (intelligence gathering), human intelligence gathering and postal interception. Surveillance is used by citizens for protecting their neighborhoods. And by governments for intelligence gathering - including espionage, prevention of crime, the protection of a process, person, group or object, or the investigation of crime. It is also used by criminal organizations to plan and commit crimes, and by businesses to Industrial espionage, gather intelligence on criminals, their competitors, suppliers or customers. Religious organisations charged with detecting he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Terrorist Screening Database
The Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB) is the central terrorist watchlist consolidated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Terrorist Screening Center and used by multiple agencies to compile their specific watchlists and for screening. The list was created after the September 11 attacks. History, sources, uses, and scope The TSDB is overseen by the FBI Terrorist Screening Center. It was created after the September 11 attacks.Devlin Barrett, Spencer S. Hsu & Marissa J. LangDozens of people on FBI terrorist watch list came to D.C. the day of Capitol riot ''Washington Post'' (January 14, 2021). A 2007 report by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General stated that the TSDB, as the "U.S. Government's consolidated terrorist watchlist" contained "basic biographical information on known or appropriately suspected domestic and international terrorists" and that "the underlying derogatory information on individuals nominated for inclusion in the TSDB must demonstra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
