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Au t umn&wi n t e r
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DEFENDERS
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and also the surveillance and body search
of individuals is on the increase.
9- A recent report by the American
Civil Liberties Union revealed that the
FBI had been spying on political groups.
The FBI and the Inspector General claim
that the investigations into these groups
were not inspired by their political
beliefs, but instead on “speculation that
the groups might commit a federal crime
in the future.”
10- According to the Center for Media
Justice, “though the spotlight is mostly on
the National Security Agency’s domestic
spying program, telecommunications
companies are working hand in hand with
the government – and its marginalized
communities that are paying a hefty
price.” As technology has grown, so
has law enforcement’s ability to collect
and retain unfathomable amounts of
data on innocent Americans. What used
to require a physical intrusion can now
often be achieved remotely with little
trace of government intrusion. Through
a program, called Upstream, the NSA
intercepts internet communications
traveling through the United States
collecting approximately $26.5 million
internet transactions annually. Despite the
massive scope of this program, it accounts
for only 9% of the internet content being
collecting and analyzed by the NSA.
The other 91% of communications
collected comes from a program called
PRISM. Through PRISM, the NSA
receives and stores content directly from
Internet Service Providers like Google,
Apple, Yahoo, and Facebook. Content
collected can include e-mail, chat, video,
social networking info, and file transfer.
PRISM and related programs gave NSA
analysts the unprecedented ability to
re-quest surveillance on anyone, even
domestically, using only their e-mail.
11- According to the American Civil
Liberties Union, agents/informants were
not only tasked with observing but they
also enticed or provoked the commission
of illegal acts . Their investigations
targeted many peaceful activist groups
such as “School of the America’s Watch,
Green-peace, and People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals, the Rocky
Mountain Peace and Justice Center in
Colorado, and the Thomas Merton Center
for Peace and Justice in Pennsylvania,
among many others.”
11- Furthermore millions of American
workers the majority of which are the
parents of innocent children are working
in different sectors, but due to bad
working conditions and existence of
discrimination against workers, they are
faced with many problems in providing
a living.
12- In November 2013, Attorney
General Eric Holder, addressing 556
federally recognized tribes, addressed the
problem that “nearly half of all Indian
women and girls have experienced rape,
physical violence, or stalking by an
intimate partner [and] Indian women are
murdered at a rate that – in some places
– is more than 10 times the national
average.”
Migrant and seasonal workers:
13- Teenagers have the highest
unemployment rate at 22.7% and Black
teens find themselves in a particularly
precarious position with a 38.2%
unemployment rate com-pared to white
teens with 20.5%.
14-Many of the occupations with the
largest projected job growth are minority
and female-dominated, but they are jobs
such as home health aides and personal
care aides, with earnings of only about
20,000 dollars per year.”
15-According to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, more than one farmworker dies
and hundreds are injured in work-related