Overview#
Government abuse or Abuse of Power as described here is in relation to the Usurpations of power by a Government rather than a single Natural Person or MalfeasanceSome of the United States Government abuse
- Warrantless Wiretapping - the National Security Agency was tapping into telephone calls of Americans without a warrant, in violation of United States Federal Law and the United States Constitution.
- Torture, Kidnapping and Detention — In the years since 9/11, our United States federal government has illegally kidnapped, detained and tortured numerous prisoners. The United States federal government continues to claim that it has the power to designate anyone, including Citizens as "enemy combatants" without charge.
- Growing Surveillance Society — In perhaps the greatest assault on the privacy of ordinary Americans, the country is undergoing a rapid expansion of data collection, storage, tracking, and mining.
- United States PATRIOT Act Several provisions of the United States PATRIOT Act were set to expire at the end of 2005 and, despite opposition from across the political spectrum and more than 400 community and state resolutions expressing concern about the United States PATRIOT Act, United States Congress reauthorized the law without reforming its most flawed provisions to bring these extraordinary powers back in line with the United States Constitution.
- Government Secrecy - United States federal government has reclassified and increased secrecy by United States Federal Agency (including the expansion of a catch-all category of "Sensitive But Unclassified")
- REAL ID - rammed through United States Congress by being attached to a unrelated, "must pass" bill, lays the foundation for a National ID card and makes it more difficult for persecuted people to seek asylum. Under the law, states are required to standardize their Driver Licenses (according to a still undetermined standard) and link to Government Data Store to be shared with every United States federal government, US State and local government official in every other US State.
- No-Fly List was established to keep track of people the United States federal government prohibits from traveling because they have been labeled as security risks. Since 9/11 the number of similar watch lists has mushroomed to about 720,000 names, all with mysterious or ill-defined criteria for how names are placed on the lists, and with little recourse for innocent travelers seeking to be taken off them.
- Political Surveillance - United States Federal Agency agencies — including the FBI and the United States Department of Defense — have conducted their own spying on innocent and law-abiding American Citizens.
- Abuse of Material Witness Statute — In the days and weeks after 9/11, the government gathered and detained many people — mostly Muslims in the United States — through the abuse of a narrow federal technicality that permits the arrest and brief detention of "material witnesses," or those who have important information about a crime.
- Attacks on Academic Freedom The United States federal governmenthas used a provision in the United States PATRIOT Act to engage in a policy of "censorship at the border" to keep scholars with perceived political views the administration does not like out of the United States.
