Activist Group Sues US Border Agency Over New, Vast Intelligence System

An anonymous reader writes with news about one of the latest unanswered FOIA requests made to the Department of Homeland Security and the associated lawsuit the department's silence has brought. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has sued the United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in an attempt to compel the government agency to hand over documents relating to a relatively new comprehensive intelligence database of people and cargo crossing the US border. EPIC's lawsuit, which was filed last Friday, seeks a trove of documents concerning the 'Analytical Framework for Intelligence' (AFI) as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. EPIC's April 2014 FOIA request went unanswered after the 20 days that the law requires, and the group waited an additional 49 days before filing suit. The AFI, which was formally announced in June 2012 by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), consists of "a single platform for research, analysis, and visualization of large amounts of data from disparate sources and maintaining the final analysis or products in a single, searchable location for later use as well as appropriate dissemination."

Ingsoc

[Bodhammer]

"The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power." George Orwell - "1984"

No Decent Solution

[Jim Sadler]

There is simply no easy solution for the border issue. No matter what is done or not done human suffering will take place. Families are split apart. Nations must have borders or the nation ceases to exist. America has never had a working economic system that provides justice for workers, owners, and those unable to be either. Yet, even if we have a border guard stop an immigrant one foot shy of entry it may be a death sentence for the immigrant. With 75 miles of desert behind them and all kinds of hazards to turn someone back may be murder and that someone could include infants or elders. A strong nation ID card would help such that even casual employment was not possible without prior approval by local police would go a long way towards stopping illegals from having the desire to get here. Yet businesses love lowering the wage pool by flooding illegal immigrants into the nation. I wonder just how much the price of groceries would jump if illegal farm labor was shut down. And the absolute bottom line is that reproduction as well as immigration degrades the quality of life for all of us. We need strict population size control.

Here's what's wrong (again... still)

[fyngyrz]

These laws are toothless. "Must answer within 20 days"... or what? With no one held immediately culpable, the law is precisely meaningless.

Heard of anyone going to jail for this?

Heard of anyone paying a fine for this?

Even heard of anyone losing their job for this?

Compare: If you don't do something the government desires you to do, there will be consequences.

This is just like the constitution: "Highest law in the land" -- violate it -- as SCOTUS and congress have done over and over -- and the consequences? Nothing.

Just so you taxpayers know your place. The laws aren't for the government. Those are just laws "for show." The real laws are just for you. Because, you know, they care about you.