Do you know what 'inalienable rights' are?

If you can't, bang go your hopes of living the American dream. You will never become a US citizen.

At least, you are going to find it harder to do so, since Thursday. Those three brainteasers appear on a new list of 144 sample questions put out by the federal government that will form the basis of a revised test for anyone seeking to turn themselves into naturalised Americans.

It is the culmination of a five-year struggle to update the citizenship test, which was laid down in 1986 and has remained virtually untouched since. That exam contains 96 questions, mostly of a more amenable nature, such as: What are the colours of our flag? Who was Martin Luther King Jnr? When was the Declaration of Independence adopted?

The new list has provoked a heated debate about the nature of citizenship exams and what they are seeking to achieve. Immigrants' rights groups fear that by adding a raft of about 80 new questions, including sections on geography (What is the longest river in the US?), more probing questions on key historical periods (Name one war fought by the US in the 1800s) and highly conceptual queries (What is the rule of law?), will merely erect a new barrier to participation.

Daunting
About 600 000 people become naturalised US citizens every year, but the worry is that many could be put off by the new questions. "Our main concern is that the test does not become even more daunting an obstacle to citizenship than it is right now," said Fred Tsao, of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

Tsao pointed out that in addition to the stress of having to pass the exam, there is the financial hurdle: naturalisation currently costs $400 to complete, and may rise to $800 under current proposals.

His group and other immigration organisations like it have taken to calling the citizenship test "the second wall". The first wall is the physical structure being erected along 1 120km of Mexican border, to keep out illegal immigrants. This second wall, the groups contend, is a barrier to full participation by legal immigrants who have lived and worked in the US for at least five years.

But the phrase is disputed by the US citizenship and immigration service. "I absolutely hate that term," said Chris Ratigan, an official within the service. "We are trying to build a wider bridge to citizenship. When someone decides to become an American citizen -- and what a wonderful decision that is -- we want them to feel that after they raise their hand and take the oath to America they are fully ready to participate in this country."

Under the old test, Ratigan said, there was great inequality about how it was administered. One state might ask only easy questions such as "Who is the president of the US today?", while other states would set the harder ones such as "Who said, 'Give me liberty or give me death?'" (Answer: Patrick Henry in 1775.) The pass rate -- running at present at 84% on the first sitting of the test and 95% in second and third sittings -- would show large local fluctuations as a result.

Under the new system, questions will be weighted according to their difficulty, so that no matter where in the country one is taking the test, one's chances of success would be equal.

So how will the new test go down? It will be piloted next year on 5 000 volunteers going for citizenship in 10 states across the country, to reflect the range of likely applicants. After feedback, the list will be whittled down to the best 100. Applicants will have to answer correctly six out of 10 randomly selected questions.

On the streets of New York, the pilot questions received a varied response. Josh, a businessman, found several questions easy. He knew the president has to be older than 35, that the tallest mountain is Mount McKinley, that the Mississippi is the longest river and that the early 19th-century war was the Spanish-American war of 1812. However, he was stumped by the question "What group of essays supported passage of the US Constitution?" (Answer: the Federalist papers.)

Edwin, a security guard from Puerto Rico, was stumped by several questions. Asked "What does 'We the people' mean in the Constitution?", he replied: "You got me, man. We never learnt that stuff in school."

If Edwin is remotely representative of the nation -- and he was just one man plucked from a New York street -- then the immigration service appears to be pitching its exam beyond its reach. However, he did get one question almost right. Asked "Who is the speaker-elect of the House of Representatives?", he said: "I know somebody was elected from California. Can't remember her name, but I know Bush ain't too happy about it."

The questions and help for those who need it

The questions
1. What does "we the people" mean in the Constitution?
2. Name one example of checks and balances.
3. How old must a president be?
4. What territory did the US buy from France in 1803?
5. Name one thing only the federal government can do.
6. What is the current minimum wage in the US?
7. Who is the Attorney General now?
8. Who governs the people in a self-governed country?
9. What is the "rule of law"?
10. What are "inalienable rights"?
11. Name one responsibility that is only for US citizens.
12. When is the last day you can send in federal income-tax forms?
13. Name one thing Benjamin Franklin is famous for.
14. Name one famous battle from the Revolutionary War.
15. Name one of the writers of the Federalist papers.
16. What group of essays supported the passage of the US Constitution?
17. What did Susan B Anthony do?
18. Who was president during World War I?
19. Where is the Grand Canyon?
20. What is the tallest mountain in the US?

Acceptable answers
1. The power of government comes from the people.
2. The president vetoes a Bill; Congress can confirm or not confirm a president's nomination; Congress approves the president's budget; the Supreme Court strikes down a law.
3. 35.
4. West of the Mississippi; the western US; the Louisiana territory.
5. Print money; declare war; create an army; make treaties.
6. $5.15.
7. Alberto Gonzales.
8. The people govern themselves; the government elected by the people.
9. Everyone must obey the law; leaders must obey the law; the government must obey the law.
10. Individual rights with which people are born.
11. Vote; serve on a jury.
12. By April 15 of every year; by April 15; April 15.
13. US diplomat; oldest member of the Constitutional Convention; first Postmaster General of the United States; writer of Poor Richard's Almanac.
14. Lexington and Concord; Trenton; Princeton; Saratoga; Cowpens; Yorktown; Bunker Hill.
15. James Madison; Alexander Hamilton; John Jay.
16. The Federalist papers
17. She fought for women's rights.
18. Woodrow Wilson.
19 Arizona; the Southwest; along on the Colorado River.
20. Mount McKinley or Denali

Source

Army monitors soldiers' blogs, Web sites
Oversight operation checks for anything that may compromise security

RICHMOND, Va. - From the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan to here at home, soldiers blogging about military life are under the watchful eye of some of their own.

A Virginia-based operation, the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell, monitors official and unofficial blogs and other Web sites for anything that may compromise security. The team scans for official documents, personal contact information and pictures of weapons or entrances to camps.

In some cases, that information can be detrimental, said Lt. Col. Stephen Warnock, team leader and battalion commander of a Manassas-based Virginia National Guard unit working on the operation.

In one incident, a blogger was describing his duties as a guard, providing pictures of his post and discussing how to exploit its vulnerabilities. Other soldiers posted photos of an Army weapons system that was damaged by enemy attack, and another showed personal information that could have endangered his family.

"We are a nation at war," Warnock said by e-mail. "The less the enemy knows, the better it is for our soldiers."

In the early years of operations in the Middle East, no official oversight governed Web sites that sprung up to keep the families of those deployed informed about their daily lives.

The oversight mission, made up of active-duty soldiers and contractors, as well as Guard and Reserve members from Maryland, Texas and Washington state, began in 2002 and was expanded in August 2005 to include sites in the public domain, including blogs.

The Army will not disclose the methods or tools being used to find and monitor the sites. Nor will it reveal the size of the operation or the contractors involved. The Defense Department has a similar program, the Joint Web Risk Assessment Cell, but the Army program is apparently the only operation that monitors nonmilitary sites.

Now soldiers wishing to blog while deployed are required to register their sites with their commanding officers, who monitor the sites quarterly, according to a four-page document of guidelines published in April 2005 by Multi-National Corps-Iraq.

Spc. Jean-Paul Borda, who has indexed thousands of military blogs for a site called Milblogging.com, said in an e-mail interview that the military still is adapting to changing technology.

"This is a new media — Blogging. Podcasting. Online videos," wrote Borda, 32, of Dallas, who kept a blog while he was deployed in Afghanistan with the Virginia National Guard. "The military is doing what it feels necessary to ensure the safety of the troops."

Warnock said the Web risk assessment team has reviewed hundreds of thousands of sites every month, sometimes e-mailing or calling soldiers asking them to take material down. If the blogger doesn't comply with the request, the team can work with the soldier's commanders to fix the problem — that is, if the blogger doesn't post anonymously.

"We are not a law enforcement or intelligence agency. Nor are we political correctness enforcers," Warnock said. "We are simply trying to identify harmful Internet content and make the authors aware of the possible misuse of the information by groups who may want to damage United States interests."

Some bloggers say the guidelines are too ambiguous — a sentiment that has led others to pre-emptively shut down or alter their blogs.

"It's impossible to determine when something crosses the line from not a violation to a violation. It's like trying to define what pornography is or bad taste in music," said Spc. Jason Hartley, 32, who says he was demoted from sergeant and fined for reposting a blog he created while deployed to Iraq with the New York Army National Guard.

According to Hartley, the Army had forced him to stop the blog even before the oversight operation existed, citing pictures he had posted of Iraqi detainees and discussions of how he loaded a weapon and the route his unit took to get to Iraq.

Warnock contended that soldiers should not be discouraged from blogging altogether.

Military bloggers "are simply expressing themselves in a wide open forum and want to share their life-changing experiences with the rest of the world," Warnock said. "Giving soldiers an outlet for free expression is good. American soldiers are not shy about giving their opinions and nothing the Web Risk Cell does dampens that trait."

Matthew Currier Burden, 39, a former intelligence officer who wrote "The Blog of War," a collection of entries from bloggers who served in the war, said soldiers' Web sites can go a long way toward portraying positive aspects of the war and other "stories that need to get told."

But he said it's legitimate to fear that some information could be used the wrong way.

"The enemy knows the value of the blogs," Burden said. "The biggest thing that we fear is battle damage assessment from the enemy. We want to deny them that."

Source: msnbc.msn.com

1 Man Still Locked Up From 9/11 Sweeps
By Martha Mendoza
The Associated Press Saturday 14 October 2006

>In a jail cell at an immigration detention center in Arizona sits a man who is not charged with a crime, not suspected of a crime, not considered a danger to society.

But he has been in custody for five years.

His name is Ali Partovi. And according to the Department of Homeland Security, he is the last to be held of about 1,200 Arab and Muslim men swept up by authorities in the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

There has been no full accounting of all of these individuals. Nor has a promised federal policy to protect against unrestricted sweeps been produced.

Human rights groups tried to track the detainees; members of Congress denounced the arrests. They all believed that all of those who had been arrested had been deported, released or processed through the criminal justice system.

Just this summer, it was reported that an Algerian man, Benemar "Ben" Benatta, was the last detainee, and that his transfer to Canada had closed the book on the post-9/11 sweeps.

But now The Associated Press has learned that at least one person - Partovi - is still being held. The Department of Homeland Security insists he really is the last one in custody.

"Certainly it's not our goal as an agency to keep anyone detained indefinitely," said DHS spokesman Dean Boyd. Boyd said the department would like to remove Partovi from the United States but that he refuses to return to his homeland of Iran.

And so he remains, a curious remnant of a desperate time.

Within hours of the Sept. 11 attacks - before it was even clear if they were over - the FBI was ordered to identify the terrorists who had managed to slip so smoothly into American society and to catch anyone who might have been working with them. The FBI operation was called PENTTBOM; it was swift and fierce, and the stakes couldn't have been higher.

When in doubt, the orders came, arrest now and ask questions later. To make this easier, law enforcement officials were authorized to use immigration charges as needed. The risk of allowing terrorists to slip away just because there wasn't ample evidence to hold them on terror charges could not be tolerated. And thus hundreds of individuals who were not terrorists, nor associated with terrorists, were temporarily taken into city, county and federal custody.

They were caught in their bedrooms while they slept, pulled from the restaurant kitchens where they worked, stopped at the border, even federal offices where they had gone to seek help. In the end, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft's call for "aggressive detentions" in the unprecedented sweeps netted more than 1,200 individuals in less than two months.

The initial reaction to the sweeps was confusion. Members of Congress, leading civil rights organizations, Arab and Muslim activists, even the Justice Department's internal watchdogs, didn't know how to react.

"After 9/11, everyone was caught off guard. There was so much secrecy surrounding the government's policies that it took a number of months before the public and civil-liberties groups began unraveling what the government was doing," said Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney.

Then came demands, from Congress, from the Justice Department's Inspector General, from the ACLU and Human Rights Watch and from Arab and Muslim activists, that these individuals must be accounted for.

To date that hasn't occurred.

"The fact is the United States has not come forward with information on what happened to these people, or released their names," said Rachel Meeropol, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, an advocacy organization that represents several detainees being held in Guantanamo. "Our understanding is that the majority of these people who were swept up on immigration violations were then held in detention until they were cleared of any connection to terrorism. We believe that accounts for the vast majority of people who were swept up."

Here's what is known: 762 of the 1,200 PENTTBOM arrestees were charged with immigration violations at the behest of the FBI because agents thought they might be associated with terrorism. Partovi was one of these 762. Much as Partovi used a false passport, nearly all of these detainees had violated immigration laws, either by overstaying their visas, entering the country illegally, or violating some other immigration law.

Unlike Partovi, almost everyone was either deported or released within a few months.

There were still at least 438 other individuals who were not accounted for. Most of those individuals, said Justice Department officials, were released within days. But at least 93 were charged with federal crimes and processed through the courts, and an unknown number were deemed material witnesses.

As the years passed, said the ACLU's Gelernt, public concern faded.

"Initially there was a lot of attention on the 1,200 people, but we're still not sure exactly what happened to all of them," said the ACLU's Gelernt.

The repercussions are still being felt, say advocates.

"Those 1,200 were taken in on pseudo-immigration charges," said Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch. "It really is a black mark on the U.S. and it undermines our intelligence gathering because it creates distrust between law enforcement officials and communities where those officials should be building rapport and trust."

"People lost years of their lives and families were ripped apart in the frenzy of fear," said Kerri Sherlock, director of policy and planning at the Rights Working Group, an advocacy organization in Washington D.C. "Do we really want to be a country that locks people up without guaranteeing their basic constitutional rights?"

In June 2003, the Justice Department's inspector general, an in-house auditor, found widespread abuses in the way immigration laws were used to hold people suspected of terrorism in the months following 9/11. The inspector general made 21 recommendations aimed at protecting individuals' civil rights. Twenty of those recommendations have been adopted.

The last recommendation calls for the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security to formalize policies, responsibilities, and procedures for managing a national emergency that involves alien detainees. After the inspector general's report, the Justice and Homeland Security departments agreed with the recommendation and began negotiating over language. Officials at both departments say those negotiations are still going on.

"The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice continue to work toward the development of formal joint policies and approaches for the handling of such national security cases during periods of national impact," said Homeland Security Department spokesman Dean Boyd.

However, Boyd stressed that guidelines were set up in 2004 to make sure detainees' rights are being protected on a case-by-case basis.

"We learned from the past," he said. "We evaluate each situation to make sure it's being handled fairly."

Tim Lynch, a lawyer with the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, said guidelines are not enough.

"I don't think the guidelines will mean very much in an emergency if they don't have the binding force of law," he said. "We shouldn't be surprised if those guidelines aren't followed if there's another massive attack."

When the AP wrote Ali Partovi to ask for an interview, he called collect from the Florence Correctional Center, a privately run detention center in Arizona where he is held. Adamantly, he said he did not want to be interviewed and that he wanted to remain private, even though he said understood his case files, including litigation he files himself, are part of the public record.

He later reportedly told a public affairs officer at the facility that he is too busy for an interview - perhaps preparing his many legal appeals.

In his lawsuits - there have been seven so far - Partovi claims he is a victim of civil rights abuses and demands between $5 million and $10 million in restitution. The most recent was filed in July.

The staff at the jail where he was first held "poured hot coffee on my body, they also poured cold ice water on my body," he wrote in one, claiming that staffers also cuffed his hands and feet, which caused "my ankle and lower extremities to swell abnormally."

"It is my firm belief that I am constantly subjected to physical abuse (because) of my ethnicity, I am Iranian of Persian birth," he wrote in another, filed this summer. In that lawsuit he claimed that immigration officers forced him to kneel while handcuffed, and then kicked and punched his stomach and kidneys.

"As you can imagine, this is very, very painful when you are cuffed from behind," he wrote.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney said that office was aware of the lawsuits but could not comment on them. A detention center spokesman said he was not aware of any lawsuits and could not respond.

Partovi doesn't have a lawyer, and he told the AP he doesn't want one, choosing instead to represent himself, gleaning expertise from the prison library.

He did have a lawyer once, when he was arrested in Guam in the fall of 2001, trying to enter the country on a fraudulent Italian passport.

"Mr. Partovi came into Guam International Airport using a false passport. He explained about having been married to a Japanese women and the arrangement wasn't working out. He applied for political asylum, and I believe the federal government thought he might be a terror suspect," said Curtis Charles Van de Veld, who was hired by the federal government to represent him.

Partovi was sentenced to 175 days in custody, which he had already served by the time he pleaded guilty in 2002. Then he was turned over to the Department of Homeland Security.

Until the AP contacted him, Van de Veld didn't realize his former client was still in custody.

"I'm surprised he hasn't contacted me," he said.