(Boylove News Articles) - DEAD END: The International Megan's Law's Assault on Everyone's Freedom of Travel

DEAD END: The International Megan's Law Assault on Everyone's Freedom of Travel The free movement of the individual is increasingly seen as a revocable privilege, not an inalienable right, as the U.S., Interpol, and governments worldwide conspire to strip, not just “sex offenders”, but everyone of the fundamental right to travel and to cross borders By David Kennerly Table Of Contents PART I: Introduction The Alarm Which Finally Roused Us From Our Slumber The Next Step Down The Road To Oblivion Understanding “International Megan's Law” “The International Megan's Law”: An Analysis The "Exterminating Angel" In the Driver's Seat PART II: The Actors: The National Security State, Post Snowden and Greenwald (and Manning and Assange and Scahill and Binney and Drake) Extending the Security State To Sex Offenders The “Five Eyes” INTERPOL's Big Makeover The Special Role of the Media In Driving the Sex Panic Non-Governmental Organizations Congress PART III: An Inescapable Conclusion Restless Natives Presumption Of Future Guilt Of Those Said To Be Victimizers (and of Eternal Saintliness of Those Said To Be Victims) Endnotes ©2014 David Kennerly We are, all of us, standing on a civil liberties precipice. The systematic degradation of the rights of all citizens is now well underway. Through the pretext of safeguarding safety and security and, ironically, our “way of life,” governments worldwide are imposing limitations (and, within the U.S., unprecedented limitations) on our freedom of movement; rights stripped from us in the name of safety and security. That the worst of these violations are, for the time being, born disproportionately by those occupying society's margins and whose social value is seen, and treated, as inferior to all others should provide us no comfort nor assurances for our future. Nor does it relieve us of the burden of our complicity or of our conscience. The emergent “zero tolerant” society has taken, as its central conceit, the proposition that all human affairs must now be intensely scrutinized, and mediated, through the obsessive ministrations of government. The utility of fear in facilitating this continuous erosion, especially the obligatory appeal that all such fearful erosions are “for the benefit of children”, has become the time-honored mechanism through which the rights of all people are routinely diminished. We should be especially dubious of that appeal when the victims of these laws are, increasingly, children, themselves. Children who are routinely deprived of their own liberty, and permanently and dramatically diminished - as citizens - for crimes that often consisted of nothing more than mutual exploration; explorations once accommodated within a rational society which had yet to lose all sense of fairness or proportion. The Snowden Alarm Which Finally Woke Us We have learned, in extraordinary detail, of the wanton illegality in which our governments now engage through the remarkable revelations of Edward Snowden as well as those of Bradley Manning, William Binney, Thomas Drake and others. They have all taken a courageous stand to insist that government must be held to account for policies which identify liberty as incompatible with the interests of safety and security, policies which are, in any case (at least, in the United States) unconstitutional and illegal. We have also learned, from the treatment of journalists such as American documentary filmmaker and recent Polk Award recipient (and Academy Award and Emmy Award Nominee), Laura Poitras, of the power of the U.S. government, through its Border & Customs authority, to subject anyone, including journalists, whose message they find inconvenient or embarrassing (such as Poitras' searing reporting on U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan) to repeated harassment upon their return to the United States. Poitras has had to endure hours of detention and threatening interrogation (without benefit of counsel) as well as the repeated search and seizure of her laptop computers and electronic devices along with the digital data found within them. [See the companion piece to this article: “'HOMELAND SECURITY'S' ASSAULT ON FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT: How America's sex laws endanger you, your children's and everyone's freedom to travel.”] We now know that the U.S. Government routinely uses U.S. Customs' warrantless powers of search to record all data contained on the laptops, cellphones and other digital devices of anti-war activists, political dissidents, journalists or of anyone else whom they wish, especially when they possess no probable cause to obtain that information through other means. This is a deliberate program in which law enforcement, and perhaps any government agency, can alert Customs officials to intercept specific individuals in the event that they travel internationally. That most people now store enormous amounts of data - often inadvertently - on their cellphones and laptops represents an opportunity for government to lay claim to the myriad details of their lives when reentering the U.S. In Poitras' case, she has endured this treatment more than forty times and with such regularity that she simply picked-up and moved to Berlin; rarely returning to the U.S. where she finds her treatment, at her own government's hands, deeply frightening and disturbing. And this, even before she met or became aware of Edward Snowden (who she then introduced to her colleague, Glenn Greenwald) in what would become one of the most extraordinary journalistic collaborations and achievements of all time. The Next Step Down The Road To Oblivion It is into this civil liberties and constitutional milieu which International Megan's Law, not yet enacted (but already partially in force), now emerges; as an additional power of the advanced global security state to strip citizens of the fundamental right to travel and of the expanded powers of two agencies within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS): Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and which are the faces of its implementation. The stark implications for freedom imposed by this law have, thus far, escaped the serious attentions of civil libertarians. It is my hope to make them aware of its dangers which go well beyond its stated goals and which pose a grave threat to the free movement of people today and with even broader implications for the future. Understanding “International Megan's Law” “It is imperative that we take the lessons we have learned on how to protect our children from known child sex predators within our borders and expand those protections globally,” declared a triumphant U.S. Representative Chris Smith, Republican of New Jersey after successfully pushing his bill, the “International Megan's Law” through the U.S. House of Representatives. “Child predators thrive on secrecy, a secrecy that allows them to commit heinous crimes against children with impunity and without any real accountability. Megan’s Law must go global to protect American children and children worldwide.” Smith has been introducing one version after the other of this bill, named after a child murder victim for whom any number of federal and state laws have been named, for the past six years, but without much success. That is, until this year. Having finally passed in The House and now being considered by The Senate, “International Megan's Law to Prevent Child Sex Trafficking” is half-way to its goal. Halfway, since it is unimaginable that President Obama would not grace it with his signature were it to reach his desk after a win in both Houses of Congress. Following the wildly successful formula of adorning criminal statutes with the names of murdered child crime victims, this bill is, nevertheless, something new altogether. Since the appalling Supreme Court decision in 2002 in “Smith v. Doe” in which the Justices held, in a six-to-three decision, that sex offender registration laws were perfectly constitutional since they do not represent retroactive ex post facto punishment (in the criminal sense) but civil regulation as a means of ensuring public safety (yet imposing criminal sanctions for non-compliance) there has been a succession of laws blithely unencumbered by constitutional concerns for sex offenders which restrict where they can live, work, visit and even who they can associate with as well as dictate the frequency with which they must report the myriad details of their lives to law enforcement. Most of those constitutionally suspect laws have, until now, concerned themselves with regulating the lives of registered sex offenders within the borders of the United States. “International Megan's Law” represents a breathtaking leap beyond those constraints which burden sex offenders with domestic restrictions on where they can live, work or visit in the U.S., and expands them to the world, as a whole. Its primary purpose is twofold: first, to prevent all child sex offenders from leaving the United States and visiting other countries where they might commit an illegal sexual act (as anyone might do) and secondly, to provide U.S. authorities with similar notice from other countries when a child sex offender plans to visit the U.S. (as if that is a problem unaddressed by law enforcement today). It is important to note that the U.S. already bars all alien convicted sex offenders from entering the U.S. when it is able to identify them as such. This bill, by alerting foreign nations to the intended visit to their country of an American sex offender, makes fully bilateral the reciprocal exchange of the criminal background of travelers. Following is a synopsis of this bill which conveys its essential elements as well as its intent: “The International Megan's Law”, An Analysis To “eliminate the demand” for child sex tourism and child sexual exploitation outside of the U.S. by making it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for American child sex offenders to be permitted entry to any foreign country and, further, as a quid pro quo to ensure that similar information be provided to the U.S. from foreign governments whose own “child sex offenders” intend to visit the U.S. (where they will be refused entry). Its effect will certainly be to virtually eliminate child sex offenders leaving the U.S. The following is what this law will do: ● Burdens the Child Sex Offender (includes those convicted of possessing or viewing child pornography and other non-contact offenses), with the legal obligation to notify authorities, in advance, of their intention to travel internationally along with extensive travel plans and destinations. Failure to provide such information will result in felony criminal prosecution and imprisonment. ● Establishes a new office, The “Angel Watch Center” within ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security) which acts as an intermediary between the U.S., foreign governments and Interpol. However, this bill does not directly reference Interpol, even though it is clearly designed to integrate directly with Interpol and its own much publicized program to identify sex offenders in international travel. Discussions amongst policymakers clearly identify Interpol as the intermediary which facilitates such notifications. One could surmise why they fail to mention Interpol but I would suggest it is because its formal role in U.S. law would strike many Americans (including this one) as an advance towards “world government”. ICE will also act with final authority in issuing notifications to foreign governments, other agencies of the U.S. government, such as the U.S. Marshall's National Sex Offender Targeting Office and the U.S. Department of State as well as to American sex offenders themselves. Needless to say, the “Angel Watch Office” will come with a very big “database” (actually, many databases) with vast inter-connectivity. ● Through the “Angel Watch Center”, provides advance warning to foreign destination countries of the travel plans of American child sex offenders, alerting them to their arrival and of the entirety of their travel plans and locations and affording that government the opportunity to refuse them entry. If the destination country were to allow them entry (perhaps to enable a “criminal investigation”, as helpfully suggested in House hearings), they will be, as Rep. Smith has said, “watched like a hawk while they're there.” We are assured that (as an inducement for Americans to urge its passage) the receipt of advance notice of travel and criminal background of travelers to the U.S. will be conditioned upon the U.S. reciprocating in providing foreign governments the criminal records of Americans who travel outside of the U.S. ● The “Angel Watch Center” will consult with non-governmental organizations, including those which are “faith-based”, who are said to have “expertise” in matters of “child sex trafficking” and other “sex crimes” and who will also liaise with those organizations in conducting criminal investigations, such as covertly surveilling identified American sex offenders in “hot spots” said to be rife with “sex trafficking” (in one scenario enthusiastically envisioned by Rep. Smith). “Faith-based” is a clear reference to fundamentalist Christian organizations who have explicitly religious missions to advance a “social-purity” agenda with some actively proselytizing native peoples (who, in Asia, are often Buddhist, Hindu or Muslim). ● Purports to simply transmit criminal conviction data to foreign governments without the expectation that it will necessarily result in the sex offender having his (or her, increasingly) travel rights restricted. But the speeches on the floor of the House tell a different story with Rep. Smith explicitly identifying refusal of entry, and keeping sex offenders confined within the U.S., as a clearly desirable goal and preferred outcome. ● Purports to provide “constructive notice” to sex offenders which will include a good-faith attempt to advise them prior to their departure if the Office believes they are likely to be refused entry (as a result of foreign government notification). It exempts itself from such reporting when the sex offender is the target of an ongoing investigation, in which case he may well be walking into a trap set by the U.S. in conjunction with a foreign government or NGO. This vague assurance (with no real teeth) is one of the few “bones” being thrown to those with constitutional reservations about this bill. It was one of the tepid “compromises” hammered out before House passage to which Smith could point as emblematic of both the unanimity and “bipartisanship” behind this issue. ● Purports to provide an appeals process although one which appears to offer no actual remedy (coming, as it would, after foreign entry and travel had already been refused) and is entirely ex-parte that is, the sex offender is not present during the process and the “Angel Watchers” word is final. ● Provides “technical assistance” to foreign authorities to enable them to participate in the global program. ● In part, appears simply to be codifying practices already in place within the U.S. government in cooperation with Interpol and other nations. By that I mean: for some unknown (to this writer) period of time but at least since March, 2013, the U.S. has already been providing data about child sex offenders to those governments to which they travel as it is able to do so. Many such U.S. policies have been introduced “administratively” i.e. under broad discretionary powers of federal departments, rather than by law. This timeframe coincides with Interpol's stated (in 2013) timetable for the implementation of its own program to issue “Green Notices”, to be available worldwide, when sex offenders travel internationally. This current practice lacks several crucial elements which they wish to implement and which this law will achieve: . Makes more rigorous and thorough the process of monitoring the movement of sex offenders. . Gets the information to foreign governments well in advance of the sex offender's arrival so as to better enable the foreign country to refuse them entry which is, after all, the explicit goal of the bill's author (in his remarks to The House). . Codifies the practice of providing this information to foreign countries and demonstrates (to their minds) both a degree of “due process” extended to the sex offender as well as establishing the framework for a reciprocal international agreement. . Current practice does not provide for the criminalization of the sex offender to travel without having provided government with advance travel intentions (UNLESS they are resident in a “SORNA-compliant” state, in which case it is already a legal obligation). In this way, International Megan's Law can be seen to be an end-run around most individual states' failure to comply with the SORNA requirements of the Adam Walsh Act. [Note: SORNA refers to the “Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act” which is part of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act (AWA). SORNA provisions were a sweeping expansion of federal laws and restrictions imposed on registered sex offenders and represented a major incursion into what had once been almost entirely the sole authority of individual states. States failing to comply with Adam Walsh/SORNA face losing federal monies as a consequence. Years after its passage, most states - in a rare instance of “push-back” which can be seen as an index of the Fed's extreme overreach with AWA - still have not complied with all the law's elements. Nevertheless, sex offenders in those non-compliant states are still subject to many of AWA's provisions.] Endnotes: