Nato head tells David Cameron: We are counting on your leadership

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We appreciate the leadership that the UK shows in the Alliance, and we count on leadership also in the future, Mr Stoltenberg said.

In the same press release, Nato said he would be meeting Michael Fallon to ensure important decisions from the Wales summit last year were being implemented.

A central outcome of the summit was a promise for all European allies to recommit to spending 2 per cent of their GDP on defence a long-standing obligation.

At the time the Prime Minister called on those countries below the mark to meet the obligation within a decade and signed a pledge saying Britain would aim to continue to hit the 2 per cent mark.

In a separate development, Mr Cameron appeared to admit the difficulty in justifying why a government should protect aid spending during austerity while not ring-fencing defence.

Pushed by the Financial Times on how the Prime Minister could say defence was more about deployability of forces than raw spending numbers while enshrining legal aid spending in law, Mr Cameron reportedly said: Its a fair point.

No 10 spokesperson said of the meeting between Mr Cameron and Mr Stoltenberg: The Prime Minister explained that the UK would continue to meet the 2 per cent target this financial year and next, but decisions beyond this would be made in the next Spending Review.

The Secretary General said he appreciated the UKs leadership within the Alliance and that the Government was using its defence spending to focus on investment in new capabilities."

Last month two former Nato heads warned that Mr Cameron will embolden Mr Putin and Islamic terrorists if he reneges on a commitment to spend two per cent of GDP on defence.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who left the post as Nato general secretary last year, and his predecessor Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said cutting defence after the election would strength Britains enemies.

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Nato head tells David Cameron: We are counting on your leadership

Nato chief in warning over Russian wargames

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David Cameron and Jens Stoltenberg meet at 10 Downing Street. Photograph: Nils Jorgensen/Rex

Natos secretary general has warned that increasing numbers of Russian wargames, with no prior warning, combined with the withering of regular military communications channels between the alliance and Moscow, raises the danger of misunderstandings between the two sides escalating rapidly.

Jens Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian prime minister, voiced his concern a few days after Russia pulled out of a joint forum with Nato countries for discussing conventional arms control in Europe.

Since the Russian intervention in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea, dialogue through the Nato Russia council, set up after the cold war, has been severely reduced, at a time of high tension and a faster tempo of military exercises by each side near to mutual borders.

There are more and more snap exercises with no prior notification, Stoltenberg told the Guardian during a visit to London. It is important we keep the channels for military communication open to have as much transparency as possible to avoid misunderstandings and to make sure that incidents dont spiral and get out of control.

Every nation has the right to conduct exercises, as long as they do it within their international obligations, the secretary general said. But the recent Russian practice of calling snap exercises is of serious concern. Sudden, unpredictable and surprise military maneuvers contribute to instability.

Russia has conducted about a dozen snap exercises over the past two years. Russias takeover of Crimea was done under the guise of a snap exercise. Nato has not conducted snap exercises since the end of the cold war.

Russia has dramatically increased the number of military flights over the Baltic region, leading to Natos stepping up air patrols over the Baltic states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. On Thursday, it was reported that Russia had launched a new live fire wargame involving the Baltic fleet and paratroopers.

The increased number of snap exercises by the Russians, the increased military presence of Russian troops along Nato borders, underlines the importance of having contact and transparency and predictability.

Stoltenberg said: We are doing what we can to make sure thats the case, but their withdrawal from the (conventional forces in Europe) is part of a broader picture. Part of the message we convey in our political dialogue is we would like to have more transparency and more predictability.

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Nato chief in warning over Russian wargames

Lawsuit Challenges NSA Internet Dragnets

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By John P. Mello Jr. 03/13/15 11:02 AM PT

The American Civil Liberties Union earlier this week filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the National Security Agency from indiscriminately snooping on United States Internet traffic.

Using a technique called "upstream" surveillance, the NSA does a spinal tap of the Internet's U.S. backbone, which carries the communications of millions of Americans, the ACLU explained in its complaint filed with a federal district court in Maryland.

"In the course of this surveillance, the NSA is seizing Americans' communications en masse while they are in transit," the complaint alleges, "and it is searching the contents of substantially all international text-based communications -- and many domestic communications as well -- for tens of thousands of search terms."

That kind of surveillance violates federal law, the First and Fourth Amendments and Article III of the Constitution, maintained the ACLU, which is representing in the lawsuit the Wikimedia Foundation, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International USA, PEN American Center, the Global Fund for Women, The Nation magazine, The Rutherford Institute and the Washington Office on Latin America.

This lawsuit is similar to one filed in the past involving NSA Director James R. Clapper and Amnesty International. That case was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court. Backers of the latest lawsuit, however, believe their case has stronger legs than the previous litigation.

"Thanks to the Snowden disclosures and government acknowledgments over the last 18 months, we now know more about government surveillance than we did in Clapper v. Amnesty," explained Ashley Gorski, an attorney with the ACLU's National Security Project.

"That, for us, makes all the difference," she told the E-Commerce Times, "and we think that will make a difference in court as well."

In the Amnesty case, the Supreme Court ruled that the parties bringing the lawsuit lacked standing -- that is, they couldn't prove they were harmed by the behavior alleged in their complaint. The reason they couldn't prove harm was that they didn't know enough about what the NSA was doing to make the connection between harm and behavior.

"Prior to the Snowden revelations and the government acknowledgments, the public did not know anything at all about upstream surveillance -- least of all that the NSA was copying entire streams of Internet traffic and searching through them for information about its targets," Gorski said.

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Lawsuit Challenges NSA Internet Dragnets

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Cato Surveillance Conference Keynote Speaker Rep. Thomas Massie – Video

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Cato Surveillance Conference Keynote Speaker Rep. Thomas Massie
Follow the link to watch the full event: http://www.cato.org/events/2014-cato-institute-surveillance-conference How should these tracking technologies be regulated by the Fourth Amendment...

By: catoinstitutevideo

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Cato Surveillance Conference Keynote Speaker Rep. Thomas Massie - Video

Are CTA Bag Checks Against Our Fourth Amendment Rights?

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After four months of random bag checks at more than 40 CTA stations, the results are in: Officers checked 2,600 bags, found zero explosives and made only one arrest. The bag-check initiative, which began Nov. 3 and had full support of Mayor Emmanuel, is funded by a grant from the Transportation Security Administration and currently has no end date.

The CTA announced it has not received any complaints from the public regarding the bag checks. But what about the one arrest made? Turns out, protestor Scott Davis, 43, told the RedEye he was acting in protest of the violation of his Fourth Amendment rights which can be registered as a very public complaint, CTA by refusing to have his bag checked and then attempting to board a Brown Line train. Davis was charged with criminal trespass to state land and disorderly conduct. According to policy, riders are able to refuse bag checks but must leave the CTA station or face arrest. However, refusing a bag check does not stop someone from entering the same station via another entrance, or boarding at a different stop.

So, are the bag checks actually against our Fourth Amendment rights?

According to MacWade vs. Kelly a Second Circuit Court ruling in 2006 no. The case was brought by the ACLU against the Commissioner of the New York City Police Department and the City of New York after subway bag checks were enacted in 2005, which were in response to the Madrid and London subway bombings of 2004 and 2005. The ruling sets precedent for five requirements that must be met for these programs to be deemed constitutional, including:

1. Passengers receive notice of the searches and may decline to be searched so long as they leave the subway. 2. Police search only those containers capable of concealing explosives. 3. A typical search lasts only for a matter of seconds. 4. Uniformed personnel conduct the searches out in the open, which reduces the fear and stigma that removal to a hidden area can cause. 5. Police exercise no discretion in selecting whom to search, but rather employ a formula that ensures they do not arbitrarily exercise their authority.

While Mayor Emanuel has defended the measures in Chicago for providing public security while protecting privacy, critics contend that the measure is simply for show afterall, there are 145 CTA stations and thousands of riders passing through them each day. Others insist that the bag checks could be used to target young, male minorities. It's yet to be seen whether the measure has yielded more harm than good.

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Are CTA Bag Checks Against Our Fourth Amendment Rights?

Vietnam War Symposium: They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967 – Video

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Vietnam War Symposium: They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967
A March 10 symposium on the Vietnam War was held at the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt, based on "They Marched Into Sunlight," a book by David Maraniss. Maraniss, Distinguished Visiting...

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Vietnam War Symposium: They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967 - Video

The Limits of Free Speech

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The Supreme Court's interpretation of the First Amendment would protect even the racist chant at the University of Oklahomabut it shouldn't.

Members of a fraternity at the University of Oklahoma were recently filmed chanting that theyd rather see a black student lynched than as a member of their clan. The now viral video of dapper, privileged white men shouting, There will never be a nigger at SAE, you can hang him from a tree reminds us of our greatest national shame. The chant has been roundly condemned as abhorrent. But after university president David Boren announced the expulsion of two students leading the chants, prominent legal scholars from the right and left have come to their defense. The university is a public institution, they say, and punishing the students for what they saidno matter how vileviolates the First Amendments commitment to uninhibited, robust, and wide-open discourse.

Oklahoma could make a decent argument that the students chant created a hostile educational environment and was thus unprotected speech, but these scholars are likely correct as a predictive matter. If this situation were litigated before the current Supreme Court, the students would almost certainly win. The frat boys howls are reminiscent of the Westboro Baptist Churchs God hates fags protests near military funerals, which the Supreme Court protected a few years ago. And while public university hate-speech codes have never been litigated at the Supreme Court, they have been trounced in lower courts.

A Brief and Recent History of Bigotry at Fraternities

We are told the First Amendment protects the odious because we cannot trust the government to make choices about content on our behalf. That protections of speech will inevitably be overinclusive. But that this is a cost we must bear. If we start punishing speech, advocates argue, then we will slide down the slippery slope to tyranny.

If that is what the First Amendment means, then we have a problem greater than bigoted frat boys. The problem would be the First Amendment.

No one with a frontal lobe would mistake this drunken anthem for part of an uninhibited and robust debate about race relations. The chant was a spew of hatred, a promise to discriminate, a celebration of privilege, and an assertion of the right to violenceall wrapped up in a catchy ditty. If the First Amendment has become so bloated, so ham-fisted, that it cannot distinguish between such filth and earnest public debate about race, then it is time we rethink what it means.

The way we interpret the First Amendment need not be simplistic and empty of nuance, and was not always so. The Supreme Court unanimously held over eighty years ago that those words which by their very utterance inflict injury are no essential part of any exposition of ideas. And in 1952 the Court upheld an Illinois statute punishing false or malicious defamation of racial and religious groups. These rulings, while never officially reversed, have shrunk to historical trinkets. But they mark a range of the possible, where one can be a staunch defender of full-throated discourse but still recognize the difference between dialogue and vomitus.

When frat boys delight in singing about lynching in Oklahoma, or loop a noose around the statue of James Meredith at Ole Miss, or publish a rape guide at Dartmouth, the First Amendment tells us our remedy to these expressions of hatred is to grimace and bear it. Or ignore it. Or speak out against it. But punish it we cannot. That would go too far; we would slide down the slippery slope to tyranny.

Those not targeted by the speech can sit back and recite how distasteful such racism or sexism is, and isnt it too bad so little can be done. Meanwhile, those targeted by the speech are forced to speak out, yet again, to reassert their right to be treated equally, to be free to learn or work or live in an environment that does not threaten them with violence. The First Amendments reliance on counterspeech as remedy forces the most marginalized among us to bear the costs of the bigots speech. Counterspeech is exhausting and distracting, but if you are the target of hatred you have little choice. Speak up! Remind us why you should not be lynched. Speak up! Remind us why you should not be raped. You can stay silent, but that internalizes the taunt. The First Amendment tells us the government cannot force us either to remain silent or to speak, but its reliance on counterspeech effectively forces that very choice onto victims of hate speech.

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The Limits of Free Speech