ACLU sues Boeing over CIA transfers

[mxlm]

Funny how the US government can't get the most basic things right, but they still get accused of covering up Roswell, hiring the mafia to kill JFK, and taking unsuspecting Boeing pilots from their homes at gunpoint in the middle of the night to help kidnap foreign nationals.

I take it you're unfamiliar with the Spanish-American War? Or, for that matter, Operations Ajax and Success?

[ayergo]

I think its worth reading the official ACLU page:

http://www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/29 ... 70530.html

The complaint, to be filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that Jeppesen, through its travel service known as Jeppesen International Trip Planning, has been a main provider of flight and logistical support services for aircraft used by the CIA in the U.S. government's extraordinary rendition program.

You can read Jeppesen's page on its scary "flight planning" software here:


http://www.jeppesen.com/wlcs/applicatio ... gory_id=FP

Someone in the Jeppesen board suspected they were torture flights, but what are you gonna do? Pull a product to plan international flights? Rediculous. Even still that doesn't mean they weren't threatened.

This is an ACLU publicity stunt at best. Doesn't seem to be a lot of legal merit here. Boeing no doubt makes some cool black ops toys, but none of them were used for this. Really for people transfer, why would you?

I call B.S.

[Valdimir]

I take it you're unfamiliar with the Spanish-American War? Or, for that matter, Operations Ajax and Success?

LOL... If you are referring to the famous "Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain" pretext for starting that war, I believe that even then the guise was pretty thin (much like the Gulf of Tonkin). The media helped start that war against a declining empire.

I would call Operation Ajax a qualified success. While it did put the Shah in power, US involvement was well known by the time he was ousted in 1979. While the CIA did conduct a number of other 'successful' coups, especially in South America, their involvement rarely remained a secret for long, often souring international relations for years to follow.

I am unfamiliar with Operation Success and have had no luck googling it. Perhaps it was the one government op that remains a secret to this day?

I say these things with some degree of sarcasm, however, I really do not believe that US citizens are being threatened with violence to help the government. Boeing does it for the money, to be sure. I can't speak for the AT&T employee, but I suspect there is more to it than it appears. I could see someone losing a security clearance for NOT helping the FBI or losing his job for helping the FBI without a warrant, but both seems fishy.

Just my two cents...

[mxlm]

LOL... If you are referring to the famous "Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain" pretext for starting that war, I believe that even then the guise was pretty thin (much like the Gulf of Tonkin). The media helped start that war against a declining empire.

The media helped sell it, but that's not quite the same thing. You make my point when you state the guise was pretty thin; McKinley, among others, had rather concrete reasons for going to war (without going too in-depth, essentially the notion was 'we need foreign markets [Asian markets] for a stable economy' [a reaction to the preceding decades' rather unstable domestic economy], the only way to secure foreign markets was to have a strong military--specifically navy--and the only way to have a strong navy was to have far-flung bases, in order to refuel/rearm/respond in a timely manner to local developments).

Additionally, when one considers the internal memo authored by Kennan circa 1945 stating something to the effect of 'we have a disproportionately large amount of the world's resources, and we need to figure out how to keep that disproportion' and recongizes that the goal laid out then was met for decades, it is difficult to say the government is uniformly incompetent.

For that matter, the Cold War was handled fairly well in the broad strokes; though many individual cases (Iran, Indochina, Central America, etc) were botched, those failures did little, if anything, to damage larger American policy objectives.

I am unfamiliar with Operation Success and have had no luck googling it

Odd. When I type it into google, the first hit is this

Here's the page wiki, with all the usual caveats about wikipedia's accuracy.

I say these things with some degree of sarcasm, however, I really do not believe that US citizens are being threatened with violence to help the government.

I tend to agree. I wasn't really taking issue with this, merely the notion that the government did x poorly, so it must be incapable of doing y.

[Grand Fromage]

Are we seriously arguing if the government has coercive power over people or not? Lording that power over the citizenry is practically everything they do.

[Valdimir]

Are we seriously arguing if the government has coercive power over people or not? Lording that power over the citizenry is practically everything they do.

No...just whether or not they make ninja visits in the middle of the night.
Should we find out?

I hear that GF is hacking the Boeing database for the Chinese.

Please post your address here and we will see what happens. Have your Amnesty International attorney call us if you get picked up.

[Grand Fromage]

Considering the other CIA operations I've read about, them personally threatening people into compliance doesn't strike me as the least bit unbelievable. That said, I suspect the government gets a lot more out of people by waving huge stacks of (our) money at them than they do by threats.

[Mulu]

This is an ACLU publicity stunt at best. Doesn't seem to be a lot of legal merit here.

It's the civil equivalent of aiding and abetting, conspiracy to deprive, etc. If you provide a car and gas it up, make a map from the bank to a safehouse including traffic flow patterns and best times to drive, provide a fastpass to get through the toll gate on the best road, and hand the keys of the car over to some men you know for a fact are going to rob the bank on the map... well, that's illegal conduct, and it should be punished.

The lawsuit was filed under the Alien Tort Statute, which permits aliens to bring claims in the United States for violations of the law of nations or a United States treaty. The statute recognizes international norms accepted among civilized nations that are violated by acts such as enforced disappearance, torture and other inhuman treatment described in the lawsuit.

That's the press statement version. Here's the actual complaint.

Even so, I have my suspicions about this litigation. You have to understand litigation against governmental entities and also understand the ACLU to figure out what's probably really going on. IMHO, what the ACLU is really after here is information. If they can get documentation of the rendition program from this defendant, then they have an argument against the state secrets defense and can try to go after the CIA itself, or failing that at least have evidence to give to Congress in hopes of having a special prosecutor appointed. Sometimes to sue the intended target, you have to sue others first. At which point this is less a PR stunt and more a Hail Mary. I suspect Jeppesen will claim it was acting as an agent of the US in all alleged actions and claim soveriegn immunity or a similar defense as a US contractor, which will likely fail at the trial level, and then on a writ petition US attorneys will attempt to intervene, and the ball will roll from there.

This is going to take years. I wish them luck.

[ayergo]

This is an ACLU publicity stunt at best. Doesn't seem to be a lot of legal merit here.

It's the civil equivalent of aiding and abetting, conspiracy to deprive, etc. If you provide a car and gas it up, make a map from the bank to a safehouse including traffic flow patterns and best times to drive, provide a fastpass to get through the toll gate on the best road, and hand the keys of the car over to some men you know for a fact are going to rob the bank on the map... well, that's illegal conduct, and it should be punished.

Except the ACLU is only specifically acusing them of providing software to plan international trips and handle the air space. The ACLU makes no claims about the aircraft used, the fuel, or even the pilots.

Ooooh, software that helps tell you defined airspace internationally and plot a course accordingly! Scary stuff! Can't let the government have that!

[Mulu]

Maybe you should try actually reading the complaint....

[ayergo]

Relavent section from the actual complaint:

Among other services provided Jeppesen prepared pre-departure flight
planning services, including itinerary, route weather, and fuel plans for both aircraft involved in their renditions; procured necessary landing and overflight permits for all legs of the rendition flights; and through local agents, arranged fuel and ground handling for the aircraft; filed flight plans with national and inter-governmental air traffic control authorities; paid passenger fees for the crew; and made arrangements to secure the safety of the aircraft and crew on the ground.

Guess what the software does for you automagically, genius. That sure looks like a flight plan to me, and exactly like the software i linked to above.

It is a program that takes care of documentation and planning (where to get fuel, how much, best way to go, etc) for you when planning international flights. Pretty devious stuff huh?

[Mulu]

So if I made a software program intended to track sexual predators and instead used it to track a teenage girl so she could be abducted, that's okay? Using software to do evil things takes away intent?

No, of course it doesn't. Doing it through a software program doesn't take away my malfeasance. It's the knowingly, willfully part that creates intent.

If I have a generic service I provide to others, and I provide that service for someone knowing they are going to use that service to commit a serious crime against international laws and humanity, I may be civilly liable as a tortfeasor under the Alien Tort Statute as someone who contributed to the harm knowingly (or even recklessly), hence the lawsuit.

If Jeppensen was truly ignorant of the purpose of the flights, then obviously there would be no liability. But if you *know* what's going on, and you assist, then you are a contributor to the harm. That should be obvious. If assisting in torture and disappearing doesn't seem that bad to you, imagine the flights were filled with jews going to gas chambers, and maybe it will make more sense.

[NickD]

If Jeppensen was truly ignorant of the purpose of the flights, then obviously there would be no liability. But if you *know* what's going on, and you assist, then you are a contributor to the harm. That should be obvious. If assisting in torture and disappearing doesn't seem that bad to you, imagine the flights were filled with jews going to gas chambers, and maybe it will make more sense.

OMG! Mulu hates Freedom and is a Holocaust Denier!

[ayergo]

Its not used to track people, its used to plan flights. You can't stop selling maps because people might use them for smuggling. What's more in this case is that you can't revoke their software licensce once they've paid for it and given it to them. The unlocked program stays unlocked.


Your analogy is bogus.

Are you suggesting they be like Microsoft "genuine advantage" and dial home every once in a while to Big Brother to make sure that He still says its okay to function?