28. Oppose Establishment of U.S. Secret Police Force

WHEREAS the U.S. House of Representatives is considering a version of the 2007 Intelligence  Authorization Bill that would grant CIA and NSA security personnel the authority to make arrests for "any felony" committed in their presence, no matter how remote from the foreign intelligence mission it might be; and

WHEREAS section 423 of H.R. 5020 "appears...to grant to CIA security personnel powers that have little to do with the primary mission of 'executive protection,' and potentially creates a pretext for use or abuse of these powers for the purposes of general domestic law enforcement -- something no element of the CIA has ever been empowered to perform," according to Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight in a letter to members of the House Intelligence Committee opposing the provision; and

WHEREAS section 432 of the bill grants similar authority to NSA security personnel; and

WHEREAS these bills also include measures intended to increase penalties for unauthorized disclosures of classified information which are intended to intimidate whistle-blowers and thus undermine the public good;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Maui Democratic Party calls on the Hawai`i Democratic Party, the Hawai`i legislature and our Hawai`i Senators and representative to work to defeat the passage of these bills would establish the equivalent of the Soviet's KGB in the United States.