Obama Administration Imprisons 16-Year-Old Boy Under PATRIOT Act

Why would a 16-year-old boy from Oxford, North Carolina, who has no criminal record, call in a bomb threat to South Bend, Indiana, more than 800 miles away?

This is a fundamental question the FBI and Obama administration Department of Justice have refused to answer in the case of Ashton Lundeby, who was pulled from his bed on the night of March 5 and whisked away from his home to a jail in Indiana, without access to his family or an attorney.

The administration is using the USA PATRIOT Act, passed in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, without being read by any Member of Congress. Legislators voted for the law under a veil of ignorance and assurances by the Bush administration that the law would never be used to violate the civil liberties of American citizens.

Ashton's story is told best in this news report from WRAL-TV in Raleigh, now available on YouTube:

Notice how the 16-year-old homeschooler's bedroom is decorated with a patriotic theme. Perhaps the Obama administration is following the lexicon published by the Department of Homeland Security (uncovered by the Washington Times) that defines "patriots" as potential terrorists. "Patriot movement," the DHS says, is:

A term used by rightwing extremists to link their beliefs to those commonly associated with the American Revolution. The patriot movement primarily comprises violent antigovernment groups such as militias and sovereign citizens.

In the only local print media report on Ashton's arrest by gun-wielding gangsters-with-badges, reporter William West of the Daily Dispatch wrote:

Annette Lundeby, a disabled widow, lives in a modern home and has three cats.

She told the Dispatch that, on the night of March 5, she was about to go to sleep, that her son was asleep on a sofa and that her 12-year-old daughter was in bed when the knocking on the door began.

According to Annette Lundeby, the authorities arrived in unmarked cars and remained on the property until roughly 1 a.m.-1:30 a.m.

And according to Annette Lundeby, at the time of the search she was prohibited from making any phone calls, including to an attorney, and that agents told her she had to be at her son's detention hearing the next morning in Raleigh.

And she added that she was unable to sleep after the authorities left and that her daughter was traumatized. Both of her children are home-schoolers.

Annette Lundeby maintains that a hacker — that is, one who is determined to seek unauthorized access to a computer — got her son's Internet provider address and used such access to both make crank phone calls and falsely give the impression of the calls coming from the residence.

She claimed the judge questioned an FBI agent at the hearing in Raleigh about whether one could hack one's Internet provider address and claimed the agent replied this was virtually impossible. And she claimed that the agent told the judge that he did not know of any computer software available on the Internet to hack an Internet provider address.

"Virtually impossible"? Apparently the FBI doesn't talk to other government agencies. In that DHS "Domestic Extremism Lexicon," there is this definition of "hacktivism":

(A portmanteau of “hacking” and “activism.”) The use of cyber technologies to achieve a political end, or technology-enabled political or social activism. Hacktivism might include website defacements, denial-of-service attacks, hacking into the target’s network to introduce malicious software (malware), or information theft.

In addition to incompetences like this, government law enforcement agencies are extremely shy about apologizing for mistakes. (They almost never do so, unless by court order.) So Ashton Lundeby, no matter how strong the case for his innocence is, will likely be kept in jail for years as the government tries out new and more ridiculous charges against him, until they find one that sticks or they wear Ashton down so thoroughly that he confesses to crimes he did not commit (and probably did not occur).

Under the USA PATRIOT Act, law enforcement agencies are not our friends. John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute recently wrote:

Since 9/11, it has become apparent that the federal government, unless it is kept within the bounds of the law, will develop into an immense monster that no one can curb. The end result will be that the American people will lose control of their government.

The Rutherford web site notes:

Our government is becoming more and more intrusive. With the passage of sweeping laws such as the USA Patriot Act many find themselves questioning whether we really are living under Orwell’s Big Brother government.

Annette Lundeby understands this quite well:

"We have no rights under the Patriot Act to even defend them, because the Patriot Act basically supersedes the Constitution," she said. "It wasn't intended to drag your barely 16-year-old, 120-pound son out in the middle of the night on a charge that we can't even defend."

If President Barack Obama genuinely wants to reverse the assault on civil liberties begun during his predecessor's administration, he can start by freeing Ashton Lundeby and sacking the idiot who approved the raid on the Lundeby family's home.

UPDATE: New information has come to light regarding Ashton Lundeby. Read about it here.

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