Artist Arrested for Bio-Terrorism, Could You be Next?

Today I met a man named Steve Kurtz. He's a nice man who does his best to keep the public informed of infringements on our rights. This is an excerpt from the website [link] , which you can go to for more information regarding his case and what you can do to protect your rights as an artist (and your rights as a minority opinion).

He's been charged as a terrorist, and to this day his case has not been settled.

Please read, this is a very disturbing turn of events that can only be righted by vast public outcry.

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What happened to Steve Kurtz?

On May 11, 2004, Steve Kurtz's wife of 20 years, Hope, died of heart failure in their home in Buffalo. Kurtz called 911. Buffalo Police who responded along with emergency workers, apparently sensitized to 'War on Terror' rhetoric, became alarmed by the presence of art materials in their home which had been displayed in museums and galleries throughout Europe and North America. Convinced that these materials - which consisted of several petri dishes containing harmless forms of bacteria, and scientific equipment for testing genetically altered food - were the work of a terrorist, the police called the FBI.

The next day, as Kurtz was on his way to the funeral home, he was illegally detained by agents from the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force, who informed him he was being investigated for "bioterrorism." At no point during the 22 hours Kurtz was held and questioned did the agents Mirandize him or inform him he could leave. Meanwhile, agents from numerous federal law enforcement agencies - including five regional branches of the FBI, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and the Buffalo Police, Fire Department, and state Marshall's office - descended on Kurtz's home in Hazmat suits. Cordoning off half a block around his home, they seized his cat, car, computers, manuscripts, books, equipment, and even his wife's body from the county coroner for further analysis. The Erie County Health Department condemned his house as a possible "health risk."

A week later, only after the Commissioner of Public Health for New York State had tested samples from the home and announced there was no public safety threat, was Kurtz allowed to return to his home and to recover his wife's body.

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Artist accused of "bioterrorism"

While most observers assumed the Task Force would realize its initial investigation was a terrible mistake, the feds have instead chosen to press their "case" against Steve Kurtz, Robert Ferrell, and possibly others. Despite the Public Health Commissioner's conclusion as to the safety of Kurtz's materials, and despite the fact that the FBI's own field and laboratory tests showed they were not harmful to people or the environment – it would actually be impossible to make any sort of weaponized or dangerous germ from them – the U.S. District Attorney continues to waste vast sums of public money on this outrageous and politically motivated persecution.

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What is the violation he is accused of?

In their initial investigation, the Justice Department sought charges under Section 175 of the US Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, as expanded by the USA PATRIOT Act, Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 10 Sec. 175 - Prohibitions with respect to biological weapons.

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Possible sentence of 20 years for "mail fraud" charges

On June 29, 2004, a federal Grand Jury appeared to reject those charges and instead handed down indictments of 2 counts each of "mail fraud" and "wire fraud" under Title 18, United States Code, sections 1341 and 1343. Also indicted was Robert Ferrell, former head of the Department of Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Public Health, and a collaborator on several of CAE’s projects. (Since Ferrell is ill at this point, his case has been indefinitely postponed.) The charges concern technicalities of how Ferrell allegedly helped Kurtz obtain $256 worth of harmless bacteria for one of CAE's art projects. Although they are a far cry from the charges originally sought by the District Attorney, these are still serious federal charges, which – thanks to the PATRIOT Act – carry the same potential sentence as the original “bioterrorism” charges would have: up to 20 years.

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Why Should This Case Concern Me?

This is a precedent-setting case with profound implications for all Americans’ constitutionally guaranteed rights to freedom of speech, expression, and inquiry; and for artists, scientists, researchers, and anyone engaged in vital public discussion about the actions of their government. It threatens to set dangerous and political precedent by vastly expanding the government’s reach into our homes and public institutions; by eroding the boundary between civil and criminal law; and by intimidating and criminalizing those who would legitimately and legally criticize government policy. In addition, the case has already led to dispossession of the public's fundamental right to scientific knowledge. Because of this case, many of the manufacturers that formerly supplied amateurs and science hobbyists no longer will for fear of litigation. The case therefore threatens to end independent research and seriously damage the public's ability to critique corporations and the military, which will exercise even more exclusive control of scientific knowledge.

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Please read more at: [link]

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I was outraged by this information, and so I decided to inform you folks at deviantart.com. We're a community made of artists, and "deviant" is in our name! We're "deviants" who "deviously" submit "deviations". My point is this: If we submit to this sort of outrageous censorship, do we still deserve our titles?

So please, if anyone can help in the case, do so! If anyone can post this in their journals, (their myspace blogs, their xangas, their livejournals, etc.) please do! Stand up and fight! Be deviants! Be proud.

~Unomi

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"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it tried to contact us." - Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes