The Surveillance State - A New Era

lindabaker wrote:This video deserves its own thread, Trancoso. Thanks for posting this for us all. Keep yourself well, and if our forum moves on and you do not move on with us, I want to sincerely thank you again for your efforts. You have provided so much information over the past couple of years that helps tie everything together. It's people like you who are the brave ones still holding up the lantern in the darkness. Many people have benefited from the knowledge you have shared, and you don't even know how many. Hugs from across the sea...Linda and friends.

THANX, Linda!

Very sweet of you to write, and also encouraging for me to read, my efforts are not in vain.

I once considered to become a teacher, but I didn't like the idea that I would have to deal with a lot of - too many - dumb kids also. I just lack the patience.

"Your unban request was denied.
We apologize, but there is a wide range ban on your ISP at the moment. More than likely this ban was not directed at you personally, but at an obsessive compulsive IP address re-setter on your network. We regret any inconvenience this ban may have caused you, but it is necessary to protect the website. Although the ban is indefinite, it may be lifted at a later time."


Same for three different isp's of mine.... but this forum is still available to me... for now... keepin an eye on us now

Obama Administration's "Secret Law" to Spy on Americans
by Tom Burghardt
Global Research, Antifascist Calling
July 31, 2011

During last spring's run-up to the reauthorization of three expiring provisions of the USA Patriot Act, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) charged that the administration and the FBI was relying on a "secret" interpretation of law to vacuum-up exabytes of data, including cell phone location records and internet data mining that target Americans.

In March, a written statement to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security by Justice Department official Todd Hinnen confirmed that the administration had used Section 215, the so-called "business records" section of the Act "to obtain driver's license records, hotel records, car rental records, apartment leasing records, credit card records, and the like."

Further confirmation of Wyden's charges came from an unlikely source: a White House nominee for a top counterterrorism position.

Last week Wired reported that Matthew Olsen, the administration's pick to head the National Counterterrorism Center "acknowledged that 'some of the pleadings and opinions related to the Patriot Act' to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that approves snooping warrants 'are classified'."

If confirmed, Olsen will replace Michael E. Leiter, the Bushist embed who told the Senate last year during hearings into 2009's aborted plot to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day: "I will tell you, that when people come to the country and they are on the watch list, it is because we have generally made the choice that we want them here in the country for some reason or another."

What those reasons are for wanting a terrorist to board a packed airliner were not spelled out to Senate nor were they explored by corporate media. This raises an inevitable question: what else is the administration concealing from the American people?

White House Stonewall
Back in May, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Justice Department "demanding the release of a secret legal memo used to justify FBI access to Americans' telephone records without any legal process or oversight."

So far, the administration has refused to release the memos.

According to the civil liberties' watchdogs, a report last year by the DOJ's own Inspector General "revealed how the FBI, in defending its past violations of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), had come up with a new legal argument to justify secret, unchecked access to private telephone records."

"The Obama administration," The Washington Post reports, has continued "to resist the efforts of two Democratic senators to learn more about the government's interpretation of domestic surveillance law, stating that 'it is not reasonably possible' to identify the number of Americans whose communications may have been monitored under the statute."

In a letter to Wyden and Senator Mark Udall (D-CO), Kathleen Turner, the director of legislative affairs for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), claimed that a "joint oversight team" has not uncovered evidence "of any intentional or willful attempts to violate or circumvent the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA, which was amended in 2008."

Turner went on to say that "with respect to FAA" [FISA Amendments Act of 2008, the statute that "legalized" Bushist surveillance programs and handed retroactive immunity to spying telecoms like AT&T], "you [Wyden] asked whether any significant interpretations of the FAA are currently classified. As you are aware, opinions of the FISA Court usually contain extensive discussions of particularly sources, methods and operations and are therefore classified."

Throwing the onus back on political grifters in the House and Senate, Turner wrote: "Even though not publicly available, by law any opinion containing a significant legal interpretation is provided to the congressional intelligence committees."

With circular logic Turner claims that because "FISA Court opinions are so closely tied to the facts of the application under review that they cannot be made public in any meaningful form without compromising the sensitive sources and methods at issue."

At best, her statement is disingenuous. After all, it is precisely that secret interpretation of the law made by the White House Office of Legal Counsel that Wyden and others, including EFF, the Electronic Privacy Information Network (EPIC) and journalists are demanding the administration clarify.

Justice Department Shields NSA's Private Partners
The FBI isn't the only agency shielded by the Justice Department under cover of bogus "state secrets" assertions by the Obama administration.

On July 13, EPIC reported that a U.S. District Court Judge issued an opinion in their lawsuit (EPIC v. NSA), "and accepted the NSA's claim" that it can "neither confirm nor deny" that the agency "had entered into a relationship with Google following the China hacking incident in January 2010."

The privacy watchdogs sought documents under FOIA "because such an agreement could reveal that the NSA is developing technical standards that would enable greater surveillance of Internet users."

According to EPIC, the administration's "Glomar response" to "neither confirm nor deny" a covert relationship amongst giant media corporations such as Google and secret state agencies "is a controversial legal doctrine that allows agencies to conceal the existence of records that might otherwise be subject to public disclosure."

This issue is hardly irrelevant to internet users. CNET News reported last week that "Google's Street View cars collected the locations of millions of laptops, cell phones, and other Wi-Fi devices around the world, a practice that raises novel privacy concerns."

And given the government's penchant to vacuum-up so-called "transactional data" without benefit of a warrant, would media giants such as Google, high-tech behemoths such as Apple or Microsoft, beholden to the federal government for regulatory perks, resist efforts by the feds demanding they cough-up users' locational data?

Investigative journalist Declan McCullagh found that the cars "were supposed to collect the locations of Wi-Fi access points. But Google also recorded the street addresses and unique identifiers of computers and other devices using those wireless networks and then made the data publicly available through Google.com until a few weeks ago."

According to CNET, "the French data protection authority, known as the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) recently contacted CNET and said its investigation confirmed that Street View cars collected these unique hardware IDs. In March, CNIL's probe resulted in a fine of 100,000 euros, about $143,000."

On Friday, CNET reported that Microsoft too, is in on the geolocation spy game.
Declan McCullagh wrote that "Microsoft has collected the locations of millions of laptops, cell phones, and other Wi-Fi devices around the world and makes them available on the Web."

A security researcher confirmed that the "vast database available through Live.com publishes the precise geographical location, which can point to a street address and sometimes even a corner of a building, of Android phones, Apple devices, and other Wi-Fi enabled gadgets."

Such information in the hands of government snoops would prove invaluable when it comes to waging War On Terror 2.0, the so-called "cyber war." Which is why the administration is fighting tooth and nail to keep this information from the public.

On the cyber front, EPIC is suing the White House to obtain the top secret National Security Presidential Directive that sets out the "NSA's cyber security authority," and is seeking clarification from the agency about so-called internet vulnerability assessments, "the Director's classified views on how the NSA's practices impact Internet privacy, and the NSA's 'Perfect Citizen' program."

As Antifascist Calling previously reported, "Perfect Citizen" is a $100 million privacy-killing program under development by the agency and defense giant Raytheon. Published reports informed us that the program will rely on a suite of sensors deployed in computer networks and that proprietary software will persistently monitor whichever system they are plugged into.

While little has been revealed about how Perfect Citizen will work, it was called by a corporate insider the cyber equivalent of "Big Brother," according to an email obtained last year by The Wall Street Journal.

New Report Highlights "Transparency" Fraud
The refusal by the White House to divulge information that impact Americans' civil liberties and privacy rights, along with their expansion of repressive national security and surveillance programs launched by the Bush regime, underscores the fraudulent nature of Obama's so-called "transparency administration."

A new report published by the American Civil Liberties Union, Drastic Measures Required: Congress needs to Overhaul U.S. Secrecy Laws and Increase Oversight of the Secret Security Establishment, documents how "out-of-control secrecy is a serious disease that is hurting American democracy."

Authors Jay Stanley and former FBI undercover agent turned whistleblower, Michael German, write that "we are now living in an age of government secrecy run amok."

According to the report, "reality has not always lived up to the rhetoric" of the Obama regime. Since the administration took office, the White House:

• Embraced the Bush administration's tactic of using overbroad "state secrets" claims to block lawsuits challenging government misconduct.

• Fought a court order to release photos depicting the abuse of detainees held in U.S. custody and supported legislation to exempt these photos from FOIA retroactively. Worse, the legislation gave the Secretary of Defense sweeping authority to withhold any visual images depicting the government's "treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained" by U.S. forces, no matter how egregious the conduct depicted or how compelling the public's interest in disclosure.

• Threatened to veto legislation designed to reform congressional notification procedures for covert actions.

• Aggressively pursued whistleblowers who reported waste, fraud and abuse in national security programs with criminal prosecutions to a greater degree than any previous presidential administration.

• Refused to declassify information about how the government uses its authority under section 215 of the Patriot Act to collect information about Americans not relevant to terrorism or espionage investigations. (Mike German and John Stanley, Drastic Measures Required, Washington, D.C., The American Civil Liberties Union, July 2011, pp. 7)

Amongst other findings in the report we learn that more than 2.4 million personnel, "official" denizens of the secret state which include the 16 agencies of the so-called "Intelligence Community" and outsourced private contractors hold top secret and above security clearances.

Although the Government Accountability Office (GAO) disclosed that the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2010 "required required the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to calculate and report the aggregate number of security clearances for all government employees and contractors to Congress by February 2011," as of this writing "the DNI has so far failed to produce this data."

Last year, The Washington Post's "Top Secret America" series revealed that "some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States," and that "the privatization of national security" has been made possible by a "nine-year 'gusher' of money."

The Post's reporting on America's security outsourcing mania echoed critical investigations by other journalists, including those by Tim Shorrock, who has reported extensively on intelligence privatization in his essential book Spies For Hire and by James Bamford in The Shadow Factory, which explored how NSA was turned loose on the American people.

In a follow-up piece last December, investigative journalists Dana Priest and William M. Arkin described how "the United States is assembling a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators."

"The government's goal," Priest and Arkin wrote, "is to have every state and local law enforcement agency in the country feed information to Washington to buttress the work of the FBI, which is in charge of terrorism investigations in the United States."

As the Post reported, "technologies and techniques honed for use on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan have migrated into the hands of law enforcement agencies in America."

This is a pernicious development. As I reported three years ago, one such program were efforts by the Department of Homeland Security, partnering-up with the Pentagon, to train America's fleet of top secret surveillance satellites on the American people.

That program, since killed by DHS, the National Applications Office, would have provided state and local authorities access to geospatial intelligence gleaned from military spy satellites and would have done so with no congressional oversight or privacy controls in place and would have handed over this sensitive data to selected law enforcement partners.

Local Police Control Ceded to the FBI
Along with intrusive techniques and highly-classified programs, Priest and Arkin wrote that the FBI has built "a database with the names and certain personal information, such as employment history, of thousands of U.S. citizens and residents whom a local police officer or a fellow citizen believed to be acting suspiciously."

What constitutes "suspicious behavior" of course, is in the eye of the beholder, and can constitute anything from taking photographs on a public street to organizing and participating in protests against America's endless wars.

Just recently, the San Francisco Bay Guardian revealed that local cops "assigned to the FBI's terrorism task force can ignore local police orders and California privacy laws to spy on people without any evidence of a crime."

Investigative journalist Sarah Phelan discovered that even after a "carefully crafted" set of rules on intelligence gathering had been in place "since police spying scandals of the 1990s," were "bypassed without the knowledge or consent of the S.F. Police Commission."

John Crew, a police practices expert with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California told the Bay Guardian that the 2007 Memorandum of Understanding by S.F. cops and the FBI means that "Police Commission policies do not apply" and that it "allows San Francisco police to circumvent local intelligence-gathering policies and follow more permissive federal rules."

Despite serious concerns over the Bureau's long-standing practice of spying on political dissidents and its "War On Terror" racial profiling policies, in a follow-up piece the Bay Guardian reported that Police Commission President Thomas Mazzucco, a former federal prosecutor, seemed "more concerned about defending federal practices and officials ... than worrying about the role and authority of the civilian oversight body he now represents."

The ACLU's Crew noted that when the FBI came to the SFPD with a new MOU, "there was no review by the City Attorney, and no notice to the police commission."

"Now, we didn't know about that MOU because it was kept secret at the insistence of the FBI for four years," Crew told Sarah Phelan. Crew also noted that "when ACLU and ALC [Asian Law Caucus] met with the SFPD in 2010, they were suddenly told that the police department couldn't talk about these issues without FBI permission.

"That set off a warning sign," Crew observed, "noting that in early April, when the ACLU and ALC finally got the MOU released, their worst suspicions were confirmed."

"There was no public discussion of transforming the SFPD into a national intelligence gathering association," ALC attorney Veena Dubal told the Bay Guardian. "The problem is that the FBI changed the deal, and the SFPD signed it, without telling anyone."

Neither the Bay Guardian nor the ACLU of Northern California have released the 2007 Memorandum of Understanding. However, the secrecy-shredding web site Public Intelligence has posted a sample MOU that makes for interesting reading indeed.

According to the document, local police agencies who participate in JTTFs will adhere to loose rules covered by the "Attorney General's Guidelines for Domestic FBI Operations." As Antifascist Calling reported last month, those rules will soon be loosened even further by "constitutional scholar" Barack Obama's Justice Department.

But here's the kicker; local police participating in JTTFs will be subject to rules crafted in Washington. State and municipal policies which sought to limit out-of-control spying on local activists by notorious police "Red Squads," are annulled in favor of "guidance on investigative matters handled by the JTTF" that "will be issued by the Attorney General and the FBI."

Such "guidance" we're told governs everything from "the Use of Confidential Informants" to "Guidelines Regarding Disclosure to the Director of Central Intelligence and Homeland Security Officials of Foreign Intelligence Acquired in the Course of a Criminal Investigation."

In other words, police participating in JTTFs become the CIA's eyes on the ground!

We are informed that "in order to comply with Presidential Directives, the policy and program management of the JTTFs is the responsibility of FBI Headquarters (FBIHQ)." As readers are well aware, more often than not those "Presidential Directives" arrive with built-in poison pills in the form of top secret annexes concealed from the public.

Such questions are not academic exercises.

More than three years ago, author and researcher Peter Dale Scott wrote in CounterPunch that "Congressman Peter DeFazio, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, told the House that he and the rest of his Committee had been barred from reviewing parts of National Security Presidential Directive 51, the White House supersecret plans to implement so-called 'Continuity of Government' in the event of a mass terror attack or natural disaster."

"The story," Scott wrote, "ignored by the mainstream press, involved more than the usual tussle between the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. Government. What was at stake was a contest between Congress's constitutional powers of oversight, and a set of policy plans that could be used to suspend or modify the constitution."

Should something go wrong, the onus for civil or criminal penalties resulting from lawsuits for illegal acts by JTTF officers rests solely with local taxpayers who may have to foot the bill. This is clearly spelled out: "The Participating Agency acknowledges that financial and civil liability, if any and in accordance with applicable law, for the acts and omissions of each employee detailed to the JTTF remains vested with his or her employing agency."

Got that? You violate someone's rights and then get caught, well, tough luck chumps.

Intelligence Spending, No End in Sight
While the administration and their troglodytic Republican allies in Congress are planning massive cuts in social spending as a result of a manufactured "deficit crisis," the President's fiscal year 2012 budget proposes a five-year freeze for "all discretionary spending outside of security."

Indeed, according to the Associated Press, the Defense Department will reap a windfall some $727.4 billion and DHS $44.3 billion. But these numbers only tell part of the story.

Back in March, Secrecy News disclosed that figures provided by ODNI and the Secretary of Defense "document the steady rise of the total U.S. intelligence budget from $63.5 billion in FY2007 up to last year's total of $80.1 billion."

Americans are told they face "hard choices" when it comes to America's fiscal house of cards and that they - and they alone - not the capitalist thieves who destroyed the economy, must shoulder the burden.

But as economist Michael Hudson warned last week in a Global Research article, the American people are "being led to economic slaughter."

Hudson writes that "whenever one finds government officials and the media repeating an economic error as an incessant mantra, there always is a special interest at work. The financial sector in particular seeks to wrong-foot voters into believing that the economy will be plunged into crisis if Wall Street does not get its way - usually by freeing it from taxes and deregulating it."

However, when it comes to the secret state and the corporate interests they serve, regulators, in the form of congressional oversight or the public, seeking answers about illegal government programs, need not apply.

After all, as ODNI securocrat Kathleen Turner told the Senate, "the questions you pose ... are difficult to answer in an unclassified letter."

And so it goes...

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, an independent research and media group of writers, scholars, journalists and activists based in Montreal, he is a Contributing Editor with Cyrano's Journal Today. His articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press, Uncommon Thought Journal, and the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press and has contributed to the new book from Global Research, The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century. Tom Burghardt is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

SOURCE: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25843

7000+ Accounts and 70 Police sites taken down in the name of AntiSec
July 31st, 2011

Operation Anti Security has made another huge dent in the security of american sheirfs. the latest being from mosheriffs.com ( which is offline now ), the site was defaced and 7000+ accounts leaked online.

The leak is in all plain text, all law enforcement officers. username, cleartext and non-generated passwords,home addresses.

Continue at: http://www.cyberwarnews.info/2011/07/31/7000-accounts-and-70-police-sites-taken-down-in-the-name-of-antisec/

Pentagon Seeks a Few Good Social Networkers
By DAVID STREITFELD
August 2, 2011

The Pentagon is developing plans to use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter as both a resource and a weapon in future conflicts. Its research and development agency is offering $42 million in funding to anyone who can help.

Social media will change the nature of warfare just as surely as the telegraph, the radio and the telephone did, and the Pentagon is fearful of being caught short. Some of its goals were laid out in a document being circulated among potential researchers and is to be presented at a briefing on Tuesday in Arlington, Va., at the offices of the military contractor System Planning Corporation.

As social media play increasingly large roles in fomenting unrest in countries like Egypt and Iran, the military wants systems to be able to detect and track the spread of ideas both quickly and on a broad scale. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is soliciting innovative proposals to help build what would be, at its most basic level, an Internet meme tracker.

It would be useful to know, for instance, whether signs of widespread rebellion were authentic or whether they were being created by a fringe group with little real support. Among the tools the successful seeker of government funding might choose to employ: linguistic cues, patterns of information flow, topic trend analysis, sentiment detection and opinion mining.

Social networks can allow the military not only to follow but also to shape the action. In its 37-page solicitation, Darpa described how a would-be high-technology lynching was foiled: “Rumors about the location of a certain individual began to spread in social media space and calls for storming the rumored location reached a fever pitch. By chance, responsible authorities were monitoring the social media, detected the crisis building, sent out effective messaging to dispel the rumors and averted a physical attack on the rumored location.”

(Is this a reference to Osama bin Laden or someone much more obscure? Were the “responsible authorities” trying to put off an attack because the individual was not at the location, or because he was? Darpa officials did not return e-mails requesting comment.)

The crisis was formed, observed, understood and diffused entirely within social media, the solicitation noted. But the success of the authorities was a fluke, the result of “luck and unsophisticated manual methods.”

All the more urgent, then, is the need to analyze what is happening and to fight back by countermessaging. A successful program would influence attitudes through methods including automatically generating content, formerly known as spam, and “inducing identities,” which might be whipping up fake combatants.

All of this cyberwarfare will, of course, make it even less clear what is real and what is synthetic on the Internet, but that is not the military’s problem and was possibly inevitable anyway. As Admiral Nimitz of the United States Navy wrote in 1948, “Technology in warfare, as in all else, has simplified some details but greatly complicated the aggregate.”

Interested participants will have to hurry. Preliminary proposals are due in the coming weeks. Darpa warned that projects that were merely evolutionary would be nonstarters.

SOURCE: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/02/pentagon-seeks-social-networking-experts/?smid=tw-nytimesbits&seid=auto

Obama Readies Citizen Spies For Action
by: Brandon Smith
11-08-2011

I think at this point it is fair to say that the name “Barack Obama” has become irrevocably synonymous with the phrase “Brownshirts”, and with very good reason. Riding the euphoric wave of a Prozac addled collectivist saturated puppy-love election season, the teleprompter dependent basketball playing android immediately launched several programs designed to centralize community organization using federal oversight. One of these initiatives, ‘The Universal Voluntary Public Service Program’, stood out as one of the most unabashedly fascist concepts to come out of any presidential administration since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s forced internment of innocent Japanese American’s. The idea of requiring citizens to “volunteer” for quasi-military or federal service and subsequent statist indoctrination didn’t play too well with the majority of the public, and has, for now, been abandoned.

The problem with governments with aspirations of totalitarianism, however, is that they never actually fully give up on any reach for power. Instead, they shelve one tactic and try out another, until the citizenry starts to nibble the bait.

To be fair, this behavior was going on long before Obama, and his particularly unhinged presidency is only an amalgamation of all those corrupt puppet politicians that came before him. Much of the police state apparatus we see being slowly inserted into our daily lives was constructed in stages. George W. Bush’s implementation of the Patriot Acts, the DHS, and the FISA Bill, for instance, gave Obama an easy framework of tyranny to build on. Whoever globalists deem suitable to replace Obama in 2012 or 2016 (if we even have the option of rigged elections by then), will certainly carry on where he left off (perhaps Rick Perry can have an insincere prayer circle with his Fusion Center hit squads before heading out to attend another Bilderberg conference).

That said, Obama and the DHS under his administration have had a particularly busy couple of years. While our attentions have been understandably captivated by concerns over the economic collapse which is unfolding right before our very eyes, a new push for the induction of community groups into the fold of the Homeland Security apparatus is taking place. The key to any successful tyranny, of course, is the inclusion of average and ignorant citizens who become the eyes and ears of the offending bureaucracy. With the unveiling of the White House’s “Counter Extremism Plan” this past month, the process of recruiting citizen spies has been put on the fast track.

Countering “Extremism”?
With a minimum of fanfare, the White House in the first week of August released an eight page white paper entitled ‘Empowering Local Partners To Prevent Violent Extremism In The United States’:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/empowering_local_partners.pdf

The content is decidedly bland, and typically uninformative, spotted with broad statements and empty proclamations of “patriotism and freedom” (which I found disingenuous and rather offensive). In fact, the whole document could have easily been summarized down to two paragraphs without losing anything of importance. The real issues inherent in the paper do not concern what is said, but what is NOT said…

To begin with, not once does the White House or the DHS ever actually define what they mean specifically by “extremism”. What is extremism? What signs exactly are communities supposed to be watching their neighbors for? The White House release, as well as the very similar DOJ project, ‘Guidance For Building Communities Of Trust’ (BCOT), never outline what they believe extremism is, or how they plan to identify and thwart it. The assertion made in these public releases is apparently that you and I should simply KNOW already what an extremist is, how he is supposed to behave, and how he stands out in comparison to “non-extremists”.

An analytic NPR piece covering the Local Partners paper attempts to flesh out greater details on the program which is slated to move forward over the course of the next 6 to 12 months:

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/04/138955790/white-house-unveils-counter-extremism-plan

The article falls pretty flat (you can’t expect much depth from NPR), but, certain passages are revealing. On the whole, we are seeing an acceleration of the rhetoric surrounding the now infamous idea of “white Al-Qaeda”. That is to say, we are being asked to believe that an organization of Middle Eastern CIA assets trained and utilized for terrorist applications is apparently looking to recruit troubled American teens and lonely guys in basement apartments to do their super evil bidding. I know…..it’s diabolical.

The government has gone to great lengths to perpetuate the absurd notion of a widespread Al-Qaeda network infecting every region of the country and comprised of people from all walks of life, of all religions, and of all ethnic persuasions. To their credit, Al-Qaeda is arguably the most inclusive fake terrorist organization in history.

While the above government papers and shill articles refrain from laying out specific attributes of the dreaded extremists they seek to oppose, they have already made these signals quite clear in other documents which were not meant to be so public. Who can forget the leaked MIAC Report, or the Virginia Fusion Center Report, which categorized Ron Paul supporters, Constitutionalists, Libertarians, anyone who talks about economic collapse, and anyone who owns a Gadsden Flag, as possible extremists or terrorists. The government later stated that the MIAC Report was an “embarrassing mistake”, and that such slip ups would be corrected in the future. The DHS, though, was obviously not embarrassed by the content of the reports. Otherwise, they never would have shoved them into the hands of state police where they would be quickly applied. Rather, the DHS was embarrassed that such reports were openly exposed.

And what about the post trial statements of the DOJ’s Anne Tompkins, who after railroading Liberty Dollar founder Bernard von NotHaus, stated that even those who create alternative currencies and decoupled markets, though not violent, are still akin to “domestic terrorists”. This along with other attacks on non-conformist groups from raw food producers to bloggers shows that the government is less concerned with “violent” extremists as it is concerned with anyone who seeks to walk away from the controlled mainstream system.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) continues to this day to pigeonhole all traditional conservatives (as opposed to globalist Neo Conservatives) using arbitrary labels and unsupported documentation in a shameless frenzy of false association. I don’t think I have ever heard Mark Potok say the words “Patriot”, or “Constitutionalist”, without using the words “Extremist” or “Racist” in the same sentence. This is the same organization that feeds “intelligence” on so called extremist groups to fusion centers and local law enforcement. They tell the cops who to profile. They work with the DHS to create the training models which are then utilized by police. You want to know who the White House considers an extremist? If you are reading this article now, then you probably fit their list.

Community Or Collective?
Why is it so important for the DHS and the White House to condition the public to associate “extremist behaviors” (often normal behaviors) of regular Americans with the Al-Qaeda brand name? The excerpts from the NPR article disclose the motivation below:

“When al-Qaida was sending operatives into the U.S., it made sense to rely on federal agencies to catch them at the border or arrest them as plots were discovered. But as terrorists groups have turned to American operatives who are already here, it makes sense to take the fight to the grass-roots level…”

“The White House envisions bringing together a roster of agencies and departments — from the Department of Education to the Labor Department and Energy Department — to provide local officials the tools they need to counter radicalization…”

“The law enforcement trust initiatives will hold round tables that allow community leaders to help cops distinguish, for example, between an innocent cultural behavior and possible criminal activity…”

And there you have it! Using the Counter Extremism program as a catalyst, the White House and the DHS plan to link together and centralize organizations as unrelated as the Department of Education and the Department of Energy, in tandem with community contacts, around a national witch hunt for anyone the government happens to deem undesirable. This process will be achieved through the NSI (Nationwide SAR Initiative), an effort to create a standardized information hub used for gathering, documenting, processing, analyzing, storing, and sharing terrorism related suspicious activity reports.

We have already seen the beginnings of this monstrosity in the construction of numerous Fusion Centers, which meld together elements of the FBI, CIA, and DOD and effectively militarize local law enforcement. It has also reared its ugly head in the form of the “See Something Say Something” initiative, which calls on citizens to become amateur informants, keeping their eyes open for dastardly warning signals of extremism, like white guys in hoodies, driving cargo vans, and taking pictures with cell phones while writing in notebooks:

The paranoia that the DHS is trying to illicit goes far beyond the absurd, but this is what happens in all countries that devolve into tyranny. The absurd becomes rational, and reason becomes criminal. Some skeptics may deny that these programs will ever be implemented at the community level on a scale that makes them threatening to civil liberties. I disagree. The danger is already taking shape. Oath Keepers recently came into possession of an FBI Denver Joint Terrorism Task Force handout given to Military Surplus Stores, directing owners to take note of specific purchases like:

- Weatherproofed Ammunition Or Match Containers
- Meals Ready To Eat
- Night Vision Devices; Night Flashlights; Gas Masks
- High Capacity Magazines
- Bipods Or Tripods For Rifles

http://oathkeepers.org/oath/wp-content/uploads/ColoradoFBISurplusStore.pdf

These are very common purchases, not for terrorists, but for Preppers and Survivalists, who are obviously the targets of the FBI profile, not secret Al-Qaeda agents. The handout goes on to list behaviors such as “making anti-U.S. or radical theological comments (?)” or “insisting on paying in cash”, as signs of terrorism. It even instructs store owners to subtly interrogate their customers in order to draw a fuller profile. THIS IS CALLED CITIZEN SPYING. Period.

The FBI Denver Handout is a perfect example of the oligarchic quest not for community participation, but for hardcore collectivism. That is to say, corrupt leaderships are not interested in community safety, or the elevation of individuals which make up a neighborhood, town, or city, but the manipulation of these people into mere extensions of the state itself. A procedure by which individuals are subdued and conscripted as mouthpieces and listening devices; weapons to be used, not to safeguard their community, but to enslave it.

The Counter Extremism Program falsely paints an image of community cooperation with federal agencies as balanced and mutual. It attempts to deflect fears of Orwellian oversight by suggesting the introduction of “Community Advisory Boards”, which would ostensibly wield the power to demand transparency in federal activities. In fact, such advisory boards are the perfect petri dish in which to condition local leaders into furthering the goals of centralization. As in despotic societies of the past, they go in thinking they are in charge, and come out as brainscrubbed servants of a dishonest regime. In this way, communities are pacified and wielded for state purposes, until those left who refuse to conform become utterly surrounded and fearful, never knowing who is and who is not watching their every move. As explained plainly in the BCOT:

“In addition to engaging communities on a wide range of issues, the Federal Government is using its convening power to help build a network of individuals, groups, civil society organizations, and private sector actors to support community-based efforts to counter violent extremism. Myriad groups with tools and capabilities to counter radicalization to violence often operate in separate spheres of activ­ity and therefore do not know one another. The Federal Government, with its connections to diverse networks across the country, has a unique ability to draw together the constellation of previously uncon­nected efforts and programs to form a more cohesive enterprise against violent extremism…”

The Sad Life Of The Citizen Spy
Projects for “community policing” like those being introduced by the White House and the myriad sewage swells of alphabet agencies in this country attract a very particular kind of person. Citizen spies tend to be rather uninteresting and unaccomplished people stricken with feelings of repressed inferiority and a complete lack of individual awareness. Their frantic need for outside acknowledgment, regardless of how superficial, is insatiable. Being unable to achieve anything truly meaningful in their spurious lives and generally shunned by anyone with an iota of self respect, the desire to feel important or accepted leads them to participate in the most vile government sanctioned crimes, if only to belong to the “winning team” or the “greater good”.

Ultimately, citizen spies sacrifice much more than they expect while vying for their fifteen minutes of fame or a firm pat on the head from Big Brother. While naively believing themselves to be superheroes, or pillars of the community for their relentless subversion of free speech and civil dissent, they soon discover that their lifestyle leads to alienation. No one trusts an informant, not even other informants. In the event that the leadership they serve is overthrown, citizen spies are relegated to the very worst levels of reprisal and hatred. People remember well the transgressions of lying governments, but reserve a special brand of fury for lying neighbors. It is truly the citizen spy that makes totalitarianism possible. Without them, there can be no censorship, there can be no stifling of protest, there can be no disruption of organized resistance, there can be no full spectrum dominance. In order to maintain control, despots require citizens to police each other. This is the sole purpose of the Counter Extremism Plan. To make us fear, suspect, and subjugate each other, so that elites can sit back, relax, and enjoy the fruits of our self imposed dystopia.

You can contact Brandon Smith at: brandon@alt-market.com

SOURCE: http://www.alt-market.com/articles/222-obama-readies-citizen-spies-for-action

30 Ways you are being spied on

Starts at 5:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulD_2d6s8q0&feature=channel_video_title


http://www.corbettreport.com/podcasts/

Love Always
mudra

Radiofrequency Radiation: The Invisible Hazards of 'Smart' Meters
by Dr. Ilya Sandra Perlingieri
Global Research,
August 19, 2011

“The Seletun Scientific Statement recommends that lower limits be established for electromagnetic fields and wireless exposures, based on scientific studies reporting health impacts at much lower exposure levels. Many researchers now believe that existing safety limits are inadequate to protect public health because they do not consider prolonged exposure to lower emission levels that are now widespread. Current US…standards for radiofrequency and microwave radiation from wireless technologies are entirely inadequate. They were never intended to address this kind of exposure from wireless devices that now affect over 4 billion people.” The Seletun Scientific Statement, Feb. 3, 2011

Do You Have a New “Smart” Meter?
Over the past year-and-a-half, various power companies have been removing the analogue [disc-like] meters placed on your homes, apartments and businesses, and installing what they call their new “Smart” Meters. This is part of the larger plan throughout the US and Canada where these meters have already been installed. “According to the Edison Foundation, more than 8 million Smart Meters have been deployed by electric utilities in the US and nearly 60 million should be in place by 2020.”(1) In Canada, 2 million of these meters are planned. “BC Hydro has a $930-million rollout of ‘Smart’ Meters” installation that began on July 4.(2)

The US nationwide program is “driven, in part by funding for the Smart Grid Program approved as part of the American Recovery[sic] and Reinvestment Act [AARA] of 2009.”(3) “There is great concern because exposure to microwave and radiowave radiation from these meters in involuntary and continuous. The transmitting meters may not even comply with FCC ‘safety’ standards. …These standards [are totally outdated and] were not designed to protect a diverse population from non-thermals effects of continuous exposure to microwave and radiowave radiation. Therefore, these ‘safety’ standards were not designed to protect the public from health problems under the circumstances which the meters are being used.”(4)

As Marti Oakley has just written, the best way to look at what’s happening is to: “follow the money. In late October 2009, the [US] Department of Energy announced the $3.4 billion in stimulus grants under AARA. Award selections were announced for 100 smart grid projects that are intended to lead to the rollout of approximately 18-million smart meters, 1-million in-home energy management displays, and 170,000 smart thermostats, as well as numerous advanced transformers and load management devices.”(5)

Smart-grid projects are supposed to “meet strict cyberspace guidelines”(6); but that has not happened, because greed trumped everything else: our health, safety, precaution, and any remnants of law. Government corruption is endemic, while Wall Street behind-the-scenes manipulation and the bankers theft of trillions of taxpayer dollars is ignored. White-collar crime is rarely prosecuted, because (1) there are few honest people left in government; and (2) those in charge are part of the bigger problem. All Precaution was thrown out in the race to compete for millions of fiat dollars. Without an informed and educated public and with the mass media compliant to elite and secret plans, no one is told the truth.

There has been no public discussion on the known biological hazards, both to humans and our pets, with these new meters. There has been no testing of these meters for any kind of safety. However, utilities Public Relations “spin” includes that: they will cut power costs to consumers, thus lowering your monthly bills; help customers reduce power consumption during peak times; and the meters can be read anytime, via a planned new “grid” in the works for the entire country that will use these meters. Utility companies insist these meters are safe.

“Smart” Meters are a new type of electronic device that monitors electricity, natural gas, and water usage via radio frequency (RF or rf) in an invisible but dangerous range, between 2.4GHz [GigaHertz] and 5.8Ghz. This corresponds to the electrical signals frequency used to produce radio waves. The worldwide digital wireless communications network is based upon this. RF has both an electric and magnetic components both of which can cause damage.

Malfunctioning Meter Problems In many areas, customers were given no notice that their meters would be changed, or the new meter was put in a day after a brief notice was sent. In all cases, customers were never notified of the dangers involved with these new so-called “Smart” Meters. It was a “done deal” behind closed doors. No one was given any choice about keeping an old analogue meter. According to educator Susan Brinchman, Director of San Diego, CA’s www.electrosmogprevention.org, almost 98% of San Diego has already had these meters installed in home, apartments, and businesses. Here are some of the “Smart” Meter problems already being reported where they have been installed: *Radiofrequency interference that causes malfunctioning of wireless equipment, such as Wi-Fi and Netflix (7) *Radiofrequency interference that causes malfunctioning of medical and critical-care equipment, such as pacemakers, wireless insulin pumps, pain pumps, ventilators, and baby monitors *Radiofrequency spikes causing appliances to break or malfunction, such as garage doors that won’t open or close properly *Cyber-security breaches [e.g., illegal access to 179,000 accounts at Hydro Toronto] *Excessive billing and inaccurate readings *Interception of personal identity information (electronic eavesdropping) *Safety risks: Electrical fires and explosions(

“Smart” meters have not been tested by Underwriters Laboratories and do not carry the “UL” label, required for electronic devices. With their 116-year record and having developed more than 1,000 standards for safety, why is UL certification missing on these meters? The EMR Policy Institute further notes that “components of Smart Meters are out of compliance with the National Electric Code (NEC) because they trip the Ground Fault Interrupters and Arc Fault Interrupters, creating a fire hazard. …Un-intentional re-radiation of RF/MW signal (with its higher energy) on the electrical wires may overload wires, particularly in poorly grounded or ungrounded homes, or homes with older wiring or faulty wiring.”(9)

In addition, several types of PG&E [Pacific Gas and Electric] meters with a “switching mode power-supply” (SMPS) “emit sharp spikes of millisecond burst constantly, 24/7.” They have been measured “to emit spikes of up to 50,000Hz and higher. These spikes are known as “dirty electricity,” the subject of physician and epidemiologist Dr. Sam Milham’s new book, “Dirty Electricity: Electrification and the Diseases of Civilization.”(10) Dr. Milham documents a relationship between the high frequency found on buildings and cancer [now at an all-time epidemic high where 1 out of every 2 person will develop it]. Another term for dirty electricity is electrical pollution. Dr. Milham calls that the “universal carcinogen, and ‘Smart’ Meters and oxymoron.” See his interview: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ci5GGqEPeCE

See also: “The Dark Side of Smart Meters”: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ionX4ckX8e8

Hertz, abbreviated Hz, is a unit to measure Alternating Current (AC), sound and ocean waves, and electromagnetic waves. It is an internationally recognized measurement equal to 1 cycle per second: e.g., 1,000 cycles per second = 1,000 Hz. It is well known in scientific community that over 33 Hz, these invisible waves of energy damage many aspects of our biology and our ability to think clearly.

In a excellent and informative Brainwave Chart, “Think of Energy, Frequency and Vibration,” done by Bevolution in Denmark, it is clear what this invisible energy does to all living things: http://www.bevolution.dk/pdf/BrainwavemodelBevolutionGB.pdf

These new meters can be read any time via their continuous wireless linking to the cell-towers. They can detect all your household usage of appliances, lights, etc. This information can be shared with and/or sold to other companies, so you no longer have any privacy. It is a spying device. These meters are not secure. They also can be hacked into, so it is possible for someone to know if you are not home (by lack of power usage). There are also “collector” meters used to gather and transmit RF/microwave radiation signals from various surrounding buildings and then “retransmit RF information for somewhere between 500-5,000 homes or buildings.” In addition, the utility company now also has the ability to control your own usage. Via these new meters, the power company can shut off your home usage, your block or community, or city usage without notifying you. What excuse will people be given, if power is shut off without any notification to customers? Do you remember the Enron debacle, and the enormous overcharging of millions of Californians?

As part of the placement of a nationwide “smart grid,” there are additional plans to have individual power transmitters built into in all new appliances to measure the energy use of each one (washing machines, clothes dryers, dishwashers, etc.). This means that in every home or apartment there may be dozens of power transmitters for kitchen and laundry appliances that will send energy use, via wireless radio frequency, back to the “Smart” Meter. In addition to a complete lack of safety, are these power transmitters part of untested nano-technology? Are consumers told at point-of-purchase that a new appliance has a power transmitter in it? A consumer must be willing to have these new appliances constantly transmitting power usage to the utility company. Or, they may be mandated via federal legislation.

Where is there any legal federal mandate for any of this? Marti Oakley’s August 15 article notes: “THERE IS NO FEDERAL SECURITY MANDATE FOR SMART METERS, according to George W. Arnold the national coordinator for smart-grid interoperability at the National Institute of Standards and Technology [NIST]. This agency of the US Department of Commerce is said NOT [author emphasis] to be involved in regulations but is only tasked with promoting standards among industries. While both the 2005 and 2007 faux energy bills were codified into public laws, NO part of them creates a federal law pertaining to individual consumers or dictating that the public must be forced to comply with provisions of SMART grid. Contrary to the bleating of manufacturers and utility talking heads, who claim there is no “op out,” the fact is you, the consumer must be offered the meter, or request a meter ‘OPT IN.’ No one can be forced to comply with an unrevealed contract between private corporations, and to which you were never a party and had no knowledge of.”(12)

So far, “Smart” Meters have not been “optional” in most areas around the US and Canada. This is another illegal invasion of our privacy, health, and safety. However, in northern California more than 44 municipalities, including eight counties, “have criminalized the installation of, banned or taken resolutions out against ‘smart’ meters.” In Maine, Central Maine Power Company [CMP], has a $200-million meter project [half of it funded by the federal government] and plans to install 600,000 new meters throughout the state. CMP was taken to court because numerous people became ill, once a new digital “Smart” Meter was installed. A landmark legal decision was made on May 25, 2011, “that represents the first time any [US] state had ordered an electric utility to permit customers the choice to op out of a smart meter program.” Did the attorneys handling this case not know that there was no federal mandate?

Now, Mainers can choose to “op out” but it will cost them to do so. This entire program revolves around money, not around any safety. The Portland Press Herald reported that “if smart meters are banned and the [Maine] program is abandoned…CMP would lose its federal grant and be required to pay back $22 million…and remove the more than 157,000 digital meters already installed. The cost would be borne by all customers” who did not request them in the first place.(13)

In a Letters to the Editor, an irate CMP customer wrote on August 15: “It comes as somewhat of a shock considering easements have not been passed down through deeds. Without warning, notice, or knowledge that soon we would be a buzzing, humming community of power stations, wires, eyesores, broken promises, diminished property values and broken lands, CMP marches in with smiles as it steals. We…suggest, CMP, you alter your title to Central Maine Cover-up. We think that the next time you barge into someone’s community you have the common decency to inform the residents that you will soon be turning their backyards into industrial wastelands.”(14)

Last February, Connecticut’s Attorney George Jepson sent out a press release urging Connecticut Light and Power Company [CL&P] not “to replace existing electric meters with advanced technology [that] would be very expensive and would not save enough electricity for its 1.2 million customers to justify the expense. …The pilot results showed no beneficial impact on total energy usage…and the savings that were seen in the pilot were limited to certain types of customers and would be far outweighed by the cost of installing new meters.”(15) This press release was ignored.

However, increasingly, city councils and county supervisors are becoming more responsive to valid and serious consumer complaints to reduce constant exposure (24/7/365) to the invisible dangers of RF and EMF [electromagnetic frequency]. These can be documented as causing a variety of health problems for humans and all other animals (from our pets, to farm and wild animals). This constant pulsing of high frequencies, in addition to the RF function, is causing not only interference with other electric and electronic equipment in many homes with smart meters installed, but also is causing havoc with biological systems in its field exposure.”(16)

Health Problems and Damage Many experts are speaking out of the dangers of RF/EMF exposure. Medical journals and scientific reports show that there is DNA damage, cell mutation, degenerative diseases, and damage to vision and clear-thinking (short-term memory and speech are affected).(17)

The protective Blood Brain Barrier has been breached; and there are numerous studies that show that “exposure to low levels pulsed or continuous microwave radiation has been reported to affect neurotransmitter metabolism…” while other studies suggest that “RF radiation can alter the electrical activity of the brain” and changes cognitive function and behavior. Although there has been very little reported in mainstream media, there is extensive information available information on the Internet.

In a recent community TV program, Joshua Hart, Director of Stop Smart Meters! was interviewed on July 24 about the issues. He noted it is now a public health emergency since these were installed. He said: “There has been insufficient privacy protection…and violation of civil liberties. There is a clear expression of democratic opposition to this program”: http://communitytv.org/blog/kenknobler/vftv-7-24-11-pg-e-smart-meters

Health problems, due to constant exposure of RF radiation, already reported include: migraines, nausea, vomiting, vision impairment, ringing in the ears (tinnitus), muscle spasms and nerve pain, heart palpitations, chest pain, and sleeplessness caused by intense bursts (pulsing) of radiofrequency radiation that has recently been classified as a “possible carcinogen” by the World Health Organization —in the same category as lead, engine exhaust, and DDT.

Other physical problems relate to people who have metal in their bodies: dental metals (such as silver-mercury amalgams or gold inlays); or wear metal jewelry or metal eyeglasses (the metal intensifies the RF). People with pacemakers, prosthetic devices, and wireless insulin pumps have had medical problems due to RF interference.

Most medical professionals and veterinarians have no training in RF/EMF health-related damage. So, often symptoms can be mis-diagnosed. Some people, such as those who have MCS [Multiple Chemical Sensitivity], are aware of these dangers. However, this is a massive experiment on all living beings without any informed consent. This is not “sensitivity” but a chronic and invisible poisoning to the entire population. Susan Brinchman says “there was no public warning of the health dangers with these new meters that have an unsafe technology. This exposes everyone all the time. There is no escape from electrosmog.”

Here are comments by some of the top authorities: Dr. Martin Blank, Associate Professor, Department of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics, Columbia University: “Cells in the body react to EMF’s as potentially harmful, just like any other environmental toxins, including heavy metals and toxic chemicals. The DNA in living cells recognizes electromagnetic fields at very low levels of exposure [not covered by current outdated laws]; and produces a biochemical stress response. The scientific evidence tells us that our safety standards are inadequate, and that we must protect ourselves from exposure to EMF due to power lines, cells phones and the like, or risk the known consequences. The science is very strong and we should sit up and pay attention.”

Prof. Olle Johansson, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, and co-author of the Bioinitiative Report’s section on the Immune System: “Cancer may be the least important effect [of RF/EMF exposure]. Other effects may be much more important…for instance, the impact on the Immune System which his supposed to protect you against whatever bacteria, microbes, or molecules that enter your body; effects on fertility…effects on various mental functions; including short-term memory. You have concentration capacity decreases after microwave radiation.” See: www.youtube.com/watch?v-cczGVhd63pM

Dr. David Carpenter, Professor, Environmental Health Sciences, and Director, Institute for Health and the Environment, School of Public Health, University of Albany, State University of NY: “We need to educate decision-makers that ‘business as usual’ is unacceptable. The importance of this public health issue cannot be underestimated.” See: www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7L21XOC2wA

We are up against the collusion of corporations and governments. In new posting at SmartMetersDangers.org, So CA Edison is regarding the city of Irvine, CA, as a “living laboratory” for using unsuspecting citizens as experimental laboratory subjects. So CA Edison was awarded $39,621,208 from the US DoE [Department of Energy]. The grant notes: “Thus, the project will literally provide a living laboratory for accurately assessing the interoperability of, and interaction between, all of these various Smart Grid technologies and systems working at the same time. The ISGD [Irvine Smart Grid Demonstration] will be deployed in the City of Irvine, and ideal demonstration site typical of most heavily populated areas of Southern California in climate, topography, environmental concerns and public[sic] policy issues.”(18)

What You Can Do
This is an unsafe technology, where we all are experimental lab subjects being used for dangerous levels of invisible but constant RF/EMF exposure. There is already an enormous public health threat to all of us. It is urgent for people to become informed. We must do this peacefully and COLLECTIVELY.

Here are things you can do:

1. Read up on RF/EMF exposure. Do your homework and become well-informed about these dangers. (See NOTES below.)

2. Write to the CPUC [California Public Utilities Commission]. A public meeting is planned for September 14 in San Francisco. Letters can be sent to: www.electrosmogprevention.org/joinus.html

3. Join together and have public meetings. Demand of public officials that analogue meters be restored at no charge to customers. Where “Smart” meters have not been installed, demand that analogue meters be kept at no charge to customers. In some states, customers are charged up to $500 to op-out; while other power companies are charging a monthly rate to keep analogue meters.

4. People should flood ALL public officials with letters, as this is another way of harming us; and it is a complete invasion of our privacy.

With our economy in chaos and funding of all social services slashed, there are several other news items of note:

1. Thousands of meter readers will be or are already out of work, with these “smart” meters installed. With jobs off-shored and millions of Americans out of work, where will these people find jobs?

2. On June 13, the US Department of Agriculture [USDA] announced that it had a goal of “investing $250 million in smart grid equipment deployment in rural America over the next 12 months.” (Newsroom-magazine.com) Is this tax-payer money? Why are they investing in dangerous technology? Why is there no public discussion?

3. Sempra Energy just posted its second quarter profits. According to PRNewswire (on Aug. 9): “Sempra Energy's earnings through the first six months of 2011 were $769 million, compared with $328 million in 2010.

4. For the “first six months of 2011, SDG&E (a subsidiary of Sempra Energy) earned $160 million, up from $158 million in the same period last year.”

There is a long history of deception in this country. Much of it involves our being uninformed experimental laboratory subjects for illegal testing of drugs and other products that have caused enormous harm to us. Remember the thalidomide scandal? Or, Toxic Shock Syndrome? Or the most recent one: the 2009 H1N1 Vaccines scam? None of the various “flu” vaccines were ever independently tested for safety. There were numerous reports that the H1N1 “flu” was geo-engineered. With Orwellian scare tactics, and no supporting evidence of any real “pandemic,” millions of doses were “forced” on hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Many children died. I know personally of the one-year-old grandson of a friend who was given an H1N1 vaccine and died two days later. There was no informed consent. No one was ever prosecuted.

Evidence piled up that the WHO pushed for a [false] “Level 6” Pandemic listing when there was no pandemic. What was at stake was billions of dollars for various drug companies to market a variety of unsafe and untested vaccines. Michel Chossudovsky reported on what happened behind the scenes, “Manipulating Data to Justify a Worldwide Public Health Emergency”: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14901

The corporate bottom line is all about profits. The Precautionary Principle [“first do no harm”] and our well being and safety are not included in that. We are all expendable for the bottom line. How much longer do we want to keep silent for continuous harm, lies, and deceit?

NOTES:

1. “The Benefits[sic] of Smart Meters.” California Public Utilities Commission: www.cpuc.ca.gov/energy/Demand+Response.htm

2. See: www.citizensforsafetechnology.org/smart-meters-and-grids-in-communities-governments,25,0

3. “Transmitting Smart Meters Pose a Serious Threat To Public Health”: www.electricalpollution.com/smartmeters.html

4. “See Ref. 4 above.

5. Marti Oakley. “Smart Meters: No Federal Mandate.” Aug. 15, 2011: http://ppjg.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/smart-meters-no-federal-mandate/#more-17629

6. See Ref. 5 above.

7. “Smart Meter Interference.” www.ve3ncq.ca/wordpress/?page_id-10

8. EMR Policy Institute: www.emrpolicy.org June 5, 2011 Report, p. 2.

9. See Ref. 8 above.

10. See: www.sammilham.com

11. Brainwave Chart: www.bevolution.dk/pdf/BrainwavemodelBevolutionGB.pdf

12. Marti Oakley…See Ref. 5 above. Dr. Arnold previously was V-P for Lucent Technologies Bell Laboratories.

13. Tux Turkel. “CMP: Smart meter bills come with huge costs.” April 5, 2011: www.pressherald.com/news/cmp-smart-meter-bills-come-with-huge-costs_2011-04-05.html

14. Dara Leigh Roberts. Letters to the Editor: “CMP’s attitude disdainful about customer’s interests.” Portland Press Herald: Aug. 15, 2011.

15. www.ct.gov/lib/ag/press_releases/2011/020811clpmeters.pdf

16. “New Critical Problem with ‘Smart’ Meters: The Switching-Mode Power Supply (SMPS).” March 30, 2011: http://eon3emfblog.net/?p=2180

17. Important studies include: J. Phillips et al. “Electromagnetic fields and DNA damage. Pathophysiology (2009) Vol. 16, Issue 2: 79-88; M. Dämvik and O. Johansson. “Health Risk Assessment of Electromagnetic Fields: A Conflict between the Precautionary Principle and Environmental Medicine Methodology.” Reviews on Environmental Health (2010) Vol. 25, No. 4: 325-333; A. Frangopoulou et al. The Seletun Scientific Statement. “Scientific panel on electromagnetic field health risks: consensus points, recommendation, and rationales.” Rev Environ Health (Oct.-Dec. 2010) Vol 25, No. 4: 307-317; A. Kosowsky et al. “Effects of Cell Phone Radiofrequency Signal Exposure on Brain Glucose Metabolism.” JAMA. Aug. 1, 2011: http://jama.ama_assn.org/content/305/8/808.abstract; R. Baan et al. “Carcinogenicity of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields.” Lancet Oncology. (June 22, 2011) Vol. 12 Issue 7: 624-626; O. Johansson. “Electrohypersensitivity: state-of-the-art of a functional impairment.” Electromagn Biol Med. (2006) Vol. 25, No. 4: 245-258.

18. “Irvine, CA is Living Laboratory for Smart Grid”: www.smartmeterdangers.org/index.php/smartmeter-facts/95-living-lab]

Other Important Reports: 1. The Seletun Scientific Statement, Feb. 3, 2011: http://vimeo.com/180188440 2. The Bioinitiative Report: www.bioinitiative.org 3. “Health Impacts of Radio Frequency Exposure from Smart Meters.” Final report, April 2011. California Council on Science and Technology. ISBN-13: 978-1-930117-42-6 Also available online. One of the conclusions of this report is: “There is no evidence that additional standards are needed to protect the public from smart meters.” Despite its recent publication, this report is VERY outdated and did not use current research on the significant health dangers. 4. The 2003 EU-REFLEX four-year Study found that “after being exposed to electromagnetic fields, the cells showed significant increase in DNA damage which could not always be repaired by the cell…and damage was also seen in the next generation of cells.” See, “EU REFLEX Project Report”: http://omegatwoday.net/stories/436261

ORGANIZATIONS: 1. www.elecrosmogprevention.org 2. www.smartmeterdangers.org 3. www.emfsafetynetwork.org 4. American Coalition Against Smart Meters: www.causes.com/594297 5. In Canada: www.citizensforsafetechnology.org/smart-meters-and-grids-in-communities-governments,25,0

Educator and environmental writer Dr. Ilya Sandra Perlingieri is the author of the highly acclaimed book, “The Uterine Crisis.” London’s “The Ecologist” calls this book “an inspiration.”

Ilya Sandra Perlingieri is a frequent contributor to Global Resear

SOURCE: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26082

Airport Screening Policy: Repression or Discretion?
by William John Cox
Global Research,
August 23, 2011

Google "TSA stupidity" and you will find that almost one-and-a-half million websites have something to say about the subject. If the United States is to avoid another major terrorist attack on its air transportation system without placing greater restrictions on the civil liberties of air travelers, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) had better get smart.

Everyone who travels by air in the United States has a depressing story to tell about airport screening. Media stories of a gravely ill 95-year-old grandmother forced to remove her adult diaper before being allowed on a plane and viral videos showing terrified children being intimately touched by TSA agents are more than depressing. They are a chilling commentary on the police state increasingly accepted by the American public in the name of security.

Air travelers dare not complain. TSA standards focus additional scrutiny on travelers who are "very arrogant" and express "contempt against airport passenger procedures."

Is such repression the only choice? Or, can TSA officers be trained to exercise the necessary discretion to detect would-be terrorists, while allowing innocent travelers to swiftly and safely pass through screening?

A reasonable and practical balance in airport security screening policy must be obtained before another terrorist attack results in even greater repression.

Today’s TSA
Shocked that poorly-trained airport security guards allowed terrorists armed with box cutters to board and use four passenger airplanes as flying missiles of mass destruction, Congress established the TSA two months after 9-11.

Fifty thousand Transportation Security Officers (TSO) were quickly hired and rushed through one-week training courses. Although these officers are now federal employees and receive improved training, they are still security guards. Even so, as "officers" of Homeland Security, they exercise great power over the flying public.

TSA transformed contract screening guards into quasi-law enforcement officers and provided uniform training and policies; however, the TSA was organized as a top-down directed organization which allows very little discretion to individual officers. It’s "one size fits all" approach to screening results in well intended, but outrageous conduct by its agents.

In an attempt to prevent collective bargaining and to avoid adding Democratic-leaning permanent workers to the federal bureaucracy, the Republican-controlled Congress exempted TSA employees from most federal civil service laws. Instead, the Secretary of Homeland Security and the TSA administrator were given virtually unlimited authority to create a personnel system. This action was to have a number of unintended consequences.

Although legislation has been introduced to bring TSA officers into the federal civil service, the TSA administrator retains absolute control over the personnel system. Exercising this power, administrator John Pistole granted some bargaining rights earlier this year.

While Pistole’s order provides greater job protection to officers, it does nothing to improve the existing TSA personnel selection system. As presently constituted, the employment process perpetuates mediocrity and limits the ability of TSA managers to hire and promote the most qualified officers.

Currently TSA job applicants primarily use the Internet to identify job announcements for TSA airport operations at more than 450 airports, complete applications and take an online test to measure their ability to operate screening equipment.

All English-speaking U.S. citizens over the age of 18 with a high school diploma, a GED, or one year of experience as a security officer or x-ray technician, meet the basic requirements for TSA officers, as long as they are current in their payment of income taxes and child support.

The main problem is that, once applicants meet these minimum requirements and pass a physical examination, drug screening and perfunctory background investigation, they are lumped together with all other applicants in a hiring pool for each job site.

Unlike general civil service rules, there are no ranked lists of the most qualified applicants within these pools.

Under the personnel standards established by the TSA administrator, local managers are required to select officers from the hiring pool based on the earliest applicant first, irrespective of their additional qualifications. Thus, a local TSA manager must hire a high-school dropout with a GED and no experience who applied one day before a college graduate with a degree in criminal justice and who earned his or her way through college working for the campus police department. While some managers conduct oral interviews of candidates, only in rare cases are they allowed to reject candidates who meet the minimum qualifications.

Laboring under a flawed selection process and making the best of available candidates, TSA has identified three basic ways to achieve mission effectiveness: baggage inspection, passenger screening and, most recently, behavior observation.

Although every checked bag is not hand inspected, passengers are not allowed to lock baggage unless special TSA locks are used. As a result most bags are inspected by inspectors who are either working alone or under limited supervision.

There have been some recent improvements in baggage security; however, the New York Press reports that "according to Transportation Security Administration records, press reports and court documents, . . . approximately 500 TSA officers" have been "fired or suspended for stealing from passenger luggage since the agency’s creation. . . ."

Every passenger is personally screened before boarding commercial aircraft and the majority of TSA officers are deployed to handle this task. Having a mission in which officers "literally touch passengers" and their most private possessions "requires a workforce of the best and brightest" according to Nico Melendez, TSA Public Affairs Manager of the Pacific Region.

Unfortunately, because of low hiring standards and minimum training, many, if not most screening officers possess poor people skills and manage to offend a large portion of the flying public on a daily basis.

Seeking to emulate the Israeli model of "identifying the bomber, rather than the bomb," TSA deployed Behavior Detection Officers (BDO) in 2007 under its Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) program. Officers randomly ask passengers questions, such as "Where are you traveling," while looking for facial cues that might indicate deception or terrorist intent, leading to additional questioning and closer inspection of baggage.

Thousands of BDOs are now working in hundreds of airports and the program is being expanded; however, they are generally selected from screening personnel and only given two weeks of training before being deployed.

There has been no scientific validation of the program and, although there have been hundreds of criminal arrests, most have been for documentation issues, such as immigration violations and outstanding warrants.

Would improved personnel selection procedures of TSA officers better insure the safety of the flying public and reduce the incidence of civil rights violations?

Building a Better TSA
The essential question is whether TSA officers are security guards or police officers when it comes to the manner in which they lay hands on the bodies and belongings of passengers. The difference in the two roles being the manner and extent to which they make decisions.

Security guards with minimal training cannot be expected to exercise discretion in critical matters. They are told exactly what or what not to do. The result is that screaming children are being felt up by strangers and the sick and elderly are publicly humiliated.

On the other hand, even with the "mandatory" criminal laws passed in the past 30 years, America’s free society still requires the exercise of arrest, prosecution and sentencing discretion in the criminal justice system, if there is to be individual justice in an individual case.

TSA must rethink the manner in which its officers are hired and trained to allow greater discretion, without an unacceptable rise in the risk of a terrorist attack.

The TSA has been moving in this direction with its "risk-based intelligence-driven screening process"; however, its steps have been hesitant and unsure, as it has staggered from incident to increasingly negative incident.

Melendez believes the key to successful screening is a workforce capable of implementing a risk-based screening process based upon updated software and equipment and ready access to an improved data base.

So, how can a marginally trained group of 50,000 security guards be converted into a professional workforce, which has the intellectual ability and training to use sophisticated detection equipment and computer data bases and which allows TSA officers to decide which sick person or young child should be allowed to proceed without a mandatory body search?

Selection.
A former high-level TSA manager, who declined to be publicly identified, firmly believes that TSA could build an elite organization, if local managers were simply allowed to rank the hiring pools by qualifications, rather than having to hire the candidate who filed the earliest application.

Certainly there is a need to avoid discrimination in hiring and to create a "diverse and inclusive" workforce that is reflective of the public it serves; however, police departments have used a civil service process for decades that involves testing and interviews to establish priority lists to ensure the employment and promotion of the most qualified candidates.

Among the federal law enforcement agencies, the FBI moves applicants though a multi-phase selection process in which advancement depends upon "their competitiveness among other candidates"; Secret Service applicants must pass several examinations and a series of in-depth interviews; and ATF applicants who pass entrance exams and assessment tests have to successfully complete a "field panel interview."

The current recession and high unemployment rate has resulted in a gigantic pool of highly-qualified and well-educated people who are looking for work. At the same time, TSA has been experiencing a fairly high turnover of employees, even though it offers a generous salary and benefit package. Given all of this, there is a golden opportunity to improve the quality of the TSA workforce, particularly as it relates to the ability of its officers to exercise discretion.

A recent informal survey of airport car rental employees revealed that all of them were college graduates; however, they generally earned less and had fewer benefits than the TSA officers who worked in the same building.

In fact, most national car rental companies require all applicants to have college degrees. Avis says, "College graduates, start your engines" in its attempt to attract "energetic pro-active college graduates who are eager to accelerate their careers in a fast-paced environment." Enterprise "prefers" college degrees since applicants will "be involved in a comprehensive business skills training program that will help you make crucial business decisions. . . ."

Clearly it is neither necessary nor appropriate for all TSA applicants to be college graduates; however, local TSA managers should be allowed to consider levels of education, as well as length and quality of relevant experience, in establishing priority lists for hiring replacement officers and for promoting officers to supervisory or BDO positions.

Revised personnel policies that rank applicants by qualifications for these advanced positions would also allow TSA managers to directly hire more qualified candidates, such as retired police officers, for positions requiring a higher level of decision making.

Training.
Currently, most training of TSA officers is conducted through online applications of standardized instruction. While such training may be adequate to communicate rule-based procedures to security guards, it is inadequate to teach the more finely nuanced insights required for officers to safely exercise discretion in individual cases.

Behavior Detection Officers and supervisors are currently selected from the ranks of TSOs and receive as little as two weeks of additional training upon promotion. However, a successful risk-based screening process involving critical thinking requires more intensive development and training.

Obviously, TSA can’t fire 50,000 officers and start all over again from scratch, but surely there is a way to safely maintain the basic security guard approach to screening yet allow for higher levels of discretion during the process?

Assuming that TSA managers are allowed to more effectively promote officers and to select supervisors and Behavior Detection Officers from outside the organization, and further that TSA could improve the training of supervisors and BDOs, they could begin to exercise the quality of discretion which would allow small children and elderly grandmothers to safely pass through security without impermissible assaults.

TSA should consider establishing regional training academies at the larger facilities around the country to provide classroom training for newly-appointed supervisors and BDOs into the nature of policy, the concept of rational profiling and the exercise of security discretion in a free society.

Policy.
The concept of policy, as differentiated from procedures and rules, is that policies are intended as broad guidelines for the exercise of discretion allowing decision makers some flexibility in their application.

The exercise of critical discretion will fail in the absence of effective policies. This was recognized by the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals in its Report on the Police in 1973:

"If police agencies fail to establish policy guidelines, officers are forced to establish their own policy based on their understanding of the law and perception of the police role. Errors in judgment may be an inherent risk in the exercise of discretion, but such errors can be minimized by definitive policies that clearly establish limits of discretion."

We are all aware of the insidious and repressive nature of racial profiling that has been practiced by some law enforcement agencies. Indeed, one criticism of the TSA Behavior Detection program involved Newark BDOs known as "Mexican hunters" was that they concentrated on Hispanic-appearing individuals, resulting in a large number of arrests for immigration violations.

Well-considered policies can allow BDOs to productively direct their attention to the most suspicious candidates for extended questioning, rather than to mindlessly and repetitively ask every single traveler where they are going.

With improved policy guidance and greater discretion, BDOs might actually identify and stop a real threat, but they will only offend even more travelers if they continue to follow rote procedures.

Perhaps most importantly, such polices can provide commonsense guidelines for qualified decision makers at each screening station to allow obviously harmless grandmothers and children to avoid intrusive body contact, while focusing attention on those individuals more likely to be a terrorist.

The Right Direction
According to TSA 101, a 2009 overview of the TSA, the agency seeks to evolve itself "from a top-down, follow-the-SOP culture to a networked, critically-thinking, initiative-taking, proactive team environment."

TSA Administrator John Pistole wants "to focus our limited resources on higher-risk passengers while speeding and enhancing the passenger experience at the airport."

On June 2, 2011, Pistole testified before Congress that "we must ensure that each new step we take strengthens security. Since the vast majority of the 628 million annual air travelers present little to no risk of committing an act of terrorism, we should focus on those who present the greatest risk, thereby improving security and the travel experience for everyone else."

It appears TSA is moving in the right direction and John Pistole may the person to keep in on course. Prior to his appointment by President Obama in May 2010, he served as the Deputy Director of the FBI and was directly involved in the formation of terrorism policies.

Most significantly, his regard for civil rights was suggested by his approval of FBI policy placing limits on the interrogation of captives taken during the "war on terror." The policy prohibited agents from sitting in on coercive interrogations conducted by third parties, including the CIA, and required agents to immediately report any violations.

Hopefully, Mr. Pistole will exercise his authority to bring about improved selection and training of TSA personnel and will promulgate thoughtful screening policies which will result in a safer and less stressful flying experience for everyone.

William John Cox is a retired prosecutor and public interest lawyer, author and political activist. He authored the portions of the Police Task Force Report on the role of the police and policy formulation for the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals in 1973. His efforts to promote a peaceful political evolution can be found at
VotersEvolt.com, his writings are collected at WilliamJohnCox.com and he can be contacted at u2cox@msn.com.

William John Cox is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

SOURCE: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26159

A British version of human rights


SNIP
"Around 62% of those arrested over involvement in Britain's recent unrest have been imprisoned while only 10% of them allegedly have committed serious offences.


The rest of the arrested people who have not committed any serious offences are to be kept behind bars for an unknown period of time. Human rights organizations have announced that the British government has decided to keep all arrested people in custody until trial.

The British Police have ordered Britain's courts to refuse to bail the arrested even after they have been charged. The arrested people are to stay behind bars for a longer time as the British government has taken such an “iron fist” approach.

END SNIP


http://www.presstv.ir/detail/195873.html

Intelligence Agencies Seek Tools To Predict Global Events
IARPA wants to analyze data from websites, blogs, wikis, social media and other sources to better predict events such as international crises and disease or violence outbreaks.

By Elizabeth Montalbano / InformationWeek
August 25, 2011

The Intelligence Advanced Research Project Agency's (IARPA) Open Source Indicators (OSI) Program aims to develop technology for "continuous, automated analysis" of data from myriad Web-based sources to predict when events such as disease outbreaks, political and humanitarian crises, riots, economic instability, mass violence and resource shortages may occur, according to a solicitation on its website.

CONTINUE AT: http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/231600214

It seem that the government is trying to re- invent the wheel .


SNIP from Urban Survival

"Coping: Dear Government:
Posted on August 31, 2011 by George Ure

While some say “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery“, in our case, it kinda feels like imitation may be the sincerest form of rip-off.

I refer, of course, to a press release issued a week ago by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which, upon close scrutiny sure looks like the U.S. Government is about to try and re-invent our Web Bot Project!

Now, mind you, I’ve only been associated with – and revealing bits about THE FRIGGING FUTURE SINCE 2001(!!!) which was when I started to collaborate with genius/nutter/pie-master, boatsmith, and master of all he C’s Clif High which was – note this part: well before 9/11 changed the world in what we forecast would be a ‘tipping point’. I don’t supposed you noticed that that little call? Still here. "
END of SNIP

http://www.urbansurvival.com/blog/

iT's official that Cliff High and George Ure are doing something right !

How might high-technology, and even supernatural, surveillance be regulated and handled, such that the genuinely bad guys and gals are targeted, rather than being a broad clamping-down on the general-public? The bad guys and gals seem to be protected, while it seems to be open-season on the average Joe. I want the good guys and gals to win, and the bad guys and gals to loose. Plain and simple. End of story.

Online photos can reveal our private data say experts

Find out your social networking worth
New facial recognition techniques introduced
Face recognition technology can be used to gain access to a person's private data, according to a new study.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University combined image scanning, cloud computing and public profiles from social network sites to identify individuals in the offline world.

Data captured even included a user's social security number.

Experts have warned of the privacy risks faced by the increased merging of our online and offline identities.

A Facebook profile may reveal more than you think
The Carnegie Mellon team combined off-the-shelf face recognition technology with publicly-accessible Facebook profiles to identify individual students walking on campus.

In another experiment, researchers were able to extract the social security number of a student starting only with their photo.

read on: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14386514

Love Always
mudra

New facial scanners at Heathrow to check the identity of millions
Laura Roberts
20 Jul 2011

Millions of Heathrow passengers will have their faces scanned from September to cut queues and identify potential terrorists.

Every traveller from terminals one and five will undergo the infra-red "facial recognition" checks before they board their planes.

The data - taken when passengers first hand over their boarding cards - will be stored for up to 24 hours before being destroyed.

The aim is to prevent a situation where an international passenger could swap tickets with a domestic passenger in a departure lounge, as domestic passengers do not go through immigration checks.

The Aurora Imaging Recognition system is the most advanced to be used in a UK airport. It has been approved for use at Heathrow following an 18-month trial by BAA and the UK Border Agency

read on: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23971504-new-facial-scanners-at-heathrow-to-check-the-identity-of-millions.do

Love Always
mudra

Russian spy agency targeting western diplomats, journalists

SNIP

"Russia's spy agency is waging a massive undercover campaign of harassment against British and American diplomats, as well as other targets, using deniable "psychological" techniques developed by the KGB, a new book reveals.

The federal security service (FSB) operation involves breaking into the private homes of western diplomats – a method the US state department describes as "home intrusions". Typically the agents move around personal items, open windows and set alarms in an attempt to demoralise and intimidate their targets.

The FSB operation includes the bugging of private apartments, widespread phone tapping, physical surveillance, and email interception. Its victims include local Russian staff working for western embassies, opposition activists, human rights workers and journalists.

The clandestine campaign is revealed in Mafia State, a book by the Guardian's former Moscow correspondent Luke Harding, serialised in Saturday's Weekend magazine."

END SNIP
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/23/russia-targeting-western-diplomats


It is good to know that western diplomats in Russia are treated the same way as Whistle blowers in the western countries . It must be remembered that western diplomat are spies.

(NaturalNews) A Rhode Island school district has announced a pilot program to monitor student movements by means of radio frequency identification (RFID) chips implanted in their schoolbags.

The Middletown School District, in partnership with MAP Information Technology Corp., has launched a pilot program to implant RFID chips into the schoolbags of 80 children at the Aquidneck School. Each chip would be programmed with a student identification number, and would be read by an external device installed in one of two school buses. The buses would also be fitted with global positioning system (GPS) devices.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/023445_children_microchipping_parents.html#ixzz1YxQ3HJjO

Introducing Siri: DARPA’s Ghost in Apple’s Machine


SNIP

"People are going to pay a lot of money to have their asses tracked to within a couple of meters by a device running a civilian version of DARPA’s soldier’s servant software.

The most disturbing aspect of this is not what the iPhone 4s is going to be phoning home to Apple (which is unknown), or the invasion of The Complex into most aspects of our lives, but the fact that, in general, people would think that you were nuts for having these reservations at all. I mean, what could possibly be wrong with re-purposed DoD AI software running on a mass market consumer device that persistently reveals the user’s location to the state?

Ah well, give em what they want "

END SNIP

http://cryptogon.com/?p=25289

Ofcom irks Press TV intl. audience
Fri Oct 14, 2011

Britain's Office of Communications (Ofcom) has drawn criticism from the international spectators of Press TV following the UK media supervisory body's decision to ban the law-abiding Iranian news network.

“…Whichever British government comes into power shows how ruthless they can be …with a TV station like Press TV who informs people with accurate reporting,” said a viewer from Britain on a Press TV talk show aired on October 13, adding that “it should be up to people to decide” whether a television network needs to be taken off the air and not Ofcom.

The comments come after the British media regulator reportedly decided to remove the Iranian channel from the SKY platform. The move is considered to be an abuse of the UK media law and the result of mounting pressure on the organization by certain members of the royal family and government.

“I cannot believe that the old 'democracy' in the world has stopped Press TV,” said another spectator from Germany. Other viewers also commended the Iranian television network's impartial information dissemination policies and demanded a reversal of any such measures by the British media regulator.

read on: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/204513.html`

Love Always
mudra

Total Surveillance: SMART Grids, SMART Homes, SMART Healthcare and a camera on every corner



http://ppjg.wordpress.com/2011/11/05/total-surveillance-smart-grid-smart-homes-smart-healthcare-and-a-camera-on-every-corner/



________________________________

As Above So Below

http://www2.tbo.com/news/opinion/2011/nov/20/vwviewo1-are-you-being-watched-its-your-fault-ar-325736/

Are you being watched? It's your fault

In December 1967, the Supreme Court issued what many consider to be one of its greatest and most eloquent decisions, in Katz vs. United States. That case, which is celebrated as saving privacy in the United States, articulated the principle that "the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places." The decision reversed a long erosion of privacy protection and required greater use of warrants by the government.

A couple of weeks ago, a different high court sat to hear a new privacy challenge in Jones vs. United States. The issue this time is whether privacy protections are dying in the United States — and whether Katz may be to blame.

The Jones case involves one of the most ubiquitous pieces of technology in modern life: a Global Positioning System device. Antoine Jones was convicted in the District of Columbia in 2008 on drug charges after police followed him for 28 days with a secretly installed GPS device that monitored his location.

This surveillance continued after a warrant had expired. But the Obama administration insists that no warrant should be required for the government to track the movements of citizens with such devices. The administration says that the new technology merely captures what can be observed, albeit in far greater detail. But the technology could allow the government to follow an almost limitless number of citizens in real time, all the time. If successful in its argument, the Justice Department would expand the powers of the government to spy on citizens to what Justice Stephen Breyer called Orwellian proportions.

New Surveillance System: 1 Second to Search Through 36 Million Faces
Homeland Security Newswire
March 26, 2012

New surveillance camera system can search through data on thirty-six million faces in one second
Developed by Hitachi Kokusai Electric, the camera can automatically detect a face from either surveillance footage or a regular photo, and search for it.
DigInforeports that the search results are displayed immediately, showing thumbnail images of potential matches. When a thumbnail is selected, the associated recorded surveillance footage can be viewed, so users can quickly review the person’s actions before and after the image was taken.

read on: http://theintelhub.com/2012/03/26/new-surveillance-system-1-second-to-search-through-36-million-faces/

Love Always
mudra

Air Force’s Top Brain Wants a ‘Social Radar’ to ‘See Into Hearts and Minds’
January 19, 2012

Chief Scientists of the Air Force usually spend their time trying to figure out how to build better satellites or make jets go insanely fast. Which makes Dr. Mark Maybury, today’s chief scientist, a bit of an outlier. He’d like to build a set of sensors that peer into people’s souls — and forecast wars before they erupt.

Maybury calls his vision “Social Radar.” And the comparison to traditional sensors is no accident, he tells Danger Room. “The Air Force and the Navy in this and other countries have a history of developing Sonar to see through the water, Radar to see through the air, and IR [infrared] to see through the night. Well, we also want to see into the hearts and the minds of people,” says Maybury, who serves as the top science advisor to the Air Force’s top brass.

But Social Radar won’t be a single sensor to discover your secret yearnings. It’ll be more of a virtual sensor, combining a vast array of technologies and disciplines, all employed to take a society’s pulse and assess its future health. It’s part of a broader Pentagon effort to master the societal and cultural elements of war — and effort that even many in the Defense Department believe is deeply flawed. First step: mine Twitter feeds for indications of upset.

“We’re supposed to provide ISR,” says Maybury, using the military acronym for intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance. “But our constituents [say], ‘Don’t just give me a weather forecast, Air Force, give me an enemy movement forecast.’ What’s that about? That’s human behavior. And so [we need to] understand what motivates individuals, how they behave.”

read on: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/01/social-radar-sees-minds/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WiredDangerRoom+%28Blog+-+Danger+Room%29

http://www.mitre.org/tech/smartpower/pdf/SmartPowerBrochure.pdf

Love Always
mudra