The Surveillance State - A New Era

Mudra you left off the important part. This is controlled brain washing getting people used to the unacceptable.

That is a sign of a very, very sick society. Either we have a massive crime problem or the “control grid” that our leaders have erected for us is wildly out of control.

Or both.

But how in the world are we supposed to have a healthy economy if our entire nation is being turned into one gigantic prison?

Sadly, it is not just hardcore criminals that are being rounded up and abused by authorities these days. The following are 14 of the most ridiculous things that Americans are being arrested for….

#1 A Michigan man has been charged with a felony and could face up to 5 years in prison for reading his wife’s email.

#2 A 49-year-old Queens woman had bruises all over her body after she was handcuffed, arrested and brutally beaten by NYPD officers. So what was her offense? The officers thought that her little dog had left some poop that she didn’t clean up.

#3 A 56-year-old woman who was once a rape victim refused to let airport security officials feel her breasts so she was thrown to the floor, put in handcuffs and arrested.

#4 In Milwaukee, one man was recently fined $500 for swearing on a public bus.

#5 Several years ago a 12-year-old boy in South Carolina was actually arrested by police for opening up a Christmas present early against his family’s wishes.

#6 In some areas of the country, it is now a crime to not recycle properly. For example, the city of Cleveland has announced plans to sort through trash cans to ensure that people are actually recycling according to city guidelines.

#7 A 12-year-old girl from Queens was arrested earlier this year and taken out of her school in handcuffs for writing “Lex was here. 2/1/10″ and “I love my friends Abby and Faith” on her desk.

#8 Back in 2008, a 13-year-old boy in Florida was actually arrested by police for farting in class.

#9 The feds recently raided an Amish farmer at 5 AM in the morning because they claimed that he was was engaged in the interstate sale of raw milk in violation of federal law.

#10 A few years ago a 10-year-old girl was arrested and charged with a felony for bringing a small steak knife to school. It turns out that all she wanted to do was to cut up her lunch so that she could eat it.

#11 On June 18th, two Christians decided that they would peacefully pass out copies of the gospel of John on a public sidewalk outside a public Islamic festival in Dearborn, Michigan and within three minutes 8 policemen surrounded them and placed them under arrest.

#12 A U.S. District Court judge slapped a 500 dollar fine on Massachusetts fisherman Robert J. Eldridge for untangling a giant whale from his nets and setting it free. So what was his crime? Well, according to the court, Eldridge was supposed to call state authorities and wait for them do it.

#13 Once upon a time, a food fight in the cafeteria may have gotten you a detention. Now it may get you locked up. About a year ago, 25 students between the ages of 11 and 15 at a school in Chicago were taken into custody by police for being involved in a huge food fight in the school cafeteria.

#14 A few years ago a 70 year old grandmother was actually put in handcuffs and hauled off to jail for having a brown lawn.

The rest of the world sees what is going on in this country and many of them are deciding that they simply do not want to spend their tourist dollars here anymore. That is not a good thing for our economy.

As the government continues to get even bigger and exerts even more control over our lives, many of our own people are getting sick of it and are moving abroad.

America used to be the land of the free and the home of the brave.

That is no longer true.

Now we get thrown to the floor, handcuffed, beaten and arrested for things that we did not even know were crimes.

If America continues to move in this direction it is going to ruin our economy, our reputation in the world and our national spirit.

http://blacklistednews.com/Almost-Everything-Is-A-Crime-In-America-Now%3A-14-Of-The-Most-Ridiculous-Things-That-Americans-Are-Being-Arrested-For/12071/0/0/0/Y/M.html

Big Brother: America's Police State Mentality in the Electronic Age
by Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay
Global Research/TheNewAmericanEmpire.com
January 1, 2011

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
- Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790), American inventor, journalist, printer, diplomat, and statesman (1775)

“Americans used to roar like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security.”
- Norman Vincent Peale (1898 –1993), American Christian preacher and author

"A Party member lives from birth to death under the eye of the Thought Police. Even when he is alone he can never be sure that he is alone. ...At the apex of the pyramid comes Big Brother. Big Brother is infallible and all-powerful. Every success, every achievement, every victory, every scientific discovery, all knowledge, all wisdom, all happiness, all virtue, are held to issue directly from his leadership and inspiration."
- George Orwell (1903-1950) (Eric Arthur Blair), (book: 1984)

“Since information gives power, access to personal files can lead to unreasonable pressures, even blackmail, especially against those with the least resources, people who depend upon public programs, for example. Big Brother isn't a camera. Big Brother is a computer.”
- C.J. Howard, political novel 'Cybercash'

In 2049, when the 100th anniversary of the publication of George Orwell political novel “1984” will be celebrated, it will be recalled that the immediate post September 11, 2001 period marked the beginning of a gradual decline in personal liberty and freedom, especially in the United States but also elsewhere, and the emergence of a great information-obsessed Leviathan. Freedom rarely disappears in one fell swoop. Its disappearance is rather the end result of a thousand encroachments.

Pushed to the extreme and without clear democratic oversight, it becomes the mark of a totalitarian state, when authorities feel that they never have enough information on the people. It is because information is power and state bureaucrats and politicians naturally like to be in control; on the one hand, releasing as little information about their own actions through an imposed secrecy, and on the other, accumulating as much information as possible about the citizens.

And today, modern governments have all the tools to transform their country into a creeping police state, more so now then ever before, in this electronic age. They have access to information technology that previous full-fledged “police state” governments could only have dreamed about.

Nowadays, with super computers and revolutionary new models to gather information and build databases, governments, i.e. bureaucrats and politicians, are in a position as never before to accumulate and correlate tremendous amounts of personal information on their citizens, from public (federal, state and local) as well as from a plethora of private sources. Government intelligence on each and every citizen is thus rendered much easier and, I would add, much more frightening. Indeed, the potential for abuse is enormous.

In 2002, for example, retired Vice Admiral John Poindexter proposed that the U.S. government create a tracking and monitoring system called "Total Information Awareness", in order for the U.S. government to gather information in a preventive way about individuals from widely varied sources, including tax records, telephone calling records, credit card charges, banking transactions, airline or ship reservations, and various biometric databases, without taking into consideration civil liberties or a citizens' right to privacy, the U.S. Privacy Act of 1974, or without having to request search warrants and without having to give prior notice to the persons involved. —The pretext was to allow the government to thwart possible terrorist activity, thus creating an unlimited appetite for information.

Well, there are clear signs that this massive data mining system on individuals is now solidly in place and is in full operation and can be expected to grow over time. George Orwell must be turning in his grave.

First, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s network of fusion centers, launched in 2003, has allowed the government to centralize a host of previously disparate information about Americans and foreigners alike, whether related to personal and business records, drivers licenses, local taxes, local infractions, police records, etc., through a host of coordinated information-sharing networks. (N.B.: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was established on November 25, 2002 and is the domestic equivalent of the Department of Defense.)

Secondly, central provisions of the USA Patriot Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001, allow the government to operate roving wire taps, search any individual’s business, personal, and even library records upon presentation of a national security letter, and spy on so-called "lone wolf" suspects, i.e., foreign nationals who have no known links to groups designated as terrorist. On this, the current Obama administration, by extending those provisions, is scarcely different than the previous Bush administration.

Thirdly, since passports and tight intelligence screening have been made a requirement for most international travel by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, since January 1, 2008, every individual traveling in and out of the United States has all his or her whereabouts and movements recorded so the government knows at all times his or her address and the places he or she has traveled to and from.

For instance, U.S. Transportation Security Administration's recent decision to use full-body airport X-ray scanners and full body groping at airports is another example where so-called security procedures are applied blindly and indiscriminately. There is more to come, since it has been announced that such invasive intelligence screening is coming to hotels and shopping malls, as well as to trains, buses and ports, etc.

These are some of the main features of the new government apparatus to gather information on people. There are many others. — Take for instance the requirement, since 2002, that all American high schools must give Pentagon military recruiters the names and contact information of all their juniors and seniors. Failure to comply on their part may result in the loss of government funding.

The logical next step for the U.S. government would be to follow a recent Italy's lead and outlaw outright the use of cash for most transactions, except for small ones, thus providing the government even more minute information about an individual's income, purchases and displacements. Nothing will escape the watching eye of the government in the electronic age. People will be filed, photographed and corralled.

Indeed, the way mass government surveillance systems are growing, by year 2020, chances are good that Americans will be living in a “Brave New World”!

CYBER BIG BROTHER would know it all and it will be watching you.

Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com. He is the author of the book "The Code for Global Ethics" at:
www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/

The book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles”, by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, prefaced by Dr. Paul Kurtz, has just been released by Prometheus Books.

The French version of the book is also now available. See: www.lecodepouruneethiqueglobale.com/ or on Amazon Canada

Rodrigue Tremblay is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

SOURCE: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22596

Computers That See You and Keep Watch Over You
By STEVE LOHR / New York Times
02-01-2011

Hundreds of correctional officers from prisons across America descended last spring on a shuttered penitentiary in West Virginia for annual training exercises.

Some officers played the role of prisoners, acting like gang members and stirring up trouble, including a mock riot. The latest in prison gear got a workout — body armor, shields, riot helmets, smoke bombs, gas masks. And, at this year’s drill, computers that could see the action.

Perched above the prison yard, five cameras tracked the play-acting prisoners, and artificial-intelligence software analyzed the images to recognize faces, gestures and patterns of group behavior. When two groups of inmates moved toward each other, the experimental computer system sent an alert — a text message — to a corrections officer that warned of a potential incident and gave the location.

The computers cannot do anything more than officers who constantly watch surveillance monitors under ideal conditions. But in practice, officers are often distracted. When shifts change, an observation that is worth passing along may be forgotten. But machines do not blink or forget. They are tireless assistants.

The enthusiasm for such systems extends well beyond the nation’s prisons. High-resolution, low-cost cameras are proliferating, found in products like smartphones and laptop computers. The cost of storing images is dropping, and new software algorithms for mining, matching and scrutinizing the flood of visual data are progressing swiftly.

A computer-vision system can watch a hospital room and remind doctors and nurses to wash their hands, or warn of restless patients who are in danger of falling out of bed. It can, through a computer-equipped mirror, read a man’s face to detect his heart rate and other vital signs. It can analyze a woman’s expressions as she watches a movie trailer or shops online, and help marketers tailor their offerings accordingly. Computer vision can also be used at shopping malls, schoolyards, subway platforms, office complexes and stadiums.

All of which could be helpful — or alarming.

“Machines will definitely be able to observe us and understand us better,” said Hartmut Neven, a computer scientist and vision expert at Google. “Where that leads is uncertain.”

Google has been both at the forefront of the technology’s development and a source of the anxiety surrounding it. Its Street View service, which lets Internet users zoom in from above on a particular location, faced privacy complaints. Google will blur out people’s homes at their request.

Google has also introduced an application called Goggles, which allows people to take a picture with a smartphone and search the Internet for matching images. The company’s executives decided to exclude a facial-recognition feature, which they feared might be used to find personal information on people who did not know that they were being photographed.

Despite such qualms, computer vision is moving into the mainstream. With this technological evolution, scientists predict, people will increasingly be surrounded by machines that can not only see but also reason about what they are seeing, in their own limited way.

The uses, noted Frances Scott, an expert in surveillance technologies at the National Institute of Justice, the Justice Department’s research agency, could allow the authorities to spot a terrorist, identify a lost child or locate an Alzheimer’s patient who has wandered off.

The future of law enforcement, national security and military operations will most likely rely on observant machines. A few months ago, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon’s research arm, awarded the first round of grants in a five-year research program called the Mind’s Eye. Its goal is to develop machines that can recognize, analyze and communicate what they see. Mounted on small robots or drones, these smart machines could replace human scouts. “These things, in a sense, could be team members,” said James Donlon, the program’s manager.

Millions of people now use products that show the progress that has been made in computer vision. In the last two years, the major online photo-sharing services — Picasa by Google, Windows Live Photo Gallery by Microsoft, Flickr by Yahoo and iPhoto by Apple — have all started using face recognition. A user puts a name to a face, and the service finds matches in other photographs. It is a popular tool for finding and organizing pictures.

Kinect, an add-on to Microsoft’s Xbox 360 gaming console, is a striking advance for computer vision in the marketplace. It uses a digital camera and sensors to recognize people and gestures; it also understands voice commands. Players control the computer with waves of the hand, and then move to make their on-screen animated stand-ins — known as avatars — run, jump, swing and dance. Since Kinect was introduced in November, game reviewers have applauded, and sales are surging.

To Microsoft, Kinect is not just a game, but a step toward the future of computing. “It’s a world where technology more fundamentally understands you, so you don’t have to understand it,” said Alex Kipman, an engineer on the team that designed Kinect.

‘Please Wash Your Hands’
A nurse walks into a hospital room while scanning a clipboard. She greets the patient and washes her hands. She checks and records his heart rate and blood pressure, adjusts the intravenous drip, turns him over to look for bed sores, then heads for the door but does not wash her hands again, as protocol requires. “Pardon the interruption,” declares a recorded women’s voice, with a slight British accent. “Please wash your hands.”

Three months ago, Bassett Medical Center in Cooperstown, N.Y., began an experiment with computer vision in a single hospital room. Three small cameras, mounted inconspicuously on the ceiling, monitor movements in Room 542, in a special care unit (a notch below intensive care) where patients are treated for conditions like severe pneumonia, heart attacks and strokes. The cameras track people going in and out of the room as well as the patient’s movements in bed.

The first applications of the system, designed by scientists at General Electric, are immediate reminders and alerts. Doctors and nurses are supposed to wash their hands before and after touching a patient; lapses contribute significantly to hospital-acquired infections, research shows.

The camera over the bed delivers images to software that is programmed to recognize movements that indicate when a patient is in danger of falling out of bed. The system would send an alert to a nearby nurse.

If the results at Bassett prove to be encouraging, more features can be added, like software that analyzes facial expressions for signs of severe pain, the onset of delirium or other hints of distress, said Kunter Akbay, a G.E. scientist.

Hospitals have an incentive to adopt tools that improve patient safety. Medicare and Medicaid are adjusting reimbursement rates to penalize hospitals that do not work to prevent falls and pressure ulcers, and whose doctors and nurses do not wash their hands enough. But it is too early to say whether computer vision, like the system being tried out at Bassett, will prove to be cost-effective.

Mirror, Mirror
Daniel J. McDuff, a graduate student, stood in front of a mirror at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab. After 20 seconds or so, a figure — 65, the number of times his heart was beating per minute — appeared at the mirror’s bottom. Behind the two-way mirror was a Web camera, which fed images of Mr. McDuff to a computer whose software could track the blood flow in his face.

The software separates the video images into three channels — for the basic colors red, green and blue. Changes to the colors and to movements made by tiny contractions and expansions in blood vessels in the face are, of course, not apparent to the human eye, but the computer can see them.

“Your heart-rate signal is in your face,” said Ming-zher Poh, an M.I.T. graduate student. Other vital signs, including breathing rate, blood-oxygen level and blood pressure, should leave similar color and movement clues.

The pulse-measuring project, described in research published in May by Mr. Poh, Mr. McDuff and Rosalind W. Picard, a professor at the lab, is just the beginning, Mr. Poh said. Computer vision and clever software, he said, make it possible to monitor humans’ vital signs at a digital glance. Daily measurements can be analyzed to reveal that, for example, a person’s risk of heart trouble is rising. “This can happen, and in the future it will be in mirrors,” he said.

Faces can yield all sorts of information to watchful computers, and the M.I.T. students’ adviser, Dr. Picard, is a pioneer in the field, especially in the use of computing to measure and communicate emotions. For years, she and a research scientist at the university, Rana el-Kaliouby, have applied facial-expression analysis software to help young people with autism better recognize the emotional signals from others that they have such a hard time understanding.

The two women are the co-founders of Affectiva, a company in Waltham, Mass., that is beginning to market its facial-expression analysis software to manufacturers of consumer products, retailers, marketers and movie studios. Its mission is to mine consumers’ emotional responses to improve the designs and marketing campaigns of products.

John Ross, chief executive of Shopper Sciences, a marketing research company that is part of the Interpublic Group, said Affectiva’s technology promises to give marketers an impartial reading of the sequence of emotions that leads to a purchase, in a way that focus groups and customer surveys cannot. “You can see and analyze how people are reacting in real time, not what they are saying later, when they are often trying to be polite,” he said. The technology, he added, is more scientific and less costly than having humans look at store surveillance videos, which some retailers do.

The facial-analysis software, Mr. Ross said, could be used in store kiosks or with Webcams. Shopper Sciences, he said, is testing Affectiva’s software with a major retailer and an online dating service, neither of which he would name. The dating service, he said, was analyzing users’ expressions in search of “trigger words” in personal profiles that people found appealing or off-putting.

Watching the Watchers
Maria Sonin, 33, an office worker in Waltham, Mass., sat in front of a notebook computer looking at a movie trailer while Affectiva’s software, through the PC’s Webcam, calibrated her reaction. The trailer was for “Little Fockers,” starring Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller, which opened just before Christmas. The software measured her reactions by tracking movements on a couple of dozen points on her face — mostly along the eyes, eyebrows, nose and the perimeter of her lips.

To the human eye, Ms. Sonin appeared to be amused. The software agreed, said Dr. Kaliouby, though it used a finer-grained analysis, like recording that her smiles were symmetrical (signaling amusement, not embarrassment) and not smirks. The software, Ms. Kaliouby said, allows for continuous, objective measurement of viewers’ response to media, and in the future will do so in large numbers on the Web.

Ms. Sonin, an unpaid volunteer, said later that she did not think about being recorded by the Webcam. “It wasn’t as if it was a big camera in front of you,” she said.

Christopher Hamilton, a technical director of visual effects, has used specialized software to analyze facial expressions and recreate them on the screen. The films he has worked on include “King Kong,” “Charlotte’s Web” and “The Matrix Revolutions.” Using facial-expression analysis technology to gauge the reaction of viewers, who agree to be watched, may well become a valuable tool for movie makers, said Mr. Hamilton, who is not involved with Affectiva.

Today, sampling audience reaction before a movie is released typically means gathering a couple of hundred people at a preview screening. The audience members then answer questions and fill out surveys. Yet viewers, marketing experts say, are often inarticulate and imprecise about their emotional reactions.

The software “makes it possible to measure audience response with a scene-by-scene granularity that the current survey-and-questionnaire approach cannot,” Mr. Hamilton said. A director, he added, could find out, for example, that although audience members liked a movie over all, they did not like two or three scenes. Or he could learn that a particular character did not inspire the intended emotional response.

Emotion-sensing software, Mr. Hamilton said, might become part of the entertainment experience — especially as more people watch movies and programs on Internet-connected televisions, computers and portable devices. Viewers could share their emotional responses with friends using recommendation systems based on what scene — say, the protagonists’ dancing or a car chase — delivered the biggest emotional jolt.

Affectiva, Dr. Picard said, intends to offer its technology as “opt-in only,” meaning consumers have to be notified and have to agree to be watched online or in stores. Affectiva, she added, has turned down companies, which she declined to name, that wanted to use its software without notifying customers.

Darker Possibilities
Dr. Picard enunciates a principled stance, but one that could become problematic in other hands.

The challenge arises from the prospect of the rapid spread of less-expensive yet powerful computer-vision technologies.

At work or school, the technology opens the door to a computerized supervisor that is always watching. Are you paying attention, goofing off or daydreaming? In stores and shopping malls, smart surveillance could bring behavioral tracking into the physical world.

More subtle could be the effect of a person knowing that he is being watched — and how that awareness changes his thinking and actions. It could be beneficial: a person thinks twice and a crime goes uncommitted. But might it also lead to a society that is less spontaneous, less creative, less innovative?

“With every technology, there is a dark side,” said Hany Farid, a computer scientist at Dartmouth. “Sometimes you can predict it, but often you can’t.”

A decade ago, he noted, no one predicted that cellphones and text messaging would lead to traffic accidents caused by distracted drivers. And, he said, it was difficult to foresee that the rise of Facebook and Twitter and personal blogs would become troves of data to be collected and exploited in tracking people’s online behavior.

Often, a technology that is benign in one setting can cause harm in a different context. Google confronted that problem this year with its face-recognition software. In its Picasa photo-storing and sharing service, face recognition helps people find and organize pictures of family and friends.

But the company took a different approach with Goggles, which lets a person snap a photograph with a smartphone, setting off an Internet search. Take a picture of the Eiffel Tower and links to Web pages with background information and articles about it appear on the phone’s screen. Take a picture of a wine bottle and up come links to reviews of that vintage.

Google could have put face recognition into the Goggles application; indeed, many users have asked for it. But Google decided against it because smartphones can be used to take pictures of individuals without their knowledge, and a face match could retrieve all kinds of personal information — name, occupation, address, workplace.

“It was just too sensitive, and we didn’t want to go there,” said Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive of Google. “You want to avoid enabling stalker behavior.”

SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/science/02see.html?_r=2&ref=technology&pagewanted=print

Mobile Prison Guard Towers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVQRMrlQ95U


Mobile Surveillance Towers coming to a town near you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-KFag3kdV4


Love Always
mudra

America's Next Failure: the Police State
by Prof John Kozy
January 6, 2011

Every police force in the nation has cold (unsolved) cases. The War on Drugs has been ineffective for more than forty years. No one knows where a vast number of illegal immigrants even are. The CIA has been unable to locate Osama bin Laden after more than ten years of searching. Your local police cannot protect you from burglaries, drive by shootings, rapes, domestic abuse, or murder — even with the help of most ordinary citizens. The situation is so bad that numerous legislatures have legalized the carrying of loaded weapons so that ordinary people can protect themselves which is a complete abdication of the usual view that people should not take the law into their own hands. So what in the world would make anyone believe that policing can protect us from terrorists?

Suppose you were a person who painted the exteriors of houses, and that one August afternoon you were close to completing a job when you noticed a thunderstorm looming. Suppose you looked around and saw a police car coming down the street, flagged it down, and asked the policemen to help you finish the job before the storm hit. What reaction do you think you'd get? Do you think you'd get any help?

Now consider this: A person is caught by a surveillance camera robbing a convenience store. The police send the tape to the local television stations, and on the next newscast, the tape is broadcast and viewers are asked to help identify the robber. Say what?

What distinguished this situation from the one described in the first paragraph? The police expect the public to help them do their jobs, but the public cannot expect help from the police. Am I the only person who finds this situation odd?

Things are even worse. Have you ever had your home burglarized? I have. When the police arrived after my call, they dutifully wrote a report. When it was handed to me, one of the officers said, "You realize that all we are going to do is file the report" and advised me to file an insurance claim. Why don't they tell that to the convenience store's owner instead of asking the public for help?

Some will say that getting criminals off the street is a good thing, so so is helping the police identify them. But it's not clear that policing gets criminals off the street. Even when convicted, judges routinely sentence the convicted person to probation. When sentenced to prison, some other convicted criminal is often paroled to make room for the newcomer. So what is it exactly that the police do for you? I don't know the answer.

Because of this, in some communities, people refuse to help the police and frown on anyone who does.

In Tampa, three women heard gunshots. What they did next made them heroes to many people but outcasts to others – including some of their neighbors.

Rose Dodson was awakened by gunfire and tires squealing that night, June 29. Moments later, her roommate, Delores Keen, watched a man leap over a fence near her apartment. In the distance, at 50th Street and 23rd Avenue in east Tampa, she saw the emergency lights of a police cruiser twirling in the dark, but no officer was in sight. Both knew something was wrong and stepped outside the safety of the apartment to investigate. A friend, Renee Roundtree, who had been walking to a nearby store, joined them. Lying on the ground beside the police cruiser, the women found two officers, David Curtis and Jeffrey Kocab.

Keen called a 911 dispatcher.

Whether making outcasts of these three women is appropriate is for each to decide for her/himself. I am merely making a point about policing in general which is merely that police seem to be unable to do their jobs alone. And this situation applies to the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security as well as the local police. All seem to require help from ordinary people.

For instance, the FBI has claimed to have foiled a number of terrorist plots, all with the help of paid informants. The FBI foiled none on its own. It also regularly issues a ten most wanted list asking for help from the public in finding those listed. The CIA also relies on paid informants even to gather information. The border patrol seems to be equally unable to carry out its functions alone. It has been totally ineffective in providing border security.

Now the nation seems headed toward becoming a police state in which everyone is watched, people are asked to snitch, and information is collected willy-nilly on everyone. But consider these facts:

Every police force in the nation has cold (unsolved) cases. The War on Drugs has been ineffective for more than forty years. No one knows where a vast number of illegal immigrants even are. The CIA has been unable to locate Osama bin Laden after more than ten years of searching. Your local police cannot protect you from burglaries, drive by shootings, rapes, domestic abuse, or murder — even with the help of most ordinary citizens. The situation is so bad that numerous legislatures have legalized the carrying of loaded weapons so that ordinary people can protect themselves which is a complete abdication of the usual view that people should not take the law into their own hands. So what in the world would make anyone believe that policing can protect us from terrorists? The reason police states fail lies in the failures enumerated above.

In Plato's Republic, he describes a political system ruled by an oligarchy of specially trained Guardians. Critics of this system have often poised the question, Who guards the guardians? In Plato's Republic, the Guardians guard each other using their special moral sensibilities developed by their educations. But lacking such morality, it is obvious that even guardians must be guarded. In a police state, everyone cannot be watched, especially the police themselves. Likewise, everyone cannot be protected. No police state can function efficiently or effectively. Police cannot succeed without the help of ordinary people and police states ultimately fail because of that. In a police state, money is squandered trying to get the police to do something they can never do. They can, however, make life miserable for everyone.

John Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who writes on social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university professor and another 20 years working as a writer. He has published a textbook in formal logic commercially, in academic journals and a small number of commercial magazines, and has written a number of guest editorials for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be found on http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed from that site's homepage.

John Kozy is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

SOURCE: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22668

Governments and Corporations Attempt to Repress Wikileaks: Holding Up Mirrors

WikiLeaks has struggled to stay online after initiating the slow release of over 250,000 leaked US diplomatic cables on 28th November 2010. The releases, dubbed "Cablegate" have been carried in newspapers around the world. The four-year-old WikiLeaks organistaion has been under constant political attack, especially from the conservative side of politics, whilst it's website has been subjected to a series of sophisticated cyber attacks. Reporters Without Borders condemned this hounding of Wikileaks.

Spokesperson for Wikileaks, Julian Assange, was put on Interpol's most wanted list for detention and extradition to Sweden in relation to two allegations of sexual abuse against him which had previously been dropped. The Swedish prosecutor is described as “overzealous” in the mainstream German weekly, Die Zeit. Assange surrendered his passport to British police and offered sureties of £180,000, but a Westminster Court denied his bail application. (Court protest)

Global resistance in support of Wikileaks and Assange is taking the form of over 1,200 websites mirroring Wikileaks and street protests such as in Australia. The Indymedia Network is hosting one of these Mirrors. Noam Chomsky, Professor Peter Singer and other prominent people in Australia have released an open letter to Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard calling for Julian Assange to be given full support as an Australian citizen and urged a statement of Australia’s commitment to freedom of political communication.

In retaliation against corporate censorship action against Wikileaks anonymous hackers working as Operation Payback have taken down a bank website that froze Julian Assange’s defence fund and the Mastercard site was subject to a DDOS attack after wikileaks donations were banned.

US constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald said on Democarcy Now that the freedom of the whole internet is now at stake.

The manner of these revelations has been described as "holding a mirror" to the mainstream press and their friends in governments. The governments clearly don't like to see the ugliness of their own depravity, which is ususally hidden from view by the press. Will we allow Wikileaks and Julian Assange to be destroyed for daring to tell the world the truth about wars and the criminal deeds of governments around the world? Or will we support the upholding of mirrors - both technical and journalistic - in the struggle for openness?
http://www.indymedia.org/en/index.shtml

Mission homeowner fined $5,200 for growing cucumbers

Citizens planning class-action suit over municipal grow-op inspections


"There’s no way Len Gratto is paying a $5,200 fine to Mission city hall for growing cucumbers in his basement.

Gratto — a 67-year-old who has lived for 30 years with his wife in their Mission home — says he’s raring to join an imminent class-action lawsuit attacking the municipality’s grow-op bylaw inspections. "


http://www.theprovince.com/news/Mission+homeowner+fined+growing+cucumbers/4083756/story.html#ixzz1AtQFPPY4

Dept Homeland Security SEIZING Laptops/Cellphones from Ameicans Entering the US

Not every single american, but selectively. Keeping their laptops for months, copying all the data and distributing it to other gov agencies, ditto for cellphones ... ALL WITH NO WARRANT OR REASON FOR DOING SO!

Homeland Security's seizure of electronic devices brought into U.S. by citizens

There's an audio download clip with an interview with a congresswoman about this at: www.salon.com

For those who regularly write and read about civil liberties abuses, it's sometimes easy to lose perspective of just how extreme and outrageous certain erosions are. One becomes inured to them, and even severe incursions start to seem ordinary. Such was the case, at least for me, with Homeland Security's practice of detaining American citizens upon their re-entry into the country, and as part of that detention, literally seizing their electronic products - laptops, cellphones, Blackberries and the like - copying and storing the data, and keeping that property for months on end, sometimes never returning it. Worse, all of this is done not only without a warrant, probable cause or any oversight, but even without reasonable suspicion that the person is involved in any crime. It's completely standard-less, arbitrary, and unconstrained. There's no law authorizing this power nor any judicial or Congressional body overseeing or regulating what DHS is doing. And the citizens to whom this is done have no recourse - not even to have their property returned to them.

read more at www.salon.com
(If that link doesn't work, go to the home page and look for: 'Homeland Security's laptop seizures: Interview with Rep. Sanchez')

Dept Homeland Security SEIZING Laptops/Cellphones from Ameicans Entering the US

Problem (TSA) ---> Solution (TrueCrypt)

TrueCrypt is your friend.
www.truecrypt.org

Download it and install it on your computer. Make a TrueCrypt file and place it somewhere in your windows system area named something crazy...

Put your XXXX in there and when you are coming back to the US leave your encrypted file in there and remove the TrueCrypt application.

Reinstall TrueCrypt when you get home.

SIMPLE. This is not difficult. The turdhead TSA people would NEVER be able to figure anything out..

I have nothing to hide but I still do this for fun and I come and go. I have yet to even power up my laptop but I will be laughing inside the first time they do.

SOURCE: http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1327596/pg3

In the End - We will either choose Paradigms that We know are False - Or We will move forward into Expansion.

That said - The choices We are about to make will not be choices of naiveté - They'll be conscious choices We'll be responsible for...

No getting off on the Old "Jeez - I didn't know" - Or - "It was hidden from Me" statement at the Translation.

This time We'll know We supported either a Paradigm of Expansion or One of Falseness...

No more Unknowing - Hence why They have to give Us an Apocalypse (A Revealing) so We will be able to make the choices We need to and all without being able to say - "I didn't know"...

Now the question is - When will We say - "Enough is Enough !!!"

I don't know about You All - But I've already reached that Point.

Hallmarks of Spook Behavior - Watch the Watchers
By JENNIFER VAN BERGEN

This was not the first time I was approached by a spook, or the first time I have pegged one in my midst, but it was the first time I was approached by a man claiming to be an Iraqi-American. In the rush that usually occurs after one speaks publicly with several people waiting to chat, I tried to listen politely as I offered Nabil my attention. After five minutes, though, I found myself feeling bad for getting a little annoyed at him. He carried on about loving America and loving Iraq and seemed to be trying to hint at something beyond this - making vague references to what the U.S. was doing to Iraq. Finally I said to him, "Why are you telling me this?" After all, I speak publicly about these things, why did he feel he needed to tell me what I was already speaking about?

Unfortunately, I rarely recall specifics of what people say to me after I make a speech – or perhaps Nabil was being purposefully vague, because it seemed to me that he really wasn't saying anything. Yet, he wouldn't let me go. I told him several times that I needed to leave, as I had a long drive ahead of me. Several other people wanted to speak to me, yet Nabil continued to follow me around and try to talk to me - about what, I could not discern. Finally, I said that if things continued as they were in this country, it would eventually collapse. This seemed to deeply satisfy him. He said that people here didn't care what happened in Iraq. They would care only if it happened to them.

I left him then and only the next morning did it occur to me that what Nabil was trying to do was to goad me into making a declaration of some unlawful or violent intent. That was when it occurred to me that Nabil was a spook: a paid informant or an undercover operative.

My first thought was that the FBI must not keep very good records or train their operatives very well because they had sent numerous others on the same or similar missions. They had to know that I am a staunch believer in nonviolence and in the rule of law - not to mention the United States Constitution. Anyone reading my multitude of articles must know this.

But more importantly, Nabil's activities reveal a government policy that post-9/11 activists have long suspected exists: the FBI is not only monitoring peace activists but is working to entrap such people. Several recent cases offer further proof of this conclusion: the outing of paid FBI informant, "Anna," in the West Coast "Green Scare" cases and the arrests of the Miami "Liberty City Seven" on the basis of an affidavit by an FBI operative.

In both of these cases, the FBI clearly did more than infiltrate and monitor groups that they believed might pose a threat to national security. In each case, the FBI goaded, provoked, provided funding and materials, and in the Liberty Seven case, even demanded the individuals sign a loyalty oath to al-Qaeda. In fact, so desperate was the FBI to capture the Miami miscreants that arrests were made despite the fact that the seven had all already walked away from the alleged conspiracy, which makes the case almost a sure loser for the government.

The FBI has monitored me at least since I first spoke out (post-9/11) at a town meeting in front of a panel of Muslim community members and overt FBI agents. A few weeks after this, a markedly taciturn and unfriendly man showed up at a Unitarian Universalist church meeting at which I was asked to speak about the PATRIOT Act. This was a congregation of mostly senior citizens who all knew each other, yet nobody knew the man, who avoided looking at or speaking to anyone, but sat and listened intently to my every word – leaning forward in his chair, all his antennae up - and then rapidly disappeared thereafter.

Spooks have infiltrated groups I've chaired. One handsome man of uncertain ethnic origins showed up at a start-up meeting for the Bill of Rights Defense Coalition in South Florida. I was facilitating the meeting and caught this young man staring at me in rapt fascination more than once. Why would he be so interested in me? My youthful beauty? Sorry. My charming and electric personality? Right.

Well, when he saw me see him looking at me, he stopped his appreciative stares. Although he said he was from Pittsburgh, another member of the group who hailed from there found he knew nothing about the city. He never returned to our group. But he did start showing up at another group allied with ours and he continued to monitor that group for quite a while, until he showed up in new all-black duds (imitating the Black Block anarchists, we supposed) at the 2003 FTAA protests in Miami and thereafter was never seen again.

These are hallmarks of spook behavior. Mark them.
Another young man joined the volunteers for a large Forum on Dissent Since 9/11 we had planned. He professed no interest in politics, was completely ignorant of most of the issues which concerned us, and disappeared shortly before the event, claiming he had decided to relocate and start a new life. Meantime, he had access to lists of speakers and volunteers.

Both of these men had never been seen before and were never seen thereafter.

You know what my reaction to all this is? I wonder why my government is spending my tax dollars to monitor me, an upright, loyal citizen who believes more deeply in the Constitution and laws of this country than do most U.S. officials sworn to uphold them. I was a patriot before it was popular to say so. I will defend free speech more strongly and at greater personal risk than most members of the ACLU (and I have proof of that). (I actually take the time to answer hate mail!)

If there really are so many horrible, dangerous terrorists out to get us, why, then, is the FBI wasting time and resources trying to provoke me into making some unlawful statement? Why are our intelligence agencies infiltrating meetings of peace groups, like the one in Lake Worth, Florida that NBC News discovered was attended by the DOD?

I attended that meeting and was one of its organizers and presenters. The subject was counter-recruitment. Is that a national security threat? Am I? The only threat I or these other peaceful persons could possibly pose would be to government officials themselves engaged in violent or unlawful activities, in lying to the public, in engaging in wars of aggression, in unlawfully detaining and torturing people, many of whom have been shown to be completely innocent, and in evading and intentionally violating federal laws. Why is the FBI not banging on their doors? Why is not the DOJ bringing charges against them?

This piece was originally published in the 9/21/2006 print edition of CounterPunch.

Jennifer Van Bergen, J.D., M.S.I.E., is the founder of the 12th Generation Institute, and author of THE TWILIGHT OF DEMOCRACY: THE BUSH PLAN FOR AMERICA (Common Courage Press, 2004) and Archetypes for Writers: Using the Power of Your Subconscious (Michael Weise Productions, 2007). She is currently working under contract with Bucknell University Press on a biography of Leonora Sansay, an early American novelist who was involved in the Aaron Burr Conspiracy, and on a screenplay about the conspiracy. She can be reached at jennifer.vanbergen@gmail.com.

SOURCE: http://www.counterpunch.org/vanbergen01142011.html

Government Spying on Americans
By SHELDON RICHMAN

Most Americans seem detached from the U.S. government's military actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere. U.S. forces not only engage in wanton killing and harsh treatment of prisoners, but also surveillance and other intelligence activities that might appall the American people if they were used at home.

Well, guess what: "Technologies and techniques honed for use on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan have migrated into the hands of law enforcement agencies in America7" writes the Washington Post in its continuing series, "Top Secret America."

The Post reports: "Nine years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, 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 system, by far the largest and most technologically sophisticated in the nation's history, collects, stores and analyzes information about thousands of U.S. citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing.

"The government's goal 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."

Sad to say, this article has gotten little attention. Is it a matter of so little importance? Governments at all levels are united in a campaign to spy on Americans, gathering, analyzing, and storing data without probable cause and hardly anyone seems to care.

Have Americans become so docile that they roll over for anything rationalized as necessary in the "war on terror"? If so, they have abandoned one of greatest virtues of early generations: suspicion of power. They might as well stop talking about liberty and individualism because it just a lot of empty words now.

The Post reports, "The FBI is building 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. It is accessible to an increasing number of local law enforcement and military criminal investigators, increasing concerns that it could somehow end up in the public domain." (Emphasis added.)

That sounds too much like what goes on under totalitarian regimes, in which the government keeps tabs on the population, encouraging everyone to spy on everyone else and provide tips on suspicious activity. How many people will end up in the database because someone who dislikes them reported them to the authorities? The Homeland Security Department's "See Something, Say Something" campaign is truly frightening. Do we want to be a nation of informants?

Don't think this has anything to do with "terrorism." The high volume of information flowing into the government's computers will actually render law-enforcement agencies less able to detect real threats. Indiscriminate gathering of data makes us less, not more, safe.

We shouldn't be so naive as to think these new data-gathering powers won't be used even when the authorities know there is no threat. The Post says that "state reports have sometimes inappropriately reported on lawful meetings." That should surprise no one. Give government the power to spy on bad guys, and it will spy on anyone it feels like. Betting against that is like betting the sun won't come up tomorrow.

Of course, government officials say only real threats are the target of surveillance. Notice that the war party was wrong when it said that "fighting them over there" would mean we won't have to "fight them over here." In fact, fighting over there is what brought the threat here. But now we're told that home-grown "terrorism" is the new big danger. There is much reason for skepticism: The alleged plots exposed by the FBI seem to have been hatched by the FBI's own informants. If the FBI has to furnish a "suspect" with phony explosives before arresting him, what threat was really involved? Such cases should sicken every American. Government agents should not be giving security tests to individuals and arresting them if they fail.

But apparently in this age of the "war on terror" anything goes. Does anybody care?

Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation and editor of The Freeman magazine.

SOURCE: http://www.counterpunch.org/richman01142011.html

I wonder why my government is spending my tax dollars to monitor me, an upright, loyal citizen who believes more deeply in the Constitution and laws of this country than do most U.S. officials sworn to uphold them. I was a patriot before it was popular to say so. I will defend free speech more strongly and at greater personal risk than most members of the ACLU (and I have proof of that). (I actually take the time to answer hate mail!)

If there really are so many horrible, dangerous terrorists out to get us, why, then, is the FBI wasting time and resources trying to provoke me into making some unlawful statement? Why are our intelligence agencies infiltrating meetings of peace groups, like the one in Lake Worth, Florida that NBC News discovered was attended by the DOD?

In the Middle of the Night...

While most slept...

With spite and malice did They conquer Their fellows...

Never once having thought of them in the endeavour...

Into that Goodnight - Goes Liberty...

-//-

We are now the Enemy. We stand in the way of the NWO and Dominant Rule over Us by those Who think Us nothing but Cattle. The Time to stampede is running out...

TICK - TOCK...

Mercuriel wrote:We are now the Enemy. We stand in the way of the NWO and Dominant Rule over Us by those Who think Us nothing but Cattle. The Time to stampede is running out...

TICK - TOCK...

Musical

TERRORIST!!!!!!

Big Brother Obama: White House Plans Internet ID System
by Tom Burghardt
January 18, 2011
Global Research, Antifascist Calling...

Urged by one and all to "tone down" what media pundits and political elites describe as "strident," even "violent" rhetoric that has "poisoned" our "national conversation" and "sharply polarized" the population, the shooting rampage in Tucson which claimed six lives, including that of a nine-year-old girl is, in fact, emblematic of the moral bankruptcy and utter hypocrisy of those selfsame capitalist elites.

Faced with an unprecedented economic crisis that has destroyed the lives of tens of millions our fellow citizens, not to mention aggressive wars which have cratered entire societies and murdered hundreds of thousands of people who have done us no harm, when, pray tell, will the "conversation" turn to the unprecedented annihilation of democratic institutions and the rule of law which exonerates, even celebrates, those who murder, maim and torture on an industrial scale?

Just last week, the Obama administration announced plans to roll-out an "identity ecosystem" for the internet. Although passed over in silence by major media, at the risk of being accused of "incivility," particularly when it comes to the "hope" fraudster and war criminal in the Oval Office, Americans need to focus - sharply - on the militarists, political bag men and corporate gangsters working to bring George Orwell's dystopian world one step closer to reality.

Earlier this month, CNET disclosed that the administration "is planning to hand the U.S. Commerce Department authority over a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans."

White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt said that the secret state's latest move to lower the boom on privacy and free speech will embed the surveillance op at the Commerce Department. Schmidt, speaking at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research said Commerce is "the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government" to centralize these efforts.

According to CNET, the move "effectively pushes the department to the forefront of the issue, beating out other potential candidates, including the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security."

Really? I don't think so.

NSA Clearly in the Frame
Last week, Government Computer News reported that the secretive Pentagon spy shop broke ground on a "massive new National Security Agency cyber intelligence center in Utah."

The multibillion dollar facility (cost overruns not included) "will have 100,000 square feet of raised-floor data center space and more than 900,000 square feet of technical support and administrative space" that "will support the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative."

In September, NextGov reported that then Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Collection, Glenn Gaffney, said the new data center "would support the intelligence community in providing foreign intelligence about cybersecurity threats and protect Defense Department networks."

Back in 2009, investigative journalist James Bamford wrote in The New York Review of Books that "the mammoth $2 billion structure will be one-third larger than the US Capitol and will use the same amount of energy as every house in Salt Lake City combined."

While corporate media tell us that the center will "enhance" the nation's capacity to thwart "cyber threats" the fact is, Bamford wrote, the complex will "house trillions of phone calls, e-mail messages, and data trails: Web searches, parking receipts, bookstore visits, and other digital 'pocket litter'." In other words, the vast data repository will serve as "spy central" for our digital minders.

"Just how much information will be stored in these windowless cybertemples?" Bamford wondered. According to a report prepared for the Pentagon by the ultra-spooky MITRE Corporation, "as the sensors associated with the various surveillance missions improve, the data volumes are increasing with a projection that sensor data volume could potentially increase to the level of Yottabytes (10 to the 24 Bytes) by 2015."

This is "roughly equal to about a septillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) pages of text, numbers beyond Yottabytes haven't yet been named," Bamford avers.

Leaving aside disinformational pyrotechnics by media cheerleaders that the NSA's data equivalent of a Wal-Mart supercenter will primarily exist for "cybersecurity," "foreign intelligence" and protecting "Defense Department networks," Bamford counters that "once vacuumed up and and stored in these near-infinite 'libraries,' the data are then analyzed by powerful infoweapons, supercomputers running complex algorithmic programs, to determine who among us may be - or may one day become - a terrorist."

"In the NSA's world of automated surveillance on steroids" Bamford avers, "every bit has a history and every keystroke tells a story."

Or as Cryptohippie puts it far less delicately, every keystroke or cellphone ping is "criminal evidence, ready for use in a trial."

Just what are they up to? Even Congress, always willing to give the Executive Branch a free pass when it comes to blanket surveillance, doesn't know. Last week the Associated Press reported that "the Pentagon failed to disclose clandestine cyber activities in a classified report on secret military actions that goes to Congress."

Citing "gaps" in reporting requirements on clandestine operations, "emerging high-tech operations are not specifically listed in the law," AP averred. After all, "cyber oversight is still a murky work in progress for the Obama administration."

Perhaps AP and other media outlets should look more closely at what's hidden inside that "murky work" and where its authority comes from. "Oversight" is certainly not part of the equation.

Cybersecurity's Brave New World
As Antifascist Calling previously reported, the operational nuts-and-bolts of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI) is a closely-held state secret that derives authority from classified annexes of the National Security Presidential Directive 54, Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23 (NSPD 54/HSPD 23) issued by our former "decider."

Those 2008 orders are so contentious that both the Bush and Obama administrations have refused to release details to Congress, prompting a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) demanding the full text of the underlying legal authority governing "cybersecurity" be made public.

Details on the "trusted identity" scheme are scarce, but back in July Antifascist Calling reported that the secret state had deployed New York Times reporter John Markoff as a conduit for administration scaremongering.

Schmidt told the "Gray Lady" that administration plans involved "a 'voluntary trusted identity' system that would be the high-tech equivalent of a physical key, a fingerprint and a photo ID card, all rolled into one."

According to the Times, "the system might use a smart identity card, or a digital credential linked to a specific computer, and would authenticate users at a range of online services."

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke was quick to downplay the more sinister implications of the hustle saying, "We are not talking about a national ID card."

CNET reported Locke's claim that "we are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy, and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities."

Why bother with privacy when surrendering your rights is so convenient!

Touted as a warm and fuzzy "identity ecosystem," Government Computer News reported that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has even launched a dedicated website hawking the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC).

According to NIST, "NSTIC envisions a cyber world - the Identity Ecosystem - that improves upon the passwords currently used to login online."

We're informed that the "Identity Ecosystem will provide people with a variety of more secure and privacy-enhancing ways to access online services. The Identity Ecosystem enables people to validate their identities securely when they're doing sensitive transactions (like banking) and lets them stay anonymous when they're not (like blogging). The Identity Ecosystem will enhance individuals' privacy by minimizing the information they must disclose to authenticate themselves."

Government Computer News tells us that the "identity ecosystem" isn't envisaged as a "national Internet ID to track online activities." The devil's in the details and what little we do know should set alarm bells ringing.

The program office will "support and coordinate interagency collaboration" and "promote pilot projects and other implementations." Which agencies are we talking about here? What pilot projects and "other implementations" are being alluding to? We don't know.

We do know however, that the National Security Agency and Department of Homeland Security have forged a Memorandum of Agreement which will increase Pentagon control over America's telecommunications and electronic infrastructure

In fact, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation disclosed in October, DHS has been tracking people online and that the agency even established a "Social Networking Monitoring Center" to explicitly do so.

Documents obtained by the civil liberties watchdog group revealed that the agency has been vacuuming-up "items of interest," systematically monitoring "citizenship petitioners" and analyzing "online public communication."

Wouldn't an "identity ecosystem" greatly facilitate online spying, despite administration claims to the contrary?

While the system is "voluntary" and individuals will not be compelled to sign up, the secret state is lusting after a sure fire means to identify the billions of computers, smart phones and other digital devices that plague us.

And even if you choose not to "opt in," well, plans are already afoot by advertising pimps and their partners in the national security state "to collect the digital equivalent of fingerprints from every computer, cellphone and TV set-top box in the world," The Wall Street Journal recently disclosed.

As with all other aspects of the "War on Terror" threatscape, the closer one looks at the Obama regime's "identity ecosystem" the less warm and fuzzy it becomes.

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,, 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=22832

Now theres some Chains (Change) We can believe in...

Obama - LOL. What a Farce.

Hope for Change was the Slogan but what most didn't see is - It was Their Mantra - Not Ours. That Slogan was the Elites saying "Change We can believe in" as They knew Obama would carry on and implement the Agenda. After all - They hand-picked Him for It...

Facebook apps can now access your home address and mobile phone number

In a move that could herald a new level of danger for Facebook users, third party application developers are now able to access your home address and mobile phone number.

Facebook has announced that developers of Facebook apps can now gather the personal contact information from their users.

Platform Updates: New User Object fields, Edge.remove Event and More

User Address and Mobile Phone Number
We are now making a user’s address and mobile phone number accessible as part of the User Graph object. Because this is sensitive information, we have created the new user_address and user_mobile_phone permissions. These permissions must be explicitly granted to your application by the user via our standard permissions dialogs. ........

Link to developers.facebook.com:
https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/446

SOURCE: http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1328646/pg1

Domestic use of aerial drones by law enforcement likely to prompt privacy debate

By Peter Finn
January 23, 2011

Domestic use of aerial drones by law enforcement likely to prompt privacy debate
Drones on the home front
With Air Force's Gorgon Drone 'we can see everything'
As dawn broke, a SWAT team waiting to execute a search warrant wanted a last-minute aerial sweep of the property, in part to check for unseen dangers. But there was a problem: The department's aircraft section feared that if it put up a helicopter, the suspect might try to shoot it down.

So the Texas agents did what no state or local law enforcement agency had done before in a high-risk operation: They launched a drone. A bird-size device called a Wasp floated hundreds of feet into the sky and instantly beamed live video to agents on the ground. The SWAT team stormed the house and arrested the suspect.

"The nice thing is it's covert," said Bill C. Nabors Jr., chief pilot with the Texas DPS, who in a recent interview described the 2009 operation for the first time publicly. "You don't hear it, and unless you know what you're looking for, you can't see it."

The drone technology that has revolutionized warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan is entering the national airspace: Unmanned aircraft are patrolling the border with Mexico, searching for missing persons over difficult terrain, flying into hurricanes to collect weather data, photographing traffic accident scenes and tracking the spread of forest fires.

But the operation outside Austin presaged what could prove to be one of the most far-reaching and potentially controversial uses of drones: as a new and relatively cheap surveillance tool in domestic law enforcement.

For now, the use of drones for high-risk operations is exceedingly rare. The Federal Aviation Administration - which controls the national airspace - requires the few police departments with drones to seek emergency authorization if they want to deploy one in an actual operation. Because of concerns about safety, it only occasionally grants permission.



But by 2013, the FAA expects to have formulated new rules that would allow police across the country to routinely fly lightweight, unarmed drones up to 400 feet above the ground - high enough for them to be largely invisible eyes in the sky.

Such technology could allow police to record the activities of the public below with high-resolution, infrared and thermal-imaging cameras.

One manufacturer already advertises one of its small systems as ideal for "urban monitoring." The military, often a first user of technologies that migrate to civilian life, is about to deploy a system in Afghanistan that will be able to scan an area the size of a small town. And the most sophisticated robotics use artificial intelligence to seek out and record certain kinds of suspicious activity.

But when drones come to perch in numbers over American communities, they will drive fresh debates about the boundaries of privacy. The sheer power of some of the cameras that can be mounted on them is likely to bring fresh search-and-seizure cases before the courts, and concern about the technology's potential misuse could unsettle the public.

"Drones raise the prospect of much more pervasive surveillance," said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. "We are not against them, absolutely. They can be a valuable tool in certain kinds of operations. But what we don't want to see is their pervasive use to watch over the American people."

read on: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/22/AR2011012204111.html

Love Always
mudra

William Pawelec Interview

Billions of Chips Ready to Implant.
The inventors testimony before he died

Posted December 30, 2010

Mr. William Pawelec was a U.S. Air Force computer operations and programming specialist with numerous credentials in security technologies and access control systems. He gave this interview with Dr. Greer prior to the 2001 National Press Club Disclosure event and asked that it not be released until after his death. We recently found out that Mr. William Pawelec passed away on May 22, 2007 and we received permission to release it in December 2010.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yytSNQ2ogD4


Love Always
mudra

Micro Drones to Fly Surveillance Missions Over The U.S.




In 2007, it was revealed by reporters in Texas that unmanned drones were being used in supposed border control operations. We detailed that report with supporting evidence that drones clearly were being used inland away from border control functions.

Recently, an article from Miami-Dade announced the arrival of a 16-pound micro drone T-Hawk surveillance model designed by Honeywell. The video below shows a more detailed view of the capabilities of this surveillance drone. Keep in mind, this is only what is being announced at the moment, which has nothing to do with the massive amount of R&D that has being going on to reduce the size of flying surveillance. There have even been reports about "wasp" drones to sniff out Wi-FI networks as well.

Pending FAA approval, these specific unmanned aerial vehicles are set to be used domestically throughout the United States. Besides the obvious uses for these drones such as during a legitimate raid, these drones may be used in order to further the police state and restrict free speech in America.

Love Always
mudra

drones...yeah,dang,right?
could we just stop with the wars and all this nonsense?
nothing against military personnel,but i say bring them home and have them working to rebuild america-speaking as an american...
and what's the deal with a foreign president,right?
seems like we need to seriously shape up and be a free country,and these billionaires should just start sharing the wealth...folks are freezing and starving while these drones are up to no good-this is no good! y'know??