Shh! Obama gets anti-secrecy award… in secret

Comment: Days before the leak indicating that Obama signed a secret presidential finding authorising covert ops in Libya he is awarded with an anti-secrecy award. Stunningly Orwellian.

ABBY PHILLIP
Politico
March 31, 2011

President Obama finally and quietly accepted his “transparency” award from the open government community this week — in a closed, undisclosed meeting at the White House on Monday.

The secret presentation happened almost two weeks after the White House inexplicably postponed the ceremony, which was expected to be open to the press pool.

This time, Obama met quietly in the Oval Office with Gary Bass of OMB Watch, Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive, Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight, Lucy Dalglish of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and Patrice McDermott of OpenTheGovernment.org, without disclosing the meeting on his public schedule or letting photographers or print reporters into the room.

“Our understanding going into the meeting was that it would have a pool photographer and a print reporter, and it turned out to be a private meeting,” Bass told POLITICO. “He was so on point, so on target in the conversation with us, it is baffling why he would not want that message to be more broadly heard by reporters and the public interest community and the public generally.”

Full article here

Video- Big Brother Watching Drivers

Video- Big Brother Is Watching You

TIME: Everything’s Tracked- Get Over It

Aaron Dykes
Infowars.com
March 13, 2011

In an astounding cover story for the March 21 issue of TIME called ‘Your Data for Sale,’ author Joel Stein tells readers to simply “get over” constant surveillance. The tagline, “Everything about you is being tracked– get over it” puts the issue in your face. Yeah, get over it, and the TSA porno-scanners and grope-downs, too.

Newsweek, like TIME, another Skull and Bones-dominated media organ, similarly published a shocker in 2009 with its cover story, ‘The Case for Killing Granny,’ preparing the masses to simply accept massive shifts in society’s norms as if it were a trifling occurrence. Unauthorized NSA wiretapping and other related surveillance (started long ago) was at least controversial during the Bush Administration, though it has unabashedly continued under Obama.



In an promotional interview with CNN about the article, author Joel Stein makes light of the fact that his social security number (and lots of other personal data), as well as that of his family members, were easily found online.

Stein and CNN host Kiran Chetry giggle like schoolgirls about Facebook’s exploitation of personal data, and the many other data-mining companies who keep “permanent files” on us. Stein even quips that he has “blackmail material” now on his mother and sister, whose SSN numbers he obtained during his research. Stein further called personalized-ads on systems like Google’s G-MAIL “kinda cool.” That’s right, now that we’re at the heart of a big brother system, 1984 is kinda cute-and-fuzzy.



Gadget, covering the upcoming TIME article, has posted an article ‘How to Opt Out of Everything Online‘ with information on how to opt-out from many of the online data companies. Below is the first of a long-list of resources and/or preference settings where you can lobby to take yourself off of the data-mining lists:

Network Advertising Initiative
Oh man, strap in for this one. The NAI Opt-out Tool shows you all the big-name marketing companies that have installed tracking cookies on your computer and lets you opt out of some or all of them in one fell swoop.

While these options may improve some aspects of online privacy, don’t hold your breath. Your ISPs alone are likely storing complete records of everything you do, to say nothing of what the NSA and other intelligence outlets have underway.

It would seem the death of privacy and the 4th amendment is officially upon us. Morever, it’s something to be passively accepted and even laughed about. The TIME story has a publish date of March 21, 2011; the detailed story text is not yet available.

Supreme Court Allows Suit to Force DNA Testing of Evidence

ADAM LIPTAK
The New York Times
March 7, 2011

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday made it easier for inmates to sue for access to DNA evidence that could prove their innocence.

The legal issue in the case was tightly focused, and quite preliminary: Was Hank Skinner, a death row inmate in Texas, entitled to sue a prosecutor there under a federal civil rights law for refusing to allow testing of DNA evidence in his case? By a 6-to-3 vote, the court said yes, rejecting a line of lower-court decisions that had said the only proper procedural route for such challenges was a petition for habeas corpus.

In her opinion for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg emphasized how narrowly the court was ruling. Allowing Mr. Skinner to sue, she said, is not the same thing as saying he should win his suit.

Red entire article

TSA, DHS plan massive rollout of mobile surveillance vans with long-distance X-ray capability, eye movement tracking and more

Mike Adams
Natural News
March 6, 2011

Newly-released documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) reveal that the US Depart of Homeland Security has been working on plans to roll out a new wave of mobile surveillance technologies at train stations, stadiums and streets. These new technologies will track your eye movements, capture and record your facial dimensions for face-recognition processing, bathe you in X-rays to look under your clothes, and even image your naked body using whole-body infrared images that were banned from consumer video cameras because they allowed the camera owners to take “nude” videos of people at the beach.

Most importantly, many of these technologies are designed to be completely hidden, allowing the government to implement “covert inspection of moving subjects.” You could be walking down a hallway at a sports stadium, in other words, never knowing that you’re being bathed in X-rays from the Department of Homeland Security, whose operators are covertly looking under your clothes to see if you’re carrying any weapons.

Roving vans to “track eye movements”

According to a Forbes.com article (http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenbe…), one project pursued by DHS using technology from Siemens would “mount backscatter x-ray scanners and video cameras on roving vans, along with other cameras on buildings and utility poles, to monitor groups of pedestrians, assess what they carried, and even track their eye movements.”

Another project involved developing “a system of long range x-ray scanning to determine what metal objects an individual might have on his or her body at distances up to thirty feet.”

We already know that the U.S. government has purchased 500 vans using covert backscatter technology to covertly scan people on the streets (http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenbe…). They’re called “Z Backscatter Vans, or ZBVs.”

This is all part of the U.S. government’s new wave of police state surveillance that aims to track and irradiate innocent civilians who have committed no crime. Under the new Janet Napolitano regime, all Americans are now considered potential terrorists, and anyone can be subjected to government-sanctioned radiation scanning at any time, without their knowledge or approval.

And don’t think these efforts will be limited merely to backscatter technology: The TSA is now testing full-power, deep-penetrating X-ray machines (like the ones that deliver chest X-rays in hospitals) in order to check people for bombs they may have swallowed. Yes, Janet Napolitano now wants to look inside your colon! And they’re willing to X-ray everyone — without their consent — in order to do that.

Read the documents yourself

If you have trouble believing the U.S. government is unleashing a new wave of police state covert scanning vans on to the streets of America, you can read the documents yourself — all 173 pages. They’re available on the EPIC website at: http://epic.org/privacy/body_scanne…

EPIC calls these vans “mobile strip search devices” because they give the federal government technology to look under your clothes without your permission or consent. It’s also being done without probable cause, so it’s a violation of the Fourth Amendment protections that are guaranteed to Americans under the Bill of Rights.

“It’s a clear violation of the fourth amendment that’s very invasive, not necessarily effective, and poses all the same radiation risks as the airport scans,” said EPIC attorney Ginger McCall, in the Forbes article (above).
Huge health risks to the population

It’s not just the privacy issues that raise red flags here, of course: It’s also the fact that the U.S. government has no respect whatsoever for the health of its citizens who are being subjected to these radiation emitting devices. Even while the TSA refuses to release testing results from its own naked body scanners, DHS keeps buying more machines (and more powerful machines) that will only subject travelers to yet more radiation.

As we’ve already reported here on NaturalNews.com, numerous scientists are already on the record warning that the TSA’s backscatter “naked body scanners” could cause breast cancer, sperm mutation and other health problems (http://www.naturalnews.com/030607_n…).

But the U.S. government doesn’t seem to care what happens to your health. Their position is that their “right” to know what you’re carrying under your clothes or inside your body overrides your right to privacy or personal health. All they have to do is float a couple of fabricated terrorism scare stories every few months, and then use those “threats” as justification for violating the Constitutional rights of U.S. citizens are very turn.

The real question in all this, of course, is how far will this go? The TSA is already reaching down your pants and feeling up peoples’ genitals as part of the “security” measures. Will DHS soon just start subjecting people to body cavity searches as a necessary security requirement before entering a football stadium, for example? Will Americans now be X-rayed with cancer-causing ionizing radiation — without their awareness or consent — merely because they are walking down the street or boarding a train?

That seems to be the case. And as you can readily tell from all this, it’s getting harder and harder for the fast-dwindling group of deniers to claim America isn’t already a police state. The USA is fast becoming a high-tech version of the very worst police state tyrannies witnessed throughout human history. The only difference is that now they have “science” on their side with the coolest new technology that can violate your rights and irradiate your body in a hundred different ways, with high-resolution images and digital storage devices.

I suppose if all this were being done to really stop international terrorists, that might be one thing. But what has become increasingly clear in observing the government’s behavior in this realm is that the U.S. government now considers Americans to be the enemy — especially those who have the gall to defend their Constitutionally-protected freedoms or question the unjustified centralization of power taking place right now in Washington.

The DHS is America’s new secret police. And their cameras are pointing inward, into the everyday lives of Americans; not outward, aimed at international terrorists.

When the price of security becomes forfeiting your liberty, the source of the “terror” is no longer the terrorists but your own government. Isn’t this the lesson that history has taught us well?

Watch the talk by Naomi Wolf, who explains all this extremely well:

Part 1:http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=EEE6C…

Part 2:http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=176F5…

This video will open your eyes to what’s really happening today.It has all happened beforein recent history, and the patterns are undeniable. Watch the videos to learn more.

Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/031603_surveillance_police_state.html#ixzz1FpbPdIeI

Texas Plans to Implement REAL ID in 2013

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
March 4, 2011

Tela Mange, Chief of Media Relations at Texas Department of Public Safety, has responded to an Infowars.com request for information on the state’s implementation of REAL ID.

The REAL ID Act was enacted by Congress on May 11, 2005, without significant debate. It modifies U.S. federal law pertaining to security, authentication, and issuance procedures standards for state driver’s licenses and ID cards.


In response to numerous states resisting compliance, the federal government has extended the deadline several times. In 2007, Maine and Utah led the way in passing resolutions refusing implementation.

Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Washington have joined Maine and Utah in passing legislation opposing Real ID.

Similar resolutions are pending in Alaska, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, D.C., West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

See National ID and the REAL ID Act at the Electronic Privacy Information Center for more details.

According to Mange, the timeframe for implementation in Texas has changed to January 15, 2013. “DPS is planning to follow the standards established to ensure that we issue secure credentials,” she wrote in an email.

“There are no new biometric requirements,” she added in a follow-up email.
On March 1, 2007, the Department of Homeland Security issued a NPRM (Notice of Proposed Rule Making) for the Real ID Act that detailed the minimum data elements required. It did not require a state to include biometric technology in its driver’s licenses.

Mange was contacted after she was quoted by CNET News. “We’re still reading the fine print,” she said in response to a question about the status of the law and its implementation in Texas.

REAL ID was in the news this week after House Republican sent a letter to DHS boss Janet Napolitano. The republicans said that “any further extension of Real ID threatens the security of the United States.”

Unless Homeland Security grants an extension, the law’s requirements take effect on May 11, CNET notes. According to reports, DHS is considering pushing back the deadline a further 21 months to January 15, 2013.


Reps. Lamar Smith, Peter King, and Jim Sensenbrenner argued in the letter that federal criminal charges of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari in Texas make implementation of the law even more necessary. “The goal of the REAL ID Act is to prevent another 9/11-type attack by disrupting terrorist travel,” they argue.

DHS mulled COVERT scans of pedestrians, vehicles

Thomas Frank
USA Today
March 4, 2011

The Homeland Security Department paid contractors millions of dollars to develop and study surveillance systems that could covertly track pedestrians and check under people’s clothing with airport-style body scanners as they enter train stations, bus depots or major events, newly released documents show.

Two contracts the department signed in 2005 and 2006 were part of its effort to acquire technology to find suicide bombers in a crowd of moving people, according to documents given to the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a privacy-rights group that is suing Homeland Security.

The department dropped the projects in a “very early” phase after testing showed flaws, Homeland Security spokesman Bobby Whithorne says.

EPIC lawyer Ginger McCall says the project is disturbing nonetheless because it shows the department “obviously believed that this level of surveillance is acceptable when in fact it is not at all acceptable.”

Read full article

Big Brother: The Orwellian Nightmare Come True

Mark Dice
Infowars.com
March 4, 2011

When George Orwell (pen name of Eric Blair) first published his famous novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, it was the year 1949, and it told a dark story of what he envisioned life may be like in the future-in the year 1984. His book, as well as his name, have become synonymous with privacy concerns involving technology and also an all-powerful, oppressive ruling elite that strictly governs the activities of the population with an iron fist.

Orwell’s book is where we get the term Big Brother from, such as when people say “Big Brother is watching you.” When people say this, they’re referring to the omniscient surveillance system described in the novel that continuously watched and listened to people-even in their own homes. When we call something Orwellian to describe the invasiveness of certain technology or government policies, we are also referring to George Orwell’s nightmarish vision he described in his novel. There are several other terms that Orwell himself coined in Nineteen Eighty-Four, such as doublethink, thoughtcrime, and memory hole, which have also become part of our vernacular.


Even if you have not read the book or seen the film, you are still undoubtedly familiar with the issues that make up the storyline, such as the high-tech surveillance system watching and listening to everyone in order to keep them in line with the government (called the Party in the novel). You are probably also familiar with the concept of a small elite ruling class (what Orwell calls the Inner Party) living in luxury and wielding unimaginable power over lower level citizens. In the novel, people have lost their freedom, their critical thinking skills, and even the ability to love due to the cultural depths society has sunk to as a result of Big Brother’s control. The reason Nineteen Eighty-Four remains so popular, and the reason society has adopted vocabulary from the book, is because it serves as more than merely a fictional novel for the reader’s entertainment. The novel served (and continues to serve) as a stark warning of what the future may hold if we don’t resist invasive technology and oppressive government policies, or if the population at large becomes so lost in a world of pop culture, sports entertainment, or our own selfish desires, that we simply don’t care.

My new non-fiction book, Big Brother: The Orwellian Nightmare Come True, looks at technology that now exists or is under development and will exist in the near future, that threatens to make our world just as horrific or even worse than the world George Orwell described. I have assembled information from mainstream news sources, industry experts, and even patent numbers of the most invasive and sinister Orwellian devices anyone could dream of. We will also look at actual government programs and policies that seem as if they came right out of Orwell’s dark imagination, such as the government secretly paying mainstream media reporters to act as gate-keepers and propagandists for the establishment, and the FBI illegally spying on and smearing peaceful political activists who were seen as problematic.

I am certainly not anti-technology. Technology is a fantastic tool which can benefit those who use it, or harm them, depending on the intentions of the person designing it or using it. Technology has brought us amazing inventions that would seem supernatural to civilizations that lived just a few hundred years ago. Arthur C. Clark, the author of 2001 a Space Odyssey, was correct when he said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” While this magical technology has brought us the convenience of calling our friends or family on our cell phones, allowing us to talk with them from virtually anywhere in the world, and given us the ability to watch events on the other side of the earth unfold live on television, and other wonders such as the Internet, DVR recorders, YouTube, Excel spread sheets, word processors, e-mail, Facebook, and more; it has also brought us identity theft, illegal wiretaps, Peeping Toms using hidden video cameras, cyber stalkers, and worse.

If you have ever left your cell phone at home when you’ve left the house for the day, you’ve realized how much we depend on technology for what have become common and necessary activities. If you’ve ever been at home when the electricity unexpectedly goes out, you have also realized how much we take for granted in our modern world.

House Republicans attempt to revive Real ID

Declan McCullagh
CNet
March 3, 2011

If you’re a resident of one of at least 24 states including Arizona, Georgia, and Washington, your driver’s license may no longer be valid for boarding an airplane or entering federal buildings as of May 11, 2011.

That’s the deadline that senior House Republicans are calling on the Obama administration to impose, saying states must be required to comply with so-called Real ID rules creating a standardized digital identity card that critics have likened to a national ID.

The political problem for the GOP committee chairmen is that the 2005 Real ID Act has proven to be anything but popular: legislatures of two dozen states have voted to reject its requirements, and in the Michigan and Pennsylvania legislatures one chamber has done so.

Read entire article

New Internal Cavity X-ray Technology for Airports

New Internal Cavity X-ray Technology for Airports

NEW X-ray technology that can reveal drug smugglers' internal cavities will be trialled at airports under a plan to fast-track security searches.

 Legislation before Federal Parliament would enable customs officers to use new body scanners instead of sending suspects to hospital for internal X-rays ordered by a doctor, reported the Herald Sun.

Federal police wasted more than 4600 hours in hospital waiting rooms last year because of drug smugglers waiting for scans.

More than 200 people were taken to hospital for internal searches, with almost 50 found to have drugs in their bodies.

 

Read the article

Child brain scans to pick out future criminals

Richard Alleyne
London Telegraph
Feb 22, 2011

The seeds of criminal and anti-social behaviour can be found in children as young as three, scientists have claimed.

More researchers believe that violent tendencies have a biological basis and that tests and brain imaging can pick them up in children.

They argue that, by predicting which children have the potential to be trouble, treatments could be introduced to keep them on the straight and narrow. If the tests are accurate enough then a form of screening could be introduced in the same way we test for some diseases.

The theories were put forward by two leading criminologists at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington.

Prof Adrian Raine, a British criminologist, argued that abnormal physical brain make-up could be a cause of criminality, as well as helping to predict it.

Full article here

GPS to track truant students

RELATED: Back in Jan. 2010, this program was implemented in Texas:
Paul J. Watson: ‘Texas Schoolkids Tagged With GPS Tracking Devices‘

TG Daily
February 20, 2011

Cutting class used to be all about dodging the hall monitor, but nowadays if students ditch too many times they will be asked to carry a GPS tracker in Anaheim, California. The GPS technology not only tells school officials where exactly the kids are, but asks them to enter a code at critical times in the day like lunch or a break, where they might be tempted to ditch.

Once the student enters a code like “1111,” which signifies all is good, it will send an email or text message to school administrators with the code and the student’s location.

The truancy plan doesn’t stop at GPS tracking but extends into personal coaching where adults can call a student’s phone to wake them up for school and make sure the student attends.

Read full article

Hummingbird Size Spy Drone Tested

Hummingbird Size Spy Drone Tested

Nano Hummingbird Spy Drone Being Developed By Pentagon

Huffington Post
February 19, 2011

It has taken five years to build and cost $4 million, per the Los Angeles Times, but the new model of the Nano Hummingbird drone really looks like a bird flying around. It would allow the military to literally drop a bird at a window ledger for reconnaissance purposes.

“You can use these things anywhere, put them anyplace, and the target will never even know they’re being watched,” said defense expert Peter W. Singer.

Don’t Be Evil? 10 Ways In Which Google Runs The World

Steve Watson & Paul Watson
Infowars.com
February 18, 2011

As far as mega corporations in bed with the government go, Google sits somewhere close to the top of the tree. The company was seeded with CIA money and is literally an a corporate arm of the intelligence community.
The following ten facts highlight how much influence Google has, and how the company has seemingly abandoned its own corporate motto, “Don’t be evil”.

#1 – Google has intimate and long standing connections to government spy networks.
 
The company has established a close working relationship with the National Security Agency, the government spy force responsible for warrantless monitoring of Americans’ phone calls and e-mails in the wake of 9/11. Google is supplying the software, hardware and tech support to US intelligence agencies in the process of creating a vast closed source database for global spy networks to share information.

Google’s partnership with the intelligence network is not new. As we reported in late 2006, An ex-CIA agent Robert David Steele has claimed sources told him that CIA seed money helped get the company off the ground.

Recent disclosures under the Freedom Of Information Act have also revealed that the federal government has several contracts with social media outlets, including Youtube which is owned by Google. The contracts are said to waive rules on monitoring users and permit companies to track visitors to government web sites for advertising purposes.

#2 – Google is one of the corporations at the forefront of the government’s drive to use cybersecurity as a pretext for restricting the openness of the Internet.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said that government regulation of Internet service providers (ISPs) is necessary. In fact, he said he thinks the entire concept of the Internet marketplace relies on it.

FBI Calls for Backdoor to Snoop Web

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
February 18, 2011

The FBI is once again calling for the internet to be converted into a Stasi-like spy grid. “Web-based e-mail, social-networking and peer-to-peer services are frustrating law enforcement wiretapping efforts, a lawyer for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation told lawmakers Thursday,” reports PCWorld.

The Obama administration will attempt to bribe, coerce, or intimidate web-based services not covered by traditional wiretap laws into helping the government turn the medium into a sprawling high-tech surveillance platform.


Valerie Caproni, general counsel at the FBI, reminded the U.S. House Judiciary Committee that the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, does not cover the internet. CALEA requires traditional telecom carriers to allow law enforcement agencies real-time access to communications.

Instead of forcing ISPs to adopt CALEA, the government will attempt to convince communication providers to build in so-called back doors allowing law enforcement access to their software. Caproni said she’s optimistic the U.S. government can find “incentives” for companies to “have intercept solutions engineered into their systems.”

“We are not looking for any new authority,” she said. “We are concerned we are losing ground in actually being able to gather the information we are authorized to have.”

Laura Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, said in a statement that the FBI plan “will actually change the structure of the Internet, providing the government with a master key to our online communications.”

Caproni said the FBI is concerned about the internet being used for criminal activity. “That criminal may be a massive drug dealer, they may be an arms trafficker, they may be a child pornographer or a child molester,” she said. “We need the actual ability to conduct the wiretaps so we can keep the streets safe.”

The FBI has a long history of using its authority to monitor and harass political activists. A report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation reveals that since 9/11, the FBI has been responsible for at least 40,000 violations of the law. It has functioned primarily since its inception in the early 1900s as a political police force tasked with going after political activists of all stripes.

“In many cases, many of those now under surveillance by the FBI are ordinary American citizens doing nothing more than exercising their First Amendment right to free speech by criticizing the government,” writes constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead.

Ms. Caproni has sheepishly admitted that the internet continues to stump the FBI and the government. It has allowed activists to coordinate and announce their protest activities. It also represents the greatest single threat to the ruling elite and the government because it allows unfettered dissemination of alternative news that is not reported by the corporate Mockingbird media.

Caproni told the House committee the FBI would have recommendations for Congress soon. Representative Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat, said Congress is ready to oblige. “What are you seeking here today?” he asked. “What is it exactly that you would want Congress to do?”

The FBI wants Congress to turn the internet into the largest and most efficient Stasi snoop grid in history. It wants a legal fig leaf to cover its effort to neutralize the opposition through surveillance and ultimately harassment, intimidation, and in the case of the Black Panthers and American Indian Movement activists in the 1960s and 70s, assassination.

Kids who skip school are tracked by GPS

Eric Carpenter
OC Register
February 18, 2011

ANAHEIM – Frustrated by students habitually skipping class, police and school officials in Anaheim are turning to GPS tracking to ensure they come to class.

The Anaheim Union High School District is the first in California to test Global Positioning System technology as part of a six-week pilot program that began last week, officials said.

Seventh- and eighth-graders with four unexcused absences or more this school year are assigned to carry a handheld GPS device, about the size of a cell phone.

Each morning on schooldays, they get an automated phone call reminding them that they need to get to school on time.

Read entire article