Filed under: 1984, ACTA, Big Brother, Censorship, copyright, Dictatorship, Empire, Fascism, file sharing, internet, internet blackout, internet censorship, internet police, internet policy, internet regulations, ISPs, nanny state, orwell, Police State, RIAA, verison | Tags: graduated-response policy, Motion Picture Association, Recording Industry Association of America
Verizon Terminating Copyright Infringers’ Internet Access
Wired
July 20, 2010
Verizon is terminating internet service to an unknown number of repeat copyright scofflaws, a year after suggesting it was not adopting a so-called graduated-response policy.
While it was not immediately clear whether other internet service providers were following suit, the move comes as the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America are lobbying ISPs and Congress to support terminating internet access for repeat, online copyright offenders.
All the while, the United States has been privately lobbying the European Union to “encourage” so-called three strikes policies, according to leaked documents surrounding a proposed international intellectual property accord.
Verizon was not immediately prepared to comment in detail on the developments, first reported by CNET, or to detail how many of its more than 8 million broadband subscribers it has terminated — although CNET said the number was “small.” The RIAA declined comment.
“We reserve the right to do that,” Verizon spokeswoman Bobbi Henson said in a telephone interview regarding the terminations. The next day, it “disputed” the accuracy of CNET’s story.
The RIAA announced a year ago it was winding down its litigation campaign against individual file sharers, about 30,000 lawsuits in all. Instead, the music industry’s lobbying and litigation arm said it would rely on a series of accords it had reached with “leading” internet service providers, in which ISPs have agreed “on principle” to shut off internet access to customers the RIAA catches file sharing repeatedly.
At that time, in a Jan. 5, 2009 interview, Verizon spokeswoman Ellen Yu said that, in reference to the RIAA announcement: “We are not working with them on this.”
Cara Duckworth, an RIAA spokeswoman, said the same day that “We have an agreement on principle with several leading ISPs but not all, and the agreement on principle is confidential.”
Other than Verizon, none of the leading ISPs have acknowledged practicing what the content industry is calling “graduated response.” Under Verizon’s plan, the ISP notifies customers that unlawful file sharing allegedly is taking place on their accounts — file sharing discovered by the RIAA or other intellectual property holders who actively police networks and IP addresses. Internet service could be terminated perhaps after several warnings.
Global treaty could ban file-sharers from Internet after ‘three strikes’
Filed under: 1984, 1st amendment, 2-party system, 2nd Amendment, 9/11 Truth, Al Gore, anti gun, Barack Obama, brownshirts, bush, climategate, Dictatorship, Dissent, Empire, Fairness Doctrine, Fascism, free specch, George Bush, Global Warming, global warming hoax, government bureaucrat, Gun Control, internet, Internet 2, internet blackout, internet censorship, internet police, john yoo, left right paradigm, nanny state, Neolibs, New World Order, NWO, obama czar, political dissent, provocateur, supreme court, truth movement | Tags: Information Czar
Obama’s Favorite For Supreme Court Justice Wants to Ban Guns, Free Speech
Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
January 15, 2010
 Obama’s Advisor Cass Sunstein is one of his top picks for a seat in the Supreme Court |
Cass Sunstein, president Obama’s appointee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and the man who outlined a plan for the government to infiltrate “conspiracy groups” in order to undermine them, is in direct line for a promotion to Supreme Court Justice.
Sunstein, already in an advanced position of power in the White House as Regulatory czar, has already called for strict restrictions on gun ownership, an internet “Fairness Doctrine”, and an effective ban on free speech where dissenting opinions to those of the government are expressed.
Suntein’s name was on various shortlists to replace Justice David Souter last year following his retirement, and prior to the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor. Sunstein’s name was also touted for the Supreme Court before Obama even took office in November 2008.
His close personal relationship with Obama should set alarm bells ringing for anyone who values the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, particularly as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, now aged 75, is likely to take retirement soon following illness, and with Justice John Paul Stevens now aged 90.
Sunstein and Obama go way back from their faculty days at the University of Chicago law school and are firm friends. Sunstein worked as an advisor to Obama during his presidential campaign and was drafted into the White House soon after Obama won the election.
As Obama’s “Information Czar”, Sunstein effectively interprets the law for the Executive. Sunstein operates in a similar, but much more elevated, role to that of former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, who infamously re-interpreted the law to legally sanction torture under the Bush Administration.
As we highlighted in our article yesterday, Sunstein has outlined plans for the government to infiltrate “conspiracy groups”, including the 9/11 Truth Movement, in order to undermine them via postings on chat rooms and social networks, as well as real meetings.
Sunstein has effectively penned the blueprint for a Cointelpro “provocateur” style program to silence what have become the government’s most vociferous and influential critics.
The specifics of the plans must be read in full in order to gauge their extreme nature and the threat Sunstein poses to the freedom in America.
On page 14 of Sunstein’s January 2008 white paper entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” he proposed that “under imaginable conditions” the government “might ban conspiracy theorizing” and could “impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories.”
In effect, Obama’s information czar wants to tax or ban outright, as in make illegal, opinions and ideas that the government doesn’t approve of.
Sunstein’s definition of a “conspiracy theorist” encompasses those who question manmade global warming and, most bizarrely, anyone who believes that sunlight is healthy for their bodies.
Presumably if Sunstein had been in power in the latter middle ages he would have attempted to tax and then ban the work of Galileo Galilei for subscribing to the theory that the Earth was not the centre of the universe and that it actually revolved around the Sun.
When he’s not going after those evil sunlight lovers, Sunstein advocates Internet censorship via enforced and regulated links in news pieces to opposing opinions.
Sunstein himself later retracted that proposal, explaining that it would be “too difficult to regulate [the Internet] in a way that would respond to those concerns”, and admitting that it was “almost certainly unconstitutional.”
Sunstein has also called for the re-writing of the First Amendment, and has even proposed a mandatory celebration of tax day in America.
His views on the Second Amendment have also raised serious concerns. In his book “Radicals in Robes,” he wrote: “[A]lmost all gun control legislation is constitutionally fine.”
Sunstein is on record attacking the Second Amendment. Watch in the following clip as he says “The Supreme Court has never suggested that the Second Amendment protects the individual right to have guns.”
Given his extreme actions and stated intentions, Cass Sunstein should be forced out of office and barred from practicing law with immediate effect. If president Obama has his way, however, we may very soon see his good buddy Sunstein elevated to the highest judicial position in the country.
Bloggers and news organizations must declare war on Cass Sunstein
Sunstein: BAN Conspiracy Theories Against Global Warming and U.S. Government
Filed under: 1984, 9/11 Truth, Anti-War, Barack Obama, Big Brother, brownshirts, Censorship, CIA, climate change, climategate, cointelpro, Communism, Concentration Camp, conspiracy theories, corruption, CRU, Dictatorship, Dissent, Empire, end the fed, enemy combatant, Fairness Doctrine, False Flag, Fascism, FBI, FCC, FEMA, free speech, Global Warming, global warming hoax, government bureaucracy, government bureaucrat, government control, government crimes, Hadley CRU, hoover, Internet 2, internet censorship, internet police, JFK, journalism, Martial Law, MK ultra, MLK, nanny state, Nazi, New World Order, NWO, obama, obama czar, obama deception, Oliver North, orwell, Police State, political dissidents, progressive, Protest, provocateur, scandal, Sean Hannity, stasi, stasi tactics, Sunstein, Surveillance, tax, trilateral commission, truth movement, u.s. constutiton, warrantless wiretap, White House, ww1, WW2 | Tags: Alien and Sedition Acts, Church Committee
Obama Advisor: BAN Conspiracy Theories Against U.S. Government
Sunstein: Taxation and censorship of dissenting opinions “will have a place” under thought police program advocated in 2008 white paper
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
January 14, 2010
The controversy surrounding White House information czar and Harvard Professor Cass Sunstein’s blueprint for the government to infiltrate political activist groups has deepened, with the revelation that in the same 2008 dossier he also called for the government to tax or even ban outright political opinions of which it disapproved.
Sunstein was appointed by President Obama to head up the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an agency within the Executive Office of the President.
On page 14 of Sunstein’s January 2008 white paper entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” the man who is now Obama’s head of information technology in the White House proposed that each of the following measures “will have a place under imaginable conditions” according to the strategy detailed in the essay.
- 1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing.
2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories.
That’s right, Obama’s information czar wants to tax or ban outright, as in make illegal, political opinions that the government doesn’t approve of. To where would this be extended? A tax or a shut down order on newspapers that print stories critical of our illustrious leaders?
And what does Sunstein define as “conspiracy theories” that should potentially be taxed or outlawed by the government? Opinions held by the majority of Americans, no less.
The notion that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in killing JFK, a view shared by the vast majority of Americans in every major poll over the last ten years, is an example of a “conspiracy theory” that the federal government should consider censoring, according to Sunstein.
A 1998 CBS poll found that just 10 per cent of Americans believed that Oswald acted alone, so apparently the other 90 per cent of Americans could be committing some form of thought crime by thinking otherwise under Sunstein’s definition.
Sunstein also cites the belief that “global warming is a deliberate fraud” as another marginal conspiracy theory to be countered by government action. In reality, the majority of Americans now believe that the man-made explanation of global warming is not true, and that global warming is natural, according to the latest polls.
But Sunstein saves his most ludicrous example until last. On page 5 he characterizes as “false and dangerous” the idea that exposure to sunlight is healthy, despite the fact that top medical experts agree prolonged exposure to sunlight reduces the risk of developing certain cancers.
To claim that encouraging people to get out in the sun is to peddle a dangerous conspiracy theory is like saying that promoting the breathing of fresh air is also a thought crime. One can only presume that Sunstein is deliberately framing the debate by going to such absurd extremes so as to make any belief whatsoever into a conspiracy theory unless it’s specifically approved by the kind of government thought police system he is pushing for.
Despite highlighting the fact that repressive societies go hand in hand with an increase in “conspiracy theories,” Sunstein’s ’solution’ to stamp out such thought crimes is to ban free speech, fulfilling the precise characteristic of the “repressive society” he warns against elsewhere in the paper.
“We could imagine circumstances in which a conspiracy theory became so pervasive, and so dangerous, that censorship would be thinkable,” he writes on page 20. Remember that Sunstein is not just talking about censoring Holocaust denial or anything that’s even debatable in the context of free speech, he’s talking about widely accepted beliefs shared by the majority of Americans but ones viewed as distasteful by the government, which would seek to either marginalize by means of taxation or outright censor such views.
No surprise therefore that Sunstein has called for re-writing the First Amendment as well as advocating Internet censorship and even proposing that Americans should celebrate tax day and be thankful that the state takes a huge chunk of their income.
The government has made it clear that growing suspicion towards authority is a direct threat to their political agenda and indeed Sunstein admits this on page 3 of his paper.
That is why they are now engaging in full on information warfare in an effort to undermine, disrupt and eventually outlaw organized peaceful resistance to their growing tyranny.
Sunstein’s Paper Provides More Evidence COLINTELPRO Still Operational
Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet.com
January 14, 2009
Cass Sunstein’s white paper, entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” is an exclamation point in the latest chapter of a long history of government tyranny against citizens who organize in opposition to the government. Sunstein argues that individuals and groups deviating from the official government narrative on a number of political issues and events are a national security threat. The administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs formulates “a plan for the government to infiltrate conspiracy groups in order to undermine them via postings on chat rooms and social networks, as well as real meetings, according to a recently uncovered article Sunstein wrote for the Journal of Political Philosophy,” writes Paul Joseph Watson.
 FDR, an icon for many liberals, sent the FBI after citizens who opposed his war policies. |
Sunstein’s plan is a reformulation of a long-standing effort to subvert the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights. Concerted government attacks against organized political opposition began soon after the founding of the republic — specifically with the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 by the Federalists — but have gained critical momentum in the modern era.
During the First World War, the government created the Bureau of Investigation, predecessor to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and appointed J. Edgar Hoover as its head. Hoover’s Bureau of Investigation, with the assistance of police and the military — described as a “citizens auxiliary” — conducted mass raids against the anti-war movement of the time, according to documents released by the Church Committee in the 1970s. The Bureau, specifically designed as a national political police force, “rounded up some 50,000 men without warrants of sufficient probable cause for arrest” for the crime of opposing the First World War.
In 1920, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer conducted a massive program in 33 cities and rounded up over 10,000 people. The Church Committee report (p.384) talks of “the abuses of due process of law incident to the raids.” According to Robert Preston (Aliens And Dissenters), the Palmer Raids involved “indiscriminate arrests of the innocent with the guilty, unlawful seizures by federal detectives” and other violations of constitutional rights. The Church Committee (p.385) “found federal agents guilty of using third-degree tortures, making illegal searches and arrests, using agents provocateurs.” Palmer and Hoover found no evidence of a proposed Bolshevik revolution as they claimed but a large number of the rounded up suspects continued to be held without trial.
The Second World War brought a new wave of government terrorism against political opponents. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a 1940 issued a memorandum giving the FBI the power to use warrantless wiretaps against suspected subversives, that is to say activists opposed to U.S. involvement in the war. FDR not only unleashed the FBI on activists, but concerned citizens as well. After giving a speech on national defense in 1940, FDR had his press secretary, Stephen Early, send Hoover the names of 128 people who had sent telegrams to the White House criticizing the address. “The President thought you might like to look them over,” Early’s note instructed Hoover.
Following the Second World War, the government engineered the immensely profitable (for the military-industrial complex) Cold War and the attendant Red Scare. In 1956, the FBI established COINTELPRO, short for Counter Intelligence Program. COINTELPRO was ostensibly manufactured to counter communist subversion, but as a numerous documents reveal the program focused almost exclusively on domestic opposition to government policies.
The Church Committee explains that COINTELPRO “had no conceivable rational relationship to either national security or violent activity. The unexpressed major premise of much of COINTELPRO is that the Bureau has a role in maintaining the existing social order, and that its efforts should be aimed toward combating those who threaten that order.”
“This is a rough, tough, dirty business, and dangerous,” former Assistant to Director Hoover, William C. Sullivan, told the Church Committee. “No holds were barred.”
This “rough, tough, dirty business” included infiltration of political groups, psychological warfare, legal harassment, and extralegal force and violence. “The FBI and police threatened, instigated and conducted break-ins, vandalism, assaults, and beatings. The object was to frighten dissidents and disrupt their movements,” write Mike Cassidy and Will Miller. “They used secret and systematic methods of fraud and force, far beyond mere surveillance, to sabotage constitutionally protected political activity. The purpose of the program was, in FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s own words, to ‘expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit and otherwise neutralize’ specific groups and individuals.”
After the Church Committee exposed COINTELPRO, the government claimed it had dismantled the program. However, in the 1980s, the Reagan administration legalized the tactics by signing Executive Order 12333.
“There is every reason to believe that even what was not legalized is still going on as well. Lest we forget, Lt. Col. Oliver North funded and orchestrated from the White House basement break-ins and other ‘dirty tricks’ to defeat congressional critics of U.S. policy in Central America and to neutralize grassroots protest. Special Prosecutor Walsh found evidence that North and Richard Secord (architect of the 1960s covert actions in Cambodia) used Iran-Contra funds to harass the Christic Institute, a church-funded public interest group specializing in exposing government misconduct,” Cassidy and Miller continue.
In addition, North worked with FEMA to develop contingency plans for suspending the Constitution, establishing martial law, and holding political dissidents in concentration camps. Since the false flag attacks of September 11, 2001, the government has worked incessantly to fine tune plans to impose martial law. It has also worked to federalize and militarized law enforcement around the country.
Brian Glick (War at Home) argues that COINTELPRO is a permanent feature of the government. “The record of the past 50 years reveals a pattern of continuous domestic covert action,” Glick wrote in the 1990s. “Its use has been documented in each of the last nine administrations, Democratic as well as Republican. FBI testimony shows ‘COINTELPRO tactics’ already in full swing during the presidencies of Democrats Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman. COINTELPRO itself, while initiated under Eisenhower, grew from one program to six under the Democratic administrations of Kennedy and Johnson… After COINTELPRO was exposed [by the Church Committee], similar programs continued under other names during the Carter years as well as under Nixon, Ford, and Reagan. They have outlived J. Edgar Hoover and remained in place under all of his successors.”
Sunstein’s call for authoritarian action against government critics — including outright censorship in addition to the established tactics mentioned above — reveals that COINTELPRO has indeed outlived Hoover.
“Some conspiracy theories create serious risks. They do not merely undermine democratic debate; in extreme cases, they create or fuel violence,” writes Sunstein. “Even if only a small fraction of adherents to a particular conspiracy theory act on the basis of their beliefs, that small fraction may be enough to cause serious harms.”
Sunstein’s analysis dovetails with that of the Department of Homeland Security. In its now infamous report on “rightwing extremism,” the DHS insists members of the constitutionalist movement (including Libertarians and advocates of the Second Amendment) are not only violent but also virulent racists (a conclusion provided pre-packaged by the ADL and the SPLC).
If realized, Cass Sunstein’s call for outright censorship and the absurd proposal to impose fines and taxes on people who hold political views contrary to those of our rulers will naturally result in a redoubling of political activity on the part of the truth movement (specifically mentioned as “kooks” by Sunstein) and Libertarians and Constitutionalists.
As history repeatedly demonstrates, when faced with a strong and determined political opposition government invariably turns to more brutal and violent methods to enforce its will. Our rulers understand this and that is why they are hurriedly finishing their high-tech police and surveillance grid.
Filed under: Barack Obama, beijing, Britain, China, copenhagen, Copenhagen treaty, cyber attack, cyber dominance, cyber security, cyber war, David Miliband, Europe, european union, future war, gordon brown, hackers, internet, internet blackout, internet manipulation, internet police, internet war, london, Military, Military Industrial Complex, north korea, Nuke, obama, Russia, south korea, United Kingdom, WW3, ww4 | Tags: Akmal Shaikh, People's Liberation Army, Shaikh
China Will Soon Have Power to Shut Lights Off Britain
UK Telegraph
January 4, 2010
The year is 2050, and a diplomatic dispute between China and Britain risks escalating into all-out war. But rather than launching a barrage of ballistic missiles and jet fighters to destroy key British targets, Beijing has a far simpler plan for defeating its enemy. It simply turns off the lights.
At the flick of a switch elite teams of Chinese hackers attached to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launch a hi-tech assault on Britain’s computer systems, with devastating consequences. Within minutes the country’s power stations, water companies, air traffic control, government and financial systems are totally shut down.
Britain’s attempt to respond by launching nuclear-armed Trident missiles at China has to be abandoned, as the computer systems that control the weapons system are no longer functioning.
At a time when relations between China and Britain are supposed to be improving, the prospect of Beijing launching a cyber attack against Britain and its allies might seem to be the stuff of fantasy.
After all, it is only two years since Gordon Brown made a highly successful visit to Beijing where the two countries agreed to increase trade by 50 per cent by this year, and to cooperate on a range of issues, such as global warming. As one of the world’s leading economic powers, China’s role on the world stage has transformed dramatically over the past decade, with the huge wealth that Beijing has accumulated from its impressive economic growth playing a key role in supporting the global economy.
As a consequence Western policymakers have intensified their efforts to persuade China to draw on its economic prosperity and play a constructive role in world affairs, such as persuading North Korea and Iran to give up their controversial nuclear weapons programmes.
But last week Mr Brown came up against an altogether different kind of China, one that appears to have no interest in behaving like a proper ally.
For weeks British ministers and officials tried desperately to persuade their Chinese counterparts to commute the death sentence passed on Akmal Shaikh, a mentally ill 53-year-old minicab driver from North London who was convicted of smuggling four kilos of heroin into China two years ago.
Mr Brown is said to have personally raised Shaikh’s case with the Chinese premier, Wen Jiaboa, when they met at last month’s climate change summit in Copenhagen, and David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, made similar entreaties to the Chinese embassy in London.
But for all the talk of improved bilateral ties between the two countries, the Chinese took absolutely no notice. At 10.30am on Tuesday, Shaikh was put to death by lethal injection in the remote province of Urumqi, and his body disposed of in an unmarked grave. And when Messrs Brown and Miliband sought to remonstrate with the Chinese authorities for pressing ahead with Shaikh’s execution, all they received from Beijing in response was a firm admonition not to interfere in China’s internal affairs.
At a stroke the cold reality of China’s attitude to the outside world was laid bare for all to see. Rather than being a partner that can be trusted to work with the West on issues of mutual concern, the Chinese have demonstrated that their default position is that Beijing’s only real priority it to look after its own interests, whether it is enforcing its zero tolerance policy on drug abuse or refusing to cooperate with global efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
China’s self-centred approach to international affairs should come as no surprise to the British government. American President Barack Obama was similarly rebuffed during his state visit to Beijing last November. Mr Obama arrived in China hoping to get Chinese cooperation on a range of issues, such as North Korea, financial stability and human rights. But despite being given a warm reception in public by Chinese officials, including a private guided tour of the Great Wall, the American president left Beijing without gaining any concessions from China on any major issue.
Much of China’s reluctance to engage constructively with the West on issues of mutual concern dates back to the psychological trauma the country suffered during the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century, when British gunboats routinely humiliated the Chinese government of the day. The deep feelings of resentment most Chinese feel for the humiliation they suffered continues to this day, and was even reflected in the official statement issued by the Chinese Embassy in London following Shaikh’s execution. It said the “strong resentment” felt by the Chinese public to drug traffickers was based “on the bitter memory of history”.
To ensure that there is no repeat of a time when foreign powers could push the Chinese people around with impunity, Beijing is today investing enormous effort into developing technology that would render the West’s superior military firepower useless.
There have already been well-documented instances in recent years where Chinese hackers have successfully launched cyber attacks against key Western targets, including the Pentagon and Whitehall. In 2006 Chinese computer hackers were accused of shutting down the House of Commons computer network by flooding it with bogus emails, and the Foreign Office and other key government departments have accused rogue Chinese computer experts of trying to hack in their systems.
In America Chinese hackers are reported to have attempted up to 100,000 attacks on government computers each year, and have successfully penetrated the computer systems of some of the American military’s elite units, such as US Army’s 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions.
But now Western security experts believe Beijing has authorised PLA commanders to draw up a cyber wars blueprint that would give them the capability to neutralise the West’s military firepower by 2050.
The Pentagon recently reported that two highly accomplished Chinese computer hackers had been recruited by the PLA to draft a detailed plan that would enable China to disable the United States’ entire aircraft carrier battle fleet, simply by launching a pre-emptive cyber attack.
This blueprint is now seen as being part of an aggressive push by Beijing to achieve “electronic dominance” over each of its global rivals by 2050, with the US, Britain, South Korea and Russia the main targets. To ensure they recruit the best hackers available it was recently reported that senior PLA officers were holding computer hacking competitions throughout the country, and recruiting the winners to their burgeoning cyber army.
“The Chinese realise that, if it came to a conventional military conflict with the West, they would struggle to compete with the West’s superior military firepower,” said a Western security source. “But by concentrating their efforts on cyber wars they believe they can develop a cheap and highly effective method of achieving technical supremacy over the West.”
The government is now so concerned about the threat posed by China’s cyber warriors that it has established a Cyber Security Operations Centre at the GCHQ listening centre in Cheltenham. Lord West, Mr Brown’s security adviser, said that Britain was developing the capability to strike back against Chinese hackers by recruiting former British hackers to GCHQ.
“You need youngsters who are deep into this stuff,” Lord West explained last year. “If they have been slightly naughty boys, very often they enjoy stopping other naughty boys.”
And he warned that any future war between world powers was more likely to be fought over the Internet than on the battlefield. “As their ability to use the web and the net grows, there will be more opportunity for these attacks,” he said.
Filed under: cyber security, DHS, Dictatorship, Dissent, Empire, government bureaucracy, government regulation, government takeover, Homeland Security, internet, internet police, internet regulation, Janet Napolitano, napolitano, NCSC, NSA, Protest, Uncategorized, War On Terror | Tags: Rod A. Beckstrom, Rod Beckstrom
Cyber-Security Chief Resigns in Protest
New Media Journal
December 29. 2009
 Rod A. Beckstrom |
The official in charge of coordinating the US government’s cyber-security operations has quit, saying the expanding control of the National Security Agency over the nation’s computer security efforts poses “threats to our democratic processes.”
“Even from a security standpoint, it is unwise to hand over the security of all government networks to a single organization,” said Rod A. Beckstrom, the head of the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cyber Security Center when speaking to United Press International.
“If our Founding Fathers were taking part in this debate [about the future organization of the government’s cyber-security activities], there is no doubt in my mind they would support a separation of security powers among different [government] organizations, in line with their commitment to checks and balances,” he said.
In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano last week, Mr. Beckstrom said the NSA “dominates most national cyber efforts” and “effectively controls DHS cyber efforts through detailees, technology insertions and the proposed move” of the NCSC to an NSA facility at the agency’s Fort Meade, Md., headquarters.
“I believe this is a bad strategy on multiple grounds,” Mr. Beckstrom wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by UPI. “The intelligence culture is very different than a network operations or security culture. In addition, threats to our democratic processes are significant if all top-level government network security and monitoring are handled by any one organization.”
Filed under: Censorship, climate change, climate emails, climategate, Co2, corruption, CRU, Dictatorship, federal crimes, Global Warming, global warming hoax, global warming skeptics, google censorship, hacked emails, hackers, Hoax, inside job, internet blackout, internet censorship, internet manipulation, internet police, manipulation, media blackout, media censorship, Media Manipulation, Michael Mann, Phil Jones, scandal, youtube censorship | Tags: Anthropogenic Global Warming, Christopher Brooker, Climate Research Unit, East Anglia University
Google & YouTube Censoring ClimateGate?
The Google search function comes with a handy helper. Typically, when you begin to type in search terms, a drop down window will appear to provide helpful suggestions, based on the search terms Google users are typing in most often.
I mention this, because a couple of days ago, typing the word “climate” into the window resulted in “climate hack” and “climate emails” popping up near the top of the handy helper suggestion list.
Today, Google’s handy helper seems to have had a change of heart.
Search Engines Censoring ClimateGate?
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
November 30, 2009
A fantastic article written by Christopher Brooker of the London Telegraph exposing the climate change fraud rocketed to the very top of a Google News search for “global warming,” only to disappear hours later.
“What is going on at Google? I only ask because last night when I typed “Global Warming” into Google News the top item was Christopher Booker’s superb analysis of the Climategate scandal,” writes James Delingpole.
“It’s still the most-read article of the Telegraph’s entire online operation – 430 comments and counting – yet mysteriously when you try the same search now it doesn’t even feature. Instead, the top-featured item is a blogger pushing Al Gore’s AGW agenda. Perhaps there’s nothing sinister in this. Perhaps some Google-savvy reader can enlighten me.”
Another blogger noted how other versions of the article appeared, but the original had been “disappeared,” despite the fact that other London Telegraph articles showed up as the top ranked result when entering their headline.
“That is using the search string: “Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation” – which is the full headline of the piece. It shows up where it has been quoted in full by other sites, but of the Booker column there is no sign,” writes Richard North.
In addition, searches for previous Christopher Brooker articles show up as top links – it’s only this particular article that has seemingly been targeted for censorship.
The same de-listing of the article is evident on other major search engine websites like Bing and Yahoo.
Despite the fact that Google has been caught gaming its search results in the past, this is more likely an “inside job” as it were.
It appears as if one of the editors at the Telegraph has gone into the backend of the Telegraph content management system and checked an option that prevents search engines from indexing a particular article.
“My guess is that this isn’t a Google issue. The problem probably lies closer to home – there looks to be an enemy in the camp, who has probably been using this, or something like it,” writes North, referring to a code that is inserted into a web page in order to block it from being ’spidered’. This is sometimes done to prevent site ripping and other hacks, but it also has the effect of barring search engines from being able to list the page in their results.
The fact that this has been applied to just this one article suggests that some higher-up at the Telegraph from the warmist camp was concerned about how the article had gone viral and wanted to contain its spread.
The fact that this attempt at sabotage has become a story within itself will probably only mean Brooker’s article will be read by more people, so the whole ruse has backfired.
Filed under: 1984, Big Brother, Britain, Control Grid, copyright, Dictatorship, Empire, Europe, european union, file sharing, fines, free speech, government control, government regulations, international treaty, internet, internet ban, internet fines, internet manipulation, internet police, internet regulations, ISP, london, manipulation, nanny state, Oppression, orwell, Police State, privacy rights, Surveillance, tax, United Kingdom, world treaty
New Global Internet Treaty — as bad as everyone’s been saying, and worse. Much, much worse.
BoingBoing.com
November 20, 2009
The British government has brought down its long-awaited Digital Economy Bill, and it’s perfectly useless and terrible. It consists almost entirely of penalties for people who do things that upset the entertainment industry (including the “three-strikes” rule that allows your entire family to be cut off from the net if anyone who lives in your house is accused of copyright infringement, without proof or evidence or trial), as well as a plan to beat the hell out of the video-game industry with a new, even dumber rating system (why is it acceptable for the government to declare that some forms of artwork have to be mandatorily labelled as to their suitability for kids? And why is it only some media? Why not paintings? Why not novels? Why not modern dance or ballet or opera?).
So it’s bad. £50,000 fines if someone in your house is accused of filesharing. A duty on ISPs to spy on all their customers in case they find something that would help the record or film industry sue them (ISPs who refuse to cooperate can be fined £250,000).
But that’s just for starters. The real meat is in the story we broke yesterday: Peter Mandelson, the unelected Business Secretary, would have to power to make up as many new penalties and enforcement systems as he likes. And he says he’s planning to appoint private militias financed by rightsholder groups who will have the power to kick you off the internet, spy on your use of the network, demand the removal of files or the blocking of websites, and Mandelson will have the power to invent any penalty, including jail time, for any transgression he deems you are guilty of. And of course, Mandelson’s successor in the next government would also have this power.
What isn’t in there? Anything about stimulating the actual digital economy. Nothing about ensuring that broadband is cheap, fast and neutral. Nothing about getting Britain’s poorest connected to the net. Nothing about ensuring that copyright rules get out of the way of entrepreneurship and the freedom to create new things. Nothing to ensure that schoolkids get the best tools in the world to create with, and can freely use the publicly funded media — BBC, Channel 4, BFI, Arts Council grantees — to make new media and so grow up to turn Britain into a powerhouse of tech-savvy creators.
Lobby organisation The Open Rights Group is urging people to contact their MP to oppose the plans.
“This plan won’t stop copyright infringement and with a simple accusation could see you and your family disconnected from the internet – unable to engage in everyday activities like shopping and socialising,” it said.
The government will also introduce age ratings on all boxed video games aimed at children aged 12 or over.
There is, however, little detail in the bill on how the government will stimulate broadband infrastructure.
Filed under: 1984, ACTA, Big Brother, Censorship, Control Grid, copyright, Darpa, Dictatorship, Echelon, Empire, european union, Fascism, file sharing, global treaty, government control, government regulations, international treaty, internet, Internet 2, internet blackout, internet censorship, Internet Filtering, internet manipulation, internet police, internet regulations, manipulation, nanny state, orwell, Police State, Surveillance, world treaty
Global treaty could ban file-sharers from Internet after ‘three strikes’
File-sharers could be jailed under proposed ACTA provisions
Raw Story
November 4, 2009
Leaked details of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement being negotiated in secret by most of the world’s largest economies suggest Internet file-sharers could be blocked from accessing the Internet if they are repeatedly accused of sharing copyrighted material, say media and digital-rights watchdogs.
And the worst-case scenario could see popular Web sites like YouTube and Flickr shut down because of a provision in the treaty that would force them to monitor everything uploaded to the site for copyright violations.
Internet law professor Michael Geist published details of “leaked” portions of the discussions on ACTA on his blog Tuesday, as a new round of ACTA negotiations began in Seoul, South Korea. The US, along with all the countries of the European Union as well as Japan, Canada, Australia and a handful of other countries, are involved in the negotiations.
“The provisions would pave the way for a globalized three-strikes and you’re out system,” Geist blogged Wednesday, referring to a proposal from copyright holders to have Internet service providers cut off service to anyone accused at least three times of illegally sharing copyrighted material.
Filed under: 1984, 1st amendment, 2nd Amendment, 9/11 Truth, Anti-War, Barack Obama, Big Brother, bill of rights, Bloggers, civil disobedience, civil liberties, civil rights, Communism, Congress, Control Grid, DHS, Dictatorship, Dissent, domestic terror, domestic terrorism, Empire, enemies list, Fascism, free press, free speech, gay rights, gestapo, Gun Control, hate crimes, Hate Crimes Bill, Hitler, Homeland Security, House, Illegal Immigration, internet, internet police, internet regulation, iron fist, MIAC report, nanny state, Nazi, Neolibs, New World Order, obama, obama deception, One World Government, Oppression, orwell, patriot movement, Police State, political dissent, political prisoner, political prisoners, political terrorism, precrime, preventative detention, Protest, Senate, socialism, sovereignty, Surveillance, thought crime, thought crimes, thought criminal, Truth Action, truth movement, US Constitution, War On Terror, White House
Hate Crime Bill Is A Trojan Horse Against Free Speech
NoWorldSystem.com
October 23, 2009
The U.S. Senate has passed the homosexual hate-crimes bill and will now send it to President Obama to sign it into law. This bill is a trojan horse to legitimize the creation of more laws that will completely obliterate the 1st amendment of the United States.
Many homosexual organizations say this is a victory, however they are just being used to further infringe on Americans rights to free speech.
In a 68-29 vote, senators passed 2010 National Defense Authorization Act, which includes the hate crimes measure that adds “sexual orientation” and “gender identity,” as well as disability, to the current categories — such as race, religion and gender — protected from hate crimes. The House of Representatives voted 281-146 on Oct. 8 for the same defense legislation, which was used as a vehicle for the hate-crimes measure though it is not directly related to the controversial provision. President Obama has said he would sign the bill.
Any “hate crimes” bill is a disaster for the 1st amendment and leads into the direction of a nanny government.. we are all grown-ups, correct? When someone puts you down whether it’s about race, gender, sexual orientation do we really want the federal government and the police to get involved in such petty affairs? And shouldn’t the police and the government be investing their time on more serious situations? Any ‘hate crimes’ bill is just a step towards the end of the 1st amendment and stepping into the direction of a nanny government, handing out fines and putting people in prison for hate speech.
I’m not implying that gay rights aren’t a good thing, I think anyone of any sexual orientation, gender, etc. should have a right to marry, but this hate crimes bill is nothing more than a foot-in-the-door for other tyrannical regulations that will criminalize any type of speech.
This bill could lead to an age of “Pre-Crime” and “Preventative Detentions“, if say the FBI suspects you of potentially committing a hate crime you can be prosecuted and detained even if no crime was even committed. It can also lead to cyber-bullying laws which could mean an expensive fine or prison-time for internet bullying, this bill can also lead to ‘political hate laws’ where any dissent against the government or its policies could make you a political prisoner.
The White House is already planning to create an “enemies list” where any dissent against its policies can land many into a permanent White House database. The U.S. Government and Homeland Security have established its hatred for dissidents in this country, they have established that anti-New World Order groups, Alternative Media Outlets (like this one) are potential violent terrorist tools. Anything about the U.S. Constitution, any partisan activists or any civil disobedience of any kind is now considered potential violent extremism by Homeland Security.
The unclassified Homeland Security memo even says people who are concerned about loss of U.S. sovereignty, illegal immigration and gun-control who are genuinely upset about encroaching freedom may be considered a potential insurgents against the U.S. government! Even liberal environmental activism, anti-war activism is considered potential violent extremism.
When you think of the phrase “hate crimes” remember that hate speech is a form of free speech and protected by the 1st amendment of the Bill of Rights and Constitution. The whole point of free speech is to protect unpopular speech like hate speech. When Obama signs this hate crimes bill into law the government will officially turn free speech into a criminal act, and soon it will become a terrorist/extremist act if Homeland Security (aka: the American Gestapo) gets its way.
Filed under: 1984, augmented earth, Big Brother, biometrics, cameras, cell phone, cell phones, CNN, Control Grid, Darpa, data mining, Dictatorship, Echelon, Empire, global elite, global government, Globalism, google, google earth, government control, government takeover, gps, internet, Internet 2, internet 3, internet of things, internet police, IOT, Media, microchip, microchips, Microsoft, nanny state, New World Order, NWO, Oppression, orwell, Pentagon, Police State, RFID, RFID bracelet, Science and technology, south korea, Spy, Surveillance, surveillance cameras, Total Information Awareness, traffic cameras, uav, Verichip | Tags: intel, internet regulation, korea, motorola, National Intelligence Council, new songdo city, NIC, seoul, u-city, Ubiquitous computing, Ubiquitous living, Ubiquitous positioning, utopia, Video and Image Retrieval and Analysis Tool
Editor’s Note: This could be the start of the New World Order MATRIX, where every ‘thing’ in the world can be located and tracked on the internet
Augmented Google-Earth Tracks Real-Time People, Cars, Weather
Cryptogon
September 30, 2009
The surveillance side of this is the chickenfeed. There’s something far more sinister than the simple surveillance… an angle we haven’t heard about yet.
Tice never did tell his story to Congress about this different aspect of the program.
Well, my guess is that it has something to do with providing surveillance data for this SEAS World Sim thing, and that individual Americans are being watched and potentially targeted with it. Tice’s background seems to involve a lot of traditional electronic warfare, radar and ELINT stuff. Maybe Tice’s deal involved the collection of the mobile phone GPS and/or triangulation data which would provide realtime spacial/geographic data to the SEAS system. In other words, SEAS sees you. They could bring up a map of a city and plot your path based on the information that your phone is exchanging with the mobile network.
—Synthetic Environments for Analysis and Simulation
Via: Popular Science:
Researchers from Georgia Tech have devised methods to take real-time, real-world information and layer it onto Google Earth, adding dynamic information to the previously sterile Googlescape.
They use live video feeds (sometimes from many angles) to find the position and motion of various objects, which they then combine with behavioral simulations to produce real-time animations for Google Earth or Microsoft Virtual Earth.
They use motion capture data to help their animated humans move realistically, and were able to extrapolate cars’ motion throughout an entire stretch of road from just a few spotty camera angles.
From their video of an augmented virtual Earth, you can see if the pickup soccer game in the park is short a player, how traffic is on the highway, and how fast the wind is blowing the clouds across the sky.
Up next, they say they want to add weather, birds, and motion in rivers.
Ubiquitous Computing: Big Brother’s All-Seeing Eye
Filed under: 9/11, 9/11 commission report, 9/11 Explosions, 9/11 Mysteries, 9/11 Truth, C-Span, DHS, domestic terror, domestic terrorism, False Flag, FBI, Homeland Security, inside job, internet, Internet 2, internet police, michael chertoff, nano thermite, New York, Official 9/11 Story, patriot movement, Pentagon, State Sponsored Terrorism, thermite, Truth Action, truth movement, twin towers, War On Terror, World Trade Center
Chertoff: 9/11 Truth Is Akin To Holocaust Denial
Filed under: 1st amendment, 9/11, Barack Obama, catastrophic event, Congress, Dictatorship, domestic terror, domestic terrorism, Empire, Fascism, free speech, George Bush, globalist elite, Hitler, House, Internet 2, internet blackout, internet censorship, internet police, internet regulations, internet security alliance, jay rockefeller, Martial Law, Nazi, Neolibs, New World Order, NWO, obama, obama deception, rockefeller, Senate, socialism, stasi, stasi tactics, US Constitution, War On Terror, White House | Tags: Nortel, Verisign, Verizon
Bill would give president emergency control of Internet
Declan McCullagh
CNet News
August 28, 2009
Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.
They’re not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.
The new version would allow the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” relating to “non-governmental” computer networks and do what’s necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for “cybersecurity professionals,” and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.
“I think the redraft, while improved, remains troubling due to its vagueness,” said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which counts representatives of Verizon, Verisign, Nortel, and Carnegie Mellon University on its board. “It is unclear what authority Sen. Rockefeller thinks is necessary over the private sector. Unless this is clarified, we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill.”
Representatives of other large Internet and telecommunications companies expressed concerns about the bill in a teleconference with Rockefeller’s aides this week, but were not immediately available for interviews on Thursday.
A spokesman for Rockefeller also declined to comment on the record Thursday, saying that many people were unavailable because of the summer recess. A Senate source familiar with the bill compared the president’s power to take control of portions of the Internet to what President Bush did when grounding all aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001. The source said that one primary concern was the electrical grid, and what would happen if it were attacked from a broadband connection.
Jay Rockefeller: Internet should have never existed
Filed under: 1984, Big Brother, China, Conditioning, copyright, Dictatorship, EFF, Empire, FCC, internet, internet blackout, Internet Filtering, internet police, intimidation, IP, ISP, Minneapolis, nanny state, Oppression, orwell, Police State, privacy rights, RIAA, Spy, Surveillance
Chinese youth beaten to death at net addiction bootcamp
Joe Fay
The Register
August 4, 2009
China’s anti-internet addiction industry has claimed another victim, after supervisors at a rehabilitation camp allegedly beat a 16 year old inmate to death.
Deng Senshan had been sent to Guangxi Qihuang Survival Training Camp to “cure” him of his internet addiction, the AFP reports. His parents were paying $1000 for the treatment.
However, the youth ended up in solitary confinement shortly after arriving at the establishment, and was subsequently beaten to death by supervisors for “running too slowly”, according to the news agency.
Local police confirmed they were investigating the death of a high school student, allegedly at the hands of his supervisors.
China is in the grip of acute paranoia over the threat of internet addiction to its youth. Efforts to cure the young of their affliction range from the bizarre to the brutal, by way of out and out quackery.
Filed under: 1984, Big Brother, copyright, Dictatorship, EFF, Empire, FCC, internet, internet police, IP, ISP, Minneapolis, myspace, nanny state, orwell, Police State, privacy rights, RIAA, Spy, Surveillance | Tags: Joel Tenenbaum
Student Must Pay $675,000 in Downloading Case
AP
July 31, 2009
A federal jury on Friday ordered a Boston University graduate student who admitted illegally downloading and sharing music online to pay $675,000 to four record labels.
Joel Tenenbaum, of Providence, R.I., admitted in court that he downloaded and distributed 30 songs. The only issue for the jury to decide was how much in damages to award the record labels.
Under federal law, the recording companies were entitled to $750 to $30,000 per infringement. But the law allows as much as $150,000 per track if the jury finds the infringements were willful. The maximum jurors could have awarded in Tenenbaum’s case was $4.5 million.
Jurors ordered Tenenbaum to pay $22,500 for each incident of copyright infringement, effectively finding that his actions were willful. The attorney for the 25-year-old student had asked the jury earlier Friday to “send a message” to the music industry by awarding only minimal damages.
Tenenbaum said he was thankful that the case wasn’t in the millions and contrasted the significance of his fine with the maximum.
“That to me sends a message of ‘We considered your side with some legitimacy,'” he said. “$4.5 million would have been, ‘We don’t buy it at all.'”
He added he will file for bankruptcy if the verdict stands.
Tenenbaum’s lawyer, Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson, said the jury’s verdict was not fair. He said he plans to appeal the decision because he was not allowed to argue a case based on fair use.
The case is only the nation’s second music downloading case against an individual to go to trial.
Last month, a federal jury in Minneapolis ruled that Jammie Thomas-Rasset, 32, must pay $1.92 million, or $80,000 on each of 24 songs, after concluding she willfully violated the copyrights on those tunes.
The jury began deliberating the case Friday afternoon.
After Tenenbaum admitted Thursday he is liable for damages for 30 songs at issue in the case, U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner ruled that the jury must consider only whether his copyright infringement was willful and how much in damages to award four recording labels that sued him over the illegal file-sharing.
In his closing statement Friday, Nesson repeatedly referred to Tenenbaum as a “kid” and asked the jury to award only a small amount to the recording companies. At one point, Nesson suggested the damages should be as little as 99 cents per song, roughly the same amount Tenenbaum would have to pay if he legally purchased the music online.
But Tim Reynolds, a lawyer for the recording labels, recounted Tenenbaum’s history of file-sharing from 1999 to 2007, describing him as “a hardcore, habitual, long-term infringer who knew what he was doing was wrong.” Tenenbaum admitted on the witness stand that he had downloaded and shared more than 800 songs.
Tenenbaum said he downloaded and shared hundreds of songs by Nirvana, Green Day, The Smashing Pumpkins and other artists. The recording industry focused on only 30 songs in the case.
The music industry has typically offered to settle such cases for about $5,000, though it has said that it stopped filing such lawsuits last August and is instead working with Internet service providers to fight the worst offenders. Cases already filed, however, are proceeding to trial.
Tenenbaum testified that he had lied in pretrial depositions when he said his two sisters, friends and others may have been responsible for downloading the songs to his computer.
Under questioning from his own lawyer, Tenenbaum said he now takes responsibility for the illegal swapping.
“I used the computer. I uploaded, I downloaded music … I did it,” Tenenbaum said.
Filed under: 1st amendment, 2nd Amendment, 4th amendment, ACLU, Al Gore, anti gun, bailouts, Barack Obama, barbara boxer, bernanke, Big Banks, cap-and-trade, carbon dioxide, carbon regulation, Carbon Tax, China, climate bill, Co2, Congress, Credit Crisis, DEBT, defense department, DHS, Dictatorship, DoD, Dollar, eco-nazis, Economic Collapse, economic depression, Economy, Empire, environmental taxation, Fascism, FBI, Federal Reserve, free speech, global economy, global government, global tax, Global Warming, Great Depression, Greenback, Gun Control, health and environment, Hoax, Homeland Security, House, hr 1207, HR 1966, hyperinflation, Inflation, internet police, mao, maurice strong, nanny state, Nazi, New World Order, NWO, obama, Oppression, Pentagon, Police State, Ron Paul, s.787, Senate, socialism, sovereignty, stasi, Stock Market, Taxpayers, thought crime, TSA, US Constitution, US Economy, Wall Street, War On Terror, world government | Tags: death of america, Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act
RED ALERT: The Total Takeover Of America Enters Its Final Phase
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
June 29, 2009
The wholesale looting of America and the transfer of wealth and power over to a private banking elite who are setting up a world government, along with the complete obliteration of any remaining freedom to protest, resist, or even speak out against this agenda, is now entering its final phase as numerous different pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fall into place and portray a clear picture of tyranny.
We are about to sound the death knell for the United States if every one of the following attacks on our liberty, free speech, sovereignty, and right to not be ruled over by an unelected banking dictatorship is not fiercely opposed and crushed.
RED ALERT 1
The passage of the “Climate Bill” by the House and its likely approval by the Senate represents the entrée for the complete and total subjugation of any freedoms we had left and the beginning of nightmare regulation and suffocating control over every aspect of our personal lives by millions of green stasi tasked with enforcing impossible to attain goals of 80% carbon dioxide reduction – all based on the manufactured threat of global warming.
This bill will also sink the economy and create a new great depression, effectively obliterating America’s first world status. It represents a transfer of power and wealth from both the U.S. government and the American taxpayer over to the system of world government and global regulation now being erected by means of the climate change hoax.
This is far worse than just a “new tax” as Republicans are complaining – this is the total takeover of the American economy by private banking interests through the carbon trading system.
As we have attempted to warn, the major beneficiaries of the climate bill will be the elitists who own the carbon trading systems that will be used to handle the ‘cap and trade’ program, namely Al Gore and Maurice Strong, two figures intimately involved with a long standing movement to use the theory of man made global warming as a mechanism for profit and social engineering.
We must rally now to lobby members of Congress who voted for the legislation and demand they change their vote before July 2nd. Failing that, we must demand that the Senate does not rubber stamp this nightmare legislation. Failing that, we must support and organize to craft more legislation based on the example of Arizona, who recently passed state Senate legislation refusing to comply with insane climate laws coming from the federal level.
RED ALERT 2
The seemingly endless economic “bailouts” represent the wholesale looting of the American taxpayer and the grand theft of trillions of dollars by private banking interests who refuse to even disclose where the money went.
Not satisfied with stealing tens of trillions, under the Obama administration’s new regulatory reform plan, the Federal Reserve is now trying to enrich itself with dictator powers that will give it complete control over the U.S. economy, handing them the authority to “regulate” and shut down any company whose activity it believes could threaten the economy and the markets.
We must rally now and lobby more members of Congress to support Ron Paul’s H.R. 1207 bill to audit the Federal Reserve and highlight the fact that Bernanke is spewing financial terrorism when he threatens an economic collapse should the Fed be opened up to scrutiny.
RED ALERT 3
Federal hate crimes legislation, which in reality would criminalize “thought crimes,” has cleared the House and now faces the Senate as S.909, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act (officially, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act).
S.909 is a direct violation of the First Amendment. It allows the federal government to prosecute people involved in “hate speech” transmitted over television, radio, and the internet. The House version of the bill states:
“Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce [radio, TV, internet] any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both. (HR 1966, SEC 3, Sec. 881a)”
In other words, if a talk show host engages in “hostile” speech against a person or persons of the above mentioned federally protected group that talk show host will face federal prosecution and the prospect of a two year prison term.
The Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act would similarly criminalize free speech on the Internet if it can be deemed in any way to have been “harmful” to an individual. This represents the end of political blogging and free speech on the world wide web.
If both bills are not opposed and thrown out then the First Amendment will become nothing more than a relic of a bygone age.
RED ALERT 4
The Senate bill S.787, otherwise known as the Clean Water Restoration Act (CWRA), would replace language in the regulatory act currently using “navigable waters” with “waters of the United States.”
What this means is that “the government would essentially be able to regulate everything from standing water in floodplains to creeks that run behind business and residences,” according to an Environmental Leader report.
This represents a complete takeover of private land and waterways by the federal government, a total assault on private property rights and a complete federalization of America’s land and water.
“In a letter to Senate Environment and Public Works Chair Barbara Boxer and ranking member James Inhofe, the American Farm Bureau Federation said that the proposed law would “extend to all water — anywhere from farm ponds, to storm water retention basins, to roadside ditches, to desert washes, to streets and gutters, even to a puddle of rainwater,” stated the letter. “For the first time in the 36-year history of the act, activities that have no impact on actual rivers and lakes would be subject to full federal regulation.”
If this bill becomes law, it will empower the federal government to seize private property on a whim, using similar powers that Communist China employed during Chairman Mao’s “great leap forward,” where landowners had their property violently confiscated and stolen by the government.
If this bill passes the Senate, private property rights in the United States are effectively null and void and the federal government would legally have the power to bulldoze families from their homes as routinely happens in Communist China.
RED ALERT 5
Amongst the myriad of assaults on the Second Amendment rights of American citizens undertaken by the Obama administration during the course of its first year in office, the one that stands out as the most alarming is the attempt to ban people who appear on the terrorist watch list from buying guns.
But isn’t stopping terrorists from buying guns surely a sensible measure to take? The problem is that the terrorist watch list, sometimes called the no fly list, is not a list of likely terrorists, it is a sprawling database of of innocent people that contains the names of over one million Americans. This is a rise of 32% since 2007 alone.
Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes, reverends, the former assistant attorney general, toddlers and children, the ACLU administrator, people with difficult names and all American names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become caught in the vast tentacle of this list, documents the ACLU.
Moreover, once a person is included on the terrorist watch list it is virtually impossible to get off it.
The terrorist watch list is an ever-expanding tool with which to deny Americans basic rights as well as to strip them completely of the Fourth Amendment.
Now it is being used to prevent law-abiding citizens from purchasing firearms. Legislation sponsored by the The Government Accountability Office seeks to “close the gap” and prevent victims of the terrorist watch list from being able to purchase firearms.
This represents a new end run around the Second Amendment and a concerted effort on behalf of the federal government to classify millions of innocent Americans as potential terrorists, thus stripping them of their Constitutional right to own firearms.
This represents a new end run around the Second Amendment and a concerted effort on behalf of the federal government to classify millions of innocent Americans as potential terrorists, thus stripping them of their Constitutional right to own firearms.
RED ALERT 6
Our right to protest against any of the egregious assaults on the Constitution that are listed above is itself being removed by new law enforcement and Pentagon training manuals and guidelines that define protesting as domestic terrorism.
Current Department of Defense anti-terrorism training course material states that the exercise of First Amendment rights in the U.S. constitutes terrorist activity.
Over the last few years we have documented countless examples of security assessment reports from the likes of the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, as well as police training manuals, which state that anti-war protesters, gun owners, veterans, Ron Paul supporters and those who merely cite the Constitution should be equated with extremists and domestic terrorists.
The fact that the government is now treating people who merely criticize its conduct as domestic terrorists is the clearest signal possible that the United States has entered a period in history similar to Germany in the early 1930’s and that it can only be a matter of time before the right “emergency” provides the justification for dissidents to be targeted for round-ups and mass imprisonment.
No one can claim now that this is merely a paranoid delusion – the government itself is training its law enforcement and military arms that protesters and people who use their First Amendment rights are domestic terrorists. The last time this happened was under King George shortly before the American Revolution.
ONE MINUTE TO MIDNIGHT
If we don’t stand up in unison and exercise our right to protest and free speech now more than ever before, while pointing out that the real terrorists are those who would seek to destroy the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights, then we may find ourselves doing our protesting behind the barbed wires and the concrete blocks of an internment camp.
The hour is late, the clock stands at one minute to midnight, and the federal government, through all the examples documented above, is on the verge of implementing nothing less than a total environmental, financial and societal dictatorship and killing what once was the United States of America.
Almost identical programs of total enslavement are also being pushed through in almost every other major western country at the same time.
If we don’t stop obsessing about the minutia of life and actually concentrate on the imminent destruction of the very principles of our livelihoods, the bedrock freedoms that allow us to operate in relative comfort on a daily basis and be reasonably secure in our own homes, being able to pay our bills, put food on the table, earn money, and air our grievances when government threatens to impinge on those basic freedoms, then there will be nothing left but a rotten hollow carcass and a memory of what America once strived to be – land of the free, home of the brave – not land of the thief, home of the slave.
Filed under: 1984, Big Brother, copyright, Dictatorship, EFF, Empire, FCC, internet, internet police, IP, ISP, myspace, nanny state, orwell, Police State, privacy rights, RIAA, Spy, Surveillance
Single-Mother Ordered To Pay $80,000 Per Illegally Downloaded Song
A woman in Minnesota has been ordered to pay $80,000 a song to record companies for illegally downloading tracks and violating copyright laws.
A federal jury ruled that Jammie Thomas-Rasset willfully violated the copyrights on 24 songs, and awarded record companies $1.92 million.
The single mother of four from Minnesota was found liable for using the Kazaa peer-to-peer file-sharing network to download the songs over the internet.
Thomas-Rasset, 32, had been convicted previously, in October 2007, and ordered to pay $220,000 in damages, but the judge who presided over that trial threw out the verdict and ordered a retrial after he misdirected the jury.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and big music labels have sued thousands of people for downloading and sharing music illegally, with most agreeing to settlements of between $3,000 and $5,000.
Thomas-Rasset was the first among those being sued to refuse a settlement and instead took the case to court, turning her into the highest-profile digital pirate in America.
She sat glumly, chin in hand, as she heard the jury’s finding of wilful infringement, which increased the potential penalty. She raised her eyebrows in surprise when the jury’s penalty of $80,000 (£49,000) per song was read out.
Outside the courtroom, she called the $1.92 million figure “kind of ridiculous” but expressed resignation over the decision.
“There’s no way they’re ever going to get that,” she said. “I’m a mom, limited means, so I’m not going to worry about it now.”
Her lawyer, Kiwi Camara, said that he and his client had not decided whether to appeal or pursue the RIAA’s settlement overtures.
Cara Duckworth, for the RIAA, said that the industry remained willing to settle. She refused to name a figure, but acknowledged that Thomas-Rasset had been given the chance to settle for $3,000 to $5,000 earlier in the case. “Since day one we have been willing to settle this case and we remain willing to do so,” Ms Duckworth said.
In December, the RIAA said that it would stop suing people who download music illegally to concentrate instead on getting internet service providers to take action. The move away from litigation represented an important shift in strategy for the music industry group, which had filed lawsuits in the US against some 35,000 people for online music piracy since 2003.
The focus on ISPs penalising illegal file-sharers is one of the main proposals in the new Digital Britain report published this week.
In testimony, Thomas-Rasset denied she shared any songs. The self-described “huge music fan” raised the possibility for the first time in the long-running case that her children or ex-husband might have done it. The defence did not provide any evidence that any of them had shared the files.
The recording companies accused Thomas-Rasset of offering 1,700 songs on Kazaa as of February 2005, before the company became a legal music subscription service after a settlement with entertainment companies. The music industry tried to prove only 24 exemplary infringements.
The court heard that Thomas-Rasset made the songs available on Kazaa under the screen name “tereastarr” – the same nickname that she acknowledged having used for years for her e-mail and several other computer accounts, including her MySpace page.
MediaSentry, the copyright security company, traced the files offered by “tereastarr” on Kazaa to Thomas-Rasset’s IP address and to her modem.
The recording industry has blamed online piracy for declines in music sales claiming it has lost billions of dollars through illegal file-sharing.
Filed under: 1984, 1st amendment, 9/11 Truth, Airport Security, Anti-War, Australia, Big Brother, biometrics, Bloggers, Britain, California, cashless society, cell phones, Censorship, China, Cold War, Congress, Control Grid, copyright, Darpa, data mining, DHS, Dictatorship, Dissent, Echelon, Empire, Europe, european union, facebook, False Flag, free speech, George Bush, Germany, global elite, global government, Globalism, google, gps, Homeland Security, inside job, internet, Internet 2, internet blackout, internet censorship, Internet Filtering, internet of things, internet police, IOT, IP, ISP, John McCain, john roberts, korea, london, Media, michael chertoff, microchip, microchips, Microsoft, nanny state, New World Order, New York, Oppression, orwell, Pentagon, Police State, Propaganda, RFID, RIAA, Science and technology, south korea, Spy, Surveillance, Tony Blair, uav, United Kingdom, US Constitution, Verichip, War On Terror, White House | Tags: HP, incheon, intel, internet regulation, john reid, korea, motorola, National Intelligence Council, new songdo city, NIC, NWO, paul otellini, privacy, Recording Industry Association of America, seoul, u-city, Ubiquitous computing, Ubiquitous living, Ubiquitous positioning, utopia, Video and Image Retrieval and Analysis Tool, VIRAT
Australia To Enforce Mandatory Chinese-Style Internet Censorship
Government to block “controversial” websites with universal national filter
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
October 29, 2008
The Australian government is set to impose Chinese-style Internet censorship by enforcing a universal national filter that will block websites deemed “controversial,” as part of a wider agenda to regulate the Internet according to free speech advocates.
A provision whereby Internet users could opt out of the filter by contacting their ISP has been stripped from the legislation, meaning the filter will be universal and mandatory.
The System Administrators Guild of Australia and Electronic Frontiers Australia have attacked the proposal, saying it will restrict web access, raise prices and slow internet traffic speeds.
The plan was first created as a way to combat child pornography and adult content, but could be extended to include controversial websites on euthanasia or anorexia,” reports the Australian Herald Sun.
Communications minister Stephen Conroy revealed the mandatory censorship to the Senate estimates committee as the Global Network Initiative, bringing together leading companies, human rights organisations, academics and investors, committed the technology firms to “protect the freedom of expression and privacy rights of their users”. (Complete black is white, up is down, double talk).
Human Rights Watch has condemned internet censorship, and argued to the US Senate “there is a real danger of a Virtual Curtain dividing the internet, much as the Iron Curtain did during the Cold War, because some governments fear the potential of the internet, (and) want to control it.”
Speaking from personal experience, not only are “controversial” websites blocked in China, meaning any website that is critical of the state, but every website the user attempts to visit first has to pass through the “great firewall,” causing the browser to hang and delay while it is checked against a government blacklist.
This causes excruciating delays, and the user experience is akin to being on a bad dial-up connection in the mid 1990’s. Even in the center of Shanghai with a fixed ethernet connection, the user experience is barely tolerable.
Not only are websites in China blocked, but e mails too are scanned for “controversial” words and blocked from being sent if they contain phrases related to politics or obscenities.
Googling for information on certain topics is also heavily restricted. While in China I tried to google “Bush Taiwan,” which resulted in Google.com ceasing to be accessible and my Internet connection was immediately terminated thereafter.
The Australian government will no doubt insist that their filter is in our best interests and is only designed to block child pornography, snuff films and other horrors, yet the system is completely pointless because it will not affect file sharing networks, which is the medium through which the vast majority of such material is distributed.
If we allow Australia to become the first “free” nation to impose Internet censorship, the snowball effect will only accelerate – the U.S. and the UK are next.
Indeed, Prime Minister Tony Blair called for Internet censorship last year.
In April 2007, Time magazine reported that researchers funded by the federal government want to shut down the internet and start over, citing the fact that at the moment there are loopholes in the system whereby users cannot be tracked and traced all the time. The projects echo moves we have previously reported on to clamp down on internet neutrality and even to designate a new form of the internet known as Internet 2.
Moves to regulate the web have increased over the last two years.
– In a display of bi-partisanship, there have been calls for all out mandatory ISP snooping on all US citizens by both Democrats and Republicans alike.
– In December 2006, Republican Senator John McCain tabled a proposal to introduce legislation that would fine blogs up to $300,000 for offensive statements, photos and videos posted by visitors on comment boards. It is well known that McCain has a distaste for his blogosphere critics, causing a definite conflict of interest where any proposal to restrict blogs on his part is concerned.
– During an appearance with his wife Barbara on Fox News in November 2006, George Bush senior slammed Internet bloggers for creating an “adversarial and ugly climate.”
– The White House’s own de-classified strategy for “winning the war on terror” targets Internet conspiracy theories as a recruiting ground for terrorists and threatens to “diminish” their influence.
– The Pentagon has also announced its effort to infiltrate the Internet and propagandize for the war on terror.
– In an October 2006 speech, Homeland Security director Michael Chertoff identified the web as a “terror training camp,” through which “disaffected people living in the United States” are developing “radical ideologies and potentially violent skills.” His solution is “intelligence fusion centers,” staffed by Homeland Security personnel which will are already in operation.
– The U.S. Government wants to force bloggers and online grassroots activists to register and regularly report their activities to Congress. Criminal charges including a possible jail term of up to one year could be the punishment for non-compliance.
– A landmark November 2006 legal case on behalf of the Recording Industry Association of America and other global trade organizations sought to criminalize all Internet file sharing of any kind as copyright infringement, effectively shutting down the world wide web – and their argument was supported by the U.S. government.
– A landmark legal ruling in Sydney goes further than ever before in setting the trap door for the destruction of the Internet as we know it and the end of alternative news websites and blogs by creating the precedent that simply linking to other websites is breach of copyright and piracy.
– The European Union, led by former Stalinist John Reid, has also vowed to shut down “terrorists” who use the Internet to spread propaganda.
– The EU data retention bill, passed after much controversy and implemented in 2007, obliges telephone operators and internet service providers to store information on who called who and who emailed who for at least six months. Under this law, investigators in any EU country, and most bizarrely even in the US, can access EU citizens’ data on phone calls, sms’, emails and instant messaging services.
– The EU also proposed legislation that would prevent users from uploading any form of video without a license.
– The US government is also funding research into social networking sites and how to gather and store personal data published on them, according to the New Scientist magazine. “At the same time, US lawmakers are attempting to force the social networking sites themselves to control the amount and kind of information that people, particularly children, can put on the sites.”
Governments are furious that their ceaseless lies are being exposed in real time on the World Wide Web and have resolved to stifle, regulate and control what truly is the last outpost of real free speech in the world. Internet censorship is perhaps the most pertinent issue that freedom advocates should rally to combat over the course of the next few years, lest we allow a cyber-gag to be placed over our mouths and say goodbye to our last medium of free and open communication.
DARPA building search engine for video surveillance footage
Ars Technica
October 21, 2008
The government agency that birthed the Internet is developing a sophisticated search engine for video, and when complete will allow intelligence analysts to sift through live footage from spy drones, as well as thousands of hours worth of archived recordings, in order to spot a variety of selected events or behaviors. In the past month, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced nearly $20 million in total contracts for private firms to begin developing the system, which is slated to take until at least 2011 to complete.
According to a prospectus written in March but released only this month, the Video and Image Retrieval and Analysis Tool (VIRAT) will enable intel analysts to “rapidly find video content of interest from archives and provide alerts to the analyst of events of interest during live operations,” taking both conventional video and footage from infrared scanners as input. The VIRAT project is an effort to cope with a growing data glut that has taxed intelligence resources because of the need to have trained human personnel perform time- and labor-intensive review of recorded video.
The DARPA overview emphasizes that VIRAT will not be designed with “face recognition, gait recognition, human identification, or any form of biometrics” in mind. Rather, the system will search for classes of activities or events. A suggested partial list in the prospectus includes digging, loitering, exploding, shooting, smoking, following, shaking hand, exchanging objects, crawling under a car, breaking a window, and evading a checkpoint. As new sample clips are fed into the system, it will need to recognize the signature features of new classes of search terms.
EU Set to Move ‘Internet of Things’ Closer to Reality
Daniel Taylor
Old-Thinker News
November 2, 2008
If the world-wide trend continues, ‘Web 3.0′ will be tightly monitored, and will become an unprecedented tool for surveillance. The “Internet of Things”, a digital representation of real world objects and people tagged with RFID chips, and increased censorship are two main themes for the future of the web.
The future of the internet, according to author and “web critic” Andrew Keen, will be monitored by “gatekeepers” to verify the accuracy of information posted on the web. The “Outlook 2009″ report from the November-December issue of The Futurist reports that,
“Internet entrepreneur Andrew Keen believes that the anonymity of today’s internet 2.0 will give way to a more open internet 3.0 in which third party gatekeepers monitor the information posted on Web sites to verify its accuracy.”
Keen stated during his early 2008 interview withThe Futurist that the internet, in its current form, has undermined mainline media and empowered untrustworthy “amateurs”, two trends that he wants reversed. “Rather than the empowerment of the amateur, Web 3.0 will show the resurgence of the professional,” states Keen.
Australia has now joined China in implementing mandatory internet censorship, furthering the trend towards a locked down and monitored web.
The Internet of Things
Now, the European Union has announced that it will pursue the main component of Web 3.0, the Internet of Things (IoT).
According to Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media for the EU, “The Internet of the future will radically change our society.” Ultimately, the EU is aiming to “lead the way” in the transformation to Web 3.0.
Reporting on the European Union’s pursuit of the IoT, iBLS reports,
“New technology applications will need ubiquitous Internet coverage. The Internet of Things means that wireless interaction between machines, vehicles, appliances, sensors and many other devices will take place using the Internet. It already makes electronic travel cards possible, and will allow mobile devices to exchange information to pay for things or get information from billboards (or streetlights).”
The Internet of Things consists of objects that are ‘tagged’ with Radio Frequency Identification Chips (RFID) that communicate their position, history, and other information to an RFID reader or wireless network. Most, if not all major computer companies and technology developers (HP, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, etc.) are putting large amounts of time and money into the Internet of Things.
Cisco and Sun Microsystems have founded an alliance to promote the Internet of Things and further its implementation.
South Korea is at the forefront in implementing ubiquitous technology and the Internet of Things. An entire city, New Songdo, is being built in South Korea that fully utilizes the technology. Ubiquitous computing proponents in the United States admit that while a large portion of the technology is being developed in the U.S., it is being tested in South Korea where there are less traditional, ethical and social blockades to prevent its acceptance and use. As the New York Times reports
“Much of this technology was developed in U.S. research labs, but there are fewer social and regulatory obstacles to implementing them in Korea,” said Mr. Townsend [a research director at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, California], who consulted on Seoul’s own U-city plan, known as Digital Media City. ‘There is an historical expectation of less privacy. Korea is willing to put off the hard questions to take the early lead and set standards.’”
An April 2008 report from the National Intelligence Council discussed the Internet of Things and its possible implications.
A timeline shown in the April 2008 NIC report
The report outlines uses for the technology:
“Sensor networks need not be connected to the Internet and indeed often reside in remote sites, vehicles, and buildings having no Internet connection. Smart dust is a term that some have used to express a vision of tiny, wireless-connected sensors; more recently, others use the term to describe any of several technologies that range from the size of a pack of gum to a pack of cigarettes, and that are widely available to system developers.
Ubiquitous positioning describes technologies for locating objects that may reside anywhere, including indoors and underground locations where satellite signals may be unavailable or otherwise inadequate.
Biometrics enables technology to recognize people and other living things, rather than inanimate objects. Connected everyday objects could recognize authorized users by means of fingerprint, voiceprint, iris scan, or other biometric technology.”
These trends towards internet censorship and the internet of things are undoubtedly going to continue, but restricting your free speech and violating your privacy will be harder with your outspoken resistance.
DARPA spies on analyst brains; hopes to offload image analysis to computers
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20..-image-analysis-to-computers.html
Security services want personal data from sites like Facebook
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/oct/15/terrorism-security
UK.gov says: Regulate the internet
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/20/government_internet_regulation/
Filed under: 1984, 4th amendment, Airport Security, Big Brother, biometrics, Britain, cell phones, civil liberties, civil rights, Control Grid, Dictatorship, DMV, DNA Database, domestic terrorism, Empire, Europe, european union, facial recognition, FBI, fingerprints, global government, global police force, Globalism, internet police, interpol, london, microchip, microchips, Military Industrial Complex, nanny state, New World Order, NWO, Oregon, orwell, Police State, smoking ban, Surveillance, United Kingdom, US Constitution, War On Terror, world police force | Tags: cop cams, International Criminal Police Organization, Northrop-Grumman, red light camera, Server in the Sky, speeding
Global Police Plan International Face Scanning Database
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
October 20, 2008
Global security authorities are to push for a huge biometric facial scan database of international travelers so they can cross-check everyone against a database of terror suspects, international criminals and fugitives.
Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organization, is planning to expand its role into the mass screening of passengers moving around the world by creating a face recognition database to catch wanted suspects, reports the London Guardian.
The database will hold the records of every citizen who has ever traveled in and out of the virtually every country in the world, representing intelligence agency style bulk interception of information and sounding alarm bells for civil liberties groups.
Two months ago we reported on the moves underway to phase out passport control officers at airports and replace them with biometric face scanning cameras. The automated face recognition gates match passengers to a digital image stored on a microchip in the new e-passports.
Interpol wants a facial database to be linked into this technology and used in conjunction with its already existing fingerprint and DNA databases, according to Mark Branchflower, head of Interpol’s fingerprint unit.
We have previously noted that the vast array of databases currently being employed by intelligence agencies, government and law enforcement agencies worldwide were designed to be linked together in a system which will tie in the management and control of all facets of life for citizens to one central hub.
Earlier this year we reported on the announcement of a vast intelligence program to establish a global biometric database known as “Server in the Sky” that will collate and provide an ” International Information Consortium” with access to the biometric measurements and personal information of citizens across the globe in the name of fighting the “war on terror”.
As reported by the London Guardian, the plan is being formulated by the FBI with the cooperation of the home offices and law enforcement agencies of American allies. The technology is being supplied by the US defense company Northrop Grumman.
Furthermore, the use of such technology, as we have already seen, will not be limited to the passport control office.
A 2007 British government report muted an extensive upgrade to cctv systems all across the country to incorporate facial scanning technology. The report suggested a central database of every camera and a network allowing access to it could be beneficial.
In the US there are several schemes that use Facial Recognition Technology in conjunction with Federal agencies, tying the technology to traditional documents such as drivers licenses, passports and credit cards.
A biometric face recognition system has already been approved in China and is expected to be used at airports, customs entrances, banks, post offices, residential areas and other public places in the near future.
Other proposals include placing the cameras in every seat on aircraft and installing software to try and automatically detect terrorists or other dangers caused by passengers.
We are assured that cigarette vending machines will employ the technology in order to enforce smoking laws. Similarly, supermarkets in the UK have already started trialing the technology with the justification being a crackdown on underage drinking.
In Japan facial scanning cameras are being installed in train and bus stations to replace tickets in a move to make the individual features of the face a “unique bar code” as part of an antiterrorism and anticrime initiative.
Police in Tokyo are also asking home and shop owners to mount the cameras outside their properties. “Police investigating an incident in the neighborhood would have access to these images.” according to reports.
Cell phones and computers are now also being produced with face scanning cameras.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics..canner-liberty
Oregon DMV To Use Facial Recognition Software
http://www.kuik.com/Article.asp?id=954317&spid=
Orwellian U.K. Angers People With Tree Cameras, Snooping Kids
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=..=home
Speed cameras will track drivers for 30 miles
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/3163410/..ivers-for-miles.html
Filed under: 2-party system, 7/7, Air Force, Bloggers, Britain, civil liberties, civil rights, Control Grid, corporations, data mining, Dictatorship, Empire, Europe, european union, Fascism, free speech, google, internet, Internet Filtering, internet police, ISP, left right paradigm, london, nanny state, Nazi, neocons, Neolibs, Oppression, orwell, Police State, privacy rights, stasi, stasi tactics, Surveillance, telecoms, United Kingdom, united nations, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap | Tags: cyber security, cyber terrorism, e-mails, Home Office, snooper’s charter, texting
UK Telecom & Internet Companies to Check Texts and E-mails
Alan Travis
London Guardian
August 13, 2008
Local councils, health authorities and hundreds of other public bodies are to be given the power to access details of everyone’s personal text, emails and internet use under Home Office proposals published yesterday.
Ministers want to make it mandatory for telephone and internet companies to keep details of all personal internet traffic for at least 12 months so it can be accessed for investigations into crime or other threats to public safety.
The Home Office last night admitted that the measure will mean companies have to store “a billion incidents of data exchange a day”. As the measure is the result of an EU directive, the data will be made available to public investigators across Europe.
The consultation paper published yesterday estimates that it will cost the internet industry over £50m to store the mountain of data.
Conservatives and Liberal Democrats last night branded the measure a “snooper’s charter”.
When the measure was floated after the London bombings in 2005 by the then home secretary, Charles Clarke, it was justified on the grounds that it was needed to investigate terrorist plots and organised crime. But the Home Office document makes clear that the personal data will now be available for all sorts of crime and public order investigations and may even be used to prevent people self-harming.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/aug/15/labour.idcards
Zero Privacy In UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/13/privacy.privacy
Google Ordered To Unmask Mystery Blogger
http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/08/google-ordered.html
Air Force Suspends ‘Cyber Command’ Program
http://www.informationweek.com/news..wArticle.jhtml?articleID=210003721
Blogging Is Not A Crime
http://www.techcrunch.com/20..-a-crime/comment-2439303
Filed under: 1984, 1st amendment, 2008 Election, Big Brother, Bloggers, Censorship, comcast, Congress, corporations, corporatism, Dictatorship, Empire, facism, FCC, free speech, google, house senate, internet, Internet 2, internet blackout, Internet Filtering, internet police, Media, Nazi, net neutrality, poll, Surveillance, US Constitution, Washington D.C. | Tags: robert mcdowell, targeted-advertising technology
Fairness Doctrine Might Give Control of Web Content to the Government
Business and Media Institute
August 12, 2008
There’s a huge concern among conservative talk radio hosts that reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine would all-but destroy the industry due to equal time constraints. But speech limits might not stop at radio. They could even be extended to include the Internet and “government dictating content policy.”
FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell raised that as a possibility after talking with bloggers at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. McDowell spoke about a recent FCC vote to bar Comcast from engaging in certain Internet practices – expanding the federal agency’s oversight of Internet networks.
The commissioner, a 2006 President Bush appointee, told the Business & Media Institute the Fairness Doctrine could be intertwined with the net neutrality battle. The result might end with the government regulating content on the Web, he warned. McDowell, who was against reprimanding Comcast, said the net neutrality effort could win the support of “a few isolated conservatives” who may not fully realize the long-term effects of government regulation.
“I think the fear is that somehow large corporations will censor their content, their points of view, right,” McDowell said. “I think the bigger concern for them should be if you have government dictating content policy, which by the way would have a big First Amendment problem.”
“Then, whoever is in charge of government is going to determine what is fair, under a so-called ‘Fairness Doctrine,’ which won’t be called that – it’ll be called something else,” McDowell said. “So, will Web sites, will bloggers have to give equal time or equal space on their Web site to opposing views rather than letting the marketplace of ideas determine that?”
McDowell told BMI the Fairness Doctrine isn’t currently on the FCC’s radar. But a new administration and Congress elected in 2008 might renew Fairness Doctrine efforts, but under another name.
“The Fairness Doctrine has not been raised at the FCC, but the importance of this election is in part – has something to do with that,” McDowell said. “So you know, this election, if it goes one way, we could see a re-imposition of the Fairness Doctrine. There is a discussion of it in Congress. I think it won’t be called the Fairness Doctrine by folks who are promoting it. I think it will be called something else and I think it’ll be intertwined into the net neutrality debate.”
A recent study by the Media Research Center’s Culture & Media Institute argues that the three main points in support of the Fairness Doctrine – scarcity of the media, corporate censorship of liberal viewpoints, and public interest – are myths.
Some Web Firms Say They Track Behavior Without Explicit Consent
Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post
August 12, 2008
Several Internet and broadband companies have acknowledged using targeted-advertising technology without explicitly informing customers, according to letters released yesterday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
And Google, the leading online advertiser, stated that it has begun using Internet tracking technology that enables it to more precisely follow Web-surfing behavior across affiliated sites.
The revelations came in response to a bipartisan inquiry of how more than 30 Internet companies might have gathered data to target customers. Some privacy advocates and lawmakers said the disclosures help build a case for an overarching online-privacy law.
Filed under: 1st amendment, Anti-War, beijing, California, Censorship, China, Dictatorship, Empire, FBI, free press, free speech, internet, internet blackout, Internet Filtering, internet police, intimidation, mafia, Oppression, Police State, secret service, southern california, US Constitution, War On Terror | Tags: huffington post, IOC, mike whitney, tom feeley
Anti-War Website Operator Threatened By Armed Thugs
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
August 7, 2008
The operator of a leading alternative news and strongly anti-war website has become the target of nefarious thugs apparently in the employ of the U.S. government who have continually harassed him and ordered him to shut down his website.
Tom Feeley, owner and editor of InformationClearingHouse.info, has endured public harassment, home invasions, death threats and threats to his family simply for running a website.
Counterpunch writer Mike Whitney has circulated an e mail describing what happened to Feeley in an attempt to draw attention to the matter.
Whitney writes that earlier this week Feeley’s wife was startled to suddenly discover three well dressed men standing in her kitchen who told her that Tom must “Stop what he is doing on the Internet, NOW!”
To emphasize the point, the thug pulled back his jacket to reveal a gun while barking out the warning.
Tom’s wife was hysterical and refuses to go back to the house. She contacted the FBI but was told there was nothing they could do.
According to Whitney, “The well-dressed man told Tom’s wife that he knew where her son lived, what line of work he was in, and how many children he had.”
Subsequently, two men in a parked car a block from Tom’s mother’s house were spotted using laptops and sped off when they were approached by Tom’s son.
A similar incident had happened four years previously, when Feeley was approached by a stranger in the parking lot of Long’s Drug store in Southern California, after being forced to remain in his car by an accomplice who blocked him from opening the car door. The man told him, “You need to stop what you are doing on the web”.
Tom said the man was overweight and had his shirt untucked. Tom was taken aback, but (after collecting himself said) “What the fuck? Who do you think you are telling me what I can do?”
The man answered, “Tom, I’m just giving you some good advice. You should take my advice, Tom.”
Alex Jones has experienced similar intimidation tactics on several occasions in the past, particularly the scenario that happened to Tom in the parking lot as well as thinly veiled threats against his family.
In every single instance, the best response is to stand up and be vocal in the face of such harassment. Mafia-like thugs only continue to feed on those who put up with such treatment. The most dangerous thing to do is cower and acquiesce to the will of tyrants.
These kind of tactics will only succeed if the thugs think their actions can have any kind of effect. Every time someone in our movement is intimidated or harassed, we should respond only by re-doubling and intensifying our efforts.
I’ll tell you this about Tom Feeley; he is no bullshitter,” writes Whitney, “He is the “real deal” and completely committed to exposing the mob that is presently running our country. He does not understand why, (as he says) “They are reaching down SO far to get someone who just runs web site”. But, the truth is, they are. Someone wants him to “shut up” and they apparently have the muscle to do it. He knows he is in danger.”
Feeley is ditching his cellphone and maintaining a low profile but to his credit, refuses to cave in to the threats and will continue to publish his website.
Drawing attention to Feeley’s situation is of paramount importance to ensure his protection and also to combat head on attempts to create a chilling atmosphere and intimidate journalists and website publishers.
http://www.infowars.com/?p=3829
Huffington Post: Still Banned in Beijing
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-w..n-post-still-ban_b_116635.html
Major International Transport Hub Censors Political Websites
http://www.prisonplanet.com/major-..ub-censors-political-websites.html
IOC Faces Heat Over Internet Restrictions
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/feedarticle/7696295
Filed under: 1984, 4th amendment, 9/11, Airport Security, Big Brother, Canada, catastrophic event, cell phones, Checkpoints, Control Grid, DHS, Homeland Security, internet, internet police, Mexico, michael chertoff, nanny state, orwell, pedophilia, Police State, Problem Reaction Solution, Ron Paul, TSA, Uncategorized, US Constitution, war on drugs, War On Terror, warrantless search | Tags: data protection act, ipod, laptops
Homeland Security Can Steal Travelers’ Private Property
Laptops, Ipods, cell-phones, flash-drives, and even ’pocket litter’ can be confiscated by Homeland Security agents at the border without probable cause
Lee Rogers
Rogue Government
August 4, 2008
The Department of Homeland Security more popularly known as the Department of Homeland Enslavement has now come out and stated that they have the authority to confiscate people’s personal property including laptops, electronic devices and even paperwork at the border without any probable cause. They also claim that they can hold those items for an unspecified period of time. All of this they claim is justified under the guise of fighting terrorists. It doesn’t matter that thousands of illegal aliens are entering the country from Mexico unchecked. No, instead the Department of Homeland Security thinks its more effective stealing the property of U.S. citizens to keep us safe from terrorists. Any member of the Department of Homeland Security that takes the property of a U.S. citizen without a warrant should immediately be charged with theft. Of course, in this insane world we live in, that will never happen and the people who conduct this activity will probably be given some sort of freedom medal. This is just another case of the government taking a big dump on the Fourth Amendment which at this point is non-existent.
Before getting into the policies themselves, here is the text of the Fourth Amendment.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The government cannot search and seize an individual’s property unless they obtain a court order that can only be issued based upon probable cause. Keep that in mind, as we analyze the Department of Homeland Security’s policies.
The following is taken from a Washington Post piece covering these policies:
Federal agents may take a traveler’s laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.
Also, officials may share copies of the laptop’s contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
This policy is obviously illegal as it is not in accordance with the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, which makes this policy null and void. What’s really insane, is that they claim they have the authority to share the data on these electronic devices with anyone they want for any specific purpose. It is bad enough that these clowns say that they can take laptops and electronic devices without any probable cause, but they also claim that they can take people’s papers including books, pamphlets and written materials. The insanity of this is unparalleled.
Also from the Washington Post report:
The policies cover “any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form,” including hard drives, flash drives, cell phones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover “all papers and other written documentation,” including books, pamphlets and “written materials commonly referred to as ’pocket trash’ or ’pocket litter.’ “
How can the Department of Homeland Security declare that they have these powers when it is clearly not in accordance with the Constitution? There needs to be an investigation into the criminals that drafted these policies. They should start the investigation at the very top with the Skeletor look-a-like Michael Chertoff who as head of the agency has willingly implemented all sorts of illegal policies and programs under the guise of this phony terror war.
Again from the Washington Post report:
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff wrote in an opinion piece published last month in USA Today that “the most dangerous contraband is often contained in laptop computers or other electronic devices.” Searches have uncovered “violent jihadist materials” as well as images of child pornography, he wrote.
Even if you believe Chertoff’s claims on contraband and believe the bogus terror war is real, it doesn’t warrant the Department Homeland Security going on fishing expeditions. Assuming the false reality of the terror war is real, one has to question’s Chertoff’s sanity considering that he is focusing more of the government’s resources on seizing people’s laptops and personal property with no probable cause than stopping illegal aliens entering the United States unchecked from Mexico. Wouldn’t it be more likely that a terrorist would try to come into the country undetected instead of going through border checkpoints? This is especially true, considering that there is militarized combat and drug trafficking taking place frequently on the U.S.-Mexico border. Of course, Chertoff doesn’t care about any of that.
The bottom line is that the terror war is not real and everything Chertoff is implementing is designed to enslave the American people. People are more likely to die in a car accident or in a swimming pool than from an act of terrorism. The Department of Homeland Security should be abolished and at the very least, Chertoff and his minions should find their way to unemployment lines. This policy of seizing people’s personal property is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, and the people who are responsible for drafting and implementing this policy need to be put in prison.
Be sure to check out these other articles analyzing this illegal search and seizure policy by the Department of Homeland Security.
Detroit Free Press: Leave My Laptop Alone
Information Week: All Your Laptops Belong To Us
LA Times: Feds Now Arrest Your Laptops At Border
Ron Paul sponsors ’Data Protection Act’: Border agents require “reasonable suspicion” to search or confiscate laptops
Fort Bend Now
August 7, 2008
Ron Paul has sponsored legislation designed to require border agents to have “reasonable suspicion” to search the digital equipment of a traveler entering the United States.
Paul said his legislation would force Department of Homeland Security agents to have at least reasonable suspicion that a person has engaged, or is about to engage, in criminal activity before they can search a traveler’s digital equipment. Currently, he pointed out, federal officers can search or seize a traveler’s laptop computer, Blackberry or other electronic device without cause.
That, Paul said, is unconstitutional.
http://www.news.com.au/travel/story/0,26058,24089084-5014090,00.html
Travelers Laptops May Be Stolen At Border
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/content/article/2008/08/01/laptops.html
U.S. Agents Can Seize Laptops
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Government/US-Agents-Can-Seize-Laptops/?kc=rss
TSA Proud Of Confisicating Non-Dangerous Item
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/07/tsa_proud_of_co.html
http://features.csmonitor.com/innov..efends-laptop-searches-at-the-border/
Airport scans for illegal downloads on iPods, mobile phones and laptops
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/ma..ed/2008/07/10/nairport110.xml
India: NSA to tap data traffic passing through Blackberry devices
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2008/07/13/stories/2008071350580500.htm
The right to peer inside your iPod
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jul/10/intellectualproperty.law
Filed under: 1984, 2008 olympics, beijing, Big Brother, CCTV, Censorship, China, civil liberties, civil rights, George Bush, google, human rights, internet, internet blackout, Internet Filtering, internet police, Iraq, neocons, olympics, Oppression, orwell, Police State, sam brownback, Senate, Spy, Surveillance, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap | Tags: falungong, falungong practitioners, Public Security Bureau
China Spying On Internet Use In Hotels
AP
July 29, 2008
Foreign-owned hotels in China face the prospect of “severe retaliation” if they refuse to install government software that can spy on Internet use by hotel guests coming to watch the summer Olympic games, a U.S. lawmaker said Tuesday.
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., produced a translated version of a document from China’s Public Security Bureau that requires hotels to use the monitoring equipment.
“These hotels are justifiably outraged by this order, which puts them in the awkward position of having to craft pop-up messages explaining to their customers that their Web history, communications, searches and key strokes are being spied on by the Chinese government,” Brownback said at a news conference.
A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Brownback said several international hotel chains confirmed receiving the order from China’s Public Security Bureau. The hotels are in a bind, he said, because they don’t want to comply with the order, but also don’t want to jeopardize their investment of millions of dollars to expand their businesses in China. The hotel chains that forwarded the order to Brownback are declining to reveal their identities for fear of reprisal.
Earlier this year, the U.S. State Department issued a fact sheet warning travelers attending the Olympic games that “they have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public or private locations” in China.
“All hotel rooms and offices are considered to be subject to on-site or remote technical monitoring at all times,” the agency states.
The Public Security Bureau order threatens that failure to comply could result in financial penalties, suspending access to the Internet or the loss of a license to operate a hotel in China.
“If you were a human rights advocate, if you’re a journalist, you’re in room 1251 of a hotel, anything that you use, sending out over the Internet is monitored in real time by the Chinese Public Security bureau,” Brownback said. “That’s not right. It’s not in the Olympic spirit.”
Brownback and other lawmakers have repeatedly denounced China’s record of human rights abuses and asked President Bush not to attend the Olympic opening ceremonies in Beijing.
Brownback was introducing a resolution in the Senate on Tuesday that urges China to reverse its actions.
China To Censor Internet During Olympics
AP
July 29, 2008
China will censor the Internet used by foreign media during the Olympics, an organising committee official confirmed Wednesday, reversing a pledge to offer complete media freedom at the games.
“During the Olympic Games we will provide sufficient access to the Internet for reporters,” said Sun Weide, spokesman for the organising committee.
He confirmed, however, that journalists would not be able to access information or websites connected to the Falungong spiritual movement which is banned in China.
Other sites were also unavailable to journalists, he said, without specifying which ones.
Olympic panel ends ban, says Iraq can go to games
http://home.peoplepc.com/..3421_1334520080729-294375139
China Hits Back At U.S. Stands Firm On Internet
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/2008073..sGtapUp0mOsYxUinOROrgF
Google Says Privacy Doesn’t Exist, Get Used To Everyone Knowing Everything About You
http://www.informationweek.com/b..R0QSNDLPSKHSCJUNN2JVN
Filed under: 1984, Airport Security, apple, Australia, Big Brother, Control Grid, internet, internet police, nanny state, orwell, Police State, prison industrial complex, Surveillance, TSA, War On Terror | Tags: ipod, laptops
AU: Pirated music on Ipods could mean jail
MUSIC fans might soon have their iPods and laptops searched by Customs officers at airport checks and face jail if a large amount of pirated music is found on them.
News.com.au
July 28, 2008
The push for the unprecedented searches of travellers’ laptops and MP3 players has been revealed in a leaked discussion paper relating to a treaty being negotiated by the Federal Government.
It suggests criminal sanctions for infringements on a commercial scale.
That meant innocent pop and rock fans with huge song libraries could unwittingly be hit with jail for commercial piracy, according to Internet Industry Association chief executive Peter Coroneos.
“It talks about (sanctions for) commercial infringements does that mean one, 10, 20 or 1000 songs?
“It could be that people get sent to jail for being in possession of commercial-scale quantities of copied music.”
Travelers Laptops May Be Stolen At Border
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/content/article/2008/08/01/laptops.html
U.S. Agents Can Seize Laptops
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Government/US-Agents-Can-Seize-Laptops/?kc=rss
TSA Proud Of Confisicating Non-Dangerous Item
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/07/tsa_proud_of_co.html
http://noworldsystem.com/20..crackdown-on-illegal-downloads/
Filed under: Bloggers, Censorship, domestic terror, domestic terrorism, internet, internet blackout, Internet Filtering, internet police, Iran, Media, Tehran, War On Terror | Tags: gus bilirakis, press TV, SDGT, Specially Designated Global Terrorist
Press TV.com Branded “Terrorist” Website
The Truth Seeker
July 27, 2008
The United States House of Representatives introduced a resolution Saturday that seeks to label several media outlets ’Specially Designated Global Terrorist’ (SDGT) organizations.
Among those media outlets named in US House Resolution 1308, introduced June 26, were several TV Stations, including Iran’s Press TV and its web site.
Based in Tehran, Press TV is an English language news service funded by the Iranian government, which has stated its intention to cover world news differently from the western dominated global news media.
Many in the Independent Internet news media regularly refer to or use reports from Press TV.
Included among those who refer to Press TV’s Internet news reports are these web sites, What Really Happened and even Google’s own news service.
How much longer before they are accused of assisting “terrorists” by referring to Press TV’s reports?
In response Saturday, Tehran said Washington sought to label Iran’s international English news services as “terrorist” because it wanted to keep international public opinion in the dark.
The resolution, sponsored by Representative Gus Bilirakis, Republican from Florida, is currently being investigated and revised by House committees before general debate on the Congressional floor.
Latest figures show that 53% of Press TV’s viewers are from the United States.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=64725§ionid=351020101
Filed under: 1984, 4th amendment, Big Brother, CIA, CNBC, corporations, corporatism, Dictatorship, Empire, Fascism, FBI, google, internet, Internet 2, internet police, IP, Nazi, orwell, pedophilia, Police State, Surveillance, US Constitution | Tags: court, data mining, Echelon, google searches, keywords
Google searches could be used against you in court
noworldsystem.com 