Filed under: 4th amendment, 9/11, Big Brother, Dictatorship, Empire, Fascism, fusion centers, government crimes, Hegelian Dialectic, internet, NSA, Oppression, orwell, Police State, Problem Reaction Solution, US Constitution, War On Terror, warrantless wiretap
NSA Copying Internet Activity Worldwide
Filed under: 9/11, 9/11 Truth, Airport Security, alqaeda, Barack Obama, bush, CIA, conflict of interest, Coverup, cui bono, DHS, False Flag, FBI, Flight 253, George Bush, Hegelian Dialectic, Homeland Security, inside job, MIHOP, mutallab, nation building, NSA, obama, obama deception, occupation, plane bomber, Problem Reaction Solution, State Sponsored Terrorism, TSA, War On Terror, White House, yemen | Tags: christmas bomber, Mark Hosenball, Michael E. Leiter, Michael Isikoff, National Counterterrorism Cente, NCTC, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, underwear bomber
SMOKING GUN: US Government Allowed Flight 253 to Happen
globalresearch.ca
January 25, 2010
Nearly one month after passengers foiled an attempted suicide bomb attack aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 as it approached Detroit on Christmas Day, new information reveals that the White House and U.S. security agencies had specific intelligence on accused terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, far earlier than previously acknowledged.
Along with new reports, evidence suggests that the administration’s cover-up of the affair has very little to do with a failure by the intelligence apparatus to “connect the dots” and may have far more serious political implications for the Obama administration, and what little remains of a functioning democracy in the United States, than a botched bombing.
What the White House and security officials have previously described only as “vague” intercepts regarding “a Nigerian” has now morphed into a clear picture of the suspect–and the plot.
The New York Times revealed January 18 that the National Security Agency “learned from a communications intercept of Qaeda followers in Yemen that a man named “Umar Farouk”–the first two names of the jetliner suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab–had volunteered for a coming operation.”
According to Times’ journalists Eric Lipton, Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti, “the American intelligence network was clearly listening in Yemen and sharing that information.” Indeed, additional NSA intercepts in December “mentioned the date of Dec. 25, and suggested that they were ‘looking for ways to get somebody out’ or ‘for ways to move people to the West,’ one senior administration official said.”
Clearly, the administration was “worried about possible terrorist attacks over the Christmas holiday.” These concerns led President Obama to meet December 22 “with top officials of the C.I.A., F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security, who ticked off a list of possible plots against the United States and how their agencies were working to disrupt them,” the Times reports.
- “In a separate White House meeting that day” the Times disclosed, “Mr. Obama’s homeland security adviser, John O. Brennan, led talks on Yemen, where a stream of disturbing intelligence had suggested that Qaeda operatives were preparing for some action, perhaps a strike on an American target, on Christmas Day.”
In mid-January, Newsweek reported that the “White House report on the foiled Christmas Day attempted airliner bombing provided only the sketchiest of details about what may have been the most politically sensitive of its findings: how the White House itself was repeatedly warned about the prospect of an attack on the U.S.,” Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff disclosed.
According to the newsmagazine, “intelligence analysts had ‘highlighted’ an evolving ‘strategic threat,'” and that “‘some of the improvised explosive device tactics AQAP might use against U.S. interests were highlighted’ in other ‘finished intelligence products’.”
However, the real bombshell came last Wednesday during hearings before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee when Bushist embed, and current Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), Michael E. Leiter, made a startling admission.
CongressDaily reported on January 22 that intelligence officials “have acknowledged the government knowingly allows foreigners whose names are on terrorist watch lists to enter the country in order to track their movement and activities.”
Leiter told the Committee: “I will tell you, that when people come to the country and they are on the watch list, it is because we have generally made the choice that we want them here in the country for some reason or another.”
CongressDaily reporter Chris Strohm, citing an unnamed “intelligence official” confirmed that Leiter’s statement reflected government policy and told the publication, “in certain situations it’s to our advantage to be able to track individuals who might be on a terrorist watch list because you can learn something from their activities and their contacts.”
An alternative explanation fully in line with well-documented inaction, or worse, by U.S. security agencies prior to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and now, Christmas Day’s aborted airline bombing, offer clear evidence that a ruthless “choice” which facilitates the murder of American citizens are cynical pretexts in a wider game: advancing imperialism’s geostrategic goals abroad and attacks on democratic rights at home.
Leiter’s revelation in an of itself should demolish continued government claims that the accused terror suspect succeeded in boarding NW Flight 253 due to a failure to “connect the dots.”
However, as far as Antifascist Calling can determine, no other media outlet has either reported or followed-up CongressDaily’s disclosure; a clear sign that its explosive nature, and where a further investigation might lead, are strictly off-limits.
Taking into account testimony by a high-level national security official that terrorists are allowed to enter the country for intelligence purposes, one can only conclude that the alleged “failure” to stop Abdulmutallab was neither a casual omission nor the result of bureaucratic incompetence but rather, a highly-charged political calculation.
Filed under: 1984, ADS, brain manipulation, brainwashing, CIA, civil disobedience, civil liberties, civil rights, civil unrest, Communism, Darpa, Dictatorship, Dissent, Empire, Eugenics, Fascism, FBI, Genocide, human rights, Illuminati, LRAD, michael aquino, Military, Military Industrial Complex, mind control, Nazi, New World Order, non compliance, NSA, NWO, occult, Oppression, orwell, Pentagon, Police State, political dissent, Protest, psychological warfare, Psyops, Raytheon, Russia, slavery, Soviet Union, State Sponsored Terrorism, stubblebine, super weapons, Surveillance, urban warfare, Waco, War On Terror | Tags: sci tech
Russia Creates Mind Control Weapons
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: 1984, 2-party system, 4th amendment, ACLU, amnesty, AT&T, Barack Obama, Big Brother, bush = obama, CIA, civil liberties, civil rights, Congress, DHS, domeestic terrorism, domestic terror, EFF, FBI, federal crimes, FOIA, George Bush, government bureaucrat, government control, government takeover, Homeland Security, immunity, left right paradigm, Military, neocons, Neolibs, NSA, obama, obama = bush, obama deception, orwell, Patriot Act, privacy rights, roving wiretaps, Russ Feingold, Senate, Sprint, Spy, Surveillance, telecoms, us constituion, US Constitution, verison, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap, White House
Dem-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee extends PATRIOT Act provisions
Capitol Hill Blue
October 9, 2009
Key US lawmakers passed legislation Thursday extending three key provisions of the PATRIOT Act, the sweeping intelligence bill enacted after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Backing a White House request, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the measure 11 votes to 8 to extend until 2013 three clauses that would have expired by 31 December. The bill now heads to the full Senate for a vote.
The provisions include the “roving wiretap” clause, used to monitor mobile communications of individuals using multiple telephone lines, and the “lone-wolf” provision, which enables spying on individuals suspected of terrorist activity but with no obvious connection to extremist groups.
Lawmakers also extended the life of controversial section 215, known as the “library records provision” that allows government agencies to access individual’s library history.
The committee had earlier met in a closed-door meeting with members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the intelligence community on ensuring their actions would not impede investigations already underway.
The senators also debated freeing up law enforcement actions that have been hampered by legislation and court rulings since the first program was launched by former president George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11, which enabled collecting sensitive information for years without a court order.
Republicans senators have remained critical of placing restrictions on the intelligence community, saying they should more of a free hand in the early stages of investigations.
But their Democratic counterparts have decried the fact that the provisions still do not in their view adequately respect the privacy of ordinary Americans.
Democratic Senator Russ Feingold said he feared handing a “blank check” to law enforcement agencies and criticized the Democrat-controlled committee for not passing safeguards that even Republicans supported during the Bush administration.
“Among the most significant problems is the failure to include an improved standard for Section 215 orders, even though a Republican controlled Judiciary Committee unanimously supported including the same standard in 2005,” he said in a media advisory.
“But what was most upsetting was the apparent willingness of too many members to defer completely to behind the scenes complaints from the FBI and the Justice Department, even though the administration has yet to take a public position on any of the improvements that I and other senators have proposed. … [While] I am left scratching my head trying to understand how a committee controlled by a wide Democratic margin could support the bill it approved today, I will continue to work with my colleagues to try to make improvements to this bill.”
Michael Macleod-Ball, acting director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington legislative office said the rights group was “disappointed” that further moves were not made to protect civil liberties.
“This truly was a missed opportunity for the Senate Judiciary Committee to right the wrongs of the PATRIOT Act,” he said.
“We urge the Senate to adopt amendments on the floor that will bring this bill in line with the Constitution.”
Filed under: 1984, 2-party system, 4th amendment, amnesty, AT&T, Barack Obama, Big Brother, bush = obama, CIA, civil liberties, civil rights, Congress, DHS, domeestic terrorism, domestic terror, EFF, federal crimes, FOIA, George Bush, government bureaucrat, government control, government takeover, Homeland Security, immunity, left right paradigm, Military, neocons, Neolibs, NSA, obama, obama = bush, obama deception, orwell, Patriot Act, privacy rights, roving wiretaps, Senate, Sprint, Spy, Surveillance, telecoms, us constituion, US Constitution, verison, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap
Telephone Companies Are An Arm Of Government Admits DOJ
Wired News
October 9, 2009
 AT&T was the first of many telcos sued for helping the NSA spy on Americans without warrants |
The Department of Justice has finally admitted it in court papers: the nation’s telecom companies are an arm of the government — at least when it comes to secret spying.
Fortunately, a judge says that relationship isn’t enough to squash a rights group’s open records request for communications between the nation’s telecoms and the feds.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation wanted to see what role telecom lobbying of Justice Department played when the government began its year-long, and ultimately successful, push to win retroactive immunity for AT&T and others being sued for unlawfully spying on American citizens.
The feds argued that the documents showing consultation over the controversial telecom immunity proposal weren’t subject to the Freedom of Information Act since they were protected as “intra-agency” records:
“The communications between the agencies and telecommunications companies regarding the immunity provisions of the proposed legislation have been regarded as intra-agency because the government and the companies have a common interest in the defense of the pending litigation and the communications regarding the immunity provisions concerned that common interest.”
U.S. District Court Judge Jeffery White disagreed and ruled on September 24 that the feds had to release the names of the telecom employees that contacted the Justice Department and the White House to lobby for a get-out-of-court-free card.
“Here, the telecommunications companies communicated with the government to ensure that Congress would pass legislation to grant them immunity from legal liability for their participation in the surveillance,” White wrote. “Those documents are not protected from disclosure because the companies communicated with the government agencies “with their own … interests in mind,” rather than the agency’s interests.”
The feds were supposed to make the documents available Friday, but in a motion late Thursday, the Obama administration is asking for a 30-day emergency stay (.pdf) so it can file a further appeal.
Filed under: 2-party system, 4th amendment, Barack Obama, bush = obama, CIA, civil liberties, civil rights, Congress, Detainee, Detainees, detention, DOJ, domeestic terrorism, domestic terror, Extraordinary Rendition, federal crimes, FISA, forced detention, George Bush, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, left right paradigm, mandatory detention, Marines, Military, military commissions act, Military Industrial Complex, neocons, Neolibs, NSA, obama, obama = bush, obama deception, Patriot Act, preventative detention, quantanamo, rendition, roving wiretaps, Senate, soldiers, Torture, Troops, US Constitution, USMC, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap
Obama will bypass Congress to detain suspects indefinitely
John Byrne
Raw Story
September 24, 2009
President Barack Obama has quietly decided to bypass Congress and allow the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects without charges.
The move, which was controversial when the idea was first floated in The Washington Post in May, has sparked serious concern among civil liberties advocates. Such a decision allows the president to unilaterally hold “combatants” without habeas corpus — a legal term literally meaning “you shall have the body” — which forces prosecutors to charge a suspect with a crime to justify the suspect’s detention.
Obama’s decision was buried on page A 23 of The New York Times’ New York edition on Thursday. It didn’t appear on that page in the national edition. (Meanwhile, the front page was graced with the story, “Richest Russian’s Newest Toy: An N.B.A. Team.”)
Rather than seek approval from Congress to hold some 50 Guantanamo detainees indefinitely, the administration has decided that it has the authority to hold the prisoners under broad-ranging legislation passed in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001. Former President George W. Bush frequently invoked this legislation as the justification for controversial legal actions — including the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program.
“The administration will continue to hold the detainees without bringing them to trial based on the power it says it has under the Congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, authorizing the president to use force against forces of Al Qaeda and the Taliban,” the Times‘ Peter Baker writes. “In concluding that it does not need specific permission from Congress to hold detainees without charges, the Obama administration is adopting one of the arguments advanced by the Bush administration in years of debates about detention policies.”
Constitutional scholar and Salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald discussed the policy in a column in May. He warned that the ability for a president to “preventively” detain suspects could mushroom into broader, potentially abusive activity.
“It does not merely allow the U.S. Government to imprison people alleged to have committed Terrorist acts yet who are unable to be convicted in a civilian court proceeding,” Greenwald wrote. “That class is merely a subset, perhaps a small subset, of who the Government can detain. Far more significant, ‘preventive detention’ allows indefinite imprisonment not based on proven crimes or past violations of law, but of those deemed generally ‘dangerous’ by the Government for various reasons (such as, as Obama put it yesterday, they ‘expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden’ or ‘otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans’). That’s what ‘preventive’ means: imprisoning people because the Government claims they are likely to engage in violent acts in the future because they are alleged to be ‘combatants.’”
“Once known, the details of the proposal could — and likely will — make this even more extreme by extending the ‘preventive detention’ power beyond a handful of Guantanamo detainees to anyone, anywhere in the world, alleged to be a ‘combatant,’” Greenwald continues. “After all, once you accept the rationale on which this proposal is based — namely, that the U.S. Government must, in order to keep us safe, preventively detain “dangerous” people even when they can’t prove they violated any laws — there’s no coherent reason whatsoever to limit that power to people already at Guantanamo, as opposed to indefinitely imprisoning with no trials all allegedly ‘dangerous’ combatants, whether located in Pakistan, Thailand, Indonesia, Western countries and even the U.S.”
The Obama Administration appears to have embraced “preventive detention” in part because of problems with how Guantanamo prisoners’ cases — and incarceration — were handled under President Bush. Military prosecutors have said that numerous cases could not be brought successfully in civilian courts because evidence was obtained in ways that wouldn’t be admissible on US soil. The Bush Administration originally sought to try numerous detainees in military tribunals, but the Supreme Court ruled that at least some have the rights to challenge their detention in US courts.
Baker notes that Obama’s decision to hold suspects without charges doesn’t propose as broad an executive authority claimed by President Bush.
“Obama’s advisers are not embracing the more disputed Bush contention that the president has inherent power under the Constitution to detain terrorism suspects indefinitely regardless of Congress,” Baker writes.
In a statement to Baker, the Justice Department said, “The administration would rely on authority already provided by Congress [and] is not currently seeking additional authorization.”
“The position conveyed by the Justice Department in the meeting last week broke no new ground and was entirely consistent with information previously provided by the Justice Department to the Senate Armed Services Committee,” the statement added.
Roughly 50 detainees of the more than 200 still held at the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are thought to be affected by the decision.
Filed under: 1984, 2-party system, 4th amendment, amnesty, AT&T, Barack Obama, Big Brother, bush = obama, CIA, civil liberties, civil rights, Congress, Detainees, DHS, domeestic terrorism, domestic terror, Extraordinary Rendition, federal crimes, FISA, forced detention, George Bush, Habeas Corpus, Homeland Security, HR 6166, left right paradigm, mandatory detention, Military, military commissions act, neocons, Neolibs, NSA, obama, obama = bush, obama deception, orwell, Patriot Act, preventative detention, quantanamo, rendition, roving wiretaps, Senate, Sprint, Spy, Surveillance, telecoms, Torture, US Constitution, verison, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap | Tags: obama = bush
Obama Pushes For Renewal of Warrantless Spying
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
September 16, 2009
President Barack Obama has once again betrayed his promise to restore liberties eviscerated by the Bush regime by pushing Congress to renew Patriot Act provisions that allow for warrantless spying on American citizens, even in cases where there is no link to terrorism whatsoever.
According to a Wired News report, the “Obama administration has told Congress it supports renewing three provisions of the Patriot Act due to expire at year’s end, measures making it easier for the government to spy within the United States.”
Obama’s support for the provisions should come as little surprise because he first voted for warrantless wiretapping of Americans in 2008 when he was an Illinois Senator, while also lending support for immunizing the nation’s telecommunications companies from lawsuits charging them with being complicit in the Bush administration’s wiretapping program.
One of the provisions Obama is pushing to renew is the so-called “lone wolf” provision, enacted in 2004, which allows for the electronic monitoring of an individual without the government having to prove that the case has any relation whatsoever to terrorism or a foreign power. This is in effect a carte blanche for the government to use every method at their disposal to spy on any American citizen they choose.
The “lone wolf” provision is opposed by the ACLU, whose legislative counsel Michelle Richardson told Wired, “The justification for FISA and these lower standards and letting it operate in secret was all about terrorist groups and foreign governments, that they posed a unique threat other than the normal criminal element. This lone wolf provision undercuts that justification.”
Another Patriot Act provision Obama wants Congress to renew gives the government access to business, library and medical records, with the authorities generally having to prove that the investigation is terrorism related. However, since according to Homeland Security guidelines the new breed of terrorist is classified as someone who supports a third party, puts a political bumper sticker on their car, is part of the alternative media, or merely someone who disagrees with the authorities’ official version of events on any given issue, the scope for the government to use this power against their political adversaries is wide open.
The third provision Obama is pushing to renew allows a FISA court to grant “roving wiretaps” without the government having to even identify their target. This is another carte blanche power that gives the state the power to monitor telephone calls, e mails and any other form of electronic communication.
Barack Obama swept into office on a mandate of “change” and a commitment to restore liberties that were eviscerated under the Bush regime. Despite promising to do so, he has failed completely to overturn Bush signing statements and executive orders that, according to Obama, “trampled on liberties.” Indeed, despite promising to end the use of signing statements, he has continued to use them.
Obama has failed to close Guantanamo Bay or any other CIA torture “black site” as he promised to do.
Obama has failed in his promise to “reject the Military Commissions Act” and instead has supported the use of military commissions.
Obama has continued to allow the rendition and torture of detainees, while protecting Bush administration officials who ordered torture from prosecution and blocking the release of evidence related to torture.
Obama has gone even further than the Bush administration in introducing “preventative detention” of detainees, ensuring people will never get a trial.
In restating his support for warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, Obama has once again proven that his promise of “change” was nothing more than a hollow and deceptive political platitude to ensure his election. Since he took office, Obama has betrayed almost every promise he made and effectively become nothing more than the third term of the Bush administration.
Filed under: 2-party system, 9/11 Truth, afghan deaths, Afghanistan, airstrike, Barack Obama, Censorship, CIA, civilian casualties, death toll, defense department, Dictatorship, DoD, Empire, Eugenics, fake alqaeda, fallen soldiers, false, Fascism, FBI, federal crime, flag, free press, Genocide, George Bush, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, infanticide, Iraq, Israel, kidnapping, left right paradigm, marine, Media, media blackout, media censorship, Media Manipulation, Military, Military Industrial Complex, military strike, military strikes, nation building, NATO, Nazi, neocons, Neolibs, NSA, nuremburg, obama, occupation, Propaganda, Robert Gates, soldiers, State Sponsored Terrorism, Taliban, The American Legion, Torture, Troops, truth movement, u.s. soldiers, Uncategorized, USMC, war casualties, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, warhawk, warhawks, warmonger
NATO Air Strike Kills 150 Afghan Civilians
Rahmatullah, 19, a victim of Friday’ NATO air strike, tries to sit up on his bed in a hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Sept. 5, 2009.
Pajwok Afghan News
September 5, 2009
Residents of Chahar Dara district in northern Kunduz province say more than 150 civilians were killed and 20 others wounded in Friday’s air strike by NATO-led forces.
The bombing in Haji Aman village came as insurgents and residents emptied oil into jerry canes from tankers hijacked by Taliban militants from the Kunduz-Baghlan Highway.
Inhabitants of the area told Pajhwok Afghan News all those killed in the bombardment were civilians and there were no Taliban at the site at the time the attack took place. Fighters had left the scene after they asked the people to take fuel for free.
An elder from Sarak-i-Bala neighbourhood, Abdul Rahim, said 15 children were among the 50 people of Yaqubi village killed in the bombing raid.
The man, who lost two sons in the incident, argued: “Poverty brought us to this stage.” No guerrillas were among the dead, he said, explaining the fighters well before the deadly assault.
A 50-year-old woman bitterly cried while standing in front of her ruined house. She said her three sons, husband and a grandson perished in the bombardment. Locals showed this reporter as many as 50 graves of civilian victims.
In the Maulvi Naeem village, residents said 20 civilians were killed in the incident. Haji Najmuddin, a tribal elder, lost two nephews. He claimed chemicals bombs were dropped on the villagers. Clothes of his nephews were not damaged but their bodies were badly charred, the man argued.
This reporter saw the graves of those killed in the air strike. Seventy of the fatalities were from Yaqubi and Maulvi Naeem villages and the rest from three other areas.
Meanwhile, Kunduz Governor Eng. Muhammad Omar said a delegation from Kabul had arrived in the district to investigate the incident and determine the exact number of civilian deaths.
Government gives up hope of more European Nato help in Afghanistan
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/6143065/Government-gives-up-hope-of-more-European-Nato-help-in-Afghanistan.html
Afghan air strike galvanises war protesters
Filed under: 2-party system, afghan deaths, Afghanistan, airstrike, Barack Obama, Censorship, CIA, civilian casualties, death toll, defense department, Dictatorship, DoD, Empire, fallen soldiers, false, Fascism, FBI, federal crime, flag, free press, George Bush, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Iraq, Israel, kidnapping, left right paradigm, marine, Media, media blackout, media censorship, Media Manipulation, milirary, Military Industrial Complex, military strike, military strikes, nation building, NATO, Nazi, neocons, Neolibs, NSA, nuremburg, obama, occupation, Propaganda, Robert Gates, soldiers, The American Legion, Torture, Troops, u.s. soldiers, Uncategorized, USMC, war casualties, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, warhawk, warhawks, warmonger | Tags: dead marine photo, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Joshua M. Bernard, Julie Jacobson, Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard, wounded marine photo
Mass Censorship of Dead Marine Photo
Paul Craig Roberts
Antiwar.com
September 7, 2009
Americans have lost their ability for introspection, thereby revealing their astounding hypocrisy to the world.
U.S. War Secretary Robert Gates has condemned the Associated Press and a reporter, Julie Jacobson, embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan, for taking and releasing a photo of a U.S. Marine who was wounded in action and died from his injury.
The photographer was on patrol with the Marines when they came under fire. She found the courage and presence of mind to do her job. Her reward is to be condemned by the warmonger Gates as “insensitive.” Gates says her employer, the Associated Press, lacks “judgment and common decency.”
The American Legion jumped in and denounced the Associated Press for a “stunning lack of compassion and common decency.”
To stem opposition to its wars, the War Department hides signs of American casualties from the public. Angry that evidence escaped the censor, the war secretary and the American Legion attacked with politically correct jargon: “insensitive,” “offended,” and the “anguish” and “pain and suffering” inflicted upon the Marine’s family. The War Department sounds like it is preparing a harassment tort.
Isn’t this passing the buck? The Marine lost his life not because of the Associated Press and a photographer, but because of the war criminals – Gates, Bush, Cheney, Obama, and the U.S. Congress that supports wars of naked aggression that serve no American purpose, but which keep campaign coffers filled with contributions from the armaments companies.
Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard is dead because the U.S. government and a significant percentage of the U.S. population believe that the U.S. has the right to invade, bomb, and occupy other peoples who have raised no hand against us but are demonized with lies and propaganda.
For the American war secretary it is a photo that is insensitive, not America’s assertion of the right to determine the fate of Afghanistan with bombs and soldiers.
The exceptional “virtuous nation” does not think it is insensitive for America’s bombs to blow innocent villagers to pieces. On Sept. 4, the day before Gates’ outburst over the “insensitive” photo, Agence France Presse reported from Afghanistan that a U.S./NATO air strike had killed large numbers of villagers who had come to get fuel from two tankers that had been hijacked from negligent and inattentive occupation forces:
“’Nobody was in one piece. Hands, legs, and body parts were scattered everywhere. Those who were away from the fuel tanker were badly burnt,’ said 32-year-old Mohammad Daud, depicting a scene from hell. The burned-out shells of the tankers, still smoking in marooned wrecks on the riverbank, were surrounded by the charred-meat remains of villagers from Chahar Dara district in Kunduz province, near the Tajik border. Dr. Farid Rahid, a spokesperson in Kabul for the ministry of health, said up to 250 villagers had been near the tankers when the air strike was called in.”
What does the world think of the United States? The American war secretary and a U.S. military veterans association think a photo of an injured and dying American soldier is insensitive, but not the wipeout of an Afghan village that came to get needed fuel.
The U.S. government is like a criminal who accuses the police of his crime when he is arrested or a sociopathic abuser who blames the victim. It is a known fact that the CIA has violated U.S. law and international law with its assassinations, kidnappings, and torture. But it is not this criminal agency that will be held accountable. Instead, those who will be punished will be those moral beings who, appalled at the illegality and inhumanity of the CIA, leaked the evidence of the agency’s crimes. The CIA has asked the U.S. Justice (sic) Department to investigate what the CIA alleges is the “criminal disclosure” of its secret program to murder suspected foreign terrorist leaders abroad. As we learned from Gitmo, those suspected by America are overwhelmingly innocent.
The CIA program is so indefensible that when CIA director Leon Panetta found out about it six months after being in office, he cancelled the program (assuming those running the program obeyed) and informed Congress.
Yet, the CIA wants the person who revealed its crime to be punished for revealing secret information. A secret agency this unmoored from moral and legal standards is a greater threat to our country than are terrorists. Who knows what false flag operation it will pull off in order to provide justification and support for its agenda. An agency that is more liability than benefit should be abolished.
The agency’s program of assassinating terrorist leaders is itself fraught with contradictions and dangers. The hatred created by the U.S. and Israel is independent of any leader. If one is killed, others take his place. The most likely outcome of the CIA assassination program is that the agency will be manipulated by rivals, just as the FBI was used by one mafia family to eliminate another. In order to establish credibility with groups that they are attempting to penetrate, CIA agents will be drawn into participating in violent acts against the U.S. and its allies.
Accusing the truthteller instead of the evildoer is the position that the neoconservatives took against the New York Times when after one year’s delay, which gave George W. Bush time to get reelected, the Times published the NSA leak that revealed that the Bush administration was committing felonies by violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The neocons, especially those associated with Commentary magazine, wanted the New York Times indicted for treason. To the evil neocon mind, anything that interferes with their diabolical agenda is treason.
This is the way many Americans think. America über alles! No one counts but us (and Israel). The deaths we inflict and the pain and suffering we bring to others are merely collateral damage on the bloody path to American hegemony.
The attitude of the “freedom and democracy” U.S. government is that anyone who complains of illegality or immorality or inhumanity is a traitor. The Republican Sen. Christopher S. Bond is a recent example. Bond got on his high horse about “irreparable damage” to the CIA from the disclosures of its criminal activities. Bond wants those “back stabbers” who revealed the CIA’s wrongdoings to be held accountable. Bond is unable to grasp that it is the criminal activities, not their disclosure, that is the source of the problem. Obviously, the Whistleblower Protection Act has no support from Sen. Bond, who sees it as just another law to plough under.
This is where the U.S. government stands today: Ignoring and covering up government crimes is the patriotic thing to do. To reveal the government’s crimes is an act of treason. Many Americans on both sides of the aisle agree.
Yet, they still think that they are The Virtuous Nation, the exceptional nation, the salt of the earth.
Filed under: Ahmadinejad, airstrikes, Ayatollah Khomeini, Barack Obama, BBC, blackops, BP, Britain, Britian, bush, CIA, Congress, Coup, Dictatorship, Empire, european union, False Flag, green revolution, Henry Kissinger, inside job, Iran, John Bolton, Jundollah, Jundullah, london, Martial Law, media deception, MEK, Mi6, Military, military strike, MKO, Mohammed Mossadeq, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Mossad, mujahideen, mullahs, Nazi, neocons, New World Order, NGOs, NSA, Nuke, NWO, obama, occupation, Oil, operation ajax, pahlavi, PJAK, Preemptive Strike, preemptive war, Propaganda, Protest, Psyops, Reza Pahlavi, riot, shah dictatorship, shah of iran, Shock and Awe, State Sponsored Terrorism, Tehran, UN, United Kingdom, united nations, us military, War On Terror, world government, WW3, ww4, zbigniew brzezinski | Tags: iran elections, Iran meddling, iranian elections, Kenneth Timmerman, mirza, Mirza Aslam Baig, Mirza Aslam Beig, The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, The Anglo-Persian Oil Company, US meddling
Iran Finds US-Backed Terrorists in Riots
Noworldsystem.com
June 24, 2009
While total mayhem on the streets of Iran intensifies, behind the scenes lurks the Anglo-American New World Order meddling in the country’s election process, creating a ripe environment for regime change against the Islamic Republic. If the color revolution is successful it will create a dictatorial Shah monarchy much like in 1941.
The coup against Iran consists of many operations inside and outside the country; U.S. and British funded Mousavi’s revolution, terrorists were used in the riots in Tehran and the mainstream media is shelling out propaganda against Ahmadinejad.
The latest news of US-backed terrorism in Iran came from Iranian Security Official claiming terrorist Mujahedin Khaliq Organization (MKO) played a major role in the recent riots in Tehran after the elections were declared a fraud. Officials reported that they have identified and arrested a large number of MKO members, arrested members admitted they were extensively trained in Iraq (Camp Ashraf) to create post-election mayhem. They also admitted that they were given directions by the MKO command-post in Britain. [Source]
The proof of U.S. and British operations in Iran is extensive, in 2007 Bush approved to fund a covert coup in Iran according to current and former military, intelligence and from presidential findings signed by the president. The operations gave $400 million to the CIA to spend on terrorist organizations such as MKO and Jundullah terrorists to help prop up a color revolution. [Source]
More proof of state sponsored terrorism: In 2008, Former Pakistan General Mirza Aslam Beig reported that the U.S. was providing training facilities to the Jundullah terrorists located in eastern areas of Iran to create unrest in the area and effect the cordial ties between Iran and its neighbor Pakistan. [Source]
May 27, 2007, the London Telegraph admitted “Mr. Bush has signed the official document endorsing the CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs”. A few days previously the Telegraph reported Bush administration neocon, John Bolton told the Telegraph that a US military strike on Iran would “be a ‘last option’ after economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had failed”.
Globalist puppet-master Henry Kissinger had the same sentiments calling for a military invasion of Iran if the “color revolution” fails to overthrow the current Iranian administration.:
Another Neocon, Kenneth Timmerman writes that “the National Endowment for Democracy has spent millions of dollars promoting ‘color’ revolutions . . . Some of that money appears to have made it into the hands of pro-Mousavi groups, who have ties to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.” Timmerman’s own neocon Foundation for Democracy is “a private, non-profit organization established in 1995 with grants from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), to promote democracy and internationally-recognized standards of human rights in Iran.” [Source]
This election chaos in Iran will definitely be used by the Obama administration as the Democrat’s version of the War on Terror against the Mullahs. There are many signs that this administration will be the straw that breaks the camels back for regime change. In the 1970s Obama’s foreign policy adviser Zbigneiw Brzezinski flew to Pakistan to foment Iranian resistance by supporting the Afghan Mujahideen Jihadists. He wanted to arm and fund the Mujahideen without revealing the United States role.:
The 2009 Iranian election mayhem started by the corporate-controlled media reporting that candidate Mousavi was the winner before the elections ended. This created mass confusion, once the election ended Ahmadinejad was declared the winner, immediately after, Mousavi denounced the election as rigged causing all hell to break loose in the streets of Tehran.
The mainstream media has its dirty fingerprints all over the plot to help overthrow Iran, they are extremely biased towards Mousavi. Example; the BBC News website used a photo of Ahmadinejad waving to his supporters, the BBC cropped-out Ahmadinejad and used the crowd claiming that the photo was of anti-government protesters in favor of Mousavi. [Source] Not to say the Mousavi supporters are not genuine, but looking at the evidence it proves the U.S. and the British are helping the “color revolution” and using this opportunity to take out the Mullahs.
Mousavi’s green revolution against the Mullahs could be at its end because of his past leadership mistakes when Prime Minister of Iran in the 1980’s. During his leadership he personally selected a terrorist named Ali Akbar Mohtashemi-pur as the ambassador of Iran in Beirut. The new ambassador was caught by the NSA discussing plans to carry out terrorism. [Source]
The man that is now standing in line to take Mousavi’s place is none other than the son of the late Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, who is emerging as a prominent figure of the color revolution. Pahlavi long planned to help overthrow the Mullahs, five years ago he called for a “revolution sparked by massive civil disobedience in which the masses in the streets are backed by elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard,” adding that he was in contact with members of the Guard who shared his vision. Pahlavi left Iran in 1978 and was educated in the United States before training as a jet fighter pilot at the Reese Air Force Base in Lubbock, Texas.
According to writer Michael Edwards, Pahlavi “has continually appeared on satellite radio and TV shows beamed into Iran, repeatedly calling for civil disobedience in order to topple the Islamic Mullahs. He promotes a US-UN backed referendum to decide whether Iran is to be governed as a constitutional monarchy, which he says he can lead as Shah, or a secular democracy.” [Source]
History of the Shah Dictatorship in Iran
To understand what it means to have another Shah of Iran you must look back at the history of Iran and how the United States and Great Britain meddled in the past to install a dictatorial monarchy.:
Since Britain was the first to discover oil fields in Iran in 1908, the Anglo-American Empire had its meddling paws in every aspect of Iranian life. Upon discovery Britain decided to create The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) in the country, it was run only for the benefit of the British. In 1954 he Anglo-Iranian Oil Company changed its name to British Petroleum (BP).
In 1941 the British/American empire installed the Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. By 1944 the Iranian people started to realize the Shah was nothing more than a puppet of the British/American empire and started mass riots, the Shah ordered Martial Law and arresting party leaders and clerics that oppose the regime.
But in 1951 the Iranian Revolution was finally heard when Iranian nationalist Mohammed Mossadeq was elected Prime Minister. Mossadeq at this time nationalized AIOC to make sure Iranians were the only ones to benefit from the oil fields and not the British. To the Anglo-American New World Order, this was a big mistake. In 1953 the newly created CIA and MI6 launched Operation AJAX, a plan to overthrow Iran by using terror attacks to subsequently blame them on Mohammed Mossadeq. This plan was later revealed in the late 1990’s when the CIA declassified large sections of Operation AJAX to the American public.:
“TPAJAX. The plan comprised propaganda, provocations, demonstrations, and bribery, and employed agents of influence, “false flag” operatives, dissident military leaders, and paid protesters.” [Source]
August 1953, with the help of the British and the U.S., Mossadeq was removed and the Shah returned back to his throne for the next 25 years, at this time American/British oil companies took over half of Iran’s oil production. The velvet glove came off the Shah’s iron fist after the coup against Mossadeq, all who opposed the dictatorship had to deal with the imperial secret police called the SAVAK that was just as brutal then the secret police of Nazi Germany. The Shah ordered deaths of demonstrators, torture and execution of all who oppose the Shah empire. In 1965 the Shahs main opposition Ayatollah Khomeini was deported to Iraq for 13 years for saying the Shah has sold their independence to the British/American empire.
The Shah was eventually destabilized and in 1979 Khomeini returned to Iran administering the Islamic Republic of Iran.
As years passed, Ahmadinejad was elected in 2005 and now today the discontent grows against Iran, the New World Order power elite want to control Iran once again to make sure the region approves of the plan for World Government and a better control the region.
Alex Jones Interviews Paul Craig Roberts
http://www.presstv.com/classic/detail.aspx?id=96846§ionid=351020101
Iranian Unrest: Evidence Of Western Intelligence Meddling
http://www.prisonplanet.com/iranian-unrest..ntelligence-meddling.html
Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated “Color Revolution?”
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts06192009.html
Filed under: 1984, 4th amendment, Big Brother, Control Grid, data mining, DHS, DNI, FCC, George Bush, Homeland Security, internet, michael chertoff, Mike McConnell, Military, neocons, NSA, orwell, Russia, Surveillance, telecoms, US Constitution, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap | Tags: Computer Emergency Readiness Team, cyber security, Director of National Intelligence, einstein program, FY2009, IP, PINWALE, PINWHEEL, project einstein, SIGINT, signals intelligence, US-CERT
’Einstein’ Program: The All-seeing eye of internet activity
Wayne Madsen
Online Journal
September 19, 2008
WMR has learned from government sources that the Bush administration has authorized massive surveillance of the Internet using as cover a cyber-security multi-billion dollar project called the “Einstein” program.
Billed as a cyber-security intrusion detection system for federal computer systems and networks, WMR has been told that the actual intent of Einstein is to initially monitor the email and web surfing activities of federal employees and contractors and not in protecting government computer systems from intrusion by outsiders.
In February 2008, President Bush signed a directive that designated the National Security Agency (NSA) as the central administrator for the federal government’s computer and network security.
Although Einstein is primarily a program under the aegis of the Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) of the National Cyber Security Division of the Homeland Security Department, WMR has learned that it has the personal support of Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Mike McConnell, a former NSA director. Einstein is advertised as merely conducting traffic analysis within the dot (.) gov and dot (.) mil domains, including data packet lengths, protocols, source and destination IP addresses, source and destination ports, time stamp information, and autonomous system numbers. However, WMR has learned that Einstein will also bore down into the text of email and analyze message content. In fact, most of the classified budget allotted to Einstein is being used for collecting information from the text of messages and not the header data.
In fact, WMR has learned that most of the classified technology being used for Einstein was developed for the NSA in conducting signals intelligence (SIGINT) operations on email networks in Russia. Code-named PINWHEEL, the NSA email surveillance system targets Russian government, military, diplomatic, and commercial email traffic and burrows into the text portions of the email to search for particular words and phrases of interest to NSA eavesdroppers. According to NSA documents obtained by WMR, there is an NSA system code-named ”PINWALE.”
The DNI and NSA also plan to move Einstein into the private sector by claiming the nation’s critical infrastructure, by nature, overlaps into the commercial sector. There are classified plans, already budgeted in so-called “black” projects, to extend Einstein surveillance into the dot (.) com, dot (.) edu, dot (.) int, and dot (.) org, as well as other Internet domains. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has budgeted $5.4 billion for Einstein in his department’s FY2009 information technology budget. However, this amount does not take into account the “black” budgets for Einstein proliferation throughout the U.S. telecommunications network contained in the budgets for NSA and DNI.
In anticipation of the regulatory problems inherent in domestic email surveillance by the NSA, the Bush administration has ensured that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and industry associations have been stacked with pro-surveillance loyalists to ensure that Einstein is widely accepted and implemented.
Filed under: 4th amendment, al-qaeda, Congress, Detainee, Dictatorship, Empire, Extraordinary Rendition, FBI, George Bush, Guantanamo, House, Iraq, John McCain, Military, nation building, Nazi, neocons, NSA, occupation, Oppression, Posse Comitatus, rendition, Senate, telecoms, Torture, US Constitution, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap | Tags: Jose Padilla
Bush quietly seeks to make war powers permanent, by declaring indefinite state of war
Raw Story
August 30, 2008
As the nation focuses on Sen. John McCain’s choice of running mate, President Bush has quietly moved to expand the reach of presidential power by ensuring that America remains in a state of permanent war.
Buried in a recent proposal by the Administration is a sentence that has received scant attention — and was buried itself in the very newspaper that exposed it Saturday. It is an affirmation that the United States remains at war with al Qaeda, the Taliban and “associated organizations.”
Part of a proposal for Guantanamo Bay legal detainees, the provision before Congress seeks to “acknowledge again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us and who are dedicated to the slaughter of Americans.”
The New York Times’ page 8 placement of the article in its Saturday edition seems to downplay its importance. Such a re-affirmation of war carries broad legal implications that could imperil Americans’ civil liberties and the rights of foreign nationals for decades to come.
It was under the guise of war that President Bush claimed a legal mandate for his warrantless wiretapping program, giving the National Security Agency power to intercept calls Americans made abroad. More of this program has emerged in recent years, and it includes the surveillance of Americans’ information and exchanges online.
“War powers” have also given President Bush cover to hold Americans without habeas corpus — detainment without explanation or charge. Jose Padilla, a Chicago resident arrested in 2002, was held without trial for five years before being convicted of conspiring to kill individuals abroad and provide support for terrorism.
But his arrest was made with proclamations that Padilla had plans to build a “dirty bomb.” He was never convicted of this charge. Padilla’s legal team also claimed that during his time in military custody — the four years he was held without charge — he was tortured with sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, forced stress positions and injected with drugs.
Times reporter Eric Lichtblau notes that the measure is the latest step that the Administration has taken to “make permanent” key aspects of its “long war” against terrorism. Congress recently passed a much-maligned bill giving telecommunications companies retroactive immunity for their participation in what constitutional experts see as an illegal or borderline-illegal surveillance program, and is considering efforts to give the FBI more power in their investigative techniques.
“It is uncertain whether Congress will take the administration up on its request,” Lichtblau writes. “Some Republicans have already embraced the idea, with Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, introducing a measure almost identical to the administration’s proposal. ’Since 9/11,’ Mr. Smith said, ’we have been at war with an unconventional enemy whose primary goal is to kill innocent Americans.’”
If enough Republicans come aboard, Democrats may struggle to defeat the provision. Despite holding majorities in the House and Senate, they have failed to beat back some of President Bush’s purported “security” measures, such as the telecom immunity bill.
Bush’s open-ended permanent war language worries his critics. They say it could provide indefinite, if hazy, legal justification for any number of activities — including detention of terrorists suspects at bases like Guantanamo Bay (where for years the Administration would not even release the names of those being held), and the NSA’s warantless wiretapping program.
Lichtblau co-wrote the Times article revealing the Administration’s eavesdropping program along with fellow reporter James Risen.
He notes that Bush’s language “recalls a resolution, known as the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001… [which] authorized the president to ’use all necessary and appropriate force’ against those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks to prevent future strikes. That authorization, still in effect, was initially viewed by many members of Congress who voted for it as the go-ahead for the administration to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban, which had given sanctuary to Mr. bin Laden.”
“But the military authorization became the secret legal basis for some of the administration’s most controversial legal tactics, including the wiretapping program, and that still gnaws at some members of Congress,” he adds.
Filed under: 1984, 1st amendment, 2-party system, 4th amendment, ACLU, Airport Security, apple, army, Barack Obama, biden, Big Brother, biometrics, Bush Sr., CIA, civil liberties, civil rights, Congress, copyright, Department of justice, Dianne Feinstein, DOJ, EFF, FBI, FCC, fingerprints, FISA, free speech, George Bush, Hillary Clinton, House, Iraq, joe biden, John McCain, left right paradigm, Microsoft, Military, nanny state, nation building, neocons, Neolibs, net neutrality, NSA, obama, occupation, OKC bombing, orwell, Patriot Act, Police State, Posse Comitatus, privacy rights, RIAA, Robert Gates, Ron Paul, Russ Feingold, Senate, Spy, Surveillance, tax, Taxpayers, telecoms, TSA, US Constitution, verison, war on drugs, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap, White House | Tags: Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, Comprehensive Counter-Terrorism Act, Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Digital Telephony law, Drano bomb, drug paraphernalia, ebay, Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act, Improvised Munitions Handbook, kazaa, marijuana, news corp., Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995, p2p, Perform Act, pgp, rave act, Senate Foreign Relations committee, tommy chong, Violent Crime Control Act, XM, Yahoo!, zfone
Joe Biden’s pro-RIAA, pro-FBI tech voting record
CNET
August 23, 2008
By choosing Joe Biden as their vice presidential candidate, the Democrats have selected a politician with a mixed record on technology who has spent most of his Senate career allied with the FBI and copyright holders, who ranks toward the bottom of CNET’s Technology Voters’ Guide, and whose anti-privacy legislation was actually responsible for the creation of PGP.
That’s probably okay with Barack Obama: Biden likely got the nod because of his foreign policy knowledge. The Delaware politician is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee who voted for the war in Iraq, and is reasonably well-known nationally after his presidential campaigns in 1988 and 2008.
Copyright
But back to the Delaware senator’s tech record. After taking over the Foreign Relations committee, Biden became a staunch ally of Hollywood and the recording industry in their efforts to expand copyright law. He sponsored a bill in 2002 that would have make it a federal felony to trick certain types of devices into playing unauthorized music or executing unapproved computer programs. Biden’s bill was backed by content companies including News Corp. but eventually died after Verizon, Microsoft, Apple, eBay, and Yahoo lobbied against it.
A few months later, Biden signed a letter that urged the Justice Department “to prosecute individuals who intentionally allow mass copying from their computer over peer-to-peer networks.” Critics of this approach said that the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, and not taxpayers, should pay for their own lawsuits.
Last year, Biden sponsored an RIAA-backed bill called the Perform Act aimed at restricting Americans’ ability to record and play back individual songs from satellite and Internet radio services. (The RIAA sued XM Satellite Radio over precisely this point.)
All of which meant that nobody in Washington was surprised when Biden was one of only four U.S. senators invited to a champagne reception in celebration of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act hosted by the MPAA’s Jack Valenti, the RIAA, and the Business Software Alliance. (Photos are here.)
Now, it’s true that few Americans will cast their votes in November based on what the vice presidential candidate thinks of copyright law. But these pro-copyright views don’t exactly jibe with what Obama has promised; he’s pledged to “update and reform our copyright and patent systems to promote civic discourse, innovation and investment while ensuring that intellectual property owners are fairly treated.” These are code words for taking a more pro-EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) than pro-MPAA approach.
Unfortunately, Biden has steadfastly refused to answer questions on the topic. We asked him 10 tech-related questions, including whether he’d support rewriting the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as part of our 2008 Technology Voters’ guide. Biden would not answer (we did hear back from Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Ron Paul).
In our 2006 Technology Voters’ Guide, which ranked Senate votes from July 1998 through May 2005, Biden received a mere 37.5 percent score because of his support for Internet filters in schools and libraries and occasional support for Internet taxes.
Privacy, the FBI, and PGP
On privacy, Biden’s record is hardly stellar. In the 1990s, Biden was chairman of the Judiciary Committee and introduced a bill called the Comprehensive Counter-Terrorism Act, which the EFF says he was “persuaded” to do by the FBI. A second Biden bill was called the Violent Crime Control Act. Both were staunchly anti-encryption, with this identical language:
It is the sense of Congress that providers of electronic communications services and manufacturers of electronic communications service equipment shall ensure that communications systems permit the government to obtain the plain text contents of voice, data, and other communications when appropriately authorized by law.
Translated, that means turn over your encryption keys. The book Electronic Privacy Papers describes Biden’s bill as representing the FBI’s visible effort to restrict encryption technology, which was taking place in concert with the National Security Agency’s parallel, but less visible efforts. (Biden was no foe of the NSA. He once described now-retired NSA director Bobby Ray Inman as the “single most competent man in the government.”)
Biden’s bill — and the threat of encryption being outlawed — is what spurred Phil Zimmermann to write PGP, thereby kicking off a historic debate about export controls, national security, and privacy. Zimmermann, who’s now busy developing Zfone, says it was Biden’s legislation “that led me to publish PGP electronically for free that year, shortly before the measure was defeated after vigorous protest by civil libertarians and industry groups.”
While neither of Biden’s pair of bills became law, they did foreshadow the FBI’s pro-wiretapping, anti-encryption legislative strategy that followed — and demonstrated that the Delaware senator was willing to be a reliable ally of law enforcement on the topic. (They also previewed the FBI’s legislative proposal later that decade for banning encryption products such as SSH or PGP without government backdoors, which was approved by one House of Representatives committee but never came to a vote in the Senate.)
“Joe Biden made his second attempt to introduce such legislation” in the form of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which was also known as the Digital Telephony law, according to an account in Wired magazine. Biden at the time was chairman of the relevant committee; he co-sponsored the Senate version and dutifully secured a successful floor vote on it less than two months after it was introduced. CALEA became law in October 1994, and is still bedeviling privacy advocates: the FBI recently managed to extend its requirements to Internet service providers.
CALEA represented one step in the FBI and NSA’s attempts to restrict encryption without backdoors. In a top-secret memo to members of President George H.W. Bush’s administration including Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and CIA director Robert Gates, one White House official wrote: “Justice should go ahead now to seek a legislative fix to the digital telephony problem, and all parties should prepare to follow through on the encryption problem in about a year. Success with digital telephony will lock in one major objective; we will have a beachhead we can exploit for the encryption fix; and the encryption access options can be developed more thoroughly in the meantime.”
There’s another reason why Biden’s legislative tactics in the CALEA scrum amount to more than a mere a footnote in Internet history. They’re what led to the creation of the Center for Democracy and Technology — and the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s simultaneous implosion and soul-searching.
EFF staffers Jerry Berman and Danny Weitzner chose to work with Biden on cutting a deal and altering the bill in hopes of obtaining privacy concessions. It may have helped, but it also left the EFF in the uncomfortable position of leaving its imprimatur on Biden’s FBI-backed wiretapping law universally loathed by privacy advocates. The debacle ended with internal turmoil, Berman and Weitzner leaving the group and taking their corporate backers to form CDT, and a chastened EFF that quietly packed its bags and moved to its current home in San Francisco. (Weitzner, who was responsible for a censorship controversy last year, became a formal Obama campaign surrogate.)
“Anti-terror” legislation
The next year, months before the Oklahoma City bombing took place, Biden introduced another bill called the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995. It previewed the 2001 Patriot Act by allowing secret evidence to be used in prosecutions, expanding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and wiretap laws, creating a new federal crime of “terrorism” that could be invoked based on political beliefs, permitting the U.S. military to be used in civilian law enforcement, and allowing permanent detection of non-U.S. citizens without judicial review. The Center for National Security Studies said the bill would erode “constitutional and statutory due process protections” and would “authorize the Justice Department to pick and choose crimes to investigate and prosecute based on political beliefs and associations.”
Biden himself draws parallels between his 1995 bill and its 2001 cousin. “I drafted a terrorism bill after the Oklahoma City bombing. And the bill John Ashcroft sent up was my bill,” he said when the Patriot Act was being debated, according to the New Republic, which described him as “the Democratic Party’s de facto spokesman on the war against terrorism.”
Biden’s chronology is not accurate: the bombing took place in April 1995 and his bill had been introduced in February 1995. But it’s true that Biden’s proposal probably helped to lay the groundwork for the Bush administration’s Patriot Act.
In 1996, Biden voted to keep intact an ostensibly anti-illegal immigration bill that outlined what the Real ID Act would become almost a decade later. The bill would create a national worker identification registry; Biden voted to kill an Abraham-Feingold amendment that would have replaced the registry with stronger enforcement. According to an analysis by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the underlying bill would have required “states to place Social Security numbers on drivers licenses and to obtain fingerprints or some other form of biometric identification for licenses.”
Along with most of his colleagues in the Congress — including Sen. John McCain but not Rep. Ron Paul — Biden voted for the Patriot Act and the Real ID Act (which was part of a larger spending bill). Obama voted for the bill containing the Real ID Act, but wasn’t in the U.S. Senate in 2001 when the original Patriot Act vote took place.
Patriot Act
In the Senate debate over the Patriot Act in October 2001, Biden once again allied himself closely with the FBI. The Justice Department favorably quotes Biden on its Web site as saying: “The FBI could get a wiretap to investigate the mafia, but they could not get one to investigate terrorists. To put it bluntly, that was crazy! What’s good for the mob should be good for terrorists.”
The problem is that Biden’s claim was simply false — which he should have known after a decade of experience lending his name to wiretapping bills on behalf of the FBI. As CDT explains in a rebuttal to Biden: “The Justice Department had the ability to use wiretaps, including roving taps, in criminal investigations of terrorism, just as in other criminal investigations, long before the Patriot Act.”
But Biden’s views had become markedly less FBI-friendly by April 2007, six years later. By then, the debate over wiretapping had become sharply partisan, pitting Democrats seeking to embarrass President Bush against Republicans aiming to defend the administration at nearly any cost. In addition, Biden had announced his presidential candidacy three months earlier and was courting liberal activists dismayed by the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping.
That month, Biden slammed the “president’s illegal wiretapping program that allows intelligence agencies to eavesdrop on the conversations of Americans without a judge’s approval or congressional authorization or oversight.” He took aim at Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for allowing the FBI to “flagrantly misuse National Security Letters” — even though it was the Patriot Act that greatly expanded their use without also expanding internal safeguards and oversight as well.
Biden did vote against a FISA bill with retroactive immunity for any telecommunications provider that illegally opened its network to the National Security Agency; Obama didn’t. Both agreed to renew the Patriot Act in March 2006, a move that pro-privacy Democrats including Ron Wyden and Russ Feingold opposed. The ACLU said the renewal “fails to correct the most flawed provisions” of the original Patriot Act. (Biden does do well on the ACLU’s congressional scorecard.)
“Baby-food bombs”
The ACLU also had been at odds with Biden over his efforts to censor bomb-making information on the Internet. One day after a bomb in Saudi Arabia killed several U.S. servicemen and virtually flattened a military base, Biden pushed to make posting bomb-making information on the Internet a felony, punishable by up to 20 years in jail, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time.
“I think most Americans would be absolutely shocked if they knew what kind of bone-chilling information is making its way over the Internet,” he told the Senate. “You can access detailed, explicit instructions on how to make and detonate pipe bombs, light-bulb bombs, and even — if you can believe it — baby-food bombs.”
Biden didn’t get exactly what he wanted — at least not right away. His proposal was swapped in the final law for one requiring the attorney general to investigate “the extent to which the First Amendment protects such material and its private and commercial distribution.” The report was duly produced, concluding that the proposal “can withstand constitutional muster in most, if not all, of its possible applications, if such legislation is slightly modified.”
It was. Biden and co-sponsor Dianne Feinstein introduced their bill again the following year. Biden pitched it as an anti-terror measure, saying in a floor debate that numerous terrorists “have been found in possession of bomb-making manuals and Internet bomb-making information.” He added: “What is even worse is that some of these instructions are geared toward kids. They tell kids that all the ingredients they need are right in their parents’ kitchen or laundry cabinets.”
Biden’s proposal became law in 1997. It didn’t amount to much: four years after its enactment, there had been only one conviction. And instead of being used to snare a dangerous member of Al Qaeda, the law was used to lock up a 20-year old anarchist Webmaster who was sentenced to one year in prison for posting information about Molotov cocktails and “Drano bombs” on his Web site, Raisethefist.com.
Today there are over 10,000 hits on Google for the phrase, in quotes, “Drano bomb.” One is a video that lists the necessary ingredients and shows some self-described rednecks blowing up small plastic bottles in their yard. Then there’s the U.S. Army’s Improvised Munitions Handbook with instructions on making far more deadly compounds, including methyl nitrate dynamite, mortars, grenades, and C-4 plastic explosive — which free speech activists placed online as an in-your-face response to the Biden-Feinstein bill.
Peer-to-peer networks
Since then, Biden has switched from complaining about Internet baby-food bombs to taking aim at peer-to-peer networks. He held one Foreign Relations committee hearing in February 2002 titled “Theft of American Intellectual Property” and invited executives from the Justice Department, RIAA, MPAA, and Microsoft to speak. Not one Internet company, P2P network, or consumer group was invited to testify.
Afterwards, Sharman Networks (which distributes Kazaa) wrote a letter to Biden complaining about “one-sided and unsubstantiated attacks” on P2P networks. It said: “We are deeply offended by the gratuitous accusations made against Kazaa by witnesses before the committee, including ludicrous attempts to associate an extremely beneficial, next-generation software program with organized criminal gangs and even terrorist organizations.”
Biden returned to the business of targeting P2P networks this year. In April, he proposed spending $1 billion in U.S. tax dollars so police can monitor peer-to-peer networks for illegal activity. He made that suggestion after a Wyoming cop demonstrated a proof-of-concept program called “Operation Fairplay” at a hearing before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee.
A month later, the Senate Judiciary committee approved a Biden-sponsored bill that would spend over $1 billion on policing illegal Internet activity, mostly child pornography. It has the dubious virtue of being at least partially redundant: One section would “prohibit the broadcast of live images of child abuse,” even though the Justice Department has experienced no problems in securing guilty pleas for underage Webcamming. (The bill has not been voted on by the full Senate.)
Online sales of Robitussin
Around the same time, Biden introduced his self-described Biden Crime Bill of 2007. One section expands electronic surveillance law to permit police wiretaps in “crimes dangerous to the life, limb, and well-being of minor children.” Another takes aim at Internet-based telemedicine and online pharmacies, saying that physicians must have conducted “at least one in-person medical evaluation of the patient” to prescribe medicine.
Another prohibits selling a product containing dextromethorphan — including Robitussin, Sucrets, Dayquil, and Vicks — “to an individual under the age of 18 years, including any such sale using the Internet.” It gives the Justice Department six months to come up with regulations, which include when retailers should be fined for shipping cough suppressants to children. (Biden is a longtime drug warrior; he authored the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act that the Bush administration used to shut down benefit concerts.)
Net neutrality
On Net neutrality, Biden has sounded skeptical. In 2006, he indicated that no preemptive laws were necessary because if violations do happen, such a public outcry will develop that “the chairman will be required to hold this meeting in this largest room in the Capitol, and there will be lines wandering all the way down to the White House.” Obama, on the other hand, has been a strong supporter of handing pre-emptive regulatory authority to the Federal Communications Commission.
Tommy Chong: Biden ’authored the bill that put me in jail’
KXMB
August 24, 2008
It turns out that Obama’s new running mate is one of the leading crusaders in the war on drugs. Which isn’t something that’s likely to sit well with Obama’s base of young, college-aged supporters
Earlier this week, in an interview with the Washington Post, Tommy Chong was asked what the average citizen can do to further the cause of decriminalization. “Check out the people you’re voting for,” Chong replied. “For instance, Joseph Biden comes off as a liberal Democrat, but he’s the one who authored the bill that put me in jail. He wrote the law against shipping drug paraphernalia through the mail – which could be anything from a pipe to a clip or cigarette papers.”
Barack Obama’s V.P. selection Sen. Joe Biden also spnsored the Rave Act, which targets music events where drug use is allegedly prevalent.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5670703&page=1
Barack Obama: The Next PRESIDENT Is Joe Biden
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RElChQ6g2Io
VP Choice Biden Unpopular in Iraq: He’s creator of the idea of dividing Iraq
http://africa.reuters.com/world/news/usnLN96984.html
Biden’s Bill: The Patriot Act
http://www.tnr.com/columnist..582-b6ec-444834c9df73&k=93697
Biden called for unilateral Iraq invasion – in 1998
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5492
Filed under: 1984, 4th amendment, Big Brother, Control Grid, data mining, Department of justice, DHS, DOJ, Executive Order, FBI, George Bush, Homeland Security, nanny state, neocons, NSA, Oppression, Police State, privacy rights, Spy, Surveillance, US Constitution, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap
Government to Share Info on Americans With Police
Washington Post
August 16, 2008
The Justice Department has proposed a new domestic spying measure that would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years.
The proposed changes would revise the federal government’s rules for police intelligence-gathering for the first time since 1993 and would apply to any of the nation’s 18,000 state and local police agencies that receive roughly $1.6 billion each year in federal grants.
Quietly unveiled late last month, the proposal is part of a flurry of domestic intelligence changes issued and planned by the Bush administration in its waning months. They include a recent executive order that guides the reorganization of federal spy agencies and a pending Justice Department overhaul of FBI procedures for gathering intelligence and investigating terrorism cases within U.S. borders.
Filed under: 1984, 1st amendment, 4th amendment, ACLU, Big Brother, California, CIA, civil liberties, civil rights, Congress, Control Grid, corporations, data mining, Dictatorship, Dissent, DNI, Empire, Executive Order, Fascism, FBI, federal crime, FISA, FOIA, free speech, George Bush, LAPD, mukasey, Nazi, neocons, NSA, Oppression, Police State, Protest, Ronald Reagan, Spy, stasi, stasi tactics, Surveillance, US Constitution, virginia, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap, White House | Tags: Director of National Intelligence, Executive Order 12333, fusion centers, Lexis-Nexus, LocatePlus, maryland, TLA, Virginia General Assembly
“Fusion Centers” to Gather Intelligence on Peaceful Protesters
The Progressive
July 30, 2008
On the heels of the Maryland State Police spying scandal, the ACLU is ringing the alarms over “fusion centers.”
These are the state-by-state groupings of various law enforcement agencies working together at all levels, from local police to the FBI, NSA, and CIA, ostensibly to share terrorism threat information. But, as we saw in the Maryland case, they may sometimes just be sharing information about lawful, peaceful First Amendment-protected speech.
There is “mission creep from watching out for terrorism to watching out for peace activists,” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, in a press conference July 29. She called the fusion centers an incipient “domestic intelligence apparatus.” And she warned that the kind of spying that occurred in Maryland was “very dangerous to our democracy.”
In December 2007, the ACLU published a report “What’s Wrong with Fusion Centers?”
It noted that there are more than 40 fusion centers already created. And it cited several problems with them, including the participation of military personnel in law enforcement, as well as “private sector participation.” “Fusion centers are incorporating private-sector corporations into the intelligence process, breaking down the arm’s length relationship that protects the privacy of innocent Americans who are employees or customers of these companies.”
On July 29, the ACLU issued an update to that report.
The fusion centers represent an attempt to create a “total surveillance society,” the update says.
It notes that the LAPD fed into its fusion center an array of ““suspicious activity reports” that included such innocuous activities as “taking notes” or “drawing diagrams” or “using binoculars.” (Since one out of six Americans is a birdwatcher, this last item could really swell the files.)
The “suspicious activity” criteria of the LAPD “gives law enforcement officers justification to harass practically anyone they choose, to collect personal information, and to pass such information along to the intelligence community,” the update says.
Frighteningly, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has called the LAPD program “a national model.”
The Director of National Intelligence urges state and local law enforcement to “report non-criminal suspicious activities,” the update says. According to the standards of the Director of National Intelligence, these activities are defined as “observed behavior that may be indicative of intelligence gathering or pre-operational planning related to terrorism, criminal, or other illicit intention.”
The ACLU notes that “other illicit intention” is not defined, and that fusion centers are fed intelligence before “reasonable suspicion” is established.
Fusion centers also engage in data mining, as they rely not only on FBI and CIA records. They also often “have subscriptions with private data brokers such as Accurint, ChoicePoint, Lexis-Nexus, and LocatePlus, a database containing cell phone numbers and unpublished telephone records,” the ACLU notes, referring to a Washington Post article from April 2.
The ACLU calls fusion centers “out-of-control data-gathering monsters.”
While the government is gathering more and more information about us citizens, it’s trying to shield itself from telling us what it’s doing. “There appears to be an effort by the federal government to coerce states into exempting their fusion centers from state open government laws,” the ACLU notes. “For those living in Virginia, it’s already too late: The Virginia General Assembly passed a law in April 2008 exempting the state’s fusion center from the Freedom of Information Act.”
As I noted in “The New Snoops: Terrorism Liaison Officers, Some from the Private Sector”, the Department of Justice has come up with “Fusion Center Guidelines” that flat-out recommend that “fusion centers and their leadership encourage appropriate policymakers to legislate the protection of private sector data provided to fusion centers.”
The ACLU is absolutely right: Congress must investigate these fusion centers and exercise appropriate oversight before law enforcement agencies and their private sector partners violate the rights of more Americans and usher us all into the total surveillance society.
Bush turning intelligence agencies on Americans
Raw Story
July 31, 2008
President Bush seems to be slowly turning the nation’s massive surveillance apparatus upon its citizens, and some worry that administration assurances to protect civil liberties are nothing but empty promises.
With his update to a decades-old executive order governing the Intelligence Community, Bush is giving the Director of National Intelligence and the 16 agencies of the US Intelligence Community more power to access and share sensitive information on Americans with little to no independent oversight. The update to Executive Order 12333, first issued by former President Ronald Reagan, introduces a more prominent role for the Attorney General in approving intelligence gathering methods, calls for collaboration with local law enforcement agencies, eases limits on how information can be shared and urges cooperation between the IC and private companies.
“This Intelligence Community that was built to deal with foreign threats is now being slowly and incrementally turned inward,” says Mike German, policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, in an interview with RAW STORY.
Bush’s latest update of a decades old executive order governing intelligence activities is a “lit fuse” that could end with the Constitution’s immolation, another ACLU official says.
“This kind of concentrated power, exercised in secret, is a lit fuse with our Constitution likely in danger of being burned,” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington legislative office.
The White House insists that the update to Executive Order 12333 maintains protections for Americans’ civil liberties, but senior administration officials who briefed reporters Thursday provided little reassurance that the new order would correct some of the Bush administration’s most egregious abuses.
Peaceful Activist labeled a “terrorist” in a federally-funded domestic terrorism database
http://noworldsystem.com/2008/07/19/..d-spy-on-protest-groups/
Filed under: 1984, 1st amendment, 4th amendment, ACLU, Anti-War, Big Brother, bill of rights, Control Grid, Dennis Kucinich, DHS, Dissent, FBI, FOIA, free speech, George Bush, Homeland Security, maryland, Military, nanny state, neocons, NSA, Oppression, Pentagon, Police State, Posse Comitatus, Protest, stasi, stasi tactics, Surveillance, Taxpayers, Troops, US Constitution, war on drugs, War On Terror | Tags: HIDTA, Max Obuszewski
Police Infiltrate and Spy on Protest Groups
Peaceful Activist labeled a terrorist in a federally-funded database
Washington Times
July 18, 2008
Undercover Maryland state troopers infiltrated three groups advocating peace and protesting the death penalty — attending meetings and sending reports on their activities to U.S. intelligence and military agencies, according to documents released Thursday.
The documents show the activities occurred from at least March 2005 to May 2006 and that officers used false names, which the documents referred to as “covert identities” – to open e-mail accounts to receive messages from the groups.
Also included in the 46 pages of documents, obtained by the Maryland chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, is an account of an activist’s name being entered into a federally funded database designed to share information among state, local and federal law-enforcement agencies on terrorist and drug trafficking suspects.
ACLU attorney David Rocah said state police violated federal laws prohibiting departments that receive federal funds from maintaining databases with information about political activities and affiliations.
The activist was identified as Max Obuszewski. His “primary crime” was entered into the database as “terrorism – anti govern(ment).” His “secondary crime” was listed as “terrorism – anti-war protestors.” The database is known as the Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, or HIDTA.
“This is not supposed to happen in America,” said Mr. Rocah. “In a free society, which relies on the engagement of citizens in debate and protest and political activity to maintain that freedom … you should be able to attend a meeting about an issue you care about without having to worry that government spies are entering your name into a database used to track alleged terrorists and drug traffickers.”
Mr. Rocah called the surveillance “Kafka-esque insanity.”
State police Chief Col. Terrence B. Sheridan said the agency “does not inappropriately curtail the expression or demonstration of the civil liberties of protesters or organizations acting lawfully.”
The surveillance of Mr. Obuszewski, of Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore, and another person came to light during his trial for trespassing and disorderly conduct in a 2004 protest outside the National Security Agency’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Md.
Documents released by the prosecution revealed that the protesters had been under surveillance by an entity called the Baltimore Intelligence Unit.
The Maryland ACLU sued last month, claiming the state police refused to release public documents about the surveillance of peace activists.
The documents, which include intelligence reports and printouts from the database, show that several undercover officers from the state police’s Homeland Security and Intelligence Division attended meetings of three groups: Mr. Obuszewski’s group; the Coalition to End the Death Penalty; and the Committee to Save Vernon Evans, a convicted murderer who was slated for execution.
The documents show at least 288 hours of surveillance over the 14-month period. The undercover officers attended at least 20 organizing meetings at community halls and churches and a dozen rallies against the death penalty, including several at the state’s SuperMax jail in Baltimore.
Included in the documents are references to a proposed sit-in at the offices of Baltimore County State’s Attorney SandraA. O’Connor. However, they show no trooper reports of violence or threats of violence. Organizers repeatedly stressed the importance of peaceful and orderly demonstrations, the documents show.
“There were about 75-80 protestors at the rally and none participated in any type of civil disobedience or illegal acts,” said one report of a demonstration against the death penalty at the SuperMax jail. “Protesters were even careful to move out of the way for Division of Correction employees who were going into the parking lot for work.”
Still, information about the protesters and their activities was sent to seven agencies, including the National Security Agency and an unnamed military intelligence official.
“Americans have the right to peaceably assemble with others of a like mind and speak out about what they believe in,” Mr. Rocah said. “For state agencies to spend hundreds of hours entering information about lawful and peaceful political activities into a criminal database is beyond unconscionable. It is a waste of taxpayer dollars, which does nothing to make us safer from actual terrorists or drug dealers.”
Kucinich to investigate police surveillance of protest groups
Raw Story
July 18, 2008
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), who has figured prominently in recent political news for his attempts to begin impeachment hearings against President George W. Bush, today announced that the congressional subcommittee he chairs will look into reports of peace groups being surveilled by police and private investigators.
“[M]ost people would be upset to know that police were spying on lawful citizens and infiltrating peaceful organizations, rather than chasing down real criminals,” said Kucinich in a press release delivered to RAW STORY. “At a minimum, such police spying is clearly a waste of taxpayer dollars and a diversion from the mission of protecting and serving the people.
“I want the subcommittee to determine how widespread these activities are and who ordered them,” the Ohio Democrat and former presidential candidate said.
Kucinich chairs the House Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The press release referred to reports that Maryland state police officers infiltrated peace and anti-death penalty groups and that private investigators working on behalf of “several large corporations” had surveilled environmental groups.
Such surveillance is apparently not limited to law enforcement and private investigators. In January 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released a report showing “widespread Pentagon surveillance of peace activists.
Filed under: 1984, 1st amendment, 4th amendment, Airport Security, apple, army, Big Brother, Bloggers, Britain, Canada, cell phone, Control Grid, Europe, european union, free speech, google, hackers, India, internet, Internet 2, internet police, ISPs, Mi5, New York, NSA, Police State, Posse Comitatus, Surveillance, United Kingdom, US Constitution, viacom, War On Terror, Youtube | Tags: Department of Telecom, ipod, RIM
Big Brother database recording all our calls, texts and e-mails will ’ruin British way of life’
Daily Mail
July 16, 2008
Plans for a massive database snooping on the entire population were condemned yesterday as a ‘step too far for the British way of life’.
In an Orwellian move, the Home Office is proposing to detail every phone call, e-mail, text message, internet search and online purchase in the fight against terrorism and other serious crime.
But the privacy watchdog, Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, warned that the public’s traditional freedoms were under grave threat from creeping state surveillance.
Apart from the Government’s inability to hold data securely, he said the proposals raised ‘grave questions’.
‘Do the risks we face provide justification for such a scheme in the first place? Do we want the state to have details of more and more aspects of our private lives?
‘Whatever the benefits, would such a scheme amount to excessive surveillance? Would this be a step too far for the British way of life?’
It is thought the scheme would allow the police or MI5 to access the exact time when a phone call was made, the number dialled, the length of the call and, in the case of mobile phones, the location of the handset to within an accuracy of a few hundred yards.
Similarly for e-mails, it would provide details of when they were sent and who the recipients were. Police recovering a suspect’s computer would then be able to trawl through hard-drive records and recover particular messages. The content of telephone calls could not be recovered unless they were being intercepted at the time.
Mr Thomas’s warnings were backed by privacy campaigners, who claimed such Big Brother powers would give Government agencies unprecedented abilities to trawl through intimate details of ordinary people’s private lives at will.
He used the launch of his annual report to speak out after ministers signalled their intentions in their programme of legislation earlier this year, describing the new Bill as ‘modifying procedures for acquiring communications data’.
There are fears that the data will be shared with foreign governments – such as the Americans demanding personal details of air passengers – accessed by internet hackers or lost by bungling civil servants.
Opponents pointed out that town halls are already using extraordinary surveillance powers under the controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to investigate minor issues such as littering, or checking whether parents are abusing school catchment area rules, and they could be given access to almost unthinkable levels of personal data under the new scheme.
Currently police and MI5 can access customer records stored by telephone companies, but only with a warrant to examine individual accounts.
Mr Thomas said: ‘I am absolutely clear that the targeted and duly-authorised interception of the communications of suspects can be invaluable in the fight against terrorism and other serious crime.
‘But there needs to be the fullest public debate about the justification for, and implications of, a specially created database – potentially accessible to a wide range of law enforcement authorities – holding details of everyone’s telephone and internet communications.
’Do we really want the police, security services and other organs of the state to have access to more and more aspects of our private lives?’
Opposition MPs said the Government’s dismal records on safeguarding private data – most notably the loss of the entire child benefit database holding millions of people’s financial details – showed it was incapable of safeguarding such a vast volume of information safely, and the scheme should be dropped immediately.
An estimated 3billion emails are sent in Britain every day and last year 57billion text messages were sent.
The Home Office yesterday defended the need to keep its surveillance powers up to date with changing internet technology, and said full details of the plans would be published this year as part of a new Communications Data Bill.
Officials said the internet was rapidly revolutionising communications and it was vital for surveillance powers to keep up with technology in order to fight serious crime and terrorism.
India: NSA to tap data traffic passing through Blackberry devices
Business Line
July 13, 2008
New Delhi, July 12 – In a bid to find a solution to the security concerns around Blackberry services, the National Security Adviser is now supervising a discussion between National Test Research Organisation, under the Home Ministry, Department of Telecom and Canada-based Research In Motion.
The discussions are being held to find a spot on RIM’s network where the data traffic passing through Blackberry could be intercepted by security agencies.
The agencies had earlier rejected any temporary solution to the Blackberry controversy and told the Government that it must make sure that traffic originating and terminating on the device should not travel outside the country without proper monitoring.
DoT was considering deploying certain software that would allow the security agencies to snoop into Blackberry network without having to break into the service codes.
Blackberry handsets are designed by Research In Motion and uses high encryption code, making it impossible for the Indian agencies to monitor data being transmitted by users.
The DoT had earlier asked the company to set up a local server in the country which would allow the security forces to snoop into the network. However, Research In Motion said that it was not possible to give decryption codes or set up a local data centre in the country.
The DoT had earlier asked RIM to give its codes to Indian security agencies that will enable them to monitor the data being transmitted through Blackberry. The key problem was that Indian agencies do not have the required technology to monitor data that has encryption codes higher than 40 bits.
On the issue of setting up a local data centre within the country, RIM had said that Blackberry was designed to perform as a global system independent of geography. “The location of data centres and the customer’s choice of wireless network are irrelevant factors from a security perspective since end-to-end encryption is utilised,” RIM had said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/0..er=MYWAY&pagewanted=print
YouTube, Viacom Agree To Anonymize Data
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20..hxV5G7yprV84FDlzM55TmZk24cA
Canadian ISPs Plan Net Censorship
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/canada_net_censorship.html
Airport scans for illegal downloads on iPods, mobile phones and laptops
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/conn..nected/2008/07/10/nairport110.xml
Army Forms Network Warfare Batallion
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20080712.aspx
Filed under: Afghanistan, airstrikes, car bomb, False Flag, Hegelian Dialectic, ISI, kabul, military strike, nation building, NSA, occupation, Pakistan, Problem Reaction Solution, State Sponsored Terrorism, suicide bombing, War On Terror | Tags: M K Narayanan
ISI Behind Deadly Bombing in Kabul: NSA M K Narayanan
NDTV
July 12, 2008
In an exclusive interview with NDTV, National Security Adviser M K Narayanan has blamed the ISI for the suicide attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul.
Four Indians including India’s defence attach were killed in the attack.
’’We have no doubt that the ISI is behind this. We are in the favor of the peace process, but the ISI is not in any way part of it. The ISI is playing evil. The ISI needs to be destroyed,’’ said Narayanan.
Emphasising India’s stand on the peace process with Pakistan, the National Security Adviser said: ’’The peace process is being initiated by the Prime Minister and is even predated. It went on and then there was a hiccup towards the end of 2006. Since 2007, it has not picked up. However, we have not slowed it down. We hope that the new administration (in Pakistan) will take it up again.’’
http://noworldsystem.com/2008/..deadly-bombing-on-pakistan/
Pakistan fears over US airstrikes
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7505760.stm
Filed under: 1984, 1st amendment, 2008 Election, 4th amendment, amnesty, benjamin franklin, Big Brother, Bloggers, civil liberties, civil rights, colorado, Congress, corporations, corporatism, Dennis Kucinich, Denver, Economy, Fascism, federal crime, FISA, Founding Fathers, free speech, George Bush, GOP, HR 6166, Impeach, internet, Iraq, John McCain, magna carta, military commissions act, military commissions act of 2006, nation building, Nazi, neocons, NSA, occupation, Oppression, Patriot Act, Police State, secret service, Surveillance, US Constitution, US Economy, veterans, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap, We Are Change, White House | Tags: HR 6340, phil gramm
61-year-old woman kicked out of McCain “public” townhall meeting
PNA
July 7, 2008
On orders from Senator John McCain’s security detail, Denver police escorted a 61-year-old woman away who was waiting in line to attend a so-called town hall meeting with McCain that was billed as open to the public.
Carol Kreck, who works as a librarian in Denver, held a homemade sign reading “McCain = Bush.” On orders from McCain’s security detail, police cited her for trespassing and escorted her to the sidewalk. She was told if she returned she would be arrested.
“And all I did was carry a sign that said McCain = Bush,” Kreck said. “And for everyone who voted for Bush, I don’t see why it’s offensive to say McCain = Bush.”
This episode by McCain’s Secret Service appears to be a rerun of McCain’s 2005 town hall in Denver with President Bush in which the Secret Service had three Denver citizens removed from an “open” event where McCain was campaigning with Pres. Bush for his plan to privatize social security.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=W_2YRxW34-4
McCain Gets Testy With Vet Over GI Bill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzr3pdXqZ98
McCain Complains About Congress’s Vacation
http://www.theseminal.com/2..fter-he-has-missed-367-votes/
Filed under: 1984, 2-party system, 2008 Election, 4th amendment, ACLU, amnesty, AT&T, Barack Obama, Big Brother, bill of rights, Blackwater, Bloggers, civil liberties, civil rights, Congress, corporations, corporatism, DHS, Fascism, federal crime, FISA, George Bush, Hillary Clinton, Homeland Security, Impeach, internet, John McCain, left right paradigm, MCI, Media, Military, neocons, Neolibs, NSA, obama, Oppression, Police State, Senate, Sprint, Surveillance, telco pac, US Constitution, verison, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap, White House | Tags: HR 6340
Obama Votes YES on FISA Spy-Bill, McCain Skips
The Nation
July 9, 2008
Hillary Clinton just voted “no” on cloture and final passage of the FISA bill expanding the government’s domestic spying powers and guaranteeing retroactive legal immunity for the telecom companies that assisted the spying program.
Barack Obama voted “yes.”
The New York Times calls the passage of the bill “one of Mr. Bush’s most hard-won legislative victories in a Democratic-led Congress where he has had little success of late. And it represented a stinging defeat for opponents on the left who had urged Democratic leaders to stand firm against the White House after a months-long impasse.”
Here’s the roll call.
Activist: Obama defense of FISA support a ’stiff arm’ to constitution
Raw Story
July 3, 2008
After more than a week of growing criticism of his support for a flawed surveillance bill, Barack Obama quietly responded late Thursday evening. He’s not likely to quell his growing cadre of critics.
In a blog response posted just before 5 p.m. headed into a three-day holiday weekend, Obama reiterated his support for an update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act the Senate is expected to vote on Tuesday. (No mention of the blog post seems to have been distributed to Obama’s normal press list, either.)
Obama says he is against a provision in the bill to give legal immunity to telecommunications companies that facilitated the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance of Americans as authorized by President Bush. He vowed to support amendments that would strip immunity but would vote for the final bill regardless.
“It’s a stiff arm to the people that care about the Constitution,” said Mike Stark, a blogger and liberal activist who started a group on Obama’s social networking page to urge him to fix the FISA bill.
“It’s left a question in a lot of people’s mind about how committed he really is to change,” Stark told RAW STORY.
Responding to the 17,000 supporters who made the group the largest on my.barackobama.com, the Democratic candidate said he was glad to hear their concerns but reminded them that they really didn’t have any other choice in this election.
“I think it is worth pointing out that our agreement on the vast majority of issues that matter outweighs the differences we may have,” Obama wrote. “After all, the choice in this election could not be clearer.”
Justifying his support for the FISA bill, Obama cited a provision in the latest version that provides FISA is the “exclusive means” through which a president can authorize surveillance. Of course, the original FISA bill, passed in 1978, had the same qualification, and three federal judges have ruled that President Bush did not have inherent authority to conduct warrantless surveillance like he claimed to have had.
He also noted the fact that surveillance authorizations under the Protect America Act, a stopgap FISA update Obama opposed when it passed last year, would expire in August. Glenn Greenwald debunks this justification here.
If opponents of Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program can take any encouragement from Obama’s statement, it is that he does repeat earlier pledges to instruct his Attorney General to fully investigate just what Bush authorized, if he’s elected.
“Given the choice between voting for an improved yet imperfect bill, and losing important surveillance tools, I’ve chosen to support the current compromise,” he writes. “I do so with the firm intention — once I’m sworn in as President — to have my Attorney General conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs, and to make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in the future.”
Stark allowed that electing Obama remained the larger goal for him, but said the disappointment many feel about his decision to support FISA could linger even if he were elected.
“Of course I’m going to vote for him in November,” he said. But “we’re keeping score, and there’s going to be a time when he needs us. … We have long memories.”
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/07/09/fisa/index.htmlOnline Movement Aims to Punish Democrats Who Support Bush Wiretap Bill
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/07/online-activist.html
Obama Losing Voters Over FISA Support
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/07/10/1341207.shtml
Obama unequivocally says some constitutional rights must be suspended
http://www.huffingtonpost.co..sa-and-the-netroo_b_111116.html
Group urging FISA ’no’ vote is largest on Obama’s social site
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/..g_FISA_no_vote_largest_0703.html
Obama planning ’civilian national security force’ as powerful and well-funded as the US military
http://bulletin.aarp.org/states/il/a..plan_for_national_service.html
Obama: Blackwater Is Here To Stay
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/07/obama-blackwate.html
Filed under: 1984, 2-party system, 2008 Election, 4th amendment, ACLU, amnesty, AT&T, Barack Obama, Big Brother, bill of rights, civil liberties, civil rights, Congress, corporations, corporatism, DHS, Fascism, federal crime, FISA, George Bush, Hillary Clinton, Homeland Security, Impeach, John McCain, Keith Olbermann, left right paradigm, MCI, Media, MSNBC, neocons, Neolibs, NSA, obama, Oppression, Patrick Leahy, Police State, Russ Feingold, Senate, Sprint, Surveillance, telco pac, US Constitution, verison, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap | Tags: FISC, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, HR 6340, jonathan turley
4th Amendment Destroyed: FISA Spy-Bill Passes
ACLU Announces Legal Challenge To FISA Law To Follow President’s Signature
ACLU
July 9, 2008
Today, in a blatant assault upon civil liberties and the right to privacy, the Senate passed an unconstitutional domestic spying bill that violates the Fourth Amendment and eliminates any meaningful role for judicial oversight of government surveillance. The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 was approved by a vote of 69 to 28 and is expected to be signed into law by President Bush shortly. This bill essentially legalizes the president’s unlawful warrantless wiretapping program revealed in December 2005 by the New York Times.
“Once again, Congress blinked and succumbed to the president’s fear-mongering. With today’s vote, the government has been given a green light to expand its power to spy on Americans and run roughshod over the Constitution,” said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “This legislation will give the government unfettered and unchecked access to innocent Americans’ international communications without a warrant. This is not only unconstitutional, but absolutely un-American.”
The FISA Amendments Act nearly eviscerates oversight of government surveillance by allowing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to review only general procedures for spying rather than individual warrants. The FISC will not be told any specifics about who will actually be wiretapped, thereby undercutting any meaningful role for the court and violating the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
The bill further trivializes court review by authorizing the government to continue a surveillance program even after the government’s general spying procedures are found insufficient or unconstitutional by the FISC. The government has the authority to wiretap through the entire appeals process, and then keep and use whatever information was gathered in the meantime. A provision touted as a major “concession” by proponents of the bill calls for investigations by the inspectors general of four agencies overseeing spying activities. But members of Congress who do not sit on the Judiciary or Intelligence committees will not be guaranteed access to the agencies’ reports.
The bill essentially grants absolute retroactive immunity to telecommunication companies that facilitated the president’s warrantless wiretapping program over the last seven years by ensuring the dismissal of court cases pending against those companies. The test for the companies’ right to immunity is not whether the government certifications they acted on were actually legal – only whether they were issued. Because it is public knowledge that certifications were issued, all of the pending cases will be summarily dismissed. This means Americans may never learn the truth about what the companies and the government did with our private communications.
“With one vote, Congress has strengthened the executive branch, weakened the judiciary and rendered itself irrelevant,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “This bill – soon to be law – is a constitutional nightmare. Americans should know that if this legislation is enacted and upheld, what they say on international phone calls or emails is no longer private. The government can listen in without having a specific reason to do so. Our rights as Americans have been curtailed and our privacy can no longer be assumed.”
In advance of the president’s signature, the ACLU announced its plan to challenge the new law in court.
“This fight is not over. We intend to challenge this bill as soon as President Bush signs it into law,” said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. “The bill allows the warrantless and dragnet surveillance of Americans’ international telephone and email communications. It plainly violates the Fourth Amendment.”
Constitutional expert Turley on FISA bill: ’The fix is in’
Raw Story
July 9, 2008
Obama: Yes, Hillary: No, McCain: Skipped
http://senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll..ongress=110&session=2&vote=00168
Bush wins passage of spy bill to protect telecoms
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSWAT00975320080709
Traitors In Senate Approve Surveillance Bill
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/2..Ar4mXNDa49uWmlkRl2iTP_hv24cA
Judge Walker ruled, effectively, that President George W. Bush is a felon
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/07/09/alharamain_lawsuit/
Report: Because of Bush obstinance, civil liberties board exists ‘in name only’
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Re..sh_obstinance_civil_0709.html
Domestic spying quietly goes on
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-te.fisa07jul07,0,2783557.story
As FISA nears toward vote, Feingold warns against immunity
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/As_F.._vote_Feingold_0708.html
Filed under: 1984, 2-party system, 2008 Election, 4th amendment, 9/11, 9/11 Truth, amnesty, AT&T, Barack Obama, barbara boxer, Big Brother, chris dodd, civil liberties, civil rights, False Flag, FISA, George Bush, Harry Reid, House, HR 6304, inside job, left right paradigm, Media, Nancy Pelosi, neocons, Neolibs, NSA, obama, Oppression, Police State, Propaganda, Ron Paul, Senate, steny hoyer, Surveillance, telco pac, US Constitution, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap, whistleblower | Tags: Frederick Boucher, Gregory Meeks, James Clyburn, MCI, orrin hatch, Protect America Act, Rahm Emanuel, Russ Feingold, Sprint, Verizon
Why Did 94 House Democrats Change Their Votes on FISA?
(A: Money)
Politico
June 25, 2008
In March, the House passed an amendment that rejected retroactive immunity for telecoms that assisted the NSA in illegal wiretapping. Most of us have wondered what happened to change the minds of 94 Democrats. What happened between June 20 and March 14 to change 94 Democratic hearts and minds?
The answer might well be simple: money. Could it be that simple?
MAPLight.org has published a breakdown of contributions received from Telco PACS by the 94 Dems who experienced the change of heart. [Maplight.org is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, nonpartisan organization based in Berkeley, California. Its search engine at MAPLight.org illuminates the connection between Money And Politics (MAP) via an unprecedented database of campaign contributions and legislative outcomes.’]
Here’s the bottom line:
Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint gave PAC contributions averaging:
$8,359 to each Democrat who changed their position to support immunity for Telcos (94 Dems)
$4,987 to each Democrat who remained opposed to immunity for Telcos (116 Dems)88 percent of the Dems who changed to supporting immunity (83 Dems
of the 94) received PAC contributions from Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint
during the last three years (Jan. 2005-Mar. 2008). ( MAPLight.org)
Of course the average amount received is a bit misleading. A few of the very prominent Dems who changed their votes took a lot more than $8000. According to this website,
Nancy Pelosi [CA], Speaker of the House, allegedly received $24,500.
Steny Hoyer [MD] allegedly received $29,000.
James Clyburn [SC] allegedly received $29,500.
Rahm Emanuel [IL] allegedly received $28,000.
Frederick Boucher [VA] allegedly received $27,500.
Gregory Meeks [NY] allegedly received $26,000.
You can see the complete list here.
I guess with campaign finance laws in the state they’re in, we can’t expect them to turn down free money. I would like to believe that there are other reasons why they supported the current incarnation of FISA. I wish I could think of some.
HR 6304 – A Bill To Abolish the 4th Amendment
Hatch compares FISA critics to those ‘who wear tin foil hats and think 9/11 was an inside job.’
Think Progress
June 26, 2008
Speaking today on the Senate floor in favor of the Foreign Service Intelligence Act legislation, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) compared critics of the bill — which include Sens. Harry Reid (D-NV), Chris Dodd (D-CT), and Barbara Boxer (D-CA), among others — to deluded conspiracy theorists. Hatch mocked the what he called “onerous oversight provisions” included in the bill, and said those who raise the specter of unchecked executive wiretapping power “feed the delusions of those who wear tin foil hats around their house and think that 9/11 was an inside job.”
Those “onerous” oversight provisions Hatch maligns? A ban on “reverse targeting” of Americans and a new requirement of probable cause for surveillance of Americans abroad.
UpdateLate this afternoon, the Senate voted 80-15 to invoke cloture on the FISA bill. Ian Welsh at FDL writes that this “was the real vote” and applauds the 15 senators who “voted for the Bill of Rights.”
http://mparent7777-1.livejournal.com/649045.html
Obama: Immunity not that important. Won’t support filibuster
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPljokDWERg
Whistleblower: Spy Bill Will Create Police State
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/06/att-whistleblow.html
Report: FISA vote may be delayed until July
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news..il-after-july-recess-2008-06-26.html
Obama Adviser On FISA: We’ll Trust The Inspector General To Prevent Surveillance Abuses
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/m.s.-b..-well-trust_b_108904.html
The Real FISA Vote Passes 80 to 15 With the Presidential Nominees Passing
http://firedoglake.com/2008/06/2..e-presidential-nominees-passing/
Ron Paul: The FISA bill clearly violates the Fourth Amendment
http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2008/cr062008h.htm
noworldsystem.com 
