Filed under: 1984, 2-party system, airport security, australia, barack obama, big brother, bush = obama, bush obama, civil liberties, civil rights, control grid, corruption, dictatorship, empire, FBI, federal crimes, george bush, government bureaucracy, government corruption, government crimes, internet, internet police, internet regulation, left right paradigm, nanny state, obama, obama = bush, obama bush, obama deception, obama fraud, obama lies, oppression, orwell, police state, privacy rights, right to privacy, search warrant, surveillance, suspicionless searches, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap | Tags: no change
Obama Wants Warrantless Access to Internet Activity Records
Washington Post
July 29, 2010
The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual’s Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.
The administration wants to add just four words — “electronic communication transactional records” — to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge’s approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user’s browser history. It does not include, the lawyers hasten to point out, the “content” of e-mail or other Internet communication.
But what officials portray as a technical clarification designed to remedy a legal ambiguity strikes industry lawyers and privacy advocates as an expansion of the power the government wields through so-called national security letters. These missives, which can be issued by an FBI field office on its own authority, require the recipient to provide the requested information and to keep the request secret. They are the mechanism the government would use to obtain the electronic records.
Stewart A. Baker, a former senior Bush administration Homeland Security official, said the proposed change would broaden the bureau’s authority. “It’ll be faster and easier to get the data,” said Baker, who practices national security and surveillance law. “And for some Internet providers, it’ll mean giving a lot more information to the FBI in response to an NSL.”
The Obama DOJ’s warrantless demands for e-mails
Google and CIA Plough Millions Into Huge ‘Recorded Future’ Monitoring Project
Filed under: 1984, airport security, australia, big brother, civil liberties, civil rights, control grid, nanny state, oppression, orwell, police state, porn ban, privacy rights, right to privacy, surveillance
Australian travellers to be searched for porn
The Age
May 20, 2010
Australian customs officers have been given new powers to search incoming travellers’ laptops and mobile phones for pornography, a spokeswoman for the Australian sex industry says.
Fiona Patten, president of the Australian Sex Party, is demanding an inquiry into why a new question appears on Incoming Passenger Cards asking people if they are carrying “pornography”.
Patten said officials now had an unfettered right to examine travellers’ electronic devices, marking the beginning of a new era of official investigation into people’s private lives. She questioned whether it was appropriate to search people for legal R18+ and X18+ material.
Australian customs officers have been given new powers to search incoming travellers’ laptops and mobile phones for pornography, a spokeswoman for the Australian sex industry says.
Fiona Patten, president of the Australian Sex Party, is demanding an inquiry into why a new question appears on Incoming Passenger Cards asking people if they are carrying “pornography”.
Patten said officials now had an unfettered right to examine travellers’ electronic devices, marking the beginning of a new era of official investigation into people’s private lives. She questioned whether it was appropriate to search people for legal R18+ and X18+ material.
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“Is it fair that customs officers rummage through someone’s luggage and pull out a legal men’s magazine or a lesbian journal in front of their children or their mother-in-law?” she said.
“If you and your partner have filmed or photographed yourselves making love in an exotic destination or even taking a bath, you will have to answer ‘Yes’ to the question or you will be breaking the law.”
Customs confirmed the new reference to “pornography” on the Incoming Passenger Cards and the search powers, acknowledging that searches conducted by officers may involve the discovery of “personal or sensitive possessions”.
A spokesman said officers were trained to apply “tact and discretion” in their dealings with passengers.
“Including an express reference to pornography is intended to enhance the interception of prohibited pornography at the border, by making passengers aware that some forms of pornography may be a prohibited import,” the spokesman said.
The “pornography” question has appeared on the cards since September last year. The change was only spotted by Patten earlier this month and it had received little to no coverage in the media.
Colin Jacobs, chairman of the lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia, said the change appeared to have sneaked under the radar “without any public consultation about the massive privacy issues”.
“It’s hard to fathom what the pressing concern could be that requires Australia to quiz every entrant to the country on their pornography habits, as if visitors would be aware of the nuances of the Australian classification scheme,” he said.
“If this results in Customs trawling through more private information on laptops searching for contraband, I would say the solution is way worse than the problem.”
Patten said if the question was designed to stop child pornography being smuggled into the country then the question should have been asked about “child pornography”, without encompassing regular porn.
Hetty Johnson, chief executive of child protection group Bravehearts, agreed with Patten that the question was too broad. She said it should only apply to illegal pornography.
“If it said child porn I’d be 100 per cent behind it – if you’re carrying child pornography then you deserve everything you get,” she said in a phone interview.
The issue has echoes of the 1956 detention of famed British conductor and composer Sir Eugene Goossens who had his bag searched upon his return from Europe.
He was carrying material that was considered, at the time, pornographic and his reputation was subsequently ruined, forcing him to flee the country.
“The term pornography is not referred to at all in the federal Classification Act, which customs relies on to classify their material,” Patten said.
Filed under: 1984, 2-party system, 4th amendment, Barack Obama, Big Brother, bush = obama, civil liberties, civil rights, DOJ, FBI, George Bush, government crimes, left right paradigm, nanny state, obama, obama = bush, obama deception, orwell, Police State, search warrant, Surveillance, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap | Tags: obama fraud, obama lie
The Obama DOJ’s warrantless demands for e-mails
Salon
April 15, 2010
 I want your emails. |
A very significant case involving core privacy protections is now being litigated, where the Obama Justice Department is seeking to obtain from Yahoo “all emails” sent and received by multiple Yahoo email accounts, despite the fact that DOJ has never sought, let alone obtained, a search warrant, and despite there being no notice of any kind to the email account holders:
- In a brief filed Tuesday afternoon, the coalition says a search warrant signed by a judge is necessary before the FBI or other police agencies can read the contents of Yahoo Mail messages — a position that puts those companies directly at odds with the Obama administration.
As part of a case conducted largely under seal and thus hidden from public view, the DOJ demanded these emails from Yahoo without any effort to demonstrate probable cause to believe the email user was involved in the commission of any crime, but instead merely based on the vague claim that there is “reasonable grounds to believe” the emails “are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation.” If the DOJ position were accepted, Americans would have substantially less privacy protections in their email communications.
Federal law is crystal clear that a search warrant is required for the Government to obtain any emails that have been stored less than 180 days — one that requires a showing of probable cause and that the documents sought to be described with particularlity. In contrast to the nation’s largest telecoms’ eager cooperation with Bush’s illegal surveillance programs, Yahoo — to its credit — refused to turn over any such emails to the Government without a search warrant. As a result, the DOJ is now seeking a federal court Order compelling the company to comply with its demands, and a coalition of privacy groups and technology companies — led by EFF and including Google — have now filed a brief supporting Yahoo’s position. Both Yahoo and that coalition insist that federal law as well as the Fourth Amendment’s search and seizure protection bar the Obama DOJ from acquiring these emails without a search warrant.
Obama will bypass Congress to detain suspects indefinitely
Obama Supports Renewing The PATRIOT ACT
Joe Biden’s pro-RIAA, pro-FBI tech voting record
Obama Votes YES on FISA Spy-Bill, McCain Skips
Obama Supports Giving Telecoms Amnesty for Illegal Wiretaps
Obama Implements ‘Precrime’ ‘Prolonged Detention’ for Detainees
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: 2nd Amendment, 4th amendment, big pharma, Bio Weapons, biological warfare, Dictatorship, Dissent, Empire, Eugenics, federal crimes, fines, florida, forced vaccinations, Genocide, government bureaucrat, h1n1, h1n1 clinic, h1n1 vaccine, health and environment, Human Experiments, human rights, influenza, innoculation, involuntary isolation, involuntary quarantine, involuntary vaccination, knock and talk, mandatory quarantine, mandatory vaccinations, Martial Law, Massachusetts, medical Experiments, medical industrial complex, Mercury, Military, nanny state, Oppression, Pandemic, pandemic virus, parental rights, Police State, Population Control, search warrant, Senate, swine flu, swine flu pandemic, swine flu vaccine, US Constitution, vaccinations, Vaccine, vaccine teams, virus pandemic, warrantless search
Massachusetts: Prison or $1000 A Day Fine For Refusing Forced Quarantine
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
September 2, 2009
The corporate media is ignoring S. 2028, the flu pandemic bill that was unanimously passed by the Massachusetts Senate. The draconian bill was covered extensively by the alternative news sites, but not a word from the New York Times or the Washington Post.
S. 2028 will be used as a template for legislation in other states. The bill imposes a virtual police state and martial law on Massachusetts at the behest of the governor in the event of a flu pandemic this autumn. It gives the state health commissioner, law enforcement, and medical personnel wide authority to mobilize forces, vaccinate the population, enter private property with no warrants, and even quarantine people against their will in violation of the Constitution. The bill allows the state to enter property without a search warrant and destroy the property without a court order. It would force in-state health care providers to assist in the performance of vaccination.
Law enforcement authorities are authorized to “arrest without warrant any person whom the officer has probable cause to believe has violated an order for isolation or quarantine and shall use reasonable diligence to enforce such order. Any person who knowingly violates an order for isolation or quarantine shall be punished by imprisonment of not more than 30 days and may be subject to a civil fine of not more than $1,000 per day that the violation continues.”
Other states are in the process of implementing legal actions in response to the H1N1 virus hyped by the government and the corporate media. Florida has distributed blank quarantine order forms, including a voluntary home quarantine agreement, a quarantine to residence order, a quarantine to residence order (non-compliance), a quarantine to facility order, quarantine detention order, quarantine of facility order, building quarantine closure order and area quarantine closure order. North Carolina released a draft isolation order that would provide for imprisonment for up to two years and pretrial detention without bail for any citizen who fails to comply with an isolation order. Washington has granted authority to local health officers to issue emergency detention orders forcing citizens to be immediately and involuntarily isolated or quarantined for up to 10 days.
A form released by the state of Iowa for voluntary home confinement, home quarantine and home isolation recently made the rounds on the internet. “Rumors started swirling after a quarantine form was found by someone on the internet,” KIMT 3 reported. “Health leaders in Iowa are reassuring people that there are no H1N1 related quarantines being ordered.” The form calls quarantine of all individuals suspected of coming in contact with the virus.
S.2028 is now in Massachusetts House Ways and Means Committee. The Liberty Preservation Association of Massachusetts has vowed to kill the legislation before it can reach the House (see MassLPA video above). The organization plans to lobby lawmakers at the capital on Beacon Hill on September 9 and convince them not to vote for and pass the bill.
Filed under: 1984, 1st amendment, 2-party system, 4th amendment, Airport Security, Barack Obama, Big Brother, border security, bush, CBP, civil liberties, civil rights, Control Grid, DHS, domestic terror, domestic terrorism, George Bush, Homeland Security, left right paradigm, nanny state, neocons, Neolibs, obama, obama deception, Oppression, orwell, Police State, right to privacy, Surveillance, US Constitution, us customs, War On Terror, warrantless search
Obama To Keep Bush Airport Laptop Search Policy
Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post
August 28, 2009
The Obama administration will largely preserve Bush-era procedures allowing the government to search — without suspicion of wrongdoing — the contents of a traveler’s laptop computer, cellphone or other electronic device, although officials said new policies would expand oversight of such inspections.
The policy, disclosed Thursday in a pair of Department of Homeland Security directives, describes more fully than did the Bush administration the procedures by which travelers’ laptops, iPods, cameras and other digital devices can be searched and seized when they cross a U.S. border. And it sets time limits for completing searches.
But representatives of civil liberties and travelers groups say they see little substantive difference between the Bush-era policy, which prompted controversy, and this one.
“It’s a disappointing ratification of the suspicionless search policy put in place by the Bush administration,” said Catherine Crump, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. “It provides a lot of procedural safeguards, but it doesn’t deal with the fundamental problem, which is that under the policy, government officials are free to search people’s laptops and cellphones for any reason whatsoever.”
Filed under: 1st amendment, 4th amendment, abraham lincoln, big government, Britain, civil liberties, civil rights, Congress, constitution, Detainee, Dictatorship, domestic terror, domestic terrorism, Empire, enemy combatant, Europe, european union, Extraordinary Rendition, FBI, fearmongering, free speech, George Bush, government bureaucrat, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, House, john ashcroft, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Judge Napolitano, knock and talk, london, neocons, oligarchy, Oppression, Patriot Act, Police State, search warrant, Senate, slavery, supreme court, thomas jefferson, Torture, United Kingdom, US Constitution, War On Terror, warrantless search
Judge Napolitano on the Patriot Act
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: 1984, 1st amendment, 2008 Election, 4th amendment, Amy Goodman, Anti-War, Big Brother, Bloggers, civil liberties, civil rights, Control Grid, demonstration, DHS, Dictatorship, Dissent, Empire, Fascism, FBI, free press, free speech, Homeland Security, journalists, Minneapolis, nanny state, Nazi, Oppression, orwell, Police State, Protest, Raid, RNC, stasi, stasi tactics, Surveillance, tear gas, thought crime, US Constitution, War On Terror, warrantless search | Tags: democracy now, fusion center, glassbead collective, i-witness video, laptops, minneapolis police department, Ramsey County, RNC welcoming committee, seized, st. paul police, st. paul police department
Police Terrorize Children, Reporters and Other Dangerous Criminals
George Washington’s Blog
September 3, 2008
Federal and local law enforcement officers are literally terrorizing people in Minneapolis for their thought crimes.
Police have essentially been waging preemptive war by infiltrating, tracking and disrupting every-day Americans who disagree with the current administration’s policies.
As former constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald wrote on August 31st:
“We have a massive assault led by Federal Government law enforcement agencies on left-wing dissidents and protesters who have committed no acts of violence or illegality whatsoever, preceded by months-long espionage efforts to track what they do.”
As Greenwald and others note, those targeted were little old ladies and grandfathers, vegetarians, and other people who are not a threat to anyone.
And as law school professor and President of the well-respected legal group National Lawyers Guild, Marjorie Cohn, writes:
“Local police and sheriffs, working with the FBI, conducted preemptive searches, seizures and arrests. Glenn Greenwald described the targeting of protestors by ‘teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets.’ Journalists were detained at gunpoint and lawyers representing detainees were handcuffed at the scene.’I was personally present and saw officers with riot gear and assault rifles, pump action shotguns,’ said Bruce Nestor, the President of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, who is representing several of the protestors. ‘The neighbor of one of the houses had a gun pointed in her face when she walked out on her back porch to see what was going on. There were children in all of these houses, and children were held at gunpoint.’”
Cohn notes that “preventive detention violates the Fourth Amendment” (you’re supposed to have a justification for imprisonment, not just thought crimes).
“The brigades of police officers would periodically chant military terms and march around in formation (’Double Time!’), while helicopters hovered overhead and Humvees drove by frequently.
***
Clearly, and particularly in the wake of this weekend’s thuggish raids, the intent was to create a highly intimidating, militarized and high-tension climate.”
Once the protests started, the police fired rubber bullets, teargas, pepper spray and concussion grenades at protesters, then arrested them en masse.
They also specifically targeted established journalists (and see this) simply for trying to cover the protests. What’s next . . . assassinating reporters like the U.S. did in Iraq?
Police Seize Journalists Notes About RNC Protest Plans
RNC cops cuff, terrorize five-year-old
Five-year-old child handcuffed and terrorized; activists allege program of intimidation
Coldsnap Legal Collective
August 30, 2008
In an outrageous series of state-sanctioned actions, police raided an activist “Convergence Space” and several homes in the past 24 hours, detaining multiple people on extraordinarily flimsy pretences, arresting several, confiscating computers and laptops, and even handcuffing a small child.
Beginning at 9:17 p.m. last night, with the raid on the St. Paul Convergence Space, and continuing throughout the day today, police harassment and brutality towards the local community has proceeded at an alarming pace. At least five separate raids have been reported throughout the Twin Cities, with the primary focus appearing to be the confiscation of computers and personal affects.
“These actions are clearly intended to have a chilling effect on dissent prior to the launch of the Republican National Convention,” said Natalia, a local activist and mother of two, who asked that her surname be withheld. “The message being conveyed is: ‘If need be, we will terrorize your children to dissuade you from voicing your opinion.’”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim..-paul-authorities-get-t_b_124293.html
78-Year-Old Nun Arrested At RNC Protest
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/08/31/national/main4401941.shtml
Amy Goodman: Why We Were Falsely Arrested
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/377611_amyonline04.html
Amy Goodman and Two Democracy Now! Producers Unlawfully Arrested at RNC
http://www.infowars.com/?p=4273
Guns Drawn, Cops Bust in on Citizens Who Plan to Protest RNC
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/97093
Video Coverage of RNC Protest Police Raids
http://www.infowars.com/?p=4250
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: 2-party system, 7/7, Air Force, Bloggers, Britain, civil liberties, civil rights, Control Grid, corporations, data mining, Dictatorship, Empire, Europe, european union, Fascism, free speech, google, internet, Internet Filtering, internet police, ISP, left right paradigm, london, nanny state, Nazi, neocons, Neolibs, Oppression, orwell, Police State, privacy rights, stasi, stasi tactics, Surveillance, telecoms, United Kingdom, united nations, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap | Tags: cyber security, cyber terrorism, e-mails, Home Office, snooper’s charter, texting
UK Telecom & Internet Companies to Check Texts and E-mails
Alan Travis
London Guardian
August 13, 2008
Local councils, health authorities and hundreds of other public bodies are to be given the power to access details of everyone’s personal text, emails and internet use under Home Office proposals published yesterday.
Ministers want to make it mandatory for telephone and internet companies to keep details of all personal internet traffic for at least 12 months so it can be accessed for investigations into crime or other threats to public safety.
The Home Office last night admitted that the measure will mean companies have to store “a billion incidents of data exchange a day”. As the measure is the result of an EU directive, the data will be made available to public investigators across Europe.
The consultation paper published yesterday estimates that it will cost the internet industry over £50m to store the mountain of data.
Conservatives and Liberal Democrats last night branded the measure a “snooper’s charter”.
When the measure was floated after the London bombings in 2005 by the then home secretary, Charles Clarke, it was justified on the grounds that it was needed to investigate terrorist plots and organised crime. But the Home Office document makes clear that the personal data will now be available for all sorts of crime and public order investigations and may even be used to prevent people self-harming.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/aug/15/labour.idcards
Zero Privacy In UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/13/privacy.privacy
Google Ordered To Unmask Mystery Blogger
http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/08/google-ordered.html
Air Force Suspends ‘Cyber Command’ Program
http://www.informationweek.com/news..wArticle.jhtml?articleID=210003721
Blogging Is Not A Crime
http://www.techcrunch.com/20..-a-crime/comment-2439303
Filed under: 2-party system, 2008 Election, 4th amendment, 9/11, 9/11 Firefighters, 9/11 Truth, Afghanistan, Congress, Dennis Kucinich, Dissent, federal crime, first responders, George Bush, heckled, House, Iraq, judiciary committee, left right paradigm, michagin, Nancy Pelosi, nation building, neocons, Neolibs, occupation, Protest, Senate, Surveillance, US Constitution, War Crimes, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap, We Are Change | Tags: lansing, the view
Pelosi on the Articles of Impeachment: “I didn’t read it yet”
Nancy Pelosi confronted by We Are Change Lansing
Filed under: 1984, 4th amendment, 9/11, Airport Security, Big Brother, Canada, catastrophic event, cell phones, Checkpoints, Control Grid, DHS, Homeland Security, internet, internet police, Mexico, michael chertoff, nanny state, orwell, pedophilia, Police State, Problem Reaction Solution, Ron Paul, TSA, Uncategorized, US Constitution, war on drugs, War On Terror, warrantless search | Tags: data protection act, ipod, laptops
Homeland Security Can Steal Travelers’ Private Property
Laptops, Ipods, cell-phones, flash-drives, and even ’pocket litter’ can be confiscated by Homeland Security agents at the border without probable cause
Lee Rogers
Rogue Government
August 4, 2008
The Department of Homeland Security more popularly known as the Department of Homeland Enslavement has now come out and stated that they have the authority to confiscate people’s personal property including laptops, electronic devices and even paperwork at the border without any probable cause. They also claim that they can hold those items for an unspecified period of time. All of this they claim is justified under the guise of fighting terrorists. It doesn’t matter that thousands of illegal aliens are entering the country from Mexico unchecked. No, instead the Department of Homeland Security thinks its more effective stealing the property of U.S. citizens to keep us safe from terrorists. Any member of the Department of Homeland Security that takes the property of a U.S. citizen without a warrant should immediately be charged with theft. Of course, in this insane world we live in, that will never happen and the people who conduct this activity will probably be given some sort of freedom medal. This is just another case of the government taking a big dump on the Fourth Amendment which at this point is non-existent.
Before getting into the policies themselves, here is the text of the Fourth Amendment.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The government cannot search and seize an individual’s property unless they obtain a court order that can only be issued based upon probable cause. Keep that in mind, as we analyze the Department of Homeland Security’s policies.
The following is taken from a Washington Post piece covering these policies:
Federal agents may take a traveler’s laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.
Also, officials may share copies of the laptop’s contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
This policy is obviously illegal as it is not in accordance with the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, which makes this policy null and void. What’s really insane, is that they claim they have the authority to share the data on these electronic devices with anyone they want for any specific purpose. It is bad enough that these clowns say that they can take laptops and electronic devices without any probable cause, but they also claim that they can take people’s papers including books, pamphlets and written materials. The insanity of this is unparalleled.
Also from the Washington Post report:
The policies cover “any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form,” including hard drives, flash drives, cell phones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover “all papers and other written documentation,” including books, pamphlets and “written materials commonly referred to as ’pocket trash’ or ’pocket litter.’ “
How can the Department of Homeland Security declare that they have these powers when it is clearly not in accordance with the Constitution? There needs to be an investigation into the criminals that drafted these policies. They should start the investigation at the very top with the Skeletor look-a-like Michael Chertoff who as head of the agency has willingly implemented all sorts of illegal policies and programs under the guise of this phony terror war.
Again from the Washington Post report:
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff wrote in an opinion piece published last month in USA Today that “the most dangerous contraband is often contained in laptop computers or other electronic devices.” Searches have uncovered “violent jihadist materials” as well as images of child pornography, he wrote.
Even if you believe Chertoff’s claims on contraband and believe the bogus terror war is real, it doesn’t warrant the Department Homeland Security going on fishing expeditions. Assuming the false reality of the terror war is real, one has to question’s Chertoff’s sanity considering that he is focusing more of the government’s resources on seizing people’s laptops and personal property with no probable cause than stopping illegal aliens entering the United States unchecked from Mexico. Wouldn’t it be more likely that a terrorist would try to come into the country undetected instead of going through border checkpoints? This is especially true, considering that there is militarized combat and drug trafficking taking place frequently on the U.S.-Mexico border. Of course, Chertoff doesn’t care about any of that.
The bottom line is that the terror war is not real and everything Chertoff is implementing is designed to enslave the American people. People are more likely to die in a car accident or in a swimming pool than from an act of terrorism. The Department of Homeland Security should be abolished and at the very least, Chertoff and his minions should find their way to unemployment lines. This policy of seizing people’s personal property is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, and the people who are responsible for drafting and implementing this policy need to be put in prison.
Be sure to check out these other articles analyzing this illegal search and seizure policy by the Department of Homeland Security.
Detroit Free Press: Leave My Laptop Alone
Information Week: All Your Laptops Belong To Us
LA Times: Feds Now Arrest Your Laptops At Border
Ron Paul sponsors ’Data Protection Act’: Border agents require “reasonable suspicion” to search or confiscate laptops
Fort Bend Now
August 7, 2008
Ron Paul has sponsored legislation designed to require border agents to have “reasonable suspicion” to search the digital equipment of a traveler entering the United States.
Paul said his legislation would force Department of Homeland Security agents to have at least reasonable suspicion that a person has engaged, or is about to engage, in criminal activity before they can search a traveler’s digital equipment. Currently, he pointed out, federal officers can search or seize a traveler’s laptop computer, Blackberry or other electronic device without cause.
That, Paul said, is unconstitutional.
http://www.news.com.au/travel/story/0,26058,24089084-5014090,00.html
Travelers Laptops May Be Stolen At Border
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/content/article/2008/08/01/laptops.html
U.S. Agents Can Seize Laptops
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Government/US-Agents-Can-Seize-Laptops/?kc=rss
TSA Proud Of Confisicating Non-Dangerous Item
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/07/tsa_proud_of_co.html
http://features.csmonitor.com/innov..efends-laptop-searches-at-the-border/
Airport scans for illegal downloads on iPods, mobile phones and laptops
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/ma..ed/2008/07/10/nairport110.xml
India: NSA to tap data traffic passing through Blackberry devices
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2008/07/13/stories/2008071350580500.htm
The right to peer inside your iPod
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jul/10/intellectualproperty.law
Filed under: 1984, 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, 2008 olympics, beijing, Big Brother, CCTV, Censorship, China, civil liberties, civil rights, George Bush, google, human rights, internet, internet blackout, Internet Filtering, internet police, Iraq, neocons, olympics, Oppression, orwell, Police State, sam brownback, Senate, Spy, Surveillance, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap | Tags: falungong, falungong practitioners, Public Security Bureau
China Spying On Internet Use In Hotels
AP
July 29, 2008
Foreign-owned hotels in China face the prospect of “severe retaliation” if they refuse to install government software that can spy on Internet use by hotel guests coming to watch the summer Olympic games, a U.S. lawmaker said Tuesday.
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., produced a translated version of a document from China’s Public Security Bureau that requires hotels to use the monitoring equipment.
“These hotels are justifiably outraged by this order, which puts them in the awkward position of having to craft pop-up messages explaining to their customers that their Web history, communications, searches and key strokes are being spied on by the Chinese government,” Brownback said at a news conference.
A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Brownback said several international hotel chains confirmed receiving the order from China’s Public Security Bureau. The hotels are in a bind, he said, because they don’t want to comply with the order, but also don’t want to jeopardize their investment of millions of dollars to expand their businesses in China. The hotel chains that forwarded the order to Brownback are declining to reveal their identities for fear of reprisal.
Earlier this year, the U.S. State Department issued a fact sheet warning travelers attending the Olympic games that “they have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public or private locations” in China.
“All hotel rooms and offices are considered to be subject to on-site or remote technical monitoring at all times,” the agency states.
The Public Security Bureau order threatens that failure to comply could result in financial penalties, suspending access to the Internet or the loss of a license to operate a hotel in China.
“If you were a human rights advocate, if you’re a journalist, you’re in room 1251 of a hotel, anything that you use, sending out over the Internet is monitored in real time by the Chinese Public Security bureau,” Brownback said. “That’s not right. It’s not in the Olympic spirit.”
Brownback and other lawmakers have repeatedly denounced China’s record of human rights abuses and asked President Bush not to attend the Olympic opening ceremonies in Beijing.
Brownback was introducing a resolution in the Senate on Tuesday that urges China to reverse its actions.
China To Censor Internet During Olympics
AP
July 29, 2008
China will censor the Internet used by foreign media during the Olympics, an organising committee official confirmed Wednesday, reversing a pledge to offer complete media freedom at the games.
“During the Olympic Games we will provide sufficient access to the Internet for reporters,” said Sun Weide, spokesman for the organising committee.
He confirmed, however, that journalists would not be able to access information or websites connected to the Falungong spiritual movement which is banned in China.
Other sites were also unavailable to journalists, he said, without specifying which ones.
Olympic panel ends ban, says Iraq can go to games
http://home.peoplepc.com/..3421_1334520080729-294375139
China Hits Back At U.S. Stands Firm On Internet
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/2008073..sGtapUp0mOsYxUinOROrgF
Google Says Privacy Doesn’t Exist, Get Used To Everyone Knowing Everything About You
http://www.informationweek.com/b..R0QSNDLPSKHSCJUNN2JVN
Filed under: 1984, 4th amendment, Big Brother, biometrics, Britain, cancer, cashless society, CCTV, Control Grid, Echelon, Europe, european union, FISA, gps, health and environment, london, Media, microchip, neocons, Oppression, orwell, Police State, prison industrial complex, RFID, Science and technology, spy satellite, Surveillance, United Kingdom, US Constitution, Verichip, War On Terror, warrantless search | Tags: lab rats
RFID Chip Implants Cause Cancer in Lab-Rats
Filed under: 4th amendment, Child Abuse, education, education system, nanny state, Oppression, Police State, US Constitution, war on drugs, warrantless search | Tags: ed balls, Sir Alan Steer
Teachers Given Power To Search Kids
Times Online
July 14, 2008
Teachers will be allowed by law to search children for drugs, alcohol and cigarettes in school under proposals today which will be accepted by the Schools Secretary.
Sir Alan Steer, the Government’s behaviour adviser, will make the proposal in a report to Ed Balls, along with a call for more cooperation between parents and schools to stamp out poor behaviour before it happens.
His recommendations come after a speech last week, in which he said that parents must take more responsibility for tackling violence among their teenage children.
Sir Alan – who concludes that behaviour remains good and is improving in the majority of schools – nevertheless says that more must be done to keep drugs and drink out of schools.
noworldsystem.com 