Filed under: 1984, 1st amendment, 2nd Amendment, americorps, anti gun, Big Brother, CIA, civil liberties, civil rights, Communism, Concentration Camps, Conditioning, Control Grid, Denver, DHS, Dictatorship, DOJ, domestic terror, domestic terrorism, Empire, Fascism, FBI, FEMA, firefighters, free speech, Germany, gestapo, Gun Control, Hitler, Homeland Security, intimidation, nanny state, Nazi, nazi germany, orwell, paramedics, Police State, securecorps, socialism, Spy, stasi, stasi tactics, Surveillance, Total Information Awareness, US Constitution, utility workers, War On Terror, youth brigades | Tags: Operation Bright Eyes, Operation TIPS, Terrorism Liaison Officers, TLO, wetip
Nazi-Style Campaign Urges Americans to Report Each Other
WeTip program offers cash rewards for anonymous tips about guns, child abuse and suspicious behavior
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
August 6, 2009
A privately-run informant program operating nationwide encourages Americans to anonymously turn each other in to the authorities for cash rewards in a chilling echo of the Nazi “denunciations” of 1930’s Germany, where neighbors would grass their neighbors up to the local Gestapo officer over petty issues.
The WeTip organization takes anonymous tips online or via toll free phone lines and carries the creepy slogan “For A Safer America!”.
The group forwards tips given by the public to law enforcement authorities across the country, with no jurisdictional borders.
An Orwellian poster being plastered up across American towns and cities as part of a campaign run by the organization reads, “ILLEGAL ACTIVITY IS NOT TOLERATED” and advises citizens to “turn them in” and receive a reward of up to $1000. Things to “turn them in” for include drug dealing and theft, but more vague examples such as “threats and intimidation” as well as “weapons” and “gang activity” are listed, as is “child abuse”.
Is the presence of a “weapon” in and of itself evidence of a crime in a country where citizens have the legal right to own firearms? Will your neighbor be turning you in if he sees you loading your car with a rifle on your way to the shooting range? What about “child abuse”? Will your friendly local spy be informing the authorities when he sees you disciplining your child?
What else constitutes suspicious activity? According to law enforcement and Homeland Security guidelines, suspicious behavior includes owning guns, being politically active, and having bumper stickers on your car.
The WeTip organization also offers a training institute for schools, businesses and government employees, presumably providing skills courses on how to become an expert domestic spy, just like in Communist East Germany.
WeTip also claims in its promotional material that it has been endorsed by both Bush presidents, as well as Bill Clinton and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Deliciously ironic therefore it is that Arnie starred in the 1987 movie The Running Man, a futuristic portrayal of a wacky dictatorship where citizens are reminded by huge TV screens placed on street corners that they can “earn a double bonus for reporting on a family member!”
As America sinks into a military police state, it begins to parallel more and more aspects of Nazi Germany, especially in the context of citizens being turned against each other, which in turn creates a climate of fear and the constraining sense that one is always being watched.
One common misconception about Nazi Germany was that the police state was solely a creation of the authorities and that the citizens were merely victims. On the contrary, Gestapo files show that 80% of all Gestapo investigations were started in response to information provided by denunciations by “ordinary” Germans.
“There were relatively few secret police, and most were just processing the information coming in. I had found a shocking fact. It wasn’t the secret police who were doing this wide-scale surveillance and hiding on every street corner. It was the ordinary German people who were informing on their neighbors,” wrote Robert Gellately of Florida State University.
Gellately discovered that the people who informed on their neighbors were motivated primarily by banal factors – “greed, jealousy, and petty differences,” and not by a genuine concern about crime or insecurity.
Gellately “found cases of partners in business turning in associates to gain full ownership; jealous boyfriends informing on rival suitors; neighbors betraying entire families who chronically left shared bathrooms unclean or who occupied desirable apartments.”
“And then there were those who informed because for the first time in their lives someone in authority would listen to them and value what they said.”
Gellately emphasizes the fact that the Germans who sicked the authorities on their neighbors knew very well what the consequences for the victims would be – families torn apart, torture and internment in concentration camps, and ultimately in many cases death – but they still did it with few qualms because the rewards of financial bounties and mere convenience were deemed more important to them.
As we have covered before, the WeTip program is by no means the only initiative that is training Americans to become amateur domestic spies.
One of the largest cable TV companies in the United States, Bright House, is training its employees to look for suspicious behavior and report it to police under the guise of a neighborhood watch initiative called Operation Bright Eyes.
The legacy of training Americans to spy on each other in the name of “safety” has its origins in Operation TIPS, which was supposedly nixed by Congress, a DOJ, FBI, DHS and FEMA coordinated program that would have recruited one in twenty-four Americans as domestic informants, a higher percentage than was used by the Stasi in Communist East Germany.
Government funding was cut after an outcry but private funding continues and the same program was introduced under a number of sub-divisions including AmeriCorps, SecureCorps and the Highway Watch program.
In July last year we reported on how hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and utility workers have been trained and recently dispatched as “Terrorism Liaison Officers” in Colorado, Arizona and California to watch for “suspicious activity” which is later fed into a secret government database.
Also last year, a New York Times feature article heartily celebrated the fact that an increasing number of Americans are becoming informants and turning in their neighbors and family members to the authorities in return for cash rewards. In a piece about a new program run by Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers, citing gas prices, foreclosure rates and runaway food price inflation, The Times lauds the fact that citizens are reporting on each other, ensuring “a substantial increase in Crime Stopper-related arrests and recovered property, as callers turn in neighbors, grandchildren or former boyfriends in exchange for a little cash.”
As the Recession Ready America blog points out in relation to the WeTip program and its offer of $1,000 for turning people in, in an environment of recession and unemployment, the temptation to inform on people for minor indiscretions would be too tempting for many to resist, creating a gargantuan backlog of petty offenses reported by people with no criminal detective skills whatsoever, leading to harassment of innocent people and ensuring that more real crimes go unsolved.
We invite our readers to use the WeTip “Submit a Tip” form to remind the crypto-Nazis behind this program that this is America, not Germany in the 1930’s. Building strong communities is all about establishing strong bonds and friendships with your neighbors, not grassing them up to the authorities for a quick buck.
Filed under: 1984, 1st amendment, 4th amendment, Anti-War, army, Big Brother, Checkpoints, civil liberties, civil rights, Control Grid, data mining, denver colorado, Dictatorship, Dissent, DNC, domestic terror, domestic terrorism, Empire, facism, FBI, federal crime, free speech, Military, national guard, Nazi, NORTHCOM, Oppression, police brutality, Police State, Posse Comitatus, Protest, riot, RNC, secret service, Spy, Surveillance, Taser Guns, Taxpayers, Troops, us army, US Constitution, War On Terror | Tags: CIAC, Colorado National Guard, Colorado State Patrol, Drury Hotel, fusion centers, Johnson university, maryland, NLCS, Non-Lethal Capability Sets, phraselaters, soldiers, TLA, TLO, u.s. soldiers, Wales University, x-spray
Army Deploys All-In-One Nonlethal Warfare Kit
Wired
August 8, 2008
The U.S. Army is deploying an all-in-one package of nonlethal devices that covers everything from checkpoint control to riot control. “The first of the Brigade Non-Lethal Capability Sets (NLCS) is now fielded to the Army’s 1st Heavy Brigade Combat Team,” reports Defense Daily, an industry newsletter (sorry, subscription only).
The kits are put into large, weatherproof containers, and include everything from high-intensity lights to loud speakers. The checkpoint tools, for example, includes “equipment to establish and operate hasty and deliberate checkpoints.” That means tire spikes and capture nets.
Other nonlethal sets have been fielded in the past, but the NLCS “includes items not found in the previous sets, such as tasers, Phraselators, Vehicle Lightweight Arresting Devices and Ex-Spray, which allows soldiers to detect explosive residue.”
Colorado ’fusion center’ to step up intelligence gathering during DNC
The Colorado Independent
July 30, 2008
Federal and state law enforcement officials will increase intelligence operations during the Democratic National Convention, overseeing an information war room that will be staffed around the clock with analysts who access a dozen databases while receiving reports of “suspicious activity” — activity that some civil libertarians claim could be nothing more than engaging in anti-war protests or photographing federal facilities that could be targeted for terrorist attack.
Central to the efforts is Colorado’s “fusion” center, a place designed to facilitate intelligence sharing among federal, state and military agencies in an effort to prevent terrorism. But civil rights advocates fear that the Colorado Information Analysis Center, (CIAC) now housed in an inconspicuous office building in Centennial, a southern suburb of Denver, could enable unwarranted spying on Americans exercising their First Amendment rights at the convention.
Inside the building, intelligence analysts with the Colorado State Patrol, Colorado National Guard and Federal Bureau of Investigation take local reports of suspicious criminal activity and determine what merits further investigation.
“It’s a filtration point for information,” says Lance Clem, a representative for the Colorado Department of Public Safety, which directs the state troopers who work at CIAC. “We take information from the international and national level and decide what needs to be pushed out to local law enforcement agencies.”
CIAC personnel also take reports of suspicious activities from citizens and other police departments. If a report is deemed by analysts to require additional investigation, it is shared with the appropriate law enforcement officials, but if a report is not determined to merit further inspection, CIAC workers make a log of the event, according to Clem, essentially creating a massive collection of data, some of it reliable and some of it not.
When the Democratic National Convention is held in August, CIAC will be operating 24 hours a day and be fully staffed with up to eight intelligence analysts at any given time.
“CIAC is going to be expanding hours for physical presence in the office,” Clem says about the convention. “Any known threats specifically related to the convention are going to go right to the United States Secret Service and FBI, but CIAC is going to be there to take any reports that citizens have.”
Malcolm Wiley, a spokesman for the Secret Service, says he can’t confirm if members of his agency will be physically present at CIAC while the convention takes place, but he does acknowledge the center’s part in analyzing intelligence data during the event.
“They’ll be sharing information with other intelligence gatherers,” including the Secret Service and FBI, Wiley says.
The military will also be sharing intelligence information and providing support through U.S. Northern Command, (NORTHCOM) a unit stationed at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs that was created in 2002 for homeland defense missions.
While NORTHCOM personnel will not be working at CIAC during the convention, the unit will share information that is relevant to the center,as it has done occasionally in the past, according to Master Sgt. Anthony Hill, a NORTHCOM spokesman.
Federal and state law enforcement officials will increase intelligence operations during the Democratic National Convention, overseeing an information war room that will be staffed around the clock with analysts who access a dozen databases while receiving reports of “suspicious activity” — activity that some civil libertarians claim could be nothing more than engaging in anti-war protests or photographing federal facilities that could be targeted for terrorist attack.
Central to the efforts is Colorado’s “fusion” center, a place designed to facilitate intelligence sharing among federal, state and military agencies in an effort to prevent terrorism. But civil rights advocates fear that the Colorado Information Analysis Center, (CIAC) now housed in an inconspicuous office building in Centennial, a southern suburb of Denver, could enable unwarranted spying on Americans exercising their First Amendment rights at the convention.
Inside the building, intelligence analysts with the Colorado State Patrol, Colorado National Guard and Federal Bureau of Investigation take local reports of suspicious criminal activity and determine what merits further investigation.
“It’s a filtration point for information,” says Lance Clem, a representative for the Colorado Department of Public Safety, which directs the state troopers who work at CIAC. “We take information from the international and national level and decide what needs to be pushed out to local law enforcement agencies.”
CIAC personnel also take reports of suspicious activities from citizens and other police departments. If a report is deemed by analysts to require additional investigation, it is shared with the appropriate law enforcement officials, but if a report is not determined to merit further inspection, CIAC workers make a log of the event, according to Clem, essentially creating a massive collection of data, some of it reliable and some of it not.
When the Democratic National Convention is held in August, CIAC will be operating 24 hours a day and be fully staffed with up to eight intelligence analysts at any given time.
“CIAC is going to be expanding hours for physical presence in the office,” Clem says about the convention. “Any known threats specifically related to the convention are going to go right to the United States Secret Service and FBI, but CIAC is going to be there to take any reports that citizens have.”
Malcolm Wiley, a spokesman for the Secret Service, says he can’t confirm if members of his agency will be physically present at CIAC while the convention takes place, but he does acknowledge the center’s part in analyzing intelligence data during the event.
“They’ll be sharing information with other intelligence gatherers,” including the Secret Service and FBI, Wiley says.
The military will also be sharing intelligence information and providing support through U.S. Northern Command, (NORTHCOM) a unit stationed at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs that was created in 2002 for homeland defense missions.
While NORTHCOM personnel will not be working at CIAC during the convention, the unit will share information that is relevant to the center,as it has done occasionally in the past, according to Master Sgt. Anthony Hill, a NORTHCOM spokesman.
Military to commandeer campus for DNC operations
The Colorado Independent
July 29, 2008
The Colorado Army National Guard is expected to transform a private Denver university campus into a restricted military lodging area during the Democratic National Convention in August.
More than 400 soldiers could be stationed in official capacity on the campus according to the National Guard, but the Guard is not disclosing what the troops will be doing during the convention.
In mid-July The Colorado Independent reported that the Colorado National Guard was planning to rent more than 500 rooms around the Denver area for business relating specifically to the Democratic National Convention being held Aug 25-38.
At least 400 of those rooms will be used for nine days during Aug. 22-30 at Johnson & Wales University, the old University of Denver law school at 7150 Montview Blvd. in east Denver.
“We only have the Colorado Army National Guard staying with us.” says Lindsay Tracy, a spokeswoman for Johnson & Wales University.
The private university, offering culinary and hospitality programs, will be closed to students during the soldiers’ stay.
“They’re the only ones using the campus. The campus basically will be shut down during that time,” Tracy says. “Only essential staff will be allowed.”
Along with lodging at the school, the National Guard has also ordered more than 30 rooms at an Extended Stay America hotel in an unknown location and more than 70 rooms at the Drury Hotels, also located in east Denver, at 4400 Peoria St.
A Drury Hotels representative declined to comment, citing a policy to not release information about guests.
The Colorado National Guard — composed of both Air and Army Guard units totaling over 5,000 military personnel — will not say why or how soldiers will be using the facilities, but officials have confirmed that no other federal or local agencies will be using the rooms.
“All we’re concerned with is the National Guard personnel,” says Capt. Robert Bell, a public affairs officer for the Colorado National guard. “That’s what we asked for.”
Bell says the soldiers will be on duty and wearing personal protective equipment, which can include helmets and combat armor. He also said weapons will be kept in National Guard armories, in the city of Centennial south of Denver, and at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora. Both Johnson & Wales University and Drury Hotels are less than 10 miles from the base.
Maj. Gen. H. Michael Edwards, who was appointed by Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter as the adjutant general for Colorado in 2007, oversees both Army and Air National Guard operations in the state.
Bell and Tracy said they do not know how much taxpayer money will be spent on the room rentals.
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN0619904520080807
Nothing says “Change” like 3,000 cops in riot gear ready to bash your skull in
http://www.theseminal.com/2008/08/06/n..change-like-3000-cops-in-riot-gear/
Filed under: 1984, 1st amendment, 2-party system, 2008 Election, 2nd Amendment, 4th amendment, Air Force, Alex Jones, anti gun, army, Barack Obama, Big Brother, Bill Clinton, bill of rights, Britain, Chicago, China, CIA, Communism, Control Grid, DEBT, DHS, Dick Cheney, Dictatorship, Dissent, domestic terror, domestic terrorism, Drivers License, Empire, Europe, european union, Fascism, FBI, free speech, George Bush, Germany, Globalism, Gun Control, hackers, Hitler, hitler youth, Homeland Security, internet, Internet 2, internet blackout, Internet Filtering, internet police, left right paradigm, mao, Martial Law, Military, nanny state, national guard, Nazi, nazi youth, neocons, Neolibs, New World Order, obama, Oppression, Police State, Protest, rally, rome, Soviet Union, stasi, stasi tactics, Surveillance, Troops, United Kingdom, US Constitution, War On Terror, White House | Tags: Joseph Farah, National Cyber Advisor, nazi youth, Terrorism Liaison Officers, TLO
Obama’s Nazi Youth Brigade
Presidential candidate wants domestic “security force” as powerful as U.S. military, columnist compares proposal to Hitler Youth
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
July 17, 2008
Presidential frontrunner Barack Obama has called for a “civilian national security force” as powerful as the U.S. military, comments that were ignored by the vast majority of the corporate media but compared by one journalist to the Nazi Hitler Youth.
“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded,” Obama told a Colorado Springs audience earlier this month.
World Net Daily editor Joseph Farah asked if he was the only journalist in America who found Obama’s statement troubling.
“If we’re going to create some kind of national police force as big, powerful and well-funded as our combined U.S. military forces, isn’t this rather a big deal?” wrote Farah.
“Are we talking about creating a police state here? The U.S. Army alone has nearly 500,000 troops. That doesn’t count reserves or National Guard. In 2007, the U.S. Defense budget was $439 billion. Is Obama serious about creating some kind of domestic security force bigger and more expensive than that? If not, why did he say it? What did he mean?”
KnoxNews.com is seemingly the only other media outlet to express interest in exactly what Obama is proposing.
“The statement was made in the context of youth service. Is this an organization for just the youth or are adults going to participate? How does one get away from the specter of other such “youth” organizations from Nazi Germany and the former Soviet Union when talking about it?” wrote Michael Silence.
Obama’s proposal smacks of an expanded version of an existing program in which hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and utility workers have been trained and recently dispatched as “Terrorism Liaison Officers” in Colorado, Arizona and California to watch for “suspicious activity” which is later fed into a secret government database.
It is also reminiscent of the supposedly canned 2002 Operation TIPS program, which would have turned 4 per cent of Americans into informants under the jurisdiction of the Justice Department.
TIPS lived on in other guises, such as the Highway Watch program, a $19 billion dollar Homeland Security-run project which trains truckers to watch for suspicious activity on America’s highways.
More recently, ABC News reported that “The FBI is taking cues from the CIA to recruit thousands of covert informants in the United States as part of a sprawling effort…..to aid with criminal investigations.”
Since authorities now define mundane activities like buying baby formula, beer, wearing Levi jeans, carrying identifying documents like a drivers license and traveling with women or children or mentioning the U.S. constitution as the behavior of potential terrorists, the bounty for the American Stasi to turn in political dissidents is sure to be too tempting to resist under Obama’s new program.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVjcRkeKFsc
Wired
July 17, 2008
Since the start of the year, the Bush administration has kickstarted a $30 billion effort to shore up cyber security, installed a new “czar” for online defense, and reserved the right to snoop on everyone’s net traffic, to ward off a digital attack.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says the White House is still asleep at the switch, when it comes to network defense.
“We know that cyber-espionage and common crime is already on the rise. And yet while countries like China have been quick to recognize this change, for the last eight years we have been dragging our feet,” he said in a speech today at Purdue University, focusing on unconventional threats.
His recommendations on network security were vague, mostly. But they did include some subtle digs at the current administration.
As President, I’ll make cyber security the top priority that it should be in the 21st century. I’ll declare our cyber-infrastructure a strategic asset, and appoint a National Cyber Advisor who will report directly to me.
The current cyber chief serves under the Department of Homeland Security. He also, it should be noted, had no experience in security, whatsoever.
And while Obama avoided some of the more bellicose rhetoric that’s been been skipping around the government — like the Air Force’s calls for network “dominance” — he did highlight his concerns about a potential online takeover of our country’s infrastructure.
To protect our national security, I’ll bring together government, industry, and academia to determine the best ways to guard the infrastructure that supports our power…. We need to prevent terrorists or spies from hacking into our national security networks. We need to build the capacity to identify, isolate, and respond to any cyberattack. And we need to develop new standards for the cyber security that protects our most important infrastructure –- from electrical grids to sewage systems; from air traffic control to our markets.
Intelligence officers and security officials claim hackers have been able to shut down American power grids. That’s an assertion our cohorts at Threat Level have vigorously contested.
Obama Bans Signs from German Rally
http://infowars.net/articles/july2008/220708Obama.htm
Obama Advisor: Prosecuting Bush and Cheney Risks a Cycle of Criminalizing Public Service
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/34929
Obama’s “Civilian National Security Force”
http://www.infowars.com/?p=3417
Filed under: 1984, 4th amendment, abc news, ACLU, Arizona, Big Brother, California, CIA, civil liberties, civil rights, colorado, Communism, Control Grid, Denver, Department of justice, DHS, Dictatorship, DOJ, Empire, Fascism, FBI, firefighters, florida, Germany, Hitler, Homeland Security, nanny state, Nazi, paramedics, Police State, stasi, stasi tactics, Surveillance, US Constitution, utility workers, war on drugs, War On Terror, WW2 | Tags: Terrorism Liaison Officers, TLO
Utility Workers Hired As Stasi Informants In Colorado, California, Arizona
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
July 2, 2008
Hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and utility workers have been trained and recently dispatched as “Terrorism Liaison Officers” in Colorado, Arizona and California to watch for “suspicious activity” which is later fed into a secret government database.
According to a Denver Post report, “It’s a tactic intended to feed better data into terrorism early-warning systems and uncover intelligence that could help fight anti-U.S. forces. But the vague nature of the TLOs’ mission, and their focus on reporting both legal and illegal activity, has generated objections from privacy advocates and civil libertarians.
“Suspicious activity” is broadly defined in TLO training as behavior that could lead to terrorism: taking photos of no apparent aesthetic value, making measurements or notes, espousing extremist beliefs or conversing in code, according to a draft Department of Justice/Major Cities Chiefs Association document.”
“We don’t snoop into private citizens’ lives. We aren’t living in a communist state,” claims Lt. Tony Lopez, commander of Denver’s intelligence unit – but the program bears close parallels to the East German Stasi system, which at its height employed one informant for every seven citizens.
Democracy Now interviewed the Denver Post writer and an ACLU representative about the program.
It is also reminiscent of the supposedly canned 2002 Operation TIPS program, which would have turned 4 per cent of Americans into informants under the jurisdiction of the Justice Department.
TIPS lived on in other guises, such as the Highway Watch program, a $19 billion dollar Homeland Security-run project which trains truckers to watch for suspicious activity on America’s highways.
More recently, ABC News reported that “The FBI is taking cues from the CIA to recruit thousands of covert informants in the United States as part of a sprawling effort…..to aid with criminal investigations.”
Since authorities now define mundane activities like buying baby formula, beer, wearing Levi jeans, carrying identifying documents like a drivers license and traveling with women or children or mentioning the U.S. constitution as the behavior of potential terrorists, the bounty for the American Stasi to turn in political dissidents is sure to be too tempting to resist.
Indeed, last month Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers and the New York Times heartily celebrated the fact that an increasing number of Americans are becoming informants and turning in their neighbors and family members to the authorities in return for cash rewards.
Citing gas prices, foreclosure rates and runaway food price inflation, The Times lauded the fact that citizens are reporting on each other, ensuring “a substantial increase in Crime Stopper-related arrests and recovered property, as callers turn in neighbors, grandchildren or former boyfriends in exchange for a little cash.”
As any budding dictator will tell you, the creation of an informant society where individuals self-regulate their behavior in fear of being turned in by a citizen spy is one of the key stepping stones to tyranny. To have the media celebrate the fact that people are reporting on their neighbors and grandchildren puts the icing on the cake.
noworldsystem.com 