ACLU Tells Supreme Court FISA Surveillance Law is Unconstitutional

Activist Post

The Supreme Court heard arguments today in Clapper v. Amnesty International, to decide whether clients of the American Civil Liberties Union can challenge the constitutionality of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), enacted by Congress after the abuses of the 1960s and 70s, regulates the government’s conduct of intelligence surveillance inside the United States. It generally requires the government to seek warrants before monitoring Americans’ communications. In 2001, however, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to launch a warrantless wiretapping program, and in 2008 Congress ratified and expanded that program, giving the NSA almost unchecked power to monitor Americans’ international phone calls and emails.

Erasing David: A Documentary About the Surveillance State

Erasing David

David Bond lives in one of the most intrusive surveillance states in the world. He decides to find out how much private companies and the government know about him by putting himself under surveillance and attempting to disappear, a decision that changes his life forever. Leaving his pregnant wife and young child behind, he is tracked across the database state on a chilling journey that forces him to contemplate the meaning of privacy and the loss of it.

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Sentient World Simulation: Meet Your DoD Clone (Video)

Corbett Report

CONTINUE WATCHING: http://ur1.ca/9q62l
TRANSCRIPT AND SOURCES: http://www.corbettreport.com/?p=5041

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Top Obama Advisor: Homeland is "Primary" Focus of Counterterrorism

"Liberty Upended" - Anthony Freda

Activist Post

The Huffington Post is reporting that the White House is set to release their new counterterrorism strategy on the White House website.  In a press conference Tuesday, deputy national security advisor for Homeland Security and counterterrorism, John Brennan, outlined some of the details:

'This is the first counterterrorism strategy that focuses on the ability of al Qaeda and its network to inspire people in the United States to attack us from within,' he said in a speech at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. 'Indeed, this is the first counterterrorism strategy that designates the homeland as a primary area of emphasis in our counterterrorism efforts.'

These statements alone seem to indicate that Americans can expect more domestic surveillance, warrantless wiretapping, citizen spy programs and other guilty-until-proven innocent violations of their rights.  In a chest-thumping admission, Brennan said they'll use a "relentless campaign that harnesses every element of American power" to fight the war on terror.

In other words, it seems the full power of the American war machine will be turned inward to monitor and respond to Al Qaeda's "affiliates and its adherents" on American soil.  

Smart Meters: We can monitor everything you do in your home (Video)

Source

Marti Oakley, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

Although Smart Meters are promoted as energy efficiency components, the actual intent of these meters is to track your use of energy in real time across every 24hr. period, which will allow the provider to bill you for that period at the highest energy rate for the day.

They have another purpose:  thanks to Smart Meters, every appliance in your home will be monitored. 

CBP set to deploy new surveillance aircraft

CBP's MEA

Government Security News

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is set to deploy the first of 30 new patrol aircraft that bristle with passive and active surveillance systems capable of supporting a variety of land and water-based operations.

The CBP’s new King Air 350, twin engine Multi-role Enforcement Aircraft (MEA) will replace an aging fleet of surveillance aircraft, providing the Department of Homeland Security with new capabilities to patrol the skies along the nation’s land and maritime borders.

The first MEA is slated for deployment to the southwest border in mid-June 2011 to undergo initial test and evaluation and to conduct missions aimed at enhancing ground tactics and enforcement coordination, said CBP in a June 10 statement.

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RELATED ARTICLES:
The Future Expansion of Drones Over America
Micro Drones To Fly Surveillance Missions Over the U.S.

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FBI expands agents’ investigative power

The Salt Lake Tribune

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents — allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention.

The FBI soon plans to issue a new edition of its manual, called the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, according to an official who has worked on the draft document and several others who have been briefed on its contents. The new rules add to several measures taken over the past decade to give agents more latitude as they search for signs of criminal or terrorist activity.

The FBI recently briefed several privacy advocates about the coming changes. Among them, Michael German, a former FBI agent who is now a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, argued it was unwise to further ease restrictions on agents’ power to use potentially intrusive techniques, especially if they lacked a firm reason to suspect someone of wrongdoing.

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From Liberal to Libertarian: Bush, Obama and the Final Bubble

Robert Bonomo, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

Introduction: Ideas and Change

America’s once vibrant Republic has morphed into an imperial oligarchy. The regime has weaved a new dogma preached faithfully by pundits and politicians of both parties. As that dogma crumbles in the face an impending economic collapse, the vast majority of citizens will be left in an ideological vacuum.

Palin or Obama, Fox or CNN, The Drudge Report or The Huffington Post; they simply affirm to their followers and viewers different shades of the same worldview. From within this paradigm it’s impossible to grasp the enormous manipulation and dysfunction that besets the nation. In the past there was sufficient diversity of ideas within the mainstream to offer adequate solutions for the challenges of the time. This is no longer the case.

A Liberal Democrat

Born in the late 1960s, Cold War mythology was very real. The Soviets were bad, the West was good yet the echoes of Vietnam left a crack in the armor of the ‘noble’ United States. Nonetheless, FDR saved the nation and American GI’s saved the world. Government was good, if not perfect. It protected us from Nazis, Communists as well as from the greed and ruthlessness of bankers, oil men, and dirty tricks. The Left was for civil rights, workers rights and sympathized with the plight of the poor.

The War on Drugs and the Surveillance Society

NORML image

Jay Stanley
ACLU

June 2011 marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon's declaration of a "war on drugs" — a war that has cost roughly a trillion dollars, has produced little to no effect on the supply of or demand for drugs in the United States, and has contributed to making America the world's largest incarcerator. Throughout the month, check back daily for posts about the drug war, its victims and what needs to be done to restore fairness and create effective policy.

Wars have the effect of building the power of the government security establishment. World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and the “war on terror” helped transform America from a country that was deeply suspicious of standing armies, to today’s “Top Secret America” in which gigantic security agencies, shielded from public oversight by a veil of secrecy, have sweeping powers to spy on their own citizens.

These wars have transformed America from a place where most people’s interactions with employees of the federal government was limited to their postmaster, into one in which millions of citizens routinely face sometimes intimidating government agents checking their papers, ordering them about, searching them, groping their genitals, and putting their hands down their pants, as in today’s airline security lines.

Drone surveillance in the US? (Video)

YouTube -- RT

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Warning: This Message Contains Democracy

Susan Lindauer, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

No great civilization is ever destroyed from without, or conquered by external forces, until it first destroys itself from within. America's leaders should have thought long and hard about that before voting to extend the Patriot Act last week.

Unhappily it's official. We the People are the enemy. We have dared to prod and examine government policy too closely. We have questioned government leadership when we should rightly have obeyed without challenge. Some of us have exposed wrongful government practices and deceptions, expecting to hold Congress and White House leaders accountable to voters. Foolish us!

Last week Congress set the record straight. Breaking campaign promises to defeat the Patriot Act, Congress blocked hearings and debate on amendments that would fix problems in surveillance rules, and rammed a four year extension on the American People. Only 31 Republicans and 122 Democrats voted against the Patriot Act in the House.

Terrorist 'pre-crime' detector field tested in United States

Screening system aims to pinpoint passengers with malicious intentions.

Minority Report - 20th Century Fox/Dreamworks

Sharon Weinberger
Nature

Planning a sojourn in the northeastern United States? You could soon be taking part in a novel security programme that can supposedly 'sense' whether you are planning to commit a crime.

Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST), a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) programme designed to spot people who are intending to commit a terrorist act, has in the past few months completed its first round of field tests at an undisclosed location in the northeast, Nature has learned.

Like a lie detector, FAST measures a variety of physiological indicators, ranging from heart rate to the steadiness of a person's gaze, to judge a subject's state of mind. But there are major differences from the polygraph. FAST relies on non-contact sensors, so it can measure indicators as someone walks through a corridor at an airport, and it does not depend on active questioning of the subject.

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79 Senators vote to trash the Constitution: The “War of Terror” on the US grows

Dees Illustration

Marti Oakley, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

If you haven’t received the memo yet, let me update you on your status as it pertains to the Constitution and your civil liberties; you have neither.  79 Senators who snickered as they swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, voted to render you guilty in advance, with no chance of proving your innocence.  The unlawful data mining and collection, the compilation of dossiers on virtually every person in the US, the unwarranted wire-tapping, the rifling through personal records of all kinds for no other reason than to collect information to be used at a later date if the government decides to prosecute you for whatever reasons, was extended.

The Patriot Acts were sold to the public as part of the war of terror perpetrated by the Bush administration after the false flag attacks of 9/11.  A “War of Terror” is being perpetrated by our own government against its own people and is blessed by both Democrat and Republican alike.  “We the people” are the terrorists the government fears. The Constitution be damned.

Nothing in the Patriot acts is remotely connected to fighting terrorism from foreign invaders.  It is a precisely targeted bill which amounted to a massive assault on liberty and freedom right here at home.

There’s a Secret Patriot Act, Senator Says

Sen. Ron Wyden

Spencer Ackerman
Wired

You think you understand how the Patriot Act allows the government to spy on its citizens. Sen. Ron Wyden says it’s worse than you know.

Congress is set to reauthorize three controversial provisions of the surveillance law as early as Thursday. Wyden (D-Oregon) says that powers they grant the government on their face, the government applies a far broader legal interpretation — an interpretation that the government has conveniently classified, so it cannot be publicly assessed or challenged. But one prominent Patriot-watcher asserts that the secret interpretation empowers the government to deploy ”dragnets” for massive amounts of information on private citizens; the government portrays its data-collection efforts much differently.

“We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says,” Wyden told Danger Room in an interview in his Senate office. “When you’ve got that kind of a gap, you’re going to have a problem on your hands.”

What exactly does Wyden mean by that? As a member of the intelligence committee, he laments that he can’t precisely explain without disclosing classified information. But one component of the Patriot Act in particular gives him immense pause: the so-called “business-records provision,” which empowers the FBI to get businesses, medical offices, banks and other organizations to turn over any “tangible things” it deems relevant to a security investigation.

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US Senate moves forward on anti-terror powers

EN: VOMIT. "FBI and intelligence officials have warned that if the Patriot Act is not extended by the deadline they would be robbed of crucial tools in the fight against terrorism -- including wiretapping."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
© AFP/Getty Images/File Chip Somodevilla

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Senate moved Thursday toward extending controversial counter-terrorism search and surveillance powers at the heart of the Patriot Act adopted after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

In a procedural move, US lawmakers voted to end debate on the subject which would allow them to pass to a formal vote on extending the act just hours before it expires at midnight (0400 GMT Friday).

The Senate voted 79-18 against to close debate. But with the clock ticking, they still had to agree to waive the usual 30-hour waiting period after the end of debate before proceeding to a vote.

Feds to Mandate Black Box on all New Cars

Editor's Note: See, the Patriot Act did create innovative technology. Congress says let's keep the surveillance-industrial complex strong for at least another 4 years.

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars

The Feds will mandate next month that all new cars be fitted with a black box, according to news reports. So-called black boxes record information about speed, seat belt use and brake application.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has been involved in the use of black boxes since their introduction. In 2006, the safety administration encouraged but did not require automobile manufacturers to install the systems and also did not set a single standard for the way data would be recorded, according to the New York Times.

Peaceful Republic or Police State? (Video)

Youtube


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Top US lawmakers strike anti-terrorism powers deal

Deal to extend the Patriot Act for 5 years without new civil liberties safeguards

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid speaks
to the press as House Speaker John Boehner (L)
© AFP/File Mandel Ngan

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Congress leaders have agreed to extend for five years an array of counter-terrorism surveillance and search powers adopted after the September 11, 2001 attacks, sources said Thursday.

Under the arrangement, lawmakers will hold a vote on extending the controversial powers at the core of the Patriot Act before they lapse on May 27, according to several congressional aides.

The officials said the vote would be "a clean extension" to June 1, 2015, meaning it would not include new civil liberties safeguards sought by some senior lawmakers of both major parties.

DARPA's Automated Video Surveillance Will End Public Anonymity

Editor's Note: This is actually nothing compared to the nano-based surveillance initiative -- also brought to us by our own tax dollars sent to DARPA -- but it serves as yet more evidence that all of the data collection is more about behavior prediction than the investigation of crimes committed.

Evan Dashevsky
Extreme Tech

To be in public is to be on camera, but most video footage is discarded, as only so much can be sorted and analyzed -- until now. DARPA has created a technology that can index and analyze video in real-time, marking the end of anonymity in public places.

In 2008, DARPA, the US military's elite group of pocket protector warriors, began soliciting the tech industry to develop technologies that would allow computers to sort through and index surveillance footage from the military's fleet of drones, satellites, and miscellaneous other super secret spy cameras.

This was all part of the Agency's proposed Video Image Retrieval and Analysis Tool (VIRAT) that would be able to describe specific human activities in real-time. This automated index would allow for searchable queries (i.e. "how often did an adult male taller than six-foot get in a car in the early morning between November 1st and December 22nd in this compound in Abbottabad?") or flag behavior such as when someone carries a large package towards a car on the side of a road in Basra, but walked away empty handed.

And it appears that DARPA has had some success to this end. 

Earlier this week, the military released a mandated contract announcement describing how the VIRAT system will be deployed into various military-intelligence video archives and systems. The contract will be fulfilled by Lockheed Martin for an unspecified amount. We haven't been given any detailed information on how this new technology works or how accurate it is, only that a belt-tightening defense industry is willing to invest in it.

Federal Spychips To Hijack Your Phone

Editor's Note:  This may explain why the U.S. Federal Government expanded the Life Line program (free home phone service)  to make "free" cell phones available to all U.S. citizens who receive government benefits such as Food Stamps and Social Security.  I can only assume that the expansion of the Life Line program was a beta test.


Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars

The announcement that Americans are set to be bombarded with mandatory government propaganda via their cellphones represents a shocking lurch forward in the Obama administration’s bid to launch a total takeover of all communications as part of a wider move towards controlling the Internet, developing an omnipresent wiretap system, and creating a constant environment of suspicion and distrust by enlisting citizens to spy on each other.



Short of implanting a microchip in people’s heads, the US government has opted for the next best thing, a chip in your cellphone. But what else will these “special chips” be used for?