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Showing posts with label activist surveillance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label activist surveillance. Show all posts

Monday, July 23, 2012

Tom Hanks' 'Electric City' Glorifies Green Fascism

Brandon Smith, Contributor
Activist Post

I still have surprisingly vivid memories of my elementary school years, back in the mid-to late 80’s, and I often wonder why they have stuck with me in such a way. It was not as if my public school education was especially exciting or invigorating. On the contrary, it was dismal, restrictive, and mostly pointless. However, that time period was rich with something that does indeed tend to latch onto a child’s psyche; the propaganda of doom.

The 1980’s was a decade overflowing with a newly established conditioning campaign. As children, we were relentlessly taught the overwhelming evils of humanity, and our vicious crimes against “mother earth”. We were taught that the ozone layer would be depleted by the time we reached adulthood, and that the earth’s temperature would rise until normal methods of sustainment became futile. We were taught that global warming was a scientific fact, that ocean levels would rise due to the melting of polar ice caps and by the year 2000 (they always claimed all disasters would occur by the year 2000), considerable portions of the U.S. would be buried under the seas. We were told that fresh drinking water would be depleted within two decades, that Blue Whales would be extinct, that oil would disappear causing an energy crisis, and that in the near future we would not be able to walk in bad weather because of the threat of “acid rain”. This propaganda became so sickly prevalent it was like being drowned in fatalistic molasses. It was even introduced into our Saturday morning cartoons in 1990 with the hilarious gut churning globalist brainwash-fest ‘Captain Planet’:

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Apple’s “Censoring” Patent Just a Sign of Things to Come

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Julie Samuels
EFF

Apple has been much maligned in the press recently for filing a patent application covering a camera system with infrared technology that could, among other things, allow the recording functionality to be shut off by a third party. For example, in its application, Apple shows how the technology could be used to "prevent illegal image capturing" at a rock concert.



Monday, June 20, 2011

The Persecution of Juan Cole: Bush White House targeted Michigan professor

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Photo of Juan Cole: Wiki Commons
Justin Raimondo
Antiwar

The revelation by Glenn Carle, a former CIA official, that the Bush White House sought information on Prof. Juan Cole, an academic and critic of the Iraq war, in order to discredit him is hardly shocking, at least to anyone of my generation. After all, I reached political consciousness during the administration ofRichard M. Nixon, whose hijinks – the Watergate break-in, the infamous COINTELPRO operation – are well known. Less well-known is the long history of police state tactics by previous administrations, running all the way back to FDRand Woodrow Wilson, two wartime presidents who set the pace for their successors.

Sure, now we have laws supposedly forbidding a repeat of history, and yet, existing right alongside these prohibitions, we have legislation like the PATRIOT Act, which empowers the feds to read our emails, monitor our political activities, and pretty much do what it pleases in the name of fighting our endless “war on terrorism.”

Friday, June 17, 2011

Ex-spy says US officials went after Iraq critic: report

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Juan Cole, pictured in 2006
© AFP/Getty Images/File Alex Wong
AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Officials in the George W. Bush administration may have tried to use the CIA to dig up information on an Iraq war critic in order to discredit him, the New York Times reported Thursday.

Glenn Carle, who served as a top counterterrorism official in the Central Intelligence Agency, told the Times that officials twice sought to investigate Juan Cole, a professor and widely read blogger.

Cole, a Middle East expert and history professor at the University of Michigan, was a strident critic of the Bush administration and the Iraq war, which he wrote about extensively on his "Informed Comment" blog.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

FBI to Expand Domestic Surveillance Powers as Details Emerge of Its Spy Campaign Targeting Activists (Video)

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Democracy NOW!


WATCH PART 2 HERE


Civil liberties advocates are raising alarm over news the FBI is giving agents more leeway to conduct domestic surveillance. According to the New York Times, new guidelines will allow FBI agents to investigate people and organizations "proactively" without firm evidence for suspecting criminal activity. We speak to former FBI agent Mike German, who now works at the American Civil Liberties Union, and Texas activist Scott Crow, who has been the focus of intense FBI surveillance from 2001 until at least 2008. Using the Freedom of Information Act, Crow received 440 pages of heavily redacted documents revealing the FBI had set up a video camera outside his house, traced the license plates of cars parked in front of his home, recorded the arrival and departure of his guests, and observed gatherings that Crow attended at bookstores and cafes. The agency also tracked Crow’s emails and phone conversations and picked through his trash to identify his bank and mortgage companies. “It’s been definitely traumatizing at different points,” says Crow. “But if we don’t come out and be open about this, then they’ve already won, and the surveillance and the ‘war on terror’ wins against us.”

Please visit Democracy NOW! 
war and peace report, a daily TV/radio news program, hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, airing on over 900 stations, pioneering the largest community media collaboration in the United States. 



Order Now - Ultimate Guide to Low-Profile Living:
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Tuesday, June 14, 2011

DHS Should Focus on Criminal Activity, Not Beliefs

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Nusrat J. Choudhury & Hina Shamsi
ACLU

Last week, The Washington Post reported that for the last two years, the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) intelligence gathering and analysis unit devoted to rightwing groups and militias has been "effectively eviscerated," while reports on so-called Islamic extremism "got through without any major problems."

The article raises serious concerns about DHS's failure to address the real need for fact-based assessments of where threats to our security lie. An internal DHS study last year concluded that "a majority of the 86 major foiled and executed terrorist plots in the United States from 1999 to 2009 were unrelated to al-Qaeda and allied movements" (emphasis added) and warned, "Do not overlook other types of terrorist groups." (It doesn't get any clearer than that!)

Monday, June 6, 2011

Activists Using Qik To Salvage Videos After Police Confiscate Cameras

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Carlos Miller
Pixiq



As police continue to blatantly steal and destroy cameras from citizens without any legal authority whatsoever, it is essential to store our video footage online so it can accessed regardless of what happens to our cameras.

At this time, the most popular method to do this is through the Qik mobile phone application.

I personally have never used it because I tend not to use my phone for video recording, but I am going to download the app because it seems that police are getting bolder about stealing our cameras.

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Friday, June 3, 2011

Warning: This Message Contains Democracy

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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.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Mideast Taps Western Tools to Curb Skype Rebellion

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Editor's Note: And bound to be used in the Western world ...


When young dissidents in Egypt were organizing an election-monitoring project last fall, they discussed their plans over Skype, the popular Internet phone service, believing it to be secure.

But someone else was listening in-Egypt's security service.

An internal memo from the "Electronic Penetration Department" even boasted it had intercepted one conversation in which an activist stressed the importance of using Skype "because it cannot be penetrated online by any security device."

Skype, which Microsoft Corp. is acquiring for $8.5 billion, is best known as a cheap way to make international phone calls. But the Luxembourg-based service also is the communications tool of choice for dissidents around the world because its powerful encryption technology evades traditional wiretaps.

Throughout the recent Middle East uprisings, protesters have used Skype for confidential video conferences, phone calls, instant messages and file exchanges. In Iran, opposition leaders and dissidents used Skype to plot strategy and organize a February protest. Skype also is a favorite among activists in Saudi Arabia and Vietnam, according to State Department cables released by WikiLeaks.




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Tuesday, May 31, 2011

‘Ag-gag’ bills face tough row to hoe

Wiki Image
Tom Laskawy
Grist

Big Ag is having trouble installing its Iron Curtain. I am referring, of course, to the various "ag-gag" laws proposed in Florida, Minnesota, and Iowa that would make it illegal to produce (and, in some cases, possess) undercover videos from within factory livestock farms. The latest state legislature to pursue this dubious goal is New York's -- but the fate of ag-gaggery in other states makes success in the Empire State seem unlikely.

Florida's bill died a few weeks ago when legislators withdrew the bill from consideration as the legislative session ended. And now the Humane Society of the United States reports that the Minnesota bill -- in some ways the most egregious, not to say ridiculous -- has suffered the same fate. Perhaps this will teach state legislators that self-dealing isn't the best way to approach their jobs; several cosponsors of the bill stood to personally gain from the protection the bill offered factory farm operators.

As for Iowa, its legislative session is still going on and passage of the bill is considered a priority with Republican Gov. Terry Branstad on record as believing that such undercover videos represent "a problem that should be addressed." According to this report in Iowa's Globe Gazette, the major problem isn't finding a majority to back the bill, but rather trying to get around sticky constitutional issues, specifically the concept of "prior restraint." In America, at least, it's very difficult to stop someone from doing something they haven't done yet, especially when we're talking about First Amendment issues. Iowa legislators are rewriting furiously as we speak -- and I wouldn't be surprised if they pass something just to see if it sticks.

Monday, May 30, 2011

For Anarchist, Details of Life as F.B.I. Target

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Colin Moynihan and Scott Shane
The New York Times

AUSTIN, Tex. — A fat sheaf of F.B.I. reports meticulously details the surveillance that counterterrorism agents directed at the one-story house in East Austin. For at least three years, they traced the license plates of cars parked out front, recorded the comings and goings of residents and guests and, in one case, speculated about a suspicious flat object spread out across the driveway.

“The content could not be determined from the street,” an agent observing from his car reported one day in 2005. “It had a large number of multi-colored blocks, with figures and/or lettering,” the report said, and “may be a sign that is to be used in an upcoming protest.”

Actually, the item in question was more mundane.

“It was a quilt,” said Scott Crow, marveling over the papers at the dining table of his ramshackle home, where he lives with his wife, a housemate and a backyard menagerie that includes two goats, a dozen chickens and a turkey. “For a kids’ after-school program.”

Mr. Crow, 44, a self-described anarchist and veteran organizer of anticorporate demonstrations, is among dozens of political activists across the country known to have come under scrutiny from the F.B.I.’s increased counterterrorism operations since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Other targets of bureau surveillance, which has been criticized by civil liberties groups and mildly faulted by the Justice Department’s inspector general, have included antiwar activists in Pittsburgh, animal rights advocates in Virginia and liberal Roman Catholics in Nebraska. When such investigations produce no criminal charges, their methods rarely come to light publicly.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Spying on U.S Citizens -- Uncle Sam turns his multi-billion dollar espionage network on U.S Citizens

Massive spike in domestic spy operations, over 12,000 “special ops” personnel deployed daily, 100s of thousands of secret surveillance requests rubber stamped by crooked judges, secret illegal spy operations conducted in over 75 countries and over $11 billion spent annually to cover it all up. And this is only the tip of the iceberg that the feds were willing to declassify through various Freedom of Information Requests. Much more still remains classified in the interest of National Security.


Alexander Higgins, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

A series of previously classified documents obtained by The Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy reveals that spy operation against U.S citizens here in the homeland have spiked massively over the last year and so has the government’s cost to cover up their plethora of illegal activities.

But first a little background to explain how America has arrived to this point in the first place.

The Executive Branch of the US Government has found a loophole in the legal system that has effectively abolished the Constitution by allowing our entire bill of rights to be suspended at will. This probably best explains it:

FBI using GPS to track activists (Video)

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Sunday, May 1, 2011

See Something Say Something Act Seeks To Turn USA Into East Germany

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Lee Rogers
Rogue Government

The clowns in Congress continue to promote the fake terror war despite the fact that the official story of the 9/11 attacks is a total lie, and the entire war against terror is based off of an entirely false pretext.  It is also highly unlikely that any American will end up dead as a result of a terrorist attack but the promotion of fear continues.

Americans are more likely to die from disease, a car accident or any number of other circumstances than they are from a terrorist attack.  Despite all of this, we continue to see members of Congress propose bills that seek to destroy individual freedom under the guise of fighting this completely bogus terror war.  A new bill proposed by Representative Peter King (R-NY) called the See Something Say Something Act seeks to encourage Americans to spy and report information on their neighbors by ensuring that those who make such reports would be immune from lawsuits. Even if the reported claims prove to be entirely false, the accused would be unable to take action against the accuser so long as it is believed that the accusations were made in good faith and with reasonable suspicion.  This means that the true purpose of this bill is only to encourage people to be more willing to spy on and report information on their neighbors to the authorities.

From the bill:

Video Of Charlie Veitch's Pre-Crime Arrest

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Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Thermal cameras look inside homes to monitor energy efficiency

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Pilot program in Boston part of home audit scheme to encourage compliance with green energy standards, drive business.

Aaron Dykes
Infowars

The city of Boston has been taken to task by the ACLU over concerns about a roll-out of thermal imaging cameras being used to monitor energy efficiency inside homes. A pilot program to take aerial and street-level photos of heat loss in Boston was part of a scheme to encourage participation in home energy improvement programs, as well as to drive consumers towards green companies.

According to CBS, the project had been halted following public outcry about invasions of privacy, namely that “infrared cameras would reveal information about what’s going on inside the homes.” Further objections have been raised about potential violations of the Fourth Amendment (but what’s that anyway?). Officials reportedly “planned on sharing the photos and analysis with homeowners, and were hoping the findings would increase enrollment in efficiency programs and also create business opportunities.”

MIT, who helped develop the technology’s use for energy tracking, has already thermally-mapped the entire city of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their press writers brag that automated cameras attached to vehicles would collect data “similar to the way Google Street View vehicles obtain visual imagery.” This 55 second video provides a glimpse at their system:



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Friday, April 1, 2011

No surveillance without oversight

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Given the FBI's record of fallibility – and without genuine safeguards for citizens – this $1bn biometrics project is alarming

Biometrics/Wikimedia image
Jay Stanley
Guardian

The FBI recently announced that its Next Generation Identification System (NGIS) has "reached its initial operating capacity". This vast new biometrics project, for which Lockheed Martin won a $1bn contract in 2008, encompasses not only fingerprints but also, possibly, such biometrics as iris scans, face recognition, bodily scars, marks and tattoos.

Such a system raises a number of concerns from a civil liberties perspective. Many types of biometrics are of particular concern because they allow individuals to be tracked secretly and at a distance. For instance, facial recognition may allow a person to be tracked by various CCTV cameras across a city. Worse, in the future, this may be automated and done by computers.

The FBI is rushing ahead with this system in a larger context that is very troubling. Since 9/11, we've repeatedly seen the government throw together new identity and tracking systems without building in the necessary protections to make sure innocent people aren't caught up in them. A good example is aviation watchlists. Countless travelers have found themselves trapped in a Kafkaesque nightmare – improperly listed as suspected terrorists, hassled, arrested or worse, and with no way to clear their names in the eyes of the government's secretive security bureaucracies. The problem is not just errors and mistaken identification, or the lack of due process or rigorous procedures for keeping the lists accurate, but also the possibility that government bureaucrats have used a "when in doubt, thrown a name on the list" approach.

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Thursday, March 31, 2011

What the Patriot Act Does For You

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Wikimedia Commons image
Philip Giraldi
AntiWar

Incessant warmaking overseas will someday end when the United States runs out of money or soldiers or both.  But less well understood is the collateral damage here at home where the consequences of the global war on terror will linger on in the form of a shattered constitution.  The Patriot Act is generally promoted as the principal legislative tool being used to fight international terrorism.  It is, in reality, a devastating and poorly conceived bit of legislation originally approved just after 9/11.  It will soon be up for an extension in the US Senate.  President Barack Obama, who criticized it while he was a candidate but apparently has had a change of heart since that time, favors its renewal.  Most members of Congress, few of whom have ever read the entire act, want it renewed.  The mainstream media likes it because who can resist patriotism?

That is the bad news.  But there is also some good news. Libertarians, traditional conservatives, progressives, and even some tea partiers are for the first time uniting to stop the extension.  Senator Rand Paul led the charge in the Senate back in February, resulting in a temporary 90 day continuation of key provisions of the act that will expire in May.  Before that happens, the Patriot Act will again be up for Senatorial approval but this time there will be an open debate in front of the full Senate and under the scrutiny of the media.  It will be the first time that has happened since 2001.  There will also be a roll call vote with each Senator having to come down for or against.  It is an opportunity not to be missed to roll back the tide of government intrusion in the life of every citizen.

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