Homeland Security Calls Bitcoin an "Emerging Threat"

Eric Blair


The popularity of the digital currency Bitcoin is exploding. Today's price spiked over $600, nearly double what is was just over a week ago. It seems the U.S. government now wants into the party.

Today several federal agencies weighed in on the decentralized currency. While most agencies acknowledged its legitimate uses, the Department of Homeland Security referred to Bitcoin as an emerging threat.

In a letter to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, DHS wrote that they have "been actively investigating the emerging threat and criminal exploitation of virtual currency systems that further transnational criminal operations."

DHS blamed "anonymity in cyberspace" and called for an aggressive posture to deal with bitcoin and other crypto-currencies.

DHS Head Janet Napolitano Resigns! Lieberman Tops List Of Replacements

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Beware of Department of Homeland Security’s Social Networking Monitoring Manual

Kevin A. Lehmann

The Feds have been forced to release their social network monitoring manual, which contains the list of words the government watches on social media and news sites.

Earlier the Huffington Post reported on the Feds have been forced to give up their list of words they monitor on Facebook, Twitter, and comments being posted on news articles so I compiled that list below.

Homeland Security Manual Lists Government Key Words For Monitoring Social Media, News

Ever complain on Facebook that you were feeling “sick?” Told your friends to “watch” a certain TV show? Left a comment on a media website about government “pork?”

If you did any of those things, or tweeted about your recent vacation in “Mexico” or a shopping trip to “Target,” the Department of Homeland Security may have noticed.

In the latest revelation of how the federal government is monitoring social media and online news outlets, the Electronic Privacy Information Center has posted online a 2011 Department of Homeland Security manual that includes hundreds of key words (such as those above) and search terms used to detect possible terrorism, unfolding natural disasters and public health threats. The center, a privacy watchdog group, filed a Freedom of Information Act request and then sued to obtain the release of the documents.

The 39-page “Analyst’s Desktop Binder” used by the department’s National Operations Center includes no-brainer words like “”attack,” “epidemic” and “Al Qaeda” (with various spellings). But the list also includes words that can be interpreted as either menacing or innocent depending on the context, such as “exercise,” “drill,” “wave,” “initiative,” “relief” and “organization.”

These terms and others are “broad, vague and ambiguous” and include “vast amounts of First Amendment protected speech that is entirely unrelated to the Department of Homeland Security mission to protect the public against terrorism and disasters,” stated the Electronic Privacy Information Center in letter to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence.

The manual was released by the center a week after Homeland Security officials were grilled at a House hearing over other documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that revealed analysts were scrutinizing online comments that “reflect adversely” on the federal government. Mary Ellen Callahan, the chief privacy officer for the Department of Homeland Security, and Richard Chavez, director for the National Operations Center, testified that the released documents were outdated and that social media was monitored strictly to provide situational awareness and not to police disparaging opinions about the federal government. On Friday, Homeland Security officials stuck by that testimony.

A senior Homeland Security official who spoke to The Huffington Post on Friday on condition of anonymity said the testimony of agency officials last week remains “accurate” and the manual “is a starting point, not the endgame” in maintaining situational awareness of natural and man-made threats. The official denied Electronic Privacy Information Center’s charge that the government is monitoring dissent. The manual’s instruction that analysts should identify “media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities” was not aimed at silencing criticism but at spotting and addressing problems, she added.

[...]

Source: The Huffington Post

US refocuses on home-grown terror threat

President Barack Obama's top counterterrorism aide,
John Brennan, vowed to pursue the
"utter destruction" of Al-Qaeda
© AFP/File Saul Loeb

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States vowed Wednesday to pursue the "utter destruction" of Al-Qaeda, while refocusing its counter-terrorism strategy to combat the threat of home-grown terror.

The new strategy comes on the 10th year of the US-led "war on terror," launched by former president George W. Bush after the deadly September 11 attacks on the United States.

It is a "pragmatic, not ideological" approach to counterterrorism that "formalizes" the administration's approach since January 2009, said John Brennan, President Barack Obama's top counterterrorism advisor.

The new strategy, developed after US commandos killed Osama bin Laden on May 2 in Pakistan, also reflects "the extraordinary political changes" sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, Brennan said.

NSA allies with Internet carriers to thwart cyber attacks against defense firms

NSA Headquarters, Ft. Meade, MD / Wiki Commons

Ellen Nakashima
The Washington Post

The National Security Agency is working with Internet providers to deploy a new generation of tools to scan e-mail and other digital traffic with the goal of thwarting cyberattacks against defense firms by foreign adversaries, senior defense and industry officials say.

The novel program, which began last month on a voluntary, trial basis, relies on sophisticated NSA data sets to identify malicious programs slipped into the vast stream of Internet data flowing to the nation’s largest defense firms. Such attacks, including one last month against Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin, are nearly constant as rival nations and terrorist groups seek access to U.S. military secrets.

“We hope the . . . cyber pilot can be the beginning of something bigger,” Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III said at a global security conference in Paris on Thursday. “It could serve as a model that can be transported to other critical infrastructure sectors, under the leadership of the Department of Homeland Security.”

Read Full Article

RELATED ACTIVIST POST ARTICLE:
Living in the Shadows: A World of Black Ops and Cyber Wars

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DHS Should Focus on Criminal Activity, Not Beliefs

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!)

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.

Read Full Article 

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

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Janet Napolitano Visits NYU Law School to Discuss Need For Citizen Spies (Video)

"We have to get to a place where every part of our society is cognizant of the kinds of threats that are out there, and empowered to take some common sense steps to counter that." -- Janet Napolitano
  

image link

Activist Post

Homeland Security head, Janet Napolitano, continued her campus tour in a recent stop at NYU Law School where she gave a speech about the state of security as we approach the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and following the announced death of Osama bin Laden.

In the video below Napolitano lays out a sweeping surveillance agenda that includes citizen spies who have a mission of "shared responsibility" to thwart "Core" al-Qaeda, foreign groups "inspired by" al-Qaeda, as well as domestic "extremist" groups, which apparently include an increasing number of plots by U.S. citizens.  She added that "there is no single portrait" of today's potential terrorist, citing recruiting tactics "including Hip Hop videos, if you can imagine that."  And, naturally, cyberspace. Each of the four key ways that she stated as critical to Homeland Security's mission will widen the Stasi-style network of unpaid employees of the State virtually deputized to spy on their neighbor in the private and public sector and issue reports to the DHS federal security matrix.

• Strengthen the nation's 72 fusion centers, which coordinate with local police, businesses, churches, universities and more in a cooperative effort to federalize local communities.
•  Launch the National Terrorism Advisory System to replace the general color-coded terror alert system and set up a "base level" high risk, which will be augmented with specific messages.  One component of this new system that she does not address is that it will be directed toward the individual by utilizing a text messaging system, as well as social networks to issue government statements and warnings (or propaganda).  
• Continue the expanded use of Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR), initially used for IRS reporting and for businesses to alert government officials to large cash purchases at their establishments.  The new initiative will cover all sectors that will share back to DHS.
• Continue expansion of a national "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign that began with the NY Metropolitan Transit Authority, and kicked off at private businesses like Wal-Mart whereby people can receive ongoing messages via telescreens in government buildings, private businesses and public areas, then report on anyone for any reason without consequence for false reports.

She also predictably suggests that the counter-terrorism apparatus is a useful tool that can save citizens in need of rescue from natural disasters.  More likely, it is the roll-out of soft martial law that will create a permanent state of fear, suspicion, false arrests, police brutality, and the end of the American republic in the same fashion that led to the end of every society that chose the path of security over freedom.

Click "More Info" above if video does not play

Other sources for this article:
Government Security News 

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Geneva Conventions Redefined: The New U.S. Department of War

"What's in a name?"-- William Shakespeare

Perpetual war continues abroad and domestically
Dees Illustration

Lt. Eric N. Shine and Gary Corseri
Activist Post

Most people are unaware of the larger picture developing over the past seven or eight decades, or have been willing to ignore it. This still-developing image portrays matters requiring knowledge of world history, a degree of self-education and a global perspective to recognize and decipher.

The remarkable change still underway is a complete militarization of the United States, if not also the rest of the world. Today, the most disturbing sign of this take-over of all of the civilian commons by the military, at least in the U.S., comes in the form of a new, or reinvigorated, Department of War.

Our de facto Department of War, was known as our War Department from 1789 until it was reconstituted on September 18, 1947 in response to international terms set forth by the Geneva Convention accords. Wars of aggression and conquest were outlawed by those international agreements. Only wars to defend a nation’s borders were allowed. In 1948, with our agreeing to the terms of these accords, our Department of War was converted to a reconfigured Department of Defense and its focus changed… until now.

US lawmakers cut Homeland Security funding

© AFP/File Paul J. Richards

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US House of Representatives has voted to shave more than a billion dollars from next year's Department of Homeland Security budget as part of its deficit reduction plan.

The Republican-held House voted 231 to 188 to cut the fiscal 2012 budget by $1.1 billion to $40.6 billion for the agency charged with fighting terror and guarding US borders.

The budget, whose fiscal year begins on October 1, is $3 billion, or seven percent less than President Barack Obama's request.

"Providing for critical national security measures is a funding priority, and I'm pleased we've done so expediently while still cutting spending to more sustainable levels," said Kentucky Republican Hal Rogers, who chairs the committee that oversees the agency's budget.

Homeland Security's Top Cybersecurity Official Resigns

Cybersecurity Matrix / Wiki Commons

Marc Ambinder
The Atlantic 

Phil Reitinger, the Department of Homeland Security's top cyber and computer crimes official, is resigning just days after the administration launched its most ambitious cybersecurity initiative.

"I have decided that the time has come for me to move on from the Department," Reitinger wrote in an e-mail to DHS employees this afternoon. Reitinger, who, as deputy undersecretary in DHS's National Protection and Programs Directorate, was the department's senior interagency policymaker, said in an interview withNational Journal that the timing of his announcement was not meant to signal any disapproval with the White House.

"I am fully supportive of the direction the administration is going. Because there has been a recent spate of announcements, because I think we've made a lot of progress, because I think we've built a good team, now is the time for me to leave some of the execution and further development to the team," he said.

Reitinger said he wants to spend the summer with his family - he has young children and he's been working in cyber security "since they were born."

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Staged Al Qaeda Rail Attack Plot To Be Used To Further Implement TSA At “Soft” Spots Nationwide?

The Intel Hub

Just days after the staged media spectacle of the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, the corporate media and the Department of Homeland Security have released intelligence that claims that Al Qaeda is considering attacking U.S. railroads on the 10th anniversary of the September 11th terror attacks.

In a move that is sure to further heighten the fears of local police nationwide, the Department of Homeland Security issued an alert to police about the information that they had “uncovered.”

“The information was obtained from material seized by Navy SEALs in their raid in Pakistan when they killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on May 1, another U.S. official said, speaking anonymously. U.S. commandos seized computer drives and other material from the compound where bin Laden had been staying,” reported The Associated Press. 

The whole Bin Laden assassination psy op is now being used to push the police state in America to a whole new level.

Sebelius-backed biotechnology firm reorganizing under criminal probe

KBA urged Homeland Security to locate bioweapons lab in Tornado Alley  

Sebelius and Thornton / 2008 Topeka Capital-Journal image

Rady Ananda, Contributing Writer 
Activist Post 

The head of Health and Human Services not only denies that Americans have a right to bodily health and food of their choice, but Kathleen Sebelius is hell bent on spending taxpayer money to promote genetically modified food and drugs. One of her projects, Kansas Bioscience Authority, a publicly funded venture enterprise developed to promote biotechnology, is currently under criminal investigation. CEO Tom Thornton has resigned. 

KBA also lobbied the Dept. of Homeland Security for the highly controversial bioweapons and cattle disease lab in the state, along with former Governor Sebelius, now President Obama’s Cabinet Secretary. Under her governorship and full support, the Kansas Economic Growth Act of 2004 passed, funding KBA’s mission with $581 million in tax revenue to develop a bioscience industry in Kansas. 

Al-Qaeda may seek vengeance for bin Laden: US

Editor's Note: And here is the police state capitalizing on the contrived news of the assassination of Osama bin Laden.  Perfect reason to now ram through the See Something Say Something Act, which will help create a Stasi-like citizen spy network and present the CIA and Homeland Security as our saviors.  The bill's sponsor, Peter King, stated, "Al Qaeda is gonna want to avenge this as quickly as they possibly can." 

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano
© AFP/Getty Images/File Michael Loccisano

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US government urged police and the public to be on high alert Monday for possible terrorist plots to avenge slain Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, warning Western targets around the world were at risk.

CIA director Leon Panetta, a key architect of the daring US special forces raid that left bin Laden dead at a secretive Pakistan compound, warned "terrorists almost certainly will attempt to avenge him."

"We must -- and will -- remain vigilant and resolute," Panetta said, as concerns about retaliation tempered exuberant celebrations of bin Laden's slaying nearly 10 years after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

In New York, where Al-Qaeda suicide operatives used passenger airplanes as guided missiles to destroy the World Trade Center Towers, beefed-up police patrols carried assault rifles at "Ground Zero" and subway stations.

Are You Scared Yet? Big Sis To Beam Terror Warnings To Your iPhone

Steve Watson
Infowars

The Department of Homeland Security is beefing up it’s terror alert warning system in a move that will see terror alerts, whether real or phony, issued via the mainstream media and directly to your phone or computer over social networking sites, and even via Emergency Alert broadcasts.

The government’s much ridiculed colour coded chart is being scrapped, primarily because it is always set at “elevated” and is roundly ignored by almost everyone in America. The DHS assures us that the new system will be virtually impossible to avoid.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who has been dubbed ‘Big Sis’ in reference to George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, told reporters this week that The primary-color alerts have “faded in utility, except for late-night comics.”

“Homeland Security officials will disseminate the new alerts through the press and social media sites.” reports the LA Times.

“The bulletins will ask local police and the public to be on the lookout for vehicles or behavior that may be part of a terrorist plot that the government is tracking. Alerts could be directed at airports or subways, or may urge people in a specific city to take shelter in their homes for a short time.” the report continues.

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Homeland Security Black Helicopters Seen In Drill Over Downtown Miami (Video)

Michael Edwards  
Activist Post

Miami-Dade County seems to have become a staging ground in preparation of a militarized police state.  The latest event was reported on by The Miami-Herald when a scene right out of the movie Conspiracy Theory led residents to start Tweeting about "pitch black" military helicopters dropping men onto buildings, including the Bank of America building, beginning around 9:15 p.m. as witnessed in the video below:

Homeland Security: Government Sponsored "Unique Terrorism”

Marti Oakley, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

For most Americans, at least those paying any attention, the threat of Homeland Security (HSD) and its Gestapo agenda represent a far bigger threat to the nation than some nameless, faceless, unidentifiable person or group in some foreign land.  Created on the back of the fear mongering by our own government using 9/11 as the excuse, this trophy of the Bush regime is morphing into the greatest threat we face which is exactly what it was intended to do.

According to HSD these days . . . we are all unique terrorists, each of us representing a threat to the ever expanding global efforts to end human rights except for those afforded to the elite.  Somehow, those who possess great wealth, those who operate as a corporation, are somehow exempt from regulation and government sponsored terrorism.

Out here in no-man’s land where jobs have been systematically shipped out of the country to slave labor markets and where the homeless population is rising daily as a result of massive unemployment, and while our border remains unsecured and millions of illegal immigrants are encouraged to enter the country further depressing the job market and wages across the board, it seems we have no rights as these are being eroded on a daily basis not only by our elected officials, but also by Homeland Security, an unelected bureaucracy loaded with over paid bureaucrats.

Canada-U.S. Deep Integration Agenda Continues Unabated

image from Be Your Own Leader

Dana Gabriel
Be Your Own Leader

Canada and the U.S recently issued a joint threat and risk assessment as part of ongoing efforts to further enhance security on the northern border. This initiative supports a declaration by the leaders which will work towards facilitating the movement of travel and trade between the two countries. The Canadian government has announced that they are seeking online public consultation on the security perimeter arrangement. Meanwhile, the country has been thrust into an election with the defeat of the ruling Conservative party in a non-confidence vote. During the campaign, sovereignty concerns associated with the proposed trade and security deal could become a hot-button issue. 

On March 10 of this year, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Canada's Public Safety Minister Vic Toews unveiled a Joint Border Threat and Risk Assessment. The report focuses on national security, criminal enterprises, migration, agriculture and health threats to the border. A press release described how the joint initiative, “is a part of a shared vision for border security that Secretary Napolitano and Minister Toews outlined during meetings held throughout 2010, and reflects their mutual commitment to working together to safeguard both nations' vital assets, networks, infrastructure and citizens.” The assessment addresses common threats to the border such as, “terrorism and transnational crime articulated by President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in February. Their historic declaration – ‘Beyond the Border: A Shared Vision for Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness’ – sets forth how the United States and Canada will manage our shared homeland and economic security."