Source: About.com
Got fear of flying? Better try to suppress it, at least until you’re on the airplane, because the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has started conducting random additional at-gate screening of airline passenger who display “involuntary physical and physiological” actions indicating stress, fear or deception.
Passengers selected for the additional screening are separated from the line and may be subjected to enhanced security procedures including, checking and matching passenger identification and boarding passes, conducting physical searches of carry-on luggage and using handheld explosive detection units. The behavioral screening checks are unannounced and may be done at any gate, at any time.
While the TSA acknowledges that displaying stress or fear while waiting in line to get on an airplane does not automatically mark a person as a terrorist or criminal, they believe the enhanced behavioral screening can help their security officers determine if an individual poses a higher security risk. “Passenger safety continues to be our mission as we use flexible measures in our approach to random screening” assures the TSA in a press release. “Your safety is our priority.” So, whatever you do, relax.
Raw Story
A federal court has issued two rulings, the New York Times reports: One favoring President Bush’s indefinite detentions of “enemy combatants,” and another granting one of said “enemy combatants” the opportunity to challenge his detention in court. The court effectively ruled that President Bush has the same right to indefinitely detain a civilian on American soil as he does an enemy soldier on a battlefield. More
A WATCH list of suspected and known terrorists, compiled by the US authorities, has ballooned and contains more than one million names, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said today. The ACLU said it derived the figure from a Justice Department report on the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Centre, which consolidates terrorist watch list information. The centre “had over 700,000 names in its database as of April 2007 and that the list was growing by an average of over 20,000 records per month”, according to a report by the Justice Department Inspector-General, the rights group said. More
Steve Elliott
We may be the last generation that will have ever known privacy. Every day, we are one step closer to the Total Surveillance Society. Every day, we lose a little more of that part of being human that claims the right to be left alone, that knows freedom from the prying eyes of the corporate state, that has the boldness to claim some inner sanctum where the all-seeing eyes of technology cannot penetrate.
The dystopian dreams of mid-20th Century writers like George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Philip K. Dick and Barry Malzberg are coming true all around us, but it seems the majority of citizens are so dazed by mass media distractions, by government-instilled fear, and by the drudgery of their daily existence that they can’t be bothered to wake up and take stock of what is being taken from them.
Our telephones don’t just transmit our voices from point A to point B anymore. The government is there in the middle between us and those with whom we speak, listening, analyzing, weighing the possibility that we are Enemy Combatants who should be whisked away in the dead of night and stored in a cage from which we’ll be periodically extracted for “harsh interrogation.”
The telecom companies which have been entrusted with the sanctity of our private conversations have not only rolled over — all of them but Qwest and CREDO Mobile, anyway. They have acquiesced to the demands of government that they allow federal goons to hover over our every word. They have been paid handsomely for their complicity, but at the cost of their humanity and our freedom. And now they have been told by a spineless and morally bankrupt Congress that they won’t ever be held accountable; that it’s OK to break the law when the President tells you to do it. If you are rich and powerful enough to buy Congressmen, then the law apparently wasn’t meant to apply to you, anyway.
The telecom companies (again, with the notable exceptions of Qwest and CREDO) have no problem at all handing the info over to the government — and that’s without a court order. And as we sadly found out July 9, a spineless Senate (with the exception of 28 true patriots) is more than willing to give them carte blanche to do so, by including telecom immunity in the FISA bill. More Also See: Top Secret Government Spying Program: YOU
Upon activation of the electric shock device, through receipt of an activating signal from the selectively operable remote control means, the passenger wearing that particular bracelet receives the disabling electrical shock from the electric shock device. Accordingly, the passenger becomes incapacitated for a few seconds or perhaps a few minutes, during which time the passenger can be fully subdued and handcuffed, if necessary. Depending on the type of transmission medium used to send the activating signal, other passengers may also become temporarily incapacitated, which is undesirable and unfortunate, but may be unavoidable.
While working at AT&T headquarters in San Francisco, Mark Klein discovered (and had the courage to speak out about) a secret eavesdropping room that all of the company’s traffic was routed through. With the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mr. Klein went public back in April 2006, but alleges John Negroponte and Michael Hayden pressured the LA Times to kill the story.
The Federal Trade Commission indicated Wednesday that it would leave it to data-mining Web companies and Internet marketers to decide how best to protect users’ privacy. “Self-regulation may be the preferable approach for this dynamic marketplace,” Lydia Parnes, the director of the commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, told a Senate committee. The FTC’s decision not to step in — even as Microsoft and Google representatives testified that some regulation would be helpful — means that Washington won’t address the matter before a new administration and Congress take office in January. At issue is what privacy rights consumers have when data-mining companies use their Web browsing patterns to target them for ads. It’s a gold mine for online advertising and Internet marketing, but consumer and e-privacy groups say it’s intrusive. More
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) warned that if this bill passes today, “I’m confident history will not judge this Congress kindly.”
We don’t have to wait for history. This congress is not judged kindly NOW! Congress knows they’re despised by the public, yet keep selling their votes to the highest corporate bidder.
See: Congressional Approval Falls to Single Digits
BUZZFLASH
The debate on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act continued on the Senate floor Wednesday and all three proposed amendments that would eliminate or make conditional the telecom immunity were defeated. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) warned that if this bill passes today, “I’m confident history will not judge this Congress kindly.” Feingold also emphasized that the majority of Congress has not been fully briefed on the President’s wiretapping program. Because of the classification of detailed documents, only a few Senators, including himself, have been permitted to read about the program.
“If more information is declassified in the future…,” he said, “members of this body will regret that we passed this legislation.” Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) thanked the blogosphere, Internet petitioners, and concerned citizens for their leadership against the bill. He said the notion that we have to sacrifice liberty for security is a “fundamentally flawed idea,” that Americans have regretted every time they’ve chosen it, referencing the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII. More
Source: Slashdot
Corrupt notes an Ars analysis of the FISA bill of which the telecom immunity provision has been getting all the attention. Timothy B. Lee enumerates the ways in which the bill loosens current protections on domestic wiretapping and opens up whole new areas to government eavesdropping. “The legislation eliminates meaningful judicial oversight of eavesdropping between Americans citizen and foreigners located overseas and effectively legalizes dragnet surveillance of domestic-to-foreign traffic. It stretches out the judicial review process so much that the government will in many cases be able to complete its surveillance activities before the courts finish deciding on its legality.”
WEST Australian Police have asked the state government to give them the power to take a DNA sample from anyone who is arrested, even for minor offences such as trespass. Police can now take samples only from people charged with or suspected of committing a serious offence that carries a minimum jail sentence of 12 months. The West Australian newspaper said it was understood police had made the request for greater powers in their recent submission to the State Government’s statutory review of the Criminal Investigation (Identifying People) Act 2002, which regulates the DNA database, the collection of samples and the time and conditions under which profiles are kept. Police Minister John Kobelke has backed the move, saying it would help make police even more effective. More
Video: To understand just how gloomy the state of the US economy is, watch this Video of The assistant Treasury Secretary, Phillip Swagel, on the US economy. Try as he might, he cannot hide his fear and gloom.
LATimes
U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. on Wednesday called for regulatory changes that would allow financial firms to fail without threatening broader market stability. The Treasury chief also proposed steps providing for the president to approve of any use of taxpayer funds to aid a financial company. In a speech in London on Wednesday, Paulson identified a legal gap that leaves unspecified how to deal with failures of companies that don’t take deposits, such as investment banks. Paulson’s proposals aim to tighten supervisors’ oversight of lenders and dealers while at the same time discourage companies from depending on a government rescue if their bets go wrong. His speech comes a week before a congressional hearing to debate a regulatory overhaul in the wake of the credit crisis that caused the near-bankruptcy of Bear Stearns Cos. More
“I have been reading up on all things Government for a very long time. I see the War on Terror as Bush utilizing the events of September 11th as a farce/reason to spy on American citizens even further through trashing the necessity of F.I.S.A., or Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act through contracting out domestic surveillance to corporations like ChoicePoint giving citizens who love and expect privacy No Place To Hide and while we should not have something to hide it makes one wonder if the same can be asked of George W Bush and his Presidential agendas, and even the rumor of his newly acquired home in Paraguay, where if one were to consider this carefully as his attempt at retiring in a foreign land where U.S. repatriation were not an option if the United States Congress were to attempt to try him for war crimes because there is not an Extradition Treaty with Paraguay.”
FBI Agents could soon be allowed to investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, according to the Justice Department. Justice Department officials say FBI Agents would rely on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial groups. Some of the other factors that could make someone the subject of an investigation… Recent travel to places known for terrorist activity, access to weapons or military training. More
TechCrunch
The ongoing Google/YouTube-Viacom litigation has now officially spilled over to users with a court order requiring Google to turn over massive amounts of user data to Viacom. If the data is actually released, the consequences could be far more serious than the 2006 AOL Search debacle. Louis L. Stanton, the senior judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, issued the opinion and order…That data includes every YouTube username, the associated IP address and the videos that user has watched on YouTube. Google will also be required to hand over copies of every video removed from Youtube for any reason (DMCA notices or user-initiated deletions). Stanton dismissed Google’s argument that the order will violate user privacy, saying such privacy concerns are merely “speculative.” More
(UPI) — The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the Department of Justice to get details about how federal authorities are using their ability to monitor people’s movements through their cell phones without a warrant. The case highlights the controversial use by the government of investigative tools made possible by newly ubiquitous technologies in an increasingly wireless world — in this case mobile phones, which constantly update the companies that provide them with real-time information about their location. More
WASHINGTON, June 30 (UPI) — The U.S. military is looking for a contractor to patrol cyberspace, watching for warning signs of forthcoming terrorist attacks or other hostile activity on the Web. “The purpose of the services will be to identify and assess stated and implied threat, antipathy, unrest and other contextual data relating to selected Internet domains,” says the solicitation. The addresses of the Web page sources will be “captioned under alias to preserve access,” says the solicitation. Experts have noted in the past that publishing the addresses of some extremists’ sites has led to them being attacked or moving. However, the contractor will “consider releasing specific (Web page addresses) on an as-needed basis … if explicit threat materials or imminent threat to personnel or facilities are discovered.” More
Swedes may cherish openness and transparency, but not enough to accept a new law giving the government the right to snoop on all e-mails and phone calls crossing the country’s borders. Outrage over the statute has led to 2 million protests — filed by e-mail. The online petition drive comes as other European Union countries consider granting authorities unprecedented spying powers over their own citizens amid fears of a mounting terror threat. More
Also See: Swedish law allows spying on every citizen
It doesn’t get any more Orwellian than this. NaturalNews—A Rhode Island school district has announced a pilot program to monitor student movements by means of radio frequency identification (RFID) chips implanted in their schoolbags. The Middletown School District, in partnership with MAP Information Technology Corp., has launched a pilot program to implant RFID chips into the schoolbags of 80 children at the Aquidneck School. Each chip would be programmed with a student identification number, and would be read by an external device installed in one of two school buses. The buses would also be fitted with global positioning system (GPS) devices.
Parents or school officials could log onto a school web site to see whether and when specific children had entered or exited which bus, and to look up the bus’s current location as provided by the GPS device. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has criticized the plan as an invasion of children’s privacy and a potential risk to their safety. “There’s absolutely no need to be tagging children,” said Stephen Brown, executive director of the ACLU’s Rhode Island chapter. According to Brown, the school district should already know where its students are. More
Wired
Mark Klein, the retired AT&T engineer who stepped forward with the technical documents at the heart of the anti-wiretapping case against AT&T, is furious at the Senate’s vote on Wednesday night to hold a vote on a bill intended to put an end to that lawsuit and more than 30 others.
[Wednesday]’s vote by Congress effectively gives retroactive immunity to the telecom companies and endorses an all-powerful president. It’s a Congressional coup against the Constitution.
The Democratic leadership is touting the deal as a “compromise,” but in fact they have endorsed the infamous Nuremberg defense: “Just following orders.” The judge can only check their paperwork. This cynical deal is a Democratic exercise in deceit and cowardice.
Klein saw a network monitoring room being built in AT&T’s internet switching center that only NSA-approved techs had access to. He squirreled away documents and then presented them to the press and the Electronic Frontier Foundation after news of the government’s warrantless wiretapping program broke. Wired.com independently acquired a copy of the documents (.pdf) — which were under court seal — and published the wiring documents in May 2006 so that they could be evaluated.
The lawsuit that resulted from his documents is now waiting on the 9th U.S. Appeals Court to rule on whether it can proceed despite the government saying the whole matter is a state secret. A lower court judge ruled that it could, because the government admitted the program existed and that the courts could handle evidence safely and in secret. But the appeals court ruling will likely never see the light of day, since the Senate is set to vote on July 8 on the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which also largely legalizes Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program by expanding how the government can wiretap from inside the United States without getting individualized court orders. More
MSNBC
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, local governments across the country set aside concerns over privacy and installed surveillance cameras in public streets and plazas. Now — even after a damning report by the head of London’s extensive surveillance network and with little evidence that the systems work — police in many cities are trying to add thousands more cameras to their networks. Two years later, the trend shows no sign of slowing. Officials in many cities are eager to take advantage of money from state and federal security agencies to install the cameras on street corners and intersections, and in cities that already have dozens of cameras, officials are seeking real-time access to thousands more in schools, transit facilities and private businesses. More
One of the most basic tenets of our freedom is justice, and at the heart of justice lies the search for truth. Throughout history, whenever the United States government has violated the trust of the American people, we have always worked to regain that trust by seeking the truth and allowing for a full examination of the abuses of government power. Unfortunately, the FISA legislation the Senate will soon consider falls short of that standard. The bill would not only deny the Court the ability to finally make a determination as to the legality of the NSA program and the extent of the spying, but would effectively guarantee immunity for the telecommunications companies who violated the privacy of their customers. This provision will prevent us from finding out the truth. More
Now What’s Obama’s Excuse? And the Other 97 Senators? Source: AfterDowningStreet.org
Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Russ Feingold (D-WI) released the following statement today in response to the announcement that the Senate this week will consider the compromise legislation that would reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA):
“This is a deeply flawed bill, which does nothing more than offer retroactive immunity by another name. We strongly urge our colleagues to reject this so-called ‘compromise’ legislation and oppose any efforts to consider this bill in its current form. We will oppose efforts to end debate on this bill as long as it provides retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies that may have participated in the President’s warrantless wiretapping program, and as long as it fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans.
“If the Senate does proceed to this legislation, our immediate response will be to offer an amendment that strips the retroactive immunity provision out of the bill. We hope our colleagues will join us in supporting Americans’ civil liberties by opposing retroactive immunity and rejecting this so-called ‘compromise’ legislation.”
HR6304 - FISA AMENDMENTS ACT
On June 20, 2008 - 293 Representatives voted in favor to invalidate the 4th Amendment. But before they voted, this is what our leaders in Washington had to say about HR6304
(Assembled by the team at www.WashingtonYoureFired.com)
AMENDMENT IV:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Source (UPI) – Severe flooding in the midwestern United States is expected to impact global food prices, agriculturists say. The floods have left 24 people dead and caused billions of dollars in damages since they started in late May, The Daily Telegraph reported Saturday. “If the floods don’t go away, nothing will get planted and it’s getting very late. Anything that’s growing is stunted. Normally it’s chest-high at this time of year. Now, it’s 5 inches,” Iowa farmer Donnie Miller said of his corn and soy bean crops. This year’s chilly spring and intense rains were worrying farmers prior to when the Mississippi River burst its banks, the newspaper said. Farmers predict corn, soy bean and rice crops will be seriously impacted by the rains and flooding. Flooding in Iowa, Illinois and Missouri could result in 5 million acres of farms being destroyed, agriculturists say. Also See: Most Americans Are Too Stupid to Panic
WIRED
The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives quickly passed a bill Friday that will expand the government’s ability to install blanket wiretaps inside the United States. It will also put an end to the lawsuits filed against the nation’s telecoms for helping the government spy on Americans without getting the necessary court orders.
The bill allows the National Security Agency to order phone companies, ISPs and online service providers to turn over all communications that have one foreigner as a party to the conversation. If any Americans are party to the conversation, the government is supposed to mask their names, but these procedures to minimize privacy-invasion are easily overridden. The longstanding Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act required specific court orders to wiretap phone and internet lines inside the United States, but did not regulate spying conducted on non-U.S. soil.
The nation’s telecoms will soon be freed from some 40 lawsuits accusing them of eavesdropping illegally, if the bill is passed into law as expected. The legality of the retroactive amnesty isn’t clear, and groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation will likely challenge the provision on constitutional grounds. More
Alternet
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claims that a key positive feature of the new wiretap “compromise” is that the bill reaffirms that the President must follow the law, even though the same bill virtually assures that no one will be held accountable for George W. Bush’s violation of the earlier spying law. In other words, in the guise of rejecting Bush’s theories of an all-powerful presidency that is above the law, the Democratic leadership cleared the way for the President and his collaborators to evade punishment for defying the law.
So, why should anyone assume that the new legislative edict demanding that the President obey the law will get any more respect than the old one, which established the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 as the “exclusive” means for authorizing electronic spying? It wasn’t that Bush and his team didn’t understand the old law’s language; they simply believed they could violate the law without consequence, under the radical theory that at a time of war — even one as vaguely defined as the “war on terror” — the President’s powers trump all laws as well as the constitutional rights of citizens. More
Obama’s support of FISA and his “groveling before the Israel Lobby…has dispelled any hope that his presidency would make a difference.”
Washington Post
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) today announced his support for a sweeping intelligence surveillance law that has been heavily denounced by the liberal activists who have fueled the financial engines of his presidential campaign. In his most substantive break with the Democratic Party’s base since becoming the presumptive nominee, Obama declared he will support the bill when it comes to a Senate vote, likely next week, despite misgivings about legal provisions for telecommunications corporations that cooperated with the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program of suspected terrorists.
In so doing, Obama sought to walk the fine political line between GOP accusations that he is weak on foreign policy — Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called passing the legislation a “vital national security matter” — and alienating his base. More
And you can bet the spying on US citizens continues by both corporations and government. It’s pathetic. Think of it—”Lysol wanted details of a New Jersey high school student’s science fair project about cleaning products”. The elite are so greedy for control of our lives, they live in fear even from our children. Check out this web site’s section on “privacy“.
Washington Post
They scavenged through trash and tailed people for hours. They used undercover operatives to infiltrate private meetings. The targets were not agents of foreign powers but advocacy groups that had been critical of corporations. In the 1990s, a Maryland-based private detective agency composed of former CIA agents and law enforcement officers spied on such activist groups as Greenpeace, the firm’s records show.
The agency, Beckett Brown International, had an operative at meetings of a group in Rockville that accused a nursing home of substandard care. In Louisiana, it kept tabs on environmental activists after a chemical spill. In Washington, it spied on food safety activists who had found taco shells made with genetically modified corn not approved for human consumption.
Not all of BBI’s work targeted activists: Lysol wanted details of a New Jersey high school student’s science fair project about cleaning products. Mary Kay executives sought a secret “psychological assessment” of a fellow executive. A consultant working for Nestlé wanted information about rivals Mars and Whetstone Candy. “I always thought they were trying to sabotage me,” said Henry M. Whetstone Jr., who recently reviewed the BBI records. “Everyone thinks that the candy industry is this happy world. It’s not. It has a really dark side.” More
The House today overwhelmingly approved a sweeping new surveillance law that effectively would shield telecommunications companies from privacy lawsuits for cooperating with the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. Ending a year-long battle with President Bush, the House approved, 293 to 129, a re-write of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that extends the government’s ability to eavesdrop on espionage and terrorism suspects while providing a legal escape hatch for AT&T, Verizon Communications and other telecommunication firms. More
Also see: Spying Telecoms Receive Billions in Government Contracts Swedish law allows spying on every citizen
Time
Sweden’s Parliament narrowly approved a law Wednesday that gives authorities sweeping powers to eavesdrop on all e-mail and telephone traffic that crosses the Nordic nation’s borders. Critics have slammed the law as an invasion of privacy and an infringement on civil liberties. Hundreds of protesters gathered outside Parliament Wednesday, some handing out copies of George Orwell’s novel “1984,” about a fictional futuristic police state.
The right-leaning government’s slim majority helped secure 143-138 approval, despite strong opposition from left-leaning parties led by Social Democrats. The companies Swedish telecom TeliaSonera AB and Google Inc. have called the measure the most far-reaching eavesdropping plan in Europe, comparable to a U.S. government program. More
This is a bipartisan bill in a Democratic-led House of Representatives. The bill’s compromise is purely cosmetic. Yet more proof that there’s no difference between republicans and democrats. Both parties are bought and sold to the highest corporate bidder.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. telephone companies that cooperated with President George W. Bush’s warrantless domestic spying program could be shielded from lawsuits under a electronic spy bill finalized on Thursday by congressional and White House negotiators. Under the measure, a court would dismiss a suit if there is written certification that the White House asked a phone company to participate and assured it of the legality of the program that Bush secretly began shortly after the September 11 attacks.
Besides allowing court review of phone company lawsuits, the sweeping overhaul of U.S. spy powers in decades would increase oversight of U.S. intelligence activities and bolster protection of civil liberties, but not as much as some advocates would like. A vote on the bipartisan bill was anticipated on Friday in the Democratic-led House of Representatives, which was expected to approve it overwhelmingly. It would then be sent to the Democratic-led Senate where even Democratic foes of the measure conceded it would be passed and then be sent to Bush to sign into law. More
ABC News
One in three information technology professionals abuses administrative passwords to access confidential data such as colleagues’ salary details, personal emails or board-meeting minutes, according to a survey. US information security company Cyber-Ark surveyed 300 senior IT professionals, and found that one-third admitted to secretly snooping, while 47 per cent said they had accessed information that was not relevant to their role.
“All you need is access to the right passwords or privileged accounts and you’re privy to everything that’s going on within your company,” Mark Fullbrook, Cyber-Ark’s UK director, said in a statement released along with the survey results. “For most people, administrative passwords are a seemingly innocuous tool used by the IT department to update or amend systems. To those ‘in the know’ they are the keys to the kingdom,” he added. More
Source: USA Today
The Rocky Mountain News reports that Black Hawk helicopters buzzed downtown Denver and other neighborhoods Monday evening in a training exercise for a possible terrorist attack. It says several choppers flew low near Coors Field during a home game of the Colorado Rockies. The newspaper quotes Lt. Nathan Potter, with Special Operations Command, as saying Special Ops teams were training with local authorities. He did not elaborate, but said it had nothing to do with preparations for the Democratic National Convention, which will be held in Denver in August. “It’s routine preparation for the global war on terrorism,” he said. Potter added that Special Operations Command has also been conducting similar exercises in other cities.
Sweden is on the verge of passing a far-reaching wiretapping program that would greatly expand the government’s spying capabilities by permitting it to monitor all email and telephone traffic coming in and out of the country. So far, hacks from the mainstream Swedish press seem to be on holiday, so news about the proposed law is woefully hard to come by. That leaves us turning to this summary from the decidedly partisan Swedish Pirate Party for details. We’d prefer to rely on a more neutral group, but that wasn’t possible this time. According to them, here’s a broad outline:
The En anpassad försvarsunderrättelseverksamhet bill (which loosely translates to “a better adapted military intelligence gathering”) gives Sweden’s National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA) direct access to the traffic passing through its borders. Now remember, we’re talking about the internet, which frequently routes packets though multiple geographically dispersed hops before they reach their final destination. This all but guarantees that emails and voice over IP (VoIP) calls between Swedes will routinely be siphoned into a massive monitoring machine. And we wouldn’t be surprised if traffic between parties with no tie to the country regularly passes through Sweden’s border as well, and that too would be fair game. (For example, email sent from a BT address in London to Finland is likely to pass through Sweden first.)
Once intercepted, the data will be searched for certain keywords, and those that contain the words will be pulled aside for additional scrutiny. A broad array of organizations will have use of the system, including the Department of Transportation, the Department of Agriculture, the police, secret service and customs, and in some cases major businesses. The bill allows Swedes to be singled out, as well. More
Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees.
According to diplomat and author Peter Dale Scott, the KBR contract is part of a Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of “all removable aliens” and “potential terrorists.”
Sect. 1042 of the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), “Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies,” gives the executive the power to invoke martial law. For the first time in more than a century, the president is now authorized to use the military in response to “a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, a terrorist attack or any other condition in which the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to the extent that state officials cannot maintain public order.”
The Military Commissions Act of 2006, rammed through Congress just before the 2006 midterm elections, allows for the indefinite imprisonment of anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on a list of “terrorist” organizations, or who speaks out against the government’s policies. The law calls for secret trials for citizens and noncitizens alike.
Also in 2007, the White House quietly issued National Security Presidential Directive 51 (NSPD-51), to ensure “continuity of government” in the event of what the document vaguely calls a “catastrophic emergency.” Should the president determine that such an emergency has occurred, he and he alone is empowered to do whatever he deems necessary to ensure “continuity of government.” This could include everything from canceling elections to suspending the Constitution to launching a nuclear attack. Congress has yet to hold a single hearing on NSPD-51. More
I don’t agree with the judge’s reasoning. All support staff (and its organizations) of publicly elected officials should be subject to the FOIA
A federal judge ruled Monday that a White House office that has records about millions of possibly missing e-mails does not have to make them public. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly says the Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, enabling the White House to maintain the secrecy of a lengthy internal paper trail about its problem-plagued e-mail system.
The decision came in a lawsuit filed against the administration by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a private group that has been trying to find out the extent of the White House’s e-mail problems for more than a year. The functions of the Office of Administrative “are strictly administrative,” Kollar-Kotelly ruled. Since its creation in 1978, the Office of Administration has responded to FOIA requests. But the Bush White House reversed that policy in August 2007 in the lawsuit filed by CREW. More
A JOURNALISTIC investigation into terrorism suspects held at US prison camps around the world found that possibly hundreds had been wrongly imprisoned, it was reported today. An eight-month investigation in 11 countries on three continents found that the US wrongfully imprisoned suspects in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of “flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments”, McClatchy newspapers said.
McClatchy said it interviewed 66 released detainees, more than a dozen local officials, primarily in Afghanistan, and several US officials and former officials. The investigation also reviewed thousands of pages of US military tribunal documents and other records. According to their investigation “at least seven (detainees) had been working for the US-backed Afghan government and had no ties to militants, according to Afghan local officials”. Read More
