Free Republic

In Utah, the National Security Agency is building a $2 billion storage facility that will house and analyze all forms of electronic communication...a potential yottabyte of everyone's (formerly) personal data. So how big is a yottabyte? CrunchGear puts it well: There are a thousand gigabytes in a terabyte, a thousand terabytes in a petabyte, a thousand petabytes in an exabyte, a thousand exabytes in a zettabyte, and a thousand zettabytes in a yottabyte. In other words, a yottabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000GB. In terms of data on current human scales, a yottabyte is nearly infinite (though I'm sure the NSA will manage...

There’s an interesting article in the current New York Review of books (predictably, a book review) detailing the history of the National Security Agency, that shadowy power-behind-the-power to which we surrender much of our privacy. That in itself is interesting, but I found the introduction a bit shocking: the NSA is constructing a datacenter in the Utah desert that they project will be storing yottabytes of surveillance data. And what is a yottabyte? I’m glad you asked. There are a thousand gigabytes in a terabyte, a thousand terabytes in a petabyte, a thousand petabytes in an exabyte, a thousand exabytes...

Not long ago, Americans feared and ridiculed the police states cursing too many parts of the world. We worried that they might one day conquer us despite their poverty and general misery even as we mocked their totalitarian tactics — especially their “Papers, please” mentality.  Indeed, being forced to prove one’s identity to a bureaucrat on demand, having to carry and produce documents with personal information for his approval — or condemnation — seemed especially horrifying. One of our classic films, Casablanca, revolved around the deadly hassles of obtaining or forging such papers under the Nazis; episodes of Mission Impossible...

Feeling guilty about not doing enough exercise? Well, guilt might soon be the least of your problems. Thanks to a new Big Brother-style gadget being adopted by American companies — and coming to Britain early next year — bosses can measure exactly how many calories you are burning in a day and compare the data with “performance benchmarks”. In other words: staying in shape might soon become as important as getting to the office on time. The gadget, from the Dutch electronics company Philips, is slightly larger than a postage stamp and must be carried around at all times, either...

I’ve written previously on HUMAN EVENTS about the state of Big Brother Britain, and things are only getting worse. News broke this week that the police have a series of databases recording the personal details of thousands of people who attend protests or rallies, which are searchable by a number of officers and come complete with color photographs assembled and printed onto “spotter cards” which are then distributed to enable agencies to monitor attendees at events. Cost of this part of the surveillance state alone? Over nine million pounds. Moreover, we have the most CCTV of any country, we have...

You dirty rat. Chicago and Cook County residents aren’t the only ones about to get shocking tax news; the city is debuting a “tax whistle-blower” plan that could turn neighbor against neighbor in Chicago’s business community. The folks at city hall will pay cash bounties to informants who turn in business tax cheats around the city. The reward would amount to some sort of percentage of the tax money that the city recovers. "It's just another way of bringing people into compliance," Revenue Department spokesman Ed Walsh told the Sun-Times. "It would probably be ... a business knowing that a...

Personal details about thousands of people – said to include those only suspected of minor public order offences such as peaceful direct action and civil disobedience – are being compiled on a database run by the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU). The data includes pictures of people taken demonstrations and other observations made by police on the scene, such as vehicle registration numbers. These enable cars to be tracked using automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras. The Guardian reported that a man with no criminal record was stopped more than 25 times in less than three years after he...

POOLE, England — It has become commonplace to call Britain a “surveillance society,” a place where security cameras lurk at every corner, giant databases keep track of intimate personal details and the government has extraordinary powers to intrude into citizens’ lives. A report in 2007 by the lobbying group Privacy International placed Britain in the bottom five countries for its record on privacy and surveillance, on a par with Singapore. But the intrusions visited on Jenny Paton, a 40-year-old mother of three, were startling just the same. Suspecting Ms. Paton of falsifying her address to get her daughter into the...

The Federal Communications Commission today opened a proceeding to consider net neutrality rules, the culmination of contentious lobbying by the telecom industry and an intense exchange of letters from members of Congress. With a 3-2 vote along party lines, the five-member panel began the process to move forward with open-Internet regulations announced last month by the agency's chairman, Juilus Genachowski. His proposal would formally codify the FCC's current four principles intended to prevent Internet service providers from giving preferential treatment to certain content and services and therefore deciding which applications consumers have access to. He also proposed two additional principles,...

First Amendment: Diversity czar Mark Lloyd's FCC votes Thursday on the issue of net neutrality. Advertised as providing access to all, it will do to the information superhighway what Lloyd proposed for talk radio. Not much was said when $7.2 billion was included in the stimulus bill "to accelerate broadband deployment in unserved and underserved areas and to strategic institutions that are likely to create jobs or provide significant public benefits." The administration has big plans for the Internet — like controlling it. Susan Crawford, the so-called Internet czar, told the Wall Street Journal in April that the broadband billions...

Parking attendants in Malmö are to have miniature video cameras attached to their caps as part of a bid to increase the safety of members of a profession often exposed to threats and harassment. Starting this Wednesday, a number of meter maids from municipal firm Parkering Malmö will begin wearing the cap-borne cameras, which can register sound and video and are activated when an inspector pushes a button. The resultant video clips will be saved, and may be used as evidence for incidents that are reported to the police or go to trial. All other clips will be erased. "By...

A reality TV star was arrested in Massachusetts over the weekend. Adam Jasinski, who won CBS' "Big Brother" last year, was charged with dealing oxycodone in North Reading Saturday. According to the Boston Herald, Jasinski allegedly told a DEA agent that he used the $500,000 he won on the show to bankroll a drug-dealing operation on the East Coast. Federal prosecutors say Jasinski spoke to an undercover agent from his home in Delray Beach, Florida and agreed to fly to Boston to sell the agent 2,000 oxycodone pills. Once Jasinski arrived at Logan Airport, the agent drove him to a...

On September 10th of this year the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF) posted a press release informing the world that “from October 19-25, more than 60 network TV shows [will] spotlight the power and personal benefits of service,� and that this “unprecedented block of TV programming is the first wave of a multi-year ‘I Participate’ campaign.� On its face this all sounds rather benign in that silly, liberal do-gooder kind of way. The networks have launched these kinds of campaigns before and other than some clunky exposition awkwardly inserted into your favorite show to meet the mandate — no harm, no...

On September 10th of this year the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF) posted a press release informing the world that “from October 19-25, more than 60 network TV shows [will] spotlight the power and personal benefits of service,” and that this “unprecedented block of TV programming is the first wave of a multi-year ‘I Participate’ campaign.”

Motorists should be forced to pay to drive on the busiest roads to slash greenhouse gas emissions, the Government's climate change watchdog says today. The Climate Change Committee, led by former CBI chief Lord Turner, wants ministers to introduce compulsory road pricing to prevent global warming. Under the controversial scheme, cars would be fitted with electronic tags and tracked either by satellite or roadside beacon. Charges would rise at times of peak congestion to around £1.50 a mile. In a report to MPs, the advisers called for a carbon revolution - with thousands of wind turbines, nuclear power stations...

Allowing social workers and health authorities to monitor households, adding to concern at Britain's surveillance society. The devices, which the government plans to install in every home by 2020, will also tell energy firms what sort of appliances are being used, allowing companies to target customers who do not reduce their energy consumption. Privacy campaigners have expressed horror at the proposals, which come as two million homes have 'spy' devices fitted to their rubbish bins by councils who record how much residents are recycling. The government wants every home in Britain to have smart meters, which give users information on...

Welcome to the new Justice.gov. If you’re a regular visitor to our site, you’ll notice some changes today. If you are joining us for the first time, welcome. The Department of Justice launches Justice.gov today in an effort to increase openness and transparency in government. Utilizing a variety of online tools, we will be able to share news and information, not just on our own web site, but through popular social networks Twitter, YouTube and MySpace and Facebook. The Justice presence on these social networks will allow Americans to interact with the Department in entirely new ways. The new Justice.gov...

New York - On the heels of breaking up an alleged bomb terror plot, New York is planning to place high-tech security cameras, license plate readers, and "weapons sensors" in midtown Manhattan. Office workers and tourists – and possible terrorists – will have cameras watching their every move as they visit Macy's, shop for diamonds at Tiffany & Co., or gawk in Times Square. The apparatus, paid for by some $24 million in Department of Homeland Security funding, will expand a similar effort already underway in lower Manhattan where cameras focus on the Federal Reserve, the New York Stock Exchange,...

The wild, wild Web, where anything goes, could become less wild this year if federal regulators have their way. The Federal Trade Commission on Monday took steps to make product information and online reviews more accurate for consumers, regulating blogging for the first time and mandating that testimonials reflect typical results. Under the new rules, which take effect Dec. 1, writers on the Web must clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products. Testimonials will have to spell out what consumers should expect to experience with their products. Until now, companies just included disclaimers...

As Montana bars dealt with their first smoke-free weekend since the state’s indoor smoking ban went into effect, ingenuity ruled. In Missoula, according to a great piece by Michael Moore in the Missoulian, the Rhino Bar gave smokers their very own place to light up: a Butt Hutt, created by Dave Golden of Well Done Welding and Jim Bell, a general contractor. Moore describes the hut as a 4-by-8-foot “metal smoking dugout” in the alley behind the Rhino in Missoula. The no-smoking laws spark the type of debate that never seems to get extinguished. Pro-smokers argue that the bans hurt...

Researchers from Georgia Tech have devised methods to take real-time, real-world information and layer it onto Google Earth, adding dynamic information to the previously sterile Googlescape. They use live video feeds (sometimes from many angles) to find the position and motion of various objects, which they then combine with behavioral simulations to produce real-time animations for Google Earth or Microsoft Virtual Earth. They use motion capture data to help their animated humans move realistically, and were able to extrapolate cars' motion throughout an entire stretch of road from just a few spotty camera angles. From their video of an augmented...

Obama science czar John Holdren stated in a college textbook that "illegitimate children" born to unwed mothers could be taken by the government and put up for adoption if the mother refused to have an abortion. Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, argued that "illegitimate childbearing could be strongly discouraged" as a socioeconomic measure imposed to control population growth. As previously reported, WND has obtained a copy of the 1970s college textbook "Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment" that Holdren co-authored with Malthusian population alarmist Paul R. Ehrlich and Ehrlich's wife, Anne. The authors argued involuntary...

Recently declassified documents obtained by Wired magazine reveal a massive Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) data mining operation. It already possesses over 1.5 billion records from government and private-sector sources. That figure is expected by the FBI to balloon to over 6 billion within a few years. And it is not just terrorists they are after.  According to the documents, the National Security Branch Analysis Center (NSAC) is being used to pursue multiple types of non-terrorism domestic investigations. It is also meant to be able to sort through the data — everything from health and travel records to credit card...

<p>Nearly 20 young children are captured in an online video as they sing songs that overflow with campaign slogans and praise for "Barack Hussein Obama," as they repeatedly chant the president's name and celebrate his accomplishments.</p> <p>A video posted on YouTube appears to show a New Jersey elementary school class being taught to sing praises of the "great accomplishments" of President Obama.</p>

I'm having a this is Armagedon moment with this electronic healthcare records thing and had to vent...Once electronic healthcare records is a reality, how compelling will the argument be to mandate rf chips in all our hands... the first chips will be inserted on a voluntary basis of course.. Perhaps 5 to 10% of the population will participate. Non-Christians only of course. EMT workers will arrive on scene, scan the victim, the screen pops up with warnings and recommendations, and lives will be saved. And I have no doubt this techonogy would save lives. The media will diligently report everytime...

"EU funding 'Orwellian' artificial intelligence plan to monitor public for "abnormal behaviour" The European Union is spending millions of pounds developing "Orwellian" technologies designed to scour the internet and CCTV images for "abnormal behaviour"." SNIPPET: "A five-year research programme, called Project Indect, aims to develop computer programmes which act as "agents" to monitor and process information from web sites, discussion forums, file servers, peer-to-peer networks and even individual computers. Its main objectives include the "automatic detection of threats and abnormal behaviour or violence"." SNIPPET: "Project Indect, which received nearly £10 million in funding from the European Union, involves the Police...

There is so very much to be disgusted by here that it’s hard to know what to gag on first. The NEA is the largest single funder of art in the country. The transcripts prove, despite the earlier denials and obfuscations of the participants, that officials from the White House, the National Endowment of the Arts and a federally overseen initiative called United We Serve joined in hosting a conference call on August 10th with a group of artists. The point of the call was to cajole these artists into making artistic propaganda in support of President Barack Obama’s agenda.

Citing environmental and energy-conservation rationales, the California Energy Commission has served notice that it will ban big screen televisions beginning in the year 2011. “These large screen TVs consume an inordinate amount of energy,” said Commission Chairwoman Karen Douglas. “No one needs their own personal big screen. Generations of Americans got along fine with smaller TVs. In fact, while many alive today may find it hard to believe, there were no TVs in American homes 70 years ago. So, I think our action is far less draconian than it might have been.” Douglas pointed out that “those who still need...

We now learn that the White House , though a private contractor, and without anyone’s knowledge, is collecting and storing comments made on it’s social networking sites at Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo and Sideshare. The truly amazing part though is that the President is pointing to federal law as his justification for these actions.

The White House is collecting and storing comments and videos placed on its social-networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube without notifying or asking the consent of the site users, a failure that appears to run counter to President Obama's promise of a transparent government and his pledge to protect privacy on the Internet. Defenders of the White House actions said the Presidential Records Act requires that the administration gather the information and that it was justified in taking the additional step of asking a private contractor to "crawl and archive" all such material. Nicholas Shapiro, a White House...

The city just installed high-tech cameras that catch every car that rolls through the city limits. And city residents say they are willing to give up privacy for protection. Resident Kay Stelter says she feels a little better knowing that there are an extra set of eyes keeping tabs. "I do, even though it makes me nervous that it's me that they're seeing," she said. For years, people in Medina have relied on gates to protect their homes and property. But now they've added surveillance video. The Medina City Council approved the cameras after Medina reported 11 burglaries in 2008...

Energy Savings: Europe's ban on the incandescent light bulb began phasing in this month, and the U.S. will soon follow. Is Thomas Edison to blame for global warming? And why are we exporting green jobs?When the warm-mongers assemble in Copenhagen this December to hammer out a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol, no doubt their work to save the earth from the carbon dioxide that gives it life will take place under the eerie light thrown off by compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) mandated by the European Union to fight climate change. The bulbs are more expensive, costing up to...

When Barack Obama won Florida last November — the first Democrat to take the Sunshine State since FDR — many saw it as a sign of centrist GOP Governor Charlie Crist's moderating influence. But lately, Florida's disgruntled Republicans aren't looking very moderate. This week, in fact, the peninsula's GOP registered arguably the loudest outcry over the education speech President Obama plans to deliver to U.S. primary and secondary students via webcast and C-Span next Tuesday. In perhaps the most over-the-top performance, state Republican Chairman Jim Greer called it an attempt to use "our children to spread liberal propaganda" and "President...

Catch the video before Big Brother catches you.

What’s next in surveillance-happy Britain? Cameras in private homes? Actually, yes. To passing tourists, catching yet another government poster apprising you of electronic surveillance looming in the distance, the initials “CCTV” can be oddly reminiscent of “CCCP,” the Cyrillicized abbreviation for the U.S.S.R. CCTV is the United Kingdom’s ubiquitous acronym. Nobody needs to be told what it stands for. It accompanies you as you make your way to work, whether by car, bus, train, or taxi. And it’s there waiting for you at the end of your shift, as you go to buy your groceries or head to the movies....

Security: A Senate bill lets the president "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "nongovernmental" computer networks and do what's needed to respond to the threat. Didn't they just collect our e-mail addresses?We wish this was just a piece of the fictional "Dr. Strangelove" that fell to the cutting-room floor, but it's not. It is a real piece of disturbingly vague legislation sponsored by Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. Senate Bill 773 would grant the administration emergency powers (where have we heard that before?) in the event of a cyberemergency that the president would have...

This is the Obama Big Brother Zero 'dollar' (it is not a real dollar). It is political artwork that is roughly the same size as currency so that you can carry it easily in a wallet and have handy for reference or to give to someone, or to leave somewhere for another to find and take. Front of the bill first, then the back. For the whole series of Zero dollar bills, go here: "Flickr Zero Bill Archive"

Parents across the country are rebelling against plans by President Barack Obama to speak directly to their children through the classrooms of the nation's public schools without their presence, participation and approval. The plans announced by Obama also have been cited as raising the specter of the Civilian National Security Force, to which he's referred several times since his election campaign began, but never fully explained. "He's recruiting his civilian army. His 'Hitler' youth brigade," wrote one participant in a forum at Free Republic.

Some see this as simply a way to comply with the Presidential Records Act, others remember the who "fishy" incident and see this as a new Big Brother Obama attempt to collect information on individual citizens. The National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) has discovered a secret White House project to harvest personal date from social networking websites like facebook and twitter. The White House office of New Media has sent out a request for proposals from technology vendors to develop and run the project. According to the proposal request, the information to be captured includes comments, tag lines, emails,...

Both Hitler's infamous Gestapo and Mussolini's OVRA (Organization for Vigilance and Repression of Anti-Fascism) were secret-police organizations that had as their aim the control and prevention of political dissent. Though Heinrich Himmler modeled his Gestapo force after OVRA, it became much more violent than its Italian counterpart. A German law, passed in 1936, exempted the Gestapo from judicial oversight, which in turn exempted its henchmen from answering to administrative courts. All this, of course, is enough to give most Americans concern, given that the increasingly red administration in Washington has been moving daily toward installing radicals in newly created positions...

At the dawn of the Barack Obama era, the promise of hope has faded. America's public square is an angry and bitter place. Finger pointing and yelling at town hall meetings this summer are signs of a country that's been building toward a boiling point for several years, stressed by a fast changing economy, a flood of immigration and threats at home by terrorists. It's a land at turns frustrated and irate at a government that led them into an unpopular war, proved itself inept at helping its citizens in a disastrous hurricane, presided over an historic economic collapse, then...

The national Republican Party has mailed a fundraising appeal suggesting Democrats might use an overhaul of the health care system to deny medical treatment to Republicans. A questionnaire accompanying the appeal says the government could check voting registration records, "prompting fears that GOP voters might be discriminated against for medical treatment in a Democrat-imposed health care rationing system." It asks, "Does this possibility concern you?" Katie Wright, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, said the question was "inartfully worded." But she said people should worry because government officials would have access to personal financial and medical data.

Obama-mania control of America continues, first the Census was pulled to the White House, now a bill that would give Obama and his unscrupulous cronies’ control of the internet is making its way through the Senate. The fact that Florida’s own, Bill Nelson, is a cosponsor is alarming and Central Floridians will not be happyThe sponsor and other cosponsors are: Sen Bayh, Evan [IN] - 4/2/2009 Sen Snowe, Olympia J. [ME] - 4/1/2009Sen Rockefeller, John D., IV (Sponsor) CNET has this quote in an article today: I think the redraft, while improved, remains troubling due to its vagueness," said Larry...

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet. They're not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency. The new version would allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to...

The America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, HR 3200 sponsored by John Dingell, D-MI, establishes a huge new bureaucracy within the executive branch, the Health Choices Administration which is led by a Commissioner with at least 22 clearly enumerated powers and responsibilities, including: 1 The establishment of qualified health benefits plan QHBP standards. 2 The establishment and operation of a Health Insurance Exchange. 3 The administration of individual affordability credits. 4 Promoting accountability of all QHBP offering entities in meeting Federal health insurance requirements. 5 Conducting audits (at the expense of the QHBP) of qualified health benefits plan compliance....

GLENN BECK, HOST: Hey, for all you lab geeks out there, you're going to be excited to know that the government is gearing up to conduct one of the biggest scientific experiments ever and you get to be a part of it. It's called H.R. 3247. It's a bill proposed by Congressman Brian Baird. It seeks to, and I quote: "Establish social and behavioral science research programs. They would seek to identify and understand social and behavioral factors that influence energy consumption, to promote the utilization of the results of social and behavioral research to improve the design, development and...

The Obama administration unveiled $1.2 billion in federal grants for electronic health records systems on Thursday, the first wave of funding under a health-care reform plan to create vast records-sharing networks aimed at cutting costs and improving care in the coming decade. The administration has described such computer systems as a crucial step in overhauling the nation's expensive health-care system. It allocated more than $36 billion in the landmark stimulus legislation to spur adoption of the equipment by doctors and hospitals along with the development of the networks that will link them all together... ...about half the grant money would...

[Federal Register Volume 74, Number 160 (Thursday, August 20, 2009)] [Notices] = [Pages 42077-42079] From the Federal Register Online via the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov] [FR Doc No: E9-20021] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Agency Information Collection Activities: Proposed Collection; Comment Request AGENCY: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, HHS. ACTION: Notice. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- SUMMARY: This notice announces the intention of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to request that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approve the proposed information collection project: ``2010-2011 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Insurance Component.'' In...

US courts have generally been pretty good at protecting the anonymity of online speech from forced exposure -- in fact, as we're posting this story, we've come across yet another ruling protecting anonymous speech online. However, every so often a judge goes in the other direction. Earlier this year, we wrote about a case involving a model, Liskula Cohen, who was so upset about a blog that had a grand total of four posts insulting her, that she filed a lawsuit to uncover the anonymous blogger, claiming that it was defamatory to call her a "skank." Of course, most of...

Undercover Baltimore police officer Dante Arthur was doing what he does well, arresting drug dealers, when he approached a group in January. What he didn't know was that one of suspects knew from a previous arrest that Arthur was police. Arthur was shot twice in the face. In the gunfight that ensued, Arthur's partner returned fire and shot one of the suspects, three of whom were later arrested. In many ways, Dante Arthur was lucky. He lived. Nationwide, a police officer dies on duty nearly every other day. Too often a flag-draped casket is followed by miles of flashing red...