Free Republic

<p>The National Security Agency has a secret backdoor into its vast databases under a legal authority enabling it to search for US citizens' email and phone calls without a warrant, according to a top-secret document passed to the Guardian by Edward Snowden.</p>

The source said a “criminal report has been filed,” which begins the process. ...Fox News confirmed early Sunday that all members of the House of Representatives will be invited to a special, secure briefing on the NSA's surveillance programs on Tuesday. It was unclear if there would be a similar briefing for senators.

Sen. Rand Paul this week found himself in a spot that was quite familiar to him before he rocketed to GOP celebrity status — flying without a Republican army behind him. The first-term Republican from Kentucky has sought to maintain his father’s libertarian political base while spending months trying to develop relationships with some of his party’s more hawkish voices. Yet he carved out a path much more in line with Ron Paul when he filed a bill Friday, in the wake of discomfiting disclosures about the government’s database of phone records, to require officials to obtain a warrant for...

Washington - Senior Obama administration officials, including the directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and of national intelligence, have held 13 classified hearings and briefings for members of Congress since 2009 to explain the broad authority they say they have to sweep up electronic records for national security purposes, a senior administration official said Saturday. (Snip) Lawmakers said that what they knew was vague and broad — and that strict rules of classification prevented them from truly debating the programs or conducting proper oversight.

The National Security Agency has developed a powerful tool for recording and analysing where its intelligence comes from, raising questions about its repeated assurances to Congress that it cannot keep track of all the surveillance it performs on American communications. The Guardian has acquired top-secret documents about the NSA datamining tool, called Boundless Informant, that details and even maps by country the voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks.

As of this moment, Obama is making the case that the US government is not eavesdropping on phone calls. Specifically, he said "nobody is listening to your phone calls - they are just looking at phone numbers and duration of calls" and concluded that the NSA was only engaged in "modest encroachments." It was unclear if that clarification was meant to put to rest fears that Big Brother has made personal privacy a thing of the past. He further went on to add that the telephone surveillance program is fully vetted by Congress and supervised by the Federal Intelligence Surveillance...

President Barack Obama’s chief defense of his administration’s wide-ranging data-gathering programs Friday: Congress authorized them, with “every member” well aware of the details. Not so, say many members of Congress — Democrats and Republicans alike.

A recent notice from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms reveals that the agency intends to acquire an online database capable of bringing up many of an individual’s personal characteristics and connections with just a few keystrokes. On March 28 the federal law enforcement organization, which is a branch of the US Department of Justice, filed a solicitation notice for a “massive online data repository system” for its Office of Strategic Intelligence and Information. The solicitation is hosted on the Federal Business Opportunities website, where vendors and developers can offer their services to the government in a competitive reverse...

For more than a year, New York state has maintained a tip line allowing people to report illegal gun owners and collect a $500 reward. CBS-6 news reported the existence of the tip line on Wednesday. It was previously a “well-kept secret” that received little promotion from state officials or fanfare in the media, according to the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association. A February 2012 press release from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s office first publicly announced the tip line, saying it was designed to “encourage citizens to report illegal firearm possession.”

Bob GrishamROGERSVILLE — School district officials are investigating allegations that a Lauderdale County High School teacher made slurs in the presence of students regarding first lady Michelle Obama and gays. Superintendent Jennifer Gray confirmed the investigation concerns the school’s head football coach, Bob Grisham, who also teaches driver’s education and psychology. The investigation includes a 1-minute, 24-second audiotape of Grisham asking who knows who is behind the 600-calorie school lunch. “Fat butt Michelle Obama,” he said. “Look at her. She looks like she weighs 185 or 190. She’s overweight.” Male voices interject comments during the discussion, at one point referring...

Hacktivist group Anonymous took control of the U.S. Sentencing Commission website Friday, January 25 in a new campaign called "Operation Last Resort." The first attack on the website was early Friday morning. The second - successful - attack came around 9pm PST that evening. anonymous By 3am PST ussc.gov was down (it has since been dropped from the DNS), yet as of this writing the IP address (66.153.19.162) still returns the defaced site's contents. It appears that via the U.S. government website, Anonymous had distributed encrypted government files and left a statement on the website that de-encryption keys would be...

In a startling follow-up to his spate of new gun laws which were passed last week, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo today announced his new 'Gun-Snitch' program in which both adults and children will have a chance to turn in the name or names of potentially violent gun criminals for money. Cuomo announced a new 1-800 number (1-800-RAT-CALL) which you can call 24/7 to provide the New York State Police with the name and address of any person you know has a gun. Children are encouraged to call and accuse their parents as well as other family members and friends....

According to a background briefer provided by the White House, President Barack Obama is asking doctors to help deal with guns. Here's the relevant passage: PRESERVE THE RIGHTS OF HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS TO PROTECT THEIR PATIENTS AND COMMUNITIES FROM GUN VIOLENCE: We should never ask doctors and other health care providers to turn a blind eye to the risks posed by guns in the wrong hands. ï‚· Clarify that no federal law prevents health care providers from warning law enforcement authorities about threats of violence: Doctors and other mental health professionals play an important role in protecting the safety of...

East Germany's secret police sold citizens to western pharmaceutical companies to use as human guinea pigs in drug trials • Tens of thousands tested with experimental drugs not approved in the West • One study of a drug for heart conditions saw six out of 17 patients die • Sinister practice exposed in disturbing new Germany documentary Former Communist East Germany secretly sold its citizens to western pharmaceutical companies to use as human guinea pigs in drug trials. Tens of thousands of sick people in the former German Democratic Republic were treated with medicines not approved in the West to...

In 1974, a Trabant -- an old East German car -- was chugging through the Thuringian countryside, a province in the communist German Democratic Republic.In its passenger seat sat Professor Joseph Ratzinger and at the wheel was Father Joachim Wanke, then an assistant at a local seminary -- the only one in the GDR.The two priests, writes Rainer Erice, a journalist for the German radio station Mitteldeutsche Rundfunk Thüringen (MDR), were on a harmless sightseeing tour, taking in the historic cities of Jena and Weimar. It was a moment of relaxation during Father Ratzinger's short visit to East Germany, the...

LOS ANGELES, Calif. -- The Iranian regime is notorious for cracking down on dissent inside Iran. Now Mahmoud Ahmadenijad and the mullahs are targeting dissidents in other countries -- including those in the United States. And they are using an international organization to do it. Shahram Homayoun fled Iran for the United States 19 years ago. He was a marked man in his native country, because of his support for democracy and human rights. Now the regime has finally caught up with Homayoun: not in Tehran, but in Los Angeles. "They have managed to keep me here, and it seems...

Kunming Police Recruiting Schoolchildren To Be Informants by willingbird on March 25, 2010 From KDNet: Don’t let these children become wretched informants Recently, a notice was issued to all head teachers in Kunming by a certain government department, requiring them to assign 2~3 “Young Public Security Info Collectors” in each class. These Info Collectors shall gather and report information on school violence, property infringement, mobile pornography propagation, traffic around the school campus, the activities of bad youth around the school campus, and etc. information so the police and education bureaus can have complete control of the campus developments. (From Legal...

Obama Admin Admits It Tracked Abortion Groups in Wisconsin Madison, WI -- The Department of Homeland Security admitted today that it improperly conducted a threat assessment on pro-life groups in Wisconsin. The assessment came before an expected rally last year in response to the University of Wisconsin Hospital board decided to allow abortions. http://www.LifeNews.com/state4796.html

I know someone who purchased this from RAND. By page 19 this report goes from discussing the need for a Special Police Force overseas to supplement interventions, to suddenly needing a force that can circumvent Posse Comitatus. Posse Comitatus exists for a reason and any attempt to circumvent it, not matter how nicely packaged, is a step on the way to "Special" police becoming "Secret" police. They call it :A STABILITY POLICE FORCE: This study asks several questions. First, is a Stability Police Force (SPF) necessary? An SPF is a high-end police force that engages in a range of tasks...

Justification and Options for Creating U.S. Capabilities Establishing security is the sine qua non of stability operations, since it is a prerequisite for reconstruction and development. Security requires a mix of military and police forces to deal with a range of threats from insurgents to criminal organizations. This research examines the creation of a high-end police force, which the authors call a Stability Police Force (SPF). The study considers what size force is necessary, how responsive it needs to be, where in the government it might be located, what capabilities it should have, how it could be staffed, and its...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Brown University police forcibly removed a man attending a panel discussion about the politics of health care this afternoon after the man told Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy: ``You're not Catholic if you force Catholics into funding abortion.'' Kennedy was one of four panelists at the discussion. After each panelist made brief introductory remarks, the 200 people in the audience were allowed to ask questions. Christopher Young, a perpetual candidate for several public offices in Rhode Island, was the second person to take the microphone. As he made a loud and rambling statement about public funds being...

HARDIN, Mont. (CBS/AP) This is the strange story of how American Police Force, a little known company which claims to specialize in training military and security forces overseas, has seemingly taken control of a $27 million, never-used jail, and a rural Montana town's nonexistent police force. After arriving in this tiny city with three Mercedes SUVs marked with the logo of a police department that has never existed, representatives of the obscure California security company said preparations were under way to take over Hardin's jail, which has no prisoners.

In December 1917 Bolshevik Russian leaders, including one of the founders of Socialist thuggery Vladimir Lenin, established the Cheka—Russia’s first political secret police. With almost unlimited power, the Cheka implemented “campaigns of terror” against the wealthy, land owners and those who opposed Lenin and Bolshevism. !n 1922, once most of Russia’s opposition to their new absolute rulers had lessened, the Cheka was disbanded. However, under the singularly oppressive Josef Stalin, Cheka was reinstated and ultimately renamed “The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs” (NKVD) and what would be known as Stalin’s “Great Terror of the 1930s began. The NKVD was used...

The W.H. web address flag@whitehouse.gov, set up for the public to report 'fishy' information regarding health care reform, has become inactive today...

If you see anybody publicly opposing President Obama’s plan to implement a government-centric overhaul of the health care system, the White House wants you to report that person (or persons) ASAP. From the White House website: There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see...

The past can never be predicted, and perhaps never more so than when it comes to the German left. Two years ago, we learned that Nobel Laureate Günter Grass -- the literary scourge of all things fascist, especially America -- had himself been a member of the Waffen SS. Now comes another zinger that casts the radical political and social upheavals of the late 1960s in new and revealing light. The historical surprise concerns a turning point whose ripple effects were felt in Europe and beyond. On June 2, 1967, a West German policeman fatally shot an unarmed, 26-year-old literature...

One thing about President Barack Hussein Obama, he usually means what he says, at least initially that is. He is always having to back track to cover up the things he really meant when he said it the first time. For example, he said the Rearend Wright was his spirtual mentor. Anyone who has studied the guy knows that this was truly what he meant, but of course Obama had to eventually dump the Rearend when he continued to hear flack about that asscociation of twenty years. Then there are many things he has spoken that are so unfamiliar with...

A day ago, at the dedication ceremony of the National Defense University's Abraham Lincoln Hall, President Obama expressed a renewed need for a civilian national security force (MP3, 74:00 mark; DOD press release, transcript): America must balance and integrate all elements of our national power. We can not continue to push the burden onto our military alone, or leave dormant any aspect of the arsenal of American capability. That's why my administration is committed to renewing diplomacy as a tool of American power and developing our civilian national security capabilities."Our civilian national security capabilities?"

A professor in Connecticut reported one of her students to the police after he gave a class presentation on why students and teachers should be allowed to carry concealed weapons on campus. Now, free speech activists say the professor’s actions are what really need to be investigated.Last October, John Wahlberg and two classmates at Central Connecticut State University gave an oral presentation for a communications class taught by Professor Paula Anderson. The assignment was to discuss a “relevant issue in the media,” and the students presented their view that the death toll in the April 2007 Virginia Tech shooting massacre...

For CCSU student John Wahlberg, a class presentation on campus violence turned into a confrontation with the campus police due to a complaint by the professor. On October 3, 2008, Wahlberg and two other classmates prepared to give an oral presentation for a Communication 140 class that was required to discuss a “relevant issue in the media”. Wahlberg and his group chose to discuss school violence due to recent events such as the Virginia Tech shootings that occurred in 2007. Shortly after his professor, Paula Anderson, filed a complaint with the CCSU Police against her student. During the presentation Wahlberg...

Seven New Orleans police officers fired their weapons at a 22-year-old man who was killed early Thursday while sitting in a car outside his grandmother's house, Superintendent Warren Riley said Saturday. The seven were among nine officers reassigned in the wake of the fatal shooting.Riley said Adolph Grimes III sparked a "gunbattle" with officers when he fired at an unmarked police vehicle that pulled up next to his car. The officers, who were involved in undercover patrols, were wearing street clothes. Grimes died in the shooting near North Claiborne Avenue and Gov. Nicholls Street.Orleans Parish Coroner Frank Minyard said Grimes...

Barack Obama wants to institute a Civilian National Security Force, a vast militia not unlike Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, a personal army. He knows he would need such a force to protect him and to enforce his will on Americans. Americans will have not seen such arbitrary power used against them since the days of the Civil War when Lincoln put the Constitution in the bottom drawer of his desk and set about arresting anyone who opposed his policies to enforce the Union on southern States seeking secession. The moral issue was slavery. The Constitutional issue was states rights. If you...

Report cites Frank's proposal to cut military 25% President-elect Barack Obama raised questions during an election campaign stop in Colorado Springs when he asserted the U.S. needs a "civilian national security force" that would be as powerful, strong and well-funded as the Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force, but few of those questions have been answered. But now one report is proposing a possible solution for part of the equation: From where would the money for such an organization come? Democrats in Congress now are floating the idea of cutting U.S. military spending by 25 percent, or $150 billion a...

Perhaps the word "civilian" will eventually disappear just like those tax cuts will. Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw9xL6G5mz8

ordered it right after he was pushed into the public limelight, and she claims that it wasn’t political. Just standard operating procedure. Ohio’s inspector general is investigating why a state agency director approved checking the state child-support computer system for information on “Joe the Plumber.” Helen Jones-Kelly, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, confirmed today that she OK’d the check on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher following the Oct. 15 presidential debate

Government computers used to find information on Joe the Plumber Investigators trying to determine whether access was illegal Friday, October 24, 2008 8:41 PM By Randy Ludlow The Columbus Dispatch "State and local officials are investigating if state and law-enforcement computer systems were illegally accessed when they were tapped for personal information about "Joe the Plumber." Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher became part of the national political lexicon Oct. 15 when Republican presidential candidate John McCain mentioned him frequently during his final debate with Democrat Barack Obama. The 34-year-old from the Toledo suburb of Holland is held out by McCain as an...

Secret Service visits Lufkin woman after 'death threat' allegation from an Obama campaign volunteer By JESSICA SAVAGE The Lufkin Daily News Monday, October 06, 2008 A Lufkin woman received a surprise visit from the Secret Service last week because of a "death threat" comment she reportedly made about Sen. Barack Obama to a campaign volunteer asking for her support of the presidential candidate. Two federal agents arrived at Jessica Hughes' home Thursday to ask her if she said, "I will never support Obama and he will wind up dead on a hospital floor." Jessica Savage/The Lufkin Daily News (ENLARGE) Jessica...

"Mike Kernell, a longtime Tennessee state assemblyman from Memphis and a technology enthusiast, is concerned about future elections because the new machines are harder to get a look at. ''We used to be able to check the machines and see if they'd been tampered with,'' he said. ''It is now almost impossible.'' Mr. Kernell wonders whether he will have to hire a computer programmer in his next race to make sure the machines are working smoothly and haven't been tampered with. ''We've hit a brick wall,'' he said." - NY Times A "technology enthusiast" indeed. Did he help with his...

The stunning comments from Democrat Sen. Barack Obama that the United States needs a "civilian national security force" that would be as powerful, strong and well-funded as the half-trillion dollar United States Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force have mysteriously disappeared from published transcripts of the speech. In the comments, Obama confirmed the U.S. "cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set." Campaign officials have declined to return any of a series of WND telephone calls over several days requesting a comment on the situation. Nor have they posted a transcript...

A crack team of cybernauts will form a rapid response internet “war room” to track and respond aggressively to online rumours that Barack Obama is unpatriotic and a Muslim. As he gears up for his general election fight against John McCain, Mr Obama and his chief advisers are aware of the danger of such rumours, amid polling data showing that a significant number of Americans believe he is a Muslim or are suspicious about his background. Such doubts were a factor in his poor showing with white, blue-collar voters during his primary battle with Hillary Clinton. In recent days Mr...

From Shailagh Murray's pool report on Obama's visit to the Italian Market in Philadelphia, where he met an extremely persistent photograph-seeker: Run in #1: outside the first shop, on the way in Man: Senator can I have a quick picture with you. (Obama has his arm on the guys arm in a very nice way, like he does when he shakes peoples hand) but Obama refuses to take a picture and walks away.) Man: It will take you two seconds. Don't cram me, I'm not doing anything to anybody. Jesus. Run in #2: after the first shop Man: "Senator can...

PI 'admits' Hillary paid him to harass WilleyKathleen Willey's new book publishes for the first time an alleged admission by private investigator Jack Palladino that he was hired by Hillary Clinton to investigate Willey and bore responsibility for acts of harassment and intimidation designed to silence her explosive testimony of sexual assault by President Clinton in the Oval Office. In "Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton," released this week by World Ahead Publishing, WND Books' partner, Willey presents the claim by San Francisco talk-radio host Melanie Morgan, who recounts a private conversation she had with Palladino...

Falun Gong Practitioners Arrested in Moscow ahead of Hu's Visit Peaceful appeal in front of Chinese embassy leads to arrests from Russian police-CCP pressure suspected Epoch Times Russia Staff Mar 25, 2007 Russian police arrested 8 Falun Gong practitioners who were holding a peaceful appeal in front of the Chinese embassy in Moscow on Saturday ahead of Hu Jintao's visit. The first Falun Gong adherents to be arrested were 68-year-old Surova and Gerlitz. Later in the afternoon, Valiullov, along with 30-year-old Shetkina and 28-year-old Markin were arrested, and by 3:30 pm the number of Falun Gong practitioners arrested totaled 8....

CIEGO DE AVILA, Cuba - February 13 (Tania Maceda Guerra / www.cubanet.org) - A captain Creo and a woman officer of the Department of State Security questioned a 13-year-0ld girl at the middle school she attends. The girl said the agents took her out of Math class and into a room in the principal's offices, where they questioned her for about an hour about the activities of her step-father, a pastor whom they accuse of counter revolutionary activities. Leyanis Domínguez said when she did not give the desired answers, the captain called her a liar and threatened to send her...

PARIS: Victor Hugo was a miserly money-grubber, poet Rimbaud "a monstrosity", and Verlaine "a worthless human being" - such are the verdicts on 19th-century French literary lions found in long-forgotten police files recently published in Paris. Even more startling than the unflattering portraits, says Bruno Fuligni, an employee at the National Assembly, or French parliament, who discovered the dust-covered files and compiled them into a book, is the vigour and thoroughness with which the most revered writers of that era were spied upon by snitches and secret police. "Beyond criminals and political figures, there are files on writers and artists....

It's time to break a taboo and place the word "socialism" across the top of the page in a major American progressive magazine. Time for the left to stop repressing the side of ourselves that the right finds most objectionable. Until we thumb our noses at the Democratic pols who have been calling the shots and reassert the very ideas they say are unthinkable, we will keep stumbling around in the dark corners of American politics, wondering how we lost our souls--and how to find them again. I can hear tongues clucking the conventional wisdom that the "S" word is...

First time “live blogging” will officially occur during a House of Representatives Hearing WASHINGTON, D.C. – Rep. Chris Smith – Chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees Global Human Rights – today announced that for the first time, a hearing in the House of Representatives will be blogged live from Capitol Hill. Smith’s hearing on Wednesday will examine the operating procedures of major US internet companies in China and feature testimony from the US State Department, corporate representatives and NGO’s that focus on human rights. “Modern communications have empowered individuals to get their news from different sources, and blogs have...

Could proposed new intelligence-gathering powers for the Pentagon lead to spying on U.S. citizens? The question is being asked as the White House considers new roles for the military inside America's borders. The Pentagon would be granted new powers to conduct undercover intelligence gathering inside the United States—and then withhold any information about it from the public—under a series of little noticed provisions now winding their way through Congress. Citing in part the need for “greater latitude” in the war on terror, the Senate Intelligence Committee recently approved broad-ranging legislation that gives the Defense Department a long sought and potentially...

hillary clinton: ABUSER, NOT VICTIM   by Mia T, 6.21.05 (retrograde feminist fraud positions herself as victim (again) in order to win White House)[FOOL ME ONCE, SHAME ON YOU! FOOL ME TWICE, SHAME ON ME!] CLINTONS' DOCUMENTED ABUSE OF WOMEN NOTE THE SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE IN CLINTON REACTION TIME AND CONTENT TO THE TWO RAPE CHARGES CATCHING THE CONSCIENCE OF THE KINGFISHdifferential reaction to the two rape charges snares the clintons HILLARY FLUNKED D.C. BAR EXAM "the smartest woman in the world" sought less competitive venue 1st Feminist Prez Impeached(clinton, pushed by the "smartest woman in the world," managed to...

Hao Fengjun Reveals Facts of the ‘610 Office’Hao Fengjun, from Model Police Officer to 610 Office DefectorBy Li HuaThe Epoch Times Jun 19, 2005 Hao Fengjun being interviewed (The Epoch Times) MELBOURNE - Hao Fengjun never thought his visit to Melbourne’s Epoch Times office on June 4, 2005 would send shock waves throughout Western society. Hao chose to step forward to tell people why he defected from his post as a police officer in China’s notorious 610 Office. He risked his own and his family’s lives to help people understand the situation in China. A Model Police Officer at the...