Free Republic

(CNSNews.com) - Before the end of this year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will decide whether or not to begin the rulemaking process to mandate that newly manufactured cars include what is being called “vehicle-to-vehicle” (V2V) communications technology that constantly broadcasts via radio wave the car’s location, direction, speed and, possibly, even the number of passengers it is carrying. “NHTSA expects to make a decision on V2V technology by the end of the year,” a spokesman for the agency told CNSNews.com. That point was reaffirmed by NHTSA Administrator David Strickland in testimony in the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee...

While the nation’s political class has been fixated on the government shutdown in Washington this week, the National Security Agency (NSA) has continued to spy on all Americans and, by its ambiguity and shrewd silence, seems to be acknowledging slowly that the scope of its spying is truly breathtaking. The Obama administration is of the view that the NSA can spy on anyone, anywhere. The president thinks that federal statutes enable the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court to authorize the NSA to capture any information it desires about any persons without identifying the persons and without a showing...

“Clearly, any family may be visited by federally paid agents for almost any reason.” According to an Obamacare provision millions of Americans will be targeted. The Health and Human Services’ website states that your family will be targeted if you fall under the “high-risk” categories below: Families where mom is not yet 21. Families where someone is a tobacco user. Families where children have low student achievement, developmental delays, or disabilities. Families with individuals who are serving or formerly served in the armed forces, including such families that have members of the armed forces who have had multiple deployments outside...

<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...