Free Republic

America's police state: The drones are coming Friday, February 10, 2012 A new federal law accelerating domestic use of government aerial surveillance drones brings America frighteningly close to an Orwellian police state. President Obama is expected to sign the FAA Reauthorization Act, which expedites approval for federal, state and local police to use these drones. The Federal Aviation Administration's existing case-by-case approach is chilling enough -- it's being sued over its refusal to disclose publicly which agencies use drones and how they're used. Still, it's known that the Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection arm uses drones domestically....

Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It’s … a drone, and it’s watching you. That’s what privacy advocates fear from a bill Congress passed this week to make it easier for the government to fly unmanned spy planes in U.S. airspace. The FAA Reauthorization Act, which President Obama is expected to sign, also orders the Federal Aviation Administration to develop regulations for the testing and licensing of commercial drones by 2015.

Representative John Mizuno (D-Oahu) is sponsoring a bill that would require all web sites to keep records of who visits their sites. “The government has a right to know who is reading/viewing what,” Mizuno insisted. “A lot of the stuff on the Internet is not supportive of the government’s efforts to provide a safer and better life for the people. This could inspire mentally unbalanced persons to take dangerous actions that could interfere with these goals. We need to be able to spot this in advance if we are to avert an unwelcome turn of events.” The bill is opposed...

Somewhere over Afghanistan. Via http://ChamorroBible.org/gpw/gpw-20060917.htm (medium, large, huge) The Photographer Master Sgt. Andy Dunaway, United States Air Force  

<p>According to Reuters, the US government begun, in June 2010, to monitor websites, blogs and including Facebook and Twitter.</p> <p>This disturbing news only became headline now, but in the end of July, 2010, just one month after the US surveillance on blogs, WND, the most important conservative website, denounced that my blog was being monitored by the US government.</p>

The Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security today announced that 9,492 photo IDs had been issued for voting purposes from July 1st through December 31st, 2011. The vast majority (8,989) of those issued were non-photo driver licenses converted into photo driver licenses, while 503 were original photo identification cards. Effective January 1st, 2012, a new state law requires citizens to present a federal or state- issued photo ID to vote at the polls. The law also requires the Department of Safety and Homeland Security to issue photo IDs for voting purposes at no charge.

The US Air Force has ordered the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Predator C Avenger for deployment to Afghanistan. A single aircraft is being procured, marking what may be the type's first order. Although termed a test aircraft, the order fulfils an urgent request by secretary of defense Leon Panetta for reconnaissance and strike assets. Several untested aircraft and systems have been purchased or deployed under urgent operational requirements, including the Northrop Grumman MQ-8B Fire Scout currently operating in Afghanistan. "This aircraft will be used as a test asset and will provide a significantly increased weapons and sensors payload capacity on...

Every so often I want to watch some TV program in my PC. Ok, it usually is football! When I google "this game lifestream" I usually get lots of sites from where I can download something for free that will allow me to watch the game. But I don't know anything about that site, how safe it is... Does any body have any recommendations? At least, does someone know how I can watch the Denver-New England game tomorrow? Thanks

A claim by Wikileaks that documents it released last week provide evidence of a "secret new industry" of mass surveillance was as breathless as previous pronouncements from Julian Assange's organization. But the material does provide a stark reminder that our online activities are easily snooped upon, and suggests that governments or police around the world can easily go shopping for tools to capture whatever information they want from us. The take-home for ordinary computer users is that the privacy and security safeguards they use—including passwords and even encryption tools—present only minor obstacles to what one researcher calls the "cyber security...

Documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal open a rare window into a new global market for the off-the-shelf surveillance technology that has arisen in the decade since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The techniques described in the trove of 200-plus marketing documents include hacking tools that enable governments to break into people’s computers and cellphones, and "massive intercept" gear that can gather all Internet communications in a country. The documents—the highlights of which are cataloged and searchable here...[snip]

The smart grid has been one of the most talked-about issues in energy policy. Experts — and manufacturers of equipment and software — have promoted the idea that “smart meters” could enable utilities to flip household appliances on and off to ease the load of summertime electricity demand and that the devices would help homeowners manage their refrigerators, lights and air conditioning, even controlling them remotely with cellphones, laptops or tablets.

Just a precis: Drudge has a link to inforwars dot com's article on intellistreets, a hi tech surveillance system installed in streetlights. The assertion is that homeland security is paying to have these installed on city streets. There is also a link to the company website: http://www.intellistreets.com/Videos/English/IntelliStreetsEnglish.html

Next time you call a talk radio station, beware: The FBI may be listening. According to WMAL.com, "The FBI has awarded a $524,927 contract to a Virginia company to record as much radio news and talk programming as it can find on the Internet. … The FBI says it is not playing Big Brother by policing the airwaves, but rather seeking access to what airs as potential evidence." The agency's reasons for recording all these radio programs don't get any clearer as the news report goes on. No doubt that is intentional.

An internal U.S. Department of Homeland Security document indicates that a controversial program designed to predict whether a person will commit a crime is already being tested on some members of the public voluntarily, CNET has learned. If this sounds a bit like the Tom Cruise movie called "Minority Report," or the CBS drama "Person of Interest," it is. But where "Minority Report" author Philip K. Dick enlisted psychics to predict crimes, DHS is betting on algorithms: it's building a "prototype screening facility" that it hopes will use factors such as ethnicity, gender, breathing, and heart rate to "detect cues...

CHICAGO — A few months ago, Saman Jayasekara was shopping online for cheaper car insurance when he came across a new product from Progressive Corp. that offered him the chance to save as much as 30 percent. But there was a catch. He would have to install a device in his Hyundai Sonata that would monitor his driving habits, such as when he drove, miles driven and number of sudden stops. Progressive would analyze the data to determine whether he deserved a discount.

For four years, a doctor commuted between his clinics in Texas in a $5 million turboprop with jazzy metallic stripes and ruby stones embedded on the drink cabinet inside. The plane featured exotic wood veneers and polished chrome, and his daughter’s initials were in the tail number. But after a mysterious buyer snapped up the plane in 2008, it ripped out the fancy appointments, painted it a dull gray and sent it on a more dangerous mission. Unknown to the doctor, his prized King Air 350 had become a spy plane, one of the first of a new military model...

..."Had the 9/11 terrorists used prepaid ... cards to cover their expenses, none of these financial footprints would have been available." Six years after Treasury identified that vulnerability, concern that drug smugglers and terrorists are exploiting it is driving the federal government to change the rules for issuing and using prepaid cards, particularly high-value reloadable cards like the cash cards you might take with you on vacation. By making it harder to get prepaid cards without subjecting buyers to government scrutiny, regulators and lawmakers hope to make it easier to detect patterns of money movement that could signal something nefarious....

NEW YORK -Working with the CIA, the New York Police Department maintained a list of "ancestries of interest" and dispatched undercover officers to monitor Muslim businesses and social groups, according to new documents that offer a rare glimpse inside an intelligence program the NYPD insists doesn't exist. The documents add new details to an Associated Press investigation that explained how undercover NYPD officers singled out Muslim communities for surveillance and infiltration. The Demographics Unit, a squad of 16 officers fluent in a total of at least five languages, was told to map ethnic communities in New York, New Jersey and...

This ought to instill an appropriate level of fear, then The above photo by Ronnie Miranda appeared various places following the Stanley Cup riot in Vancouver in mid-June. But the original is not just any wide-angle shot, for what he captured was actually a massive 1.0 gigapixel (one billion) digital image.Such technology offers astonishing detail that is obviously useful to anyone working in law enforcement or security/intelligence -how useful? Simply click on the pic above and then zoom right down by double-clicking on anybody in the crowd... pretty scary. One can clearly see the faces of almost every single individual (prior to the trouble breaking-out) with just...

In a novel effort to increase surveillance in a crime-plagued area, Oakland city leaders have purchased a batch of cameras for merchants in the Fruitvale district who were unable to afford them. The deal with the merchants, who must allow police to view the footage, comes three months after the slaying of a community leader in Fruitvale, and as the city attorney's office seeks a civil injunction against alleged gang members in the neighborhood. The roughly 30 cameras were paid for with $35,000 in redevelopment money. They will be installed inside and outside of local businesses, including Otaez Restaurant, where...

Training of Pakistani intelligence and military personnel in the use of electronic surveillance and analysis equipment potentially could take place on U.S. soil, according to an Army planning document that U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor has located. The document asserted that the Army at this point only is conducting a market survey of firms capable of providing such training; however, the “sources sought” notice equally made clear that a follow-on Foreign Military Sales procurement of services would allow the training to take place either outside of the country—Pakistan, specifically—or domestically. The notice referred to Arizona, Florida, and Maryland as possible...

Air Force Bugbots Micro Air Vehicle (MAVs) buglike drones

Details of an emerging data-mining and intelligence-analysis program reminiscent of the Pentagon’s controversial Total Information Awareness (TIA) project emerged yesterday, U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor has discovered. Similar to TIA, which Congress in 2003 de-funded insofar as domestic applications, the Insight Focused Incubator initiative seeks to create a multimedia system that obtains, synthesizes, and analyzes mass volumes of data via the development of an advanced “‘plug and play’ modular architecture” of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) technologies. According to a Special Notice that the Monitor obtained via routine database research, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) issued a call...

Often when the government tries to suppress information about its surveillance programs, it cites national-security concerns. But not always. In 2008, a few years after the Bush administration's warrantless-wiretapping program was revealed for the first time by the New York Times, Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act. That act authorizes the government to engage in dragnet surveillance of Americans' international communications without meaningful oversight. As we've explained before (including in our lawsuit challenging the statute), the FISA Amendments Act is unconstitutional.In 2009, we also filed a Freedom of Information Act request to learn more about the government's interpretation and...

Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated the life sentence of a Washington area man named Antoine Jones, saying the government violated Jones’ privacy rights in clandestinely tracking his movement for a month in a drug trafficking investigation.

DARPA-developed Space Surveillance Telescope is supposed to see objects in deep space like no ground-based system before itYou can bet that if there are little red aliens running around on Mars or spaceships patrolling other planet in our solar system for that matter, a recently powered-up telescope built by the researchers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency might just be able to see them. The Air Force, which operates the DARPA-developed Space Surveillance Telescope (SST) says the telescope's design, featuring unique image-capturing technology known as a curved charge coupled device (CCD) system, as well as very wide field-of-view, large-aperture...

A favorite pastime of Internet users is to share their location: services like Google Latitude can inform friends when you are nearby; another, Foursquare, has turned reporting these updates into a game. But as a German Green party politician, Malte Spitz, recently learned, we are already continually being tracked whether we volunteer to be or not. Cellphone companies do not typically divulge how much information they collect, so Mr. Spitz went to court to find out exactly what his cellphone company, Deutsche Telekom, knew about his whereabouts. The results were astounding. In a six-month period — from Aug 31, 2009,...

Internal Surveillance Agencies Mushroom in N.Korea The North Korean regime in January launched a new surveillance bureau charged with snooping on its people, Radio Free Asia reported Thursday. Quoting a source in the city of Hyesan, Ryanggang Province RFA said the bureau, named 118 Sangmu, combines forces from the State Security Department, the Ministry of Public Security, prosecutors' offices and party organs, in accordance with leader Kim Jong-il's instructions "to eradicate antisocialist elements." Senior officials involved are baffled because the new bureau's tasks overlap with those of an already existing bureau, 109 Sangmu, it claimed. Since its launch in 2005,...

Apple and four app developers have been hit with a lawsuit that alleges violations of computer fraud and privacy laws by allowing ad networks to access users' personal information. Zuma Press The suit was filed on Thursday by the law firm KamberLaw on behalf of Jonathan Lalo, a Los Angeles County resident, in federal court in San Jose, California. It seeks class-action status. The suit was filed less than a week after the Wall Street Journal published an article raising privacy concerns over the transmission of personal information based on a study of 101 mobile apps on Apple's iPhone and...

Google receives "tens of thousands" of requests each year from the government to turn over user data, and it complies with any it deems legitimate. But the information comes at a cost: 25 bucks per head. According to documents obtained by privacy researcher Christopher Soghoian under the Freedom of Information Act, Google charges the Feds $25 per account for surveillance services. (No word on if Google displays targeted ads alongside the data it turns over.) Yahoo charges $29, while Microsoft lets government spooks spy on their users for free. Most domestic wiretapping requests come from the DEA, so it's best...

Norway has demanded an explanation from the United States after a television documentary said its embassy had conducted illegal surveillance of hundreds of Norwegian residents over the past decade. According to the TV2 News channel, the US embassy in Oslo employed between 15 and 20 people, including former high-ranking police officers, to monitor local residents in a bid to ward off attacks on US interests in the country. The surveillance had been going on since 2000, said the report. Embassy-hired employees photographed people taking part in demonstrations and added their names and personal data to a special computer database, SIMAS...

The Navy had been planning on phasing out all P-3s by 2019 to make way for the follow-on P-8A Poseidon, scheduled to begin joining the fleet in 2013. However, the P-3C program office announced at Lockheed’s annual P-3 international operators support conference in Marietta, GA, that the Navy intends to fly special mission P-3Cs beyond that because there is no replacement for them since EPX was cancelled earlier this year, Ray Burick, Lockheed’s vice-president for the P-3C program, told Inside the Navy on October 28. “They anticipate flying a handful of airplanes, about 40 planes, specifically special mission airplanes...well beyond...

FBI Wants Expanded Wiretap Access to Texts, Social Network Postings, Skype and More Research In Motion is locked in a struggle with several countries, including India and the United Arab Emirates, which are demanding the company hand over the keys to the encrypted messages flying back and forth between BlackBerry users. For most U.S. citizens the travails of RIM were little more than a sideshow, playing out in sidebar stories of mainstream media. But last month I cautioned readers here about something I called the "BlackBerry Butterfly Effect," where, "in this era of a globally interconnected world, the clash between...

Big brother has taken it to a new level, outfitting student Ids with tracking devices at Santa Fe Junior High and Santa Fe High School. Minus a few high profile shootings, schools are generally known as a safe environment for our children. Why then are these schools outfitted school ids with tracking devices that must be worn at all times? Are our students going to school or prison? What is the threat that requires such drastic measures? How many more schools plan on implementing these Orwellian “security” measures? Patrick Mann is a senior and said he feels like he’s in...

Four obscuring techniques that defeated facial recognition software. Don’t like the idea of a government or corporation tracking your mug around the Web or the real world? Alex Kilpatrick offers a few tips to foil facial recognition software used by those who would monitor your whereabouts: Don’t bother growing a beard, or wearing a hat. Instead, invest in a pair of oversize Gucci knockoffs. In a presentation he plans to make at the IgniteNYC event that kicks off the Web 2.0 New York conference, Kilpatrick will give a talk on defeating the technological tools of the modern–or future– surveillance state....

Despite outrage over George Bush's limited ability to wiretap into American phone calls, Obama wants to take it a step further and be able to monitor every single form of communication any American citizen uses. The same kind of authority the government has to wiretap into phone calls could be coming to Facebook, instant messaging, and every American's browser history, thanks to a push from the Obama administration. The White House plans to introduce a bill into Congress next year that would give Obama the ability to tap into literally every communication any citizen makes online. The move causes a...

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals just decided that it was legal for the police to put a GPS tracking device on your car, sitting in your driveway, on your property. Here's how to protect yourself.Matt's post about the decision explains in depth about the ruling. To quickly summarize, the supreme court had said before that police can look through things that anyone in the public could come across, meaning, your driveway is freely accessible to the public, hence, the cops can look through it. The 9th circuit court now says that cops can shove a GPS locator onto your car, because the area is publicly...

It's okay for the government to plant a GPS tracker on the car parked in your driveway, tracking everywhere you go. It doesn't violate your rights, at all—according to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers California, Arizona, Oregon and a bunch of the western US, has ruled that the government did nothing wrong when the DEA planted a GPS tracking device on Juan Pineda-Moreno's Jeep, which was parked in his driveway—without a search warrant. The underpinning for the ruling is that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in...

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway - and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements. That is the bizarre - and scary - rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government...

Ruling that federal agents erred in attaching a satellite tracking device to a vehicle without a search warrant, a federal appeals court has reversed the life sentence of man accused of running a major Washington drug ring. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Friday found that the government's use of GPS technology to track defendant Antoine Jones' Jeep violated the Fourth Amendment. Civil liberties groups that aided in the appeal of Mr. Jones, whose case involved the largest cocaine seizure in city history, called the ruling an important legal victory for privacy rights....

It is just a technical matter, the Obama administration says: We just need to make a slight change in a law to make clear that we have the right to see the names of anyone’s e-mail correspondents and their Web browsing history without the messy complication of asking a judge for permission. It is far more than a technical change. The administration’s request, reported Thursday in The Washington Post, is an unnecessary and disappointing step backward toward more intrusive surveillance from a president who promised something very different during the 2008 campaign.

BULLETIN -- NEW YORK POLICE AND FBI RAID HOMES IN QUEENS IN TERRORISM INVESTIGATION.6 minutes ago from BNO Headquarters

SNIPPET: "U.S. counterterrorism officials have linked one of the nation's most wanted terrorists to last year's thwarted plot to bomb the New York City subway system, authorities said Wednesday. Current and former counterterrorism officials said top al-Qaida operative Adnan Shukrijumah met with one of the would-be suicide bombers in a plot that Attorney General Eric Holder called one of the most dangerous since the 9/11 terror attacks."

In these times, weve all come to accept that our e-mails, telephone calls and financial transactions can be monitored and tracked, but do we really know how much of our lives are actually being observed and recorded and by whom? SHADOW GOVERNMENT provides up-to-the minute analysis of the ever changing technological landscape and new evidence that an ultra-secret global elite controls technology, finance, international law, world trade, political power and vast military capabilities. An in-depth documentary that details how all of our rights and freedoms have disappeared: how a system is now in place to control and monitor all of...

Wholesale gadget site Chinavasion has a product called the RC plane camera that will let you convert your remote-controlled aircraft into an overhead spy camera. This cylindrical device attaches to your hobby airplane or helicopter and lets you shoot VGA-quality video or photos at 1,280x960 resolution. It probably won't give you the quality military unmanned aerial vehicles are capable of, but hey, capturing aerial views of your neighborhood is still pretty cool. Why spend money on something like that when almost everyone owns a regular compact digicam? Well, a Canon Ixus or Sony Cyber-shot, however small, will still weigh about...

In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer. Even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists. The legal justification for arresting the "shooter" rests on existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland are among the 12 states in which...

New York City has thousands of police surveillance cameras, which really come in handy when a terrorist strikes. After the car bomb attempt last weekend, they captured an image of the vehicle driving through Times Square and one of a guy taking off his shirt who looked nothing like the guy arrested Monday. Which raises the question: What good are cameras? The debate over them is often framed as hardheaded law enforcement types versus wimpy civil libertarians. Whether the cameras actually work in practice to help solve and prevent crime generally gets ignored. It shouldn't. Leave aside those airy privacy...

 Google's new Government Request tool shows exactly how many times governments from around the world either asked Google to remove content or to provide user information. And how often Google complied. It's quite the roadmap to intrusion. The figures correspond to the second half of 2009, and will be updated every six months. Brazil currently leads the charge on both data and removal requests, although their stats may be padded by the strange flourishing of orkut there. The US came in a close second with over 3500 data requests between July and December of last year, 80.5% of which Google complied...

A group of lawyers, human rights activists and journalists argued in a federal appeals court on Friday that a 2008 update to U.S. surveillance law has made their e-mails and phone calls more susceptible to government interception and that, as a result, they are forgoing conversations and flying overseas rather than making phone calls or writing e-mails. Those in the group are trying to show that they have suffered harm because of the revised law, which dropped a requirement that the government identify the subjects of its surveillance. The group must prove harm in order to challenge the law's constitutionality...

Back in January last year, David Bond packed a rucksack, kissed his pregnant wife Katie and toddler Ivy, climbed into his Toyota Prius and drove away from home. Nobody knew where he was going – he didn’t even know himself. One thing he was sure about was this: “I’m going to leave my life behind and disappear,” he said. A 38-year-old Oxford graduate with a solid if unspectacular career in media, Bond wasn’t your typical runaway. But then, you might have said the same about Will Smith in Enemy of the State, or Robert Donat in The 39 Steps –...