FAA approves spy drones to fly US skies
Press TV – April 23, 2012
US law enforcement agencies have received the approval of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to use unmanned aircraft known as drones for mass surveillance.
More than 50 non-military organizations within the United States have received approval to fly drones, according to documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act requests by the advocacy group, Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Major agencies like the FBI, the US Department of Homeland Security and the US Department of Justice had been cleared to launch drones, US President Barack Obama administration’s favorite weapon of war which is being used in countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation civil liberty group warned that the use of drones poses a serious threat to personal privacy.
The documents revealed that individual city police forces are also drawing up plans to use the reconnaissance aircraft.
In February, the US Congress passed a bill which approved the government’s deployment of up to 30,000 spy drones in American airspace by 2020.
The Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act, which President Obama is expected to sign, also ordered the FAA to develop regulations for the testing and licensing of drones by 2015.
According to some estimates, the commercial drone market in the United States will be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Currently almost 50 companies are developing some 150 different drone systems.
The US has been using the unmanned vehicles for its spy operations and assassination missions worldwide and the strikes have intensified since Obama took office three years ago.
Strangling Civil Liberties, One Twist at a Time
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford | March 7, 2012
There is a constituency for the right to assemble and protest in this country, but it appears as if that constituency has very little representation in the U.S. Congress. The Senate unanimously passed a law that has significant ramifications for the Occupy movement or anyone else that wants to exercise their First Amendment rights. H.R. 347 is also known as the Trespass Bill. Only three members of the House voted against it, all of them Republicans, including presidential contender Ron Paul. None of the major civil liberties organizations raised a fuss, either, but the silence will surely come back to haunt us.
The bill makes it a federal crime punishable by a year in prison for “trespassing” on places where someone under protection of the Secret Service is also present, and up to ten years if a weapon is involved, or someone is seriously injured. The restrictions cover not just the president, but also presidential candidates and foreign dignitaries and heads of state. The new version of the law makes protesters subject to felony prosecution even if they were unaware that people protected by the Secret Service were in the area. Rather than demonstrators freely congregating to protest the presence of their least favored presidential politicians, or to loudly demand that visiting foreign leaders go back home, would-be protesters would be best-advised by their lawyers to stay as far away as possible or face a long stretch in prison. Surely, that stands the right to peacefully assemble on its head.
Even more ominously, the new law allows the Department of Homeland Security to designate whole areas as part of a so-called National Security Event Zone, off limits to protest. The United National Anti-War Coalition and others that are planning to demonstrate at the meeting of NATO nations, in Chicago, in late May, will almost certainly be confronted with, not only Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s aggressive protest containment policies, but a Homeland Security declaration putting large areas under a federal protective bubble, with even more serious criminal consequences. In the real, often chaotic whirl of mass outdoor protest, with police pushing crowds from place to place, and protesters trying to make themselves heard, large numbers of demonstrators could find themselves in a federal no-go zone. Under the old rules, the harshest penalties could be imposed only on those who “willfully” crossed into a National Security Event Zone. The new Trespass Bill omits the word “willfully,” so that anyone who is caught “trespassing” in the Zone, whether they knew it was restricted or not, is liable for felony prosecution. This brings to mind the mass arrests of Occupy demonstrators on Brooklyn Bridge, last year. Many in the crowd thought they were being escorted across the bridge by police, and were not willfully trespassing. Under the federal bill, lack of willfulness is no excuse.
What is more disturbing than the potential Bill of Rights-eroding aspects of the legislation, is the Congress’s cavalier attitude towards civil liberties. There was no debate. The only No votes came from Tea Party Republicans. Democrats behaved as if nothing important was happening, just as when President Bill Clinton first came up with the idea National Security Event Zones – where the public, by law, has nothing to say.
Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
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Homeland Security Dept. Pays General Dynamics to Scour Internet for Criticism of its Policies
AllGov | February 27, 2012
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been paying a defense contractor $11.4 million to monitor social media websites and other Internet communications to find criticisms of the department’s policies and actions.
A government watchdog organization, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), obtained hundreds of documents from DHS through the Freedom of Information Act and found details of the arrangement with General Dynamics. The company was contracted to monitor the Web for “reports that reflect adversely on DHS,” including sub-agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Citizenship and Immigration Services, Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In testimony submitted to the House Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, Ginger McCall, director of EPIC’s Open Government Project, stated that “the agency is monitoring constantly, under very broad search terms, and is not limiting that monitoring to events or activities related to natural disasters, acts of terrorism, or manmade disasters….The DHS has no legal authority to engage in this monitoring.”
McCall added: “This has a profound effect on free speech online if you feel like a government law enforcement agency—particularly the Department of Homeland Security, which is supposed to look for terrorists—is monitoring your criticism, your dissent, of the government.”
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85 Things that Might Get You on a DHS Terrorist Watch List
By Robert Wenzel | Economic Policy Journal | February 17, 2012
Because the Department of Homeland Security has asked parts of the public to report suspicious activity through the “Communities Against Terrorism” program , if you visit an airport, stay in a hotel, drink coffee at an Internet café, or in some other way interact with one of the Halloween G-men in the American public, a full-fledged FBI investigation is only one phone call away, says LaTi.
LaTi lists 85 things that might get you on a watch list, if a Halloween G-man spots you in the act:
1) Use Google Maps to find your way around a strange city.
2) Use Google Maps to view photos of sports stadiums.
3) Install online privacy protection software on your personal computer.
4) Attempt to shield your computer screen from the view of others.
5) Shave your beard, dye your hair or alter your mode of dress.
6) Sweat.
7) Avoid eye contact.
8) Use a cell-phone camera in an airport, train station or shopping mall.
9) Seek to work alone or without supervision.
10) Appear to be out of place.
11) Have bright colored stains on your clothing.
12) Be missing any fingers.
13) Emit strange odors.
14) Travel an “illogical distance” to do your shopping.
15) Have someone pick you up from a beauty supply store.
33) Act impatient.
16) Be nervous.
17) Be a new customer from out of town.
18) Use a credit card in someone else’s name.
19) Chant environmental slogans near construction sites.
20) Enter a construction site after work hours.
21) Rent watercraft for an extended period.
22) Make comments involving radical theology.
23) Make vague or cryptic warnings.
24) Express anti-U.S. sentiments.
25) Purchase a quantity of prepaid or disposable cell phones.
26) Leave store without preprogramming disposable phones.
27) Be overly interested in satellite phones and voice privacy.
28) Ask questions about swapping SIM cards in cell phones.
29) Ask questions about how phone location can be tracked.
30) Rewire cell phone’s ringer or backlight.
31) Express out-of-place and provocative religious or political sentiments.
32) Purchase a police scanner, infrared device or 2-way radio.
33) Act impatient.
34) Drive a vehicle that appears to be overloaded.
35) Depart quickly when seen or approached.
36) Be a person “acting suspiciously.”
37) Make illegible notes on a map.
38) Take photos of the Statue of Liberty or other “symbolic targets.”
39) Overdress for the weather.
40) Ask questions in a hobby shop about remote controlled aircraft.
41) Demonstrate interest that does not seem genuine.
42) Request specific room assignments or locations at a hotel or motel.
43) Arrive at a lodging with unusual amounts of luggage.
52) Make notes that are illegible to passersby.
44) Refuse cleaning service.
45) Avoid the lobby of a hotel or motel.
46) Remain in your hotel or motel room.
47) Leave your hotel for several days, then return.
48) Leave behind clothing and toiletry items.
49) Park your vehicle in an isolated area.
50) Be observed switching a cell phone SIM card.
51) Be observed using multiple cell phones.
52) Make notes that are illegible to passersby.
53) Communicate through a PC game.
54) Download “extreme/radical” content.
55) Exhibit preoccupation with press coverage of terrorist attacks.
56) Wear a backpack when the weather is warm.
57) Speak to mall maintenance personnel or security guards.
58) Make racist comments.
59) Mumble to yourself.
60) Pass along any anonymous threats you may receive.
61) Discreetly take a photo in a mass transit site.
62) Arrive with a group of people and split off from them.
63)Demand “identity privacy.”
64) Appear to endorse the use of violence in support of a cause.
65) Make bulk purchases of meals ready to eat.
66) Arrive in America from a land where militant Islamic groups operate.
67) Take a long absence for religious education or charity work.
68) Travel to countries where militant Islam rules.
69) Study technical subjects that would aid a terror operation.
70) Work in a field that “serves as a cover for preparing for an operation.”
71) Exhibit ire at global policies of the U.S.
72) Balk at providing “complete personal information.”
73) Provide multiple names on rental car paperwork.
74) Receive an unusual number of package deliveries.
75) Replace rental property locks without permission.
76) Modify your property to conceal storage areas.
77) Fail to pay rent for a storage unit in a timely manner.
78) Inquire about security systems at your storage facility.
79) Place unusual items in storage units or dumpsters.
80) Avoid contact with rental facility personnel.
81) Access storage facilities an unusual number of times.
82) Request deliveries of items directly to a storage unit.
83) Be part of a group requesting identical tattoos.
84) Request tattoos that could conceal extremist symbols.
85) Fly while appearing to be Muslim on September 11 of any year.
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From the Archives
Does Kevin Barrett Seek to “Absolve Islam of a Terrible Crime”?
The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – Last part of the series titled “9/11 and the Zionist Question”
By Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | August 28, 2016
Amidst his litany of condemnations, Jonathan Kay reserves some of his most vicious and vitriolic attacks for Kevin Barrett. For instance Kay harshly criticizes Dr. Barrett’s published E-Mail exchange in 2008 with Prof. Chomsky. In that exchange Barrett castigates Chomsky for not going to the roots of the event that “doubled the military budget overnight, stripped Americans of their liberties and destroyed their Constitution.” The original misrepresentations of 9/11, argues Barrett, led to further “false flag attacks to trigger wars, authoritarianism and genocide.”
In Among The Truthers Kay tries to defend Chomsky against Barrett’s alleged “personal obsession” with “vilifying” the MIT academic. Kay objects particularly to Barrett’s “final salvo” in the published exchange where the Wisconsin public intellectual accuses Prof. Chomsky of having “done more to keep the 9/11 blood libel alive, and cause the murder of more than a million Muslims than any other single person.” … continue
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