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Par for the course, tbh. Hope. Change.
Yes, he did. What the TSA does pisses me off the most. That is totally uncalled for.
Par for the course, tbh. Hope. Change.
so you want to kick Barry out because of something the chair-warming, useless NatSec/police state did of its own accord?
Do you really think Gecko/Ryan would stop or roll back the police state?
It's not that nobody cares. It's that nobody thinks they have influence on what happens in govt. aka, disaffection.
and UCA has TBytes of data on all of us, and it's readily shared with the NatSec secret police. But even fewer people care.
America is ed and un able. Just ignore it, since you can't do anything about it.
I read about this a few days back. Didn't forward it because, sadly, it's been seemingly the norm. 100% in agreement with FWD post.
Orwell Time: 5 Creepy New Ways You Are Being Tracked
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-pol...tter719738&t=9
9 Frightening Things About America's Biggest Police Force
The NYPD has expanded into a massive global anti-terror operation with surveillance and military capabilities unparalled in the history of local US law enforcement.
http://www.alternet.org/civil-libert...t-police-force
@ boutons: "just ignore it, since you can't do anything about it."
Then, do something about, WH. and tell us exactly what you plans are, other that posting on Internet. Which candidate, and we need 100s of them in Congress to change laws, will be elected that will stop and reverse the ?
There is nothing to be done. America is ed and un able. America, at least its 99%, is in irreversible decline.
getting the word out there isn't nothing.
why else do you post?
just to taunt and tease, or do you think information can make a difference?
Americans are mostly disaffected by the political process, as evidenced by the lowest voter turnout of all the industrial democracies, have been fed bull and kept in the dark by corporate media who depend on other corporations' advertizing.
And Americans are mostly politically naive, with massive blocks voting for the Repugs on the social/religious issues, while the Repugs them hard economically.
Look at how the right-wingers and other establishment suckers/defenders here piss on, ridicule OWS protesting financial sector predations and outright CRIMES.
Justice Dept. to defend warrantless cell phone tracking
The Obama administration will tell federal judges in New Orleans today that warrantless tracking of the location of Americans' mobile devices is perfectly legal.
Federal prosecutors are planning to argue that they should be able to obtain stored records revealing the minute-by-minute movements of mobile users over a 60-day period -- in this case, T-Mobile and MetroPCS customers -- without having to ask a judge to approve a warrant first.
The case highlights how valuable location data is for police, especially when it's tied to devices that millions of people carry with them almost all the time. Records kept by wireless carriers can hint at or reveal medical treatments, political associations, religious convictions, and even whether someone is cheating on his or her spouse.
"It's at a point now where the public awareness about this specific issue is growing," says Hanni Fakhoury, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who will be arguing the pro-privacy side before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals this morning.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57...703&s_cid=e703
What Is Happening to Muslims Will Happen to the Rest of Us
Masri and the four others, all held in British jails, will soon join hundreds of other Muslims tried in Article III federal courts in the United States over the last decade. Fair trials are unlikely. A disturbing pattern of gross infringements on basic civil liberties, put in place in the name of national security, has poisoned our legal system. These infringements include intrusive surveillance, vague material support charges, the use of prolonged pretrial solitary confinement, classified evidence that the accused cannot review, and the use of political activities, normally protected under the First Amendment, to demonstrate mind-set and intent. Muslims caught up in the Article III courts are denied the opportunity to confront their accusers and to have their religious and political associations protected, and they rarely find a judge courageous enough to protect their rights. These violations of fundamental civil liberties will not, in the end, be reserved exclusively for Muslims once the corporate state feels under siege. What is happening to them will happen to the rest of us.
“One of the misapprehensions of the last decade is that the government had to go outside the law to places like Guantanamo or Bagram to abridge the rights of suspects in the name of national security,” said Jeanne Theoharis, a professor of political science at Brooklyn College who has been an outspoken critic of the rights abridgement occurring in Article III courts. “But this is not the case. A similar degradation of rights that has characterized the prison at Guantanamo has also affected the judicial system within the United States. The right to dissent, the right to see the evidence against you, the right to due process, the right to fair and speedy trial, the right to have a judge who will be impartial, the right to fair and not disproportionate punishment, and the right not to be punished before you are convicted have been taken from us in the name of national security. It is not just in special secret prisons that this occurs, but also—dismayingly—within the U.S. federal courts.”
This is not about the guilt or innocence of Masri, an Egyptian who lost an eye and a hand as a mujahedeen fighting in Central Asia and who has repeatedly called for violence against the United States and allegedly helped orchestrate violence. This is about the right of all accused to a fair defense and humane detention conditions. Once Masri arrives on U.S. soil he will receive neither. He will, even before he is tried or convicted, endure prison conditions that replicate the brutality suffered by those in our offshore penal colonies, including the one at Guantanamo Bay. He will enter a world of prolonged and psychologically crippling isolation, made worse by the likely application of so-called special administrative measures. He will spend his days in a tiny cell under constant electronic surveillance. At New York’s Metropolitan Correction Center, where Masri and the other men will most likely first be incarcerated, he will never be allowed outdoors. He will be permitted to spend only one hour a day outside his cell, alone in a cage. Masri and the four other suspects could spend years in these conditions before trial. Because of security restrictions, it will take as long as six months for letters from his family to reach him. His lawyers can be prosecuted if they repeat in public what he tells them, especially about the conditions of his incarceration.
And, once he goes on trial, he will be in an Article III court, where national security provisions will almost certainly guarantee his conviction. Once convicted, he and the others are likely to be sent to the federal Administrative Maximum facility (known as ADX), in Florence, Colo., to spend, potentially, a lifetime in solitary confinement. There he will be permitted, at most, an hour a day out of his cell, in a cramped cage nicknamed “the dog run” because it looks like a dog kennel. His meals will be delivered to his cell through a slot. He will not be permitted to work in prison industries or have congregational prayer, an essential tenet of the Muslim faith.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/print...f_us_20121001/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/1...n_1933998.htmlWASHINGTON -- A marquee federal effort to share intelligence about terror threats with state and local law enforcers has produced no evidence of any. But it does appear to have caught a motorcycle gang telling members to obey laws, su ious fishing at the border, and Muslims offering advice on marriage, success and reading.
That's according to a report by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee released Tuesday evening that found the work of some 77 U.S. "Fusion Centers" launched since 2003 have been fraught with troubles -- including trampling cons utionally protected activities -- while the Department of Homeland Security cannot even say how much has been spent on the effort.
According to the report, DHS estimates for cost ranged from $289 million to $1.4 billion. The costs may be even higher, the report said.
In spite of the expense of the fusion centers, the report said it could "identify no reporting which uncovered a terrorist threat, nor could it identify a contribution such fusion center reporting made to disrupt an active terrorist plot."
The probe by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations lasted more than two years and reviewed 610 homeland information reports produced by the fusion centers. Of them, 188 were squelched by DHS reviewers because they are useless or may have broken rules meant to guard civil liberties, the report said.
Of the ones forwarded to the borader intelligence community, most had nothing to do with terrorism or were too slow to be of use. Some may have violated privacy laws, were cribbed from newspapers or federal agency press releases, and some duplicated work done much faster by the FBI or National Counterterrorism Center.
"DHS-assigned detailees to the centers forwarded 'intelligence' of uneven quality -– oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already-published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism," concluded the authors of the bipartisan report led by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.).
The subcommittee said numerous current and former officials involved fusion centers also found them lacking.
“A lot of [the reporting] was predominantly useless information,” one former official told committee investigators after working for the "Reporting Branch" of Intelligence and Analysis unit of the DHS from 2006 to 2010. “You had a lot of data clogging the system with no value."
Another former official estimated 85 percent of reports were “not beneficial” to anyone, the report said.
Beyond being useless, some reports are downright embarrassing.
One that never saw the light of day wrote how a pair of men were fishing in a su ious fashion on a reservoir that spanned the U.S.-Mexico border. Another worried that the notorious Mongols Motorcycle Club -- recently busted in a major federal operation -- had printed pamphlets for members advising them to be courteous to police in traffic stops, to properly care for their vehicles, and to designate a sober driver. About 40 of the reports the committee examined were blocked because of potential infringement on liberties.
One report was focused on a do ent that was en led “Ten Book Recommendations for Every Muslim.” Another DHS intelligence officer filed an item on a U.S. citizen who, the report said "was appearing at a Muslim organization to deliver a day-long motivational talk and a lecture on positive parenting."
The rejection of the latter report was blunt. “Intelligence personnel are not authorized to collect information regarding [U.S. persons] solely for the purpose of monitoring activities protected by the U.S. Cons ution,” the report recounted.
Another report by an investigator focused on a lecturer who once ran an Islamic school that was mentioned in a terrorism database. The investigator's would-be intelligence report highlighted the subject's participation in a daylong seminar on marriage.
In blocking that "intelligence," one DHS official declared “the number of things that scare me about this report are almost too many to write" and included the cons utionally protected rights to free speech, assembly and religion. It also offered no evidence.
Not all the embarrassing reports were blocked. On Nov. 13, 2009, DHS circulated a homeland information report, reaching as high as the White House situation room, that warned that terrorist leader Anwar Al-Awlaki was praising the Fort Hood shootings on his blog from Yemen. That might have been useful information, except the Los Angeles Times, ABC News and other news outlets had reported on the information four days earlier.
According to the subcommittee study, the author of that report later received an evaluation of "Achieved Excellence" from bosses who recommend him for promotion, citing the cribbed media stories as "a signature accomplishment."
Also, there appeared to be little penalty for agents who overstepped their authority.
"The DHS officials who filed useless, problematic or even potentially illegal reports generally faced no sanction for their actions, according to do ents and interviews," the Senate committee found. "Supervisors spoke with them about their errors, but those problems were not noted on the reporting officials’ annual performance reviews. ... In fact, the subcommittee investigation was able to identify only one case in which an official with a history of serious reporting issues faced any consequences for his mistakes -- he was required to attend an extra week of reporting training."
The senators' report echoes the fears of a separate report issued last month by the Cons ution Project, which warned that because the fusion centers are so poorly organized and ill-defined that they pose a high risk of violating Americans' civil liberties while providing little useful information.
http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news...port-says?liteThe Senate panel found 40 reports -- including the three listed above -- that were drafted at fusion centers by Homeland Security officials, then later “nixed” by officials in Washington after reviewers “raised concerns the do ents potentially endangered the civil liberties or legal privacy protections of the U.S. persons they mentioned.”
Despite being scrapped, however, the Senate report concluded that “these reports should not have been drafted at all.” It also noted that the reports were stored at Homeland Security headquarters in Washington, D.C., for a year or more after they had been canceled —a potential violation of the U.S. Privacy Act, which prohibits federal agencies from storing information on U.S. citizens’ First Amendment-protected activities if there is no valid reason to do so.
The report said the retention of these reports also appears to contradict Homeland Security’s own guidelines, which state that once a determination is made that a do ent should not be retained, “The U.S person identifying information is to be destroyed immediately.”
What do you expect from Homeland Insecurity?
Information makes a difference TO ME, but it makes no difference to the decline of America and the police state
http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.co....html?spref=fbNew police tech tracks cell-phone location data without provider intermediary
See an amicus brief (pdf) and press release from the national ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation about yet another cell-phone tracking device used by law enforcement that any new, restrictive Texas legislation filed next year should try to account for: "Stingray" phone surveillance. Here's a description of the new technology from ComputerWorld's Darlene Storm:
Let’s say you have your cell phone with you, even if you are not talking or texting, otherwise minding your own business, innocent of being suspected of any crime . . . but hey your privacy can be invaded as if you have no Fourth Amendment rights at all. A portable device known as an IMSI catcher, also known by the generic term stingray, acts like a fake cell tower and tricks your mobile device into connecting to it even if you are not on a call. It is used for real time location tracking; some can pinpoint you within two meters as well as eavesdrop and capture the contents of your communications. There’s been a stink about them for a little more than a year, but three big privacy and civil liberty groups, the ACLU, EPIC and the EFF have all warned that the secretive devices threaten your rights and that the invasive technology is uncons utional.The ACLU/EFF amicus was filed, wrote Storm, in a case out of Arizona, but it turns out a federal magistrate judge in Texas has been recently been plowing the same earth. "Judge Brian Owsley in Texas pushed back against the warrantless use of stingrays, not once but twice, the Wall Street Journal reported." Indeed, the Wall Street Journal has been all over the Stingray story, which (to my knowledge) they broke about a year ago do enting its warrantless use by the FBI. That earlier WSJ story mentioned that the same manufacturer, "holds trademarks registered between 2002 and 2008 on several devices, including the StingRay, StingRay II, AmberJack, KingFish, TriggerFish and LoggerHead." That piqued my interest because the Fort Worth PD not long ago purchased a KingFish system. (Who knows whether other Texas agencies have purchased similar systems or not?)
Anyway, bully for Judge Owsley! Here's a link to his most recent order, and an earlier opinion on the same subject. This week's Wall Street Journal story on his cell-site orders opened, "A judge in Texas is raising questions about whether investigators are giving courts enough details on technological tools that let them get data on all the cellphones in an area, including those of innocent people." The Journal story concluded:
In the Texas cases, Judge Owsley held hearings to determine what devices were being used. Ultimately, he wrote that stingrays and cell tower dumps did not fall within the categories of tools that Congress has said can be used without a warrant.In the end, wrote Judge Owsley, "cell-site data are protected pursuant to the Fourth Amendment from warrantless searches. Thus, the Government could obtain the cell site data only by establishing probable cause pursuant to Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure." Orin Kerr said Owsley's opinion "relies primarily on Magistrate Judge Smith’s decision now on appeal before the Fifth Circuit that held that cell-site data is protected under the Fourth Amendment and compelling it therefore requires a warrant."
According to Judge Owsley’s order, the U.S. attorney in the stingray case said the application was based on a standard model approved by the Department of Justice and indicated he would give the judge more examples of law supporting the application. But that memo, Judge Owsley writes, was never provided to the court.
Two lessons arise for any privacy legislation going forward next spring at the Texas Lege tht may address these issues: 1) the language must be flexible enough to account for rapidly changing technology, and 2) it should echo Judge Owsley's decision to require a warrant, as opposed to a lesser court order based on reasonable su ion. That latter, weaker standard is what the government would prefer in the federal cases (see the ACLU/EFF amicus for more detail) and what, as I understand it, Texas law requires now for traditional GPS tracking. Technology is outpacing statutory Fourth Amendment protections at a dizzying clip, and nowhere is that more true than with regards to cell/smart phone data.
These cases, either way, are the beginning of a long discussion that will inevitably end up in SCOTUS' lap. Personally, I'd like to see the legislative branch for once, both state and federal, try to get ahead of the curve rather than wait for judges to write the law after the technology has been in use for years.
The rub: Technology is outpacing statutory Fourth Amendment protections at a dizzying clip, and nowhere is that more true than with regards to cell/smart phone data.
The statutory warrant only seems to be a stop gap action.
"under Obama" ? as if he personally ordered it?
and does any right-winger "FREEDOM! LIBERTY! DONT TREAD ON ME! WATER THE TREE WITH BLOOD!" loving person here think Gecko/Ryan will stop or reverse Big Brotherhood or Petraeus/SOCOM/drones?
Obama defended it, Obama expanded it. I'd expect Romney to do much the same.
“As part of its concerted campaign to prosecute whistleblowers and to classify state secrets,”writes Jeff Rosen at The New Republic, “the Obama administration has taken a position in Clapper that makes the Bush administration pro-secrecy campaign seem pale in comparison: namely, that no one can challenge warrantless surveillance unless the government tells you in advance that you’re being surveilled—which national security interests prevent it from doing.”
The New York Times called the Obama administration’s position in the case “a particularly cynical Catch-22: Because the wiretaps are secret and no one can say for certain that their calls have been or will be monitored, no one has standing to bring suit over the surveillance.”
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