False flags are used to stop the rise of liberty

July 25, 2012

Although this article applies mostly to North America and Europe, the truth is that the model used to bring down liberty there will soon be utilized all over the world.

By MIKE ADAMS | NATURALNEWS | JULY 25, 2012

In the tragic aftermath of the Aurora, Colorado shooting which has all the earmarks of a staged “false flag” event, a follow-up false flag now appears imminent. To be effective in achieving its political aim, it will have to be orders of magnitude larger and more deadly than what took place in Colorado. This article is largely focused on the safety solutions for you and your family, because above all I want people to be safe. But before we get that part, let’s explore the logical reasoning behind why another false flag attack appears imminent.

For starters, the Batman movie theater shooting was obviously staged (http://www.naturalnews.com/036536_James_Holmes_shooting_false_flag.ht…).

The evidence of this includes eyewitness reports of multiple shooters, James Holmes being drugged out of his mind in court (a common tactic used against patsies), his work as a graduate student in a government-funded neuroscience program that specifically researched altered perception of time and reality, and Holmes having somehow obtained the skill set to build a highly complex maze of makeshift grenades, binary liquid explosives, intricate flammable devices, trip wires and booby traps. The attack in Aurora, Colorado was not a run-of-the-mill random violent act by a graduate student; it was a carefully planned, plotted, funded, and well-trained attack carried out for a specific purpose.

This fact is now obvious to well-informed NaturalNews readers, who, compared to the general public, tend to have far more in-depth knowledge of the way the world works. But as our stories have recently received unprecedented readership — NaturalNews.com recently surged beyond the web traffic of the BBC (source: Alexa.com) — it has unfortunately reached the “dumbed-down masses” who aren’t regular alternative news readers and therefore have very little knowledge of reality.

So for those who don’t believe any of this, simply go back to sleep and change the channel. It is not mandatory for you to understand reality in order to experience it. But for those who seek understanding and knowledge of the real forces at work in our world, keep reading.

What was the purpose of the attack?

Once you realize the attack was planned, funded and carried out for a deliberate purpose, the obvious question becomes: For what purpose was it carried out?

The answer to that question is found in many places, including the novel 1984 by George Orwell, in which the nation state is locked in a perpetual state of fabricated war in order for the government to maintain total control over its population. It is now well established that the Oklahoma City bombing was conducted for much the same purpose, as it explained in the outstanding documentary “A Noble Lie” (http://www.anoblelie.com). Do not make the mistake of thinking you know the true history of Oklahoma City unless you’ve seen this documentary. Had the Oklahoma City bombing been carried out today, during the time of the ubiquitous internet, it would have been almost instantly revealed to be a staged false flag attack. The official explanation of the event is so self-contradictory — and the cover-up so sloppy — that it only succeeded due to a mainstream media monopoly which existed at the time but has since been shattered by the rise of the alternative, independent media like NaturalNews.

The real history of the world — not the fairy tale history you were taught in government-run schools — is a history of government groups and leaders staging events to blame them on their enemies. The “false flag” tactic is so remarkably effective that it has been used since the time of the Romans and continues to this day. Anyone who does not yet realize this truth is simply ignorant of factual history. America’s public school system, of course, is run by the government itself which selectively alters accounts of history to fit its present-day political fairy tale. This altered history is also depicted in great detail in the novel 1984. (http://www.amazon.com/Nineteen-Eighty-Four-Centennial-Edition-George/…)

A similarly fresh look at actual history is also described in the outstanding book by the progressive author Howard Zinn entitled, “A People’s History of American Empire.” (http://www.amazon.com/A-Peoples-History-American-Empire/dp/0805087443) This book reveals the imperialist side of American history that’s almost never taught in public school. An even more interesting read, by the way, is A Patriot’s History of the United States: From Columbus’s Great Discovery to the War on Terror (http://www.amazon.com/Patriots-History-United-States-Columbuss/dp/159…). And I highly recommend “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” by John Perkins (http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/dp/045228…) as well as “The Secret History of the American Empire,” also by Perkins (http://www.amazon.com/The-Secret-History-American-Empire/dp/045228957…).

What we learn from the open-minded study of history often shatters whatever youthful illusions we may have been taught in school. As it turns out, individuals in government who insatiably seek power are not just cruel and inhumane; they’re often sociopathic. They have a disease, and that disease makes them think they can create a perfect world if everybody else would simply do as they’re told. This disease quickly festers into tyranny; and tyranny into genocide.

Once this disease takes hold of their minds — as it routinely does with Senators, Presidents, dictators and others who incessantly seek power — there is absolutely nothing they won’t do in order to feed their desire for yet more power. Tactics used by these tyrants throughout the history of the world include stuffing ballot boxes, conducting assassinations, blackmailing enemies and of course staging false flag attacks to justify an expansion of power. See Operation Northwoods for an open admission that the U.S. government carefully plotted, planned and was about to carry out its own false flag terror attack in order to justify war: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

The real question to ask yourself in all this is, historically speaking, how did the 9/11 attacks help President Bush, for example? If you recall, he used the tragedy to boost his own ratings in the polls to an astonishing 80% support level, then staged a “heroic bull-horning event” by climbing a heap of rubble and ground zero and delivering a supposedly impromptu — but actually well prepared — speech that helped lay the groundwork for the liberty-crushing Patriot Act that still haunts the ghost of a free America to this day.

President Clinton reportedly credited the Oklahoma City bombings for strengthening his reelection in 1996. One well-placed bomb, it seems, can alter the fortunes of major political players. Never mind the fact that, in retrospect, all the evidence available today clearly and irrefutably points to the event having been staged by rogue elements within the U.S. government itself. Again, see the film “A Noble Lie” for a full review of the stunning evidence.

Similarly, President Reagan has the staged embassy hostage crisis in 1980 to thank for his victory over President Carter. Those hostages were released the very same day Reagan was sworn in as President. “The hostages were formally released into United States custody the following day, just minutes after the new American president Ronald Reagan was sworn into office,” reports Wikipedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis)

The point of all this is that crisis always concentrates power into the hands of the government. Therefore, staging crisis accelerates that concentration of power. Because power is what all ambitious government operatives ultimately seek, this is the primary purpose of staging a false flag attack in the first place.

The lower Obama gets in the polls, the greater the risk of a large-scale staged event

If Obama were high in the polls right now, with no risk of losing his re-election bid in November, the risk of a large-scale false flag attack in the months ahead would be minimal. It is the risk of him losing the election that creates the high risk of a false flag operation. Curiously, Obama himself may have absolutely no knowledge of any of this.

Most likely, the kind of dirty work that results in false flag attacks is carried out by “handlers” and unelected power brokers who control much of what transpires on the world stage. As long as these power brokers see Obama’s second term as a positive thing for shoring up their global control, they will pull out all the stops to make sure he gets reelected, including (but not limited to) staging a false flag event that Obama himself may not even be aware of until the last minute. It’s easier for his reaction to the tragedy to appear sufficiently authentic, after all, if he’s actually not in the loop.

Why the next false flag may be orders of magnitude larger

If the Aurora Colorado shooting was just a warm-up, a truly paradigm-altering false flag event would have to be something orders of magnitude larger and more horrifying. To really tip the scales in favor of total government control and the complete annihilation of all remaining liberties in America, a truly massive event would have to be staged (or allowed to transpire) such as:

• The release of a nuclear “dirty bomb” in a major U.S. city.
• The ICBM nuking of a major U.S. city.
• Nuclear power plant sabotage leading to meltdown.
• The mass poisoning of Americans via a water supply chemical attack.
• The release of a deadly biological weapon.
• A large-scale bombing on the scale of 9/11.

For the purposes of seizing control over the nation, the more visually horrifying the attack, the better. This provides video footage that can be played over and over again on the evening news, searing into the minds of the public the visual horror of an attack which is blamed on a selected political enemy or even an entire political movement.

Because of this, you can expect the next false flag to be:

• Very large, killing not just a dozen people but thousands.

• Very bloody, for the purpose of showing such images on the news.

• Timed to support the election of whichever President the global controllers want in office. Let’s analyze this briefly:

False flag timing: Before the election or after the election?

If an attack happens before the November election, it would support Obama and help him get reelected. If Romney wins, on the other hand, and an attack happens after the election but before the inauguration, it would support Obama declaring Martial Law and seizing control of the country under emergency powers. If Romney wins and an attack happens after the inauguration in January, it would support Romney’s and make him appear heroic much like Bush in 2001. This would soon be followed by a Romney-led push for more restrictions on whatever freedoms or liberties could be conceivably tied to the attack by the mainstream (lying) media.

So the TIMING of these events tells you a wealth of information about the PURPOSE behind them. If no false flag events are witnessed between now and early 2013, it would indicate that the global controllers feel power is trending in their direction anyway and no special intervention is necessary.

False flags are used to stop the rise of liberty

False flags also tend to take place when the global controllers detect a “wave of liberty” starting to gain traction among the populace. When talk of liberty or the Bill of Rights begins to rise above the usual drone of infobabble, a false flag is often staged and then blamed on so-called “extremist” speech, which inevitably boils down to any speech that questions the credibility of Big Government. If you listen carefully to the rhetoric of any White House, you’ll discover that “extremism” means anything that does not agree with that particular administration’s political agenda. In 1943, growing your own food and even selling fresh milk was considered an act of patriotism — victory gardens! But in 2012, selling fresh milk is considered a criminal activity associated with the “sovereign” movement which, itself, is linked to so-called “extremism.”

This, itself, should be a red alert warning that tyranny has arrived. When the simple pursuit of life, liberty and happiness is equated with extremism by the government, it’s a sign that we’ve all fallen deeper down the rabbit hole of tyranny than you might have suspected.

As further evidence of false flags being used to stifle the rise of liberty, consider this: The Oklahoma City bombing was staged just as “right wing” ideas were gaining audience share on talk radio. Regardless of whether you prefer the adrenaline jolt of Alex Jones or the hypnotic drone of NPR, the attempted blaming of Rush Limbaugh following the Oklahoma City bombing was one of the most cowardly and absurd political attempts to censor free speech that our nation has ever witnessed. We may or may not agree with Rush, but if we are true Americans, we must at least agree that the man has the right to speak his mind.

Similarly, in 2001 as the “patriot movement” was gaining steam, the 9/11 attacks turned the tables on the freedom movement and resulted in the suffocating “Patriot Act” being passed that gave the government vast new police powers for surveillance, arrest, detention and more. Never mind the fact that building 7 was never even hit by airplanes and yet was quite obviously brought down by an expert demolition team using a highly engineered maze of intricately-timed explosive charges that had to have been placed in the building weeks in advance (http://www.naturalnews.com/033684_911_truth_WTC_7.html).

Whatever next false flag event is being planned could be the final nail in the coffin for American liberty. Obama has already put in place the NDAA that denies Americans due process (http://www.naturalnews.com/034537_NDAA_Bill_of_Rights_Obama.html). He promised to never use it, but that promise will, of course, be instantly revoked once a sufficiently large attack takes place. One nuclear explosion, placed not only in the right city, but more importantly in the right narrative context via the media and government, could condemn an entire generation of Americans to suffocating under the boot of tyranny, stripped of all rights, enslaved by a dictatorial police state regime that they falsely believe is protecting them from the very terrorism it initiated.

One attack away from total surrender

Today, America is just one large false flag event away from surrendering to total government dictatorship… assuming the horrifying event can be properly blamed on the right parties — in this case, anyone who believes in the U.S. Constitution or the Bill of Rights, or even someone who is a supporter of the ACLU and the concept of “civil rights.”

In the footsteps of a sufficiently large false flag attack — something on the scale of a nuclear attack on a major U.S. city, for example — you can expect all the following to be rolled out:

• TSA on street corners, in shopping malls, movie theaters, a total police state rollout.

• Domestic units of the U.S. military running patrols, going door to door and demanding everyone’s firearms. (Already happened in New Orleans following hurricane Katrina.)

• Frequent roadside checkpoints run either by the TSA or the military, complete with bulletproof checkpoint booths, strip searches and frequent sexual molestation by TSA pedophiles and perverts. (http://www.naturalnews.com/035607_government_checkpoints_Martial_Law….)

• The activation of FEMA camps and the hustling of “economic refugees” into those camps to be starved to death or exterminated, all in secret. Watch the “lost” episode of Jesse Ventura’s “Conspiracy Theory” show on FEMA camps right here: http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=C67234C7049D2AB2F3D897B805FEFEC2

• The abolishment of the Second Amendment and the forced confiscation — at gunpoint — of all guns from private citizens, thereby concentrating control of those guns in the hands of the government. This imbalance of power is always necessary right before governments commit mass genocide.

• Total government control over the internet. An outlawing of all online speech that criticizes the government or reports the truth about anything. Only the White House version of events (fairy tales) will be allowed. All else will be censored or shut down.

• The “secret disappearance” of journalists, activists or anyone who dares to ask legitimate questions about what’s going on.

• The inevitable rise of an underground railroad information network which seeks to expose the lies of government and the real story behind the false flag attacks.

• A massive, nationwide rollout of spy drones to surveil all Americans from the sky.

• The recruitment and deployment of at least 500,000 new “citizen spies” who work as informants for the Department of Homeland Security and are given cash rewards for calling in accusatory reports about their neighbors, family members or even their own parents. “My daddy said he didn’t like the government!” “Don’t worry, little boy, agents are on their way to make an arrest…” Watch for the rolling out of thought crimes enforcers like those depicted in the sci-fi movie Minority Report.

• The complete abolition of freedom. No home gardens, no weapons in the hands of citizens, no public protests, no banking privacy, no choice in anything that really matters. This is what’s coming if another sufficiently large false flag attack is rolled out in America.

How to protect yourself from the next false flag attack

Here’s the really important part of this article. First there is the question of how to protect yourself from the attack itself. And then, secondly, there’s the question of how to protect yourself from the rise of the police state which follows the attack.

Protecting yourself from the initial attack is fairly straightforward:

#1) Don’t live in a major U.S. city. All the likely targets are, of course, high population density areas. They include Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, Houston and Chicago. Each day that you live in a large U.S. city is a day of risk that you will be caught in a false flag attack.

#2) Have your preparedness pack ready. Make sure you cover all the basics: Stored food, water, water filters, communications, first aid, self defense and so on. (See resources, below.)

#3) Have a bug-out location ready. Whether it’s a family member’s house in the country or a cabin in the woods, have a bug-out location picked out and ready in advance. Read the book “Patriots” by James Wesley Rawles. (http://www.amazon.com/Patriots-Surviving-James-Wesley-Rawles/dp/15697…)

#3) Practice bugging out without using the major roads or highways. Remember, all major roads will either be clogged with traffic or held to a standstill due to TSA checkpoints. You’ll need an alternate route.

#4) Have radiation pills and pandemic defense pills ready. Radiation pills are, of course, KI pills (potassium iodide). “Pandemic defense pills” are, above all, high-dose vitamin D supplements but may also include upper respiratory defensive herbal tinctures such as Lomatium or star anise. Radiation detection stickers — “Rad Stickers” — are available atwww.SupplySource.com

The false flag depopulation strategy via a staged biological attack

Understand, importantly, that in the case of a biological attack, the higher the fatality of a biological weapon, the faster it burns out through the population. It would be a tactical mistake for an enemy of the People to develop and release a biological weapon with, for example, a fast-acting “98% kill rate” because its overall fatality would be low due to the fact that its carrierswould die before they could spread it to others.

The most “effective” biological weapon to deploy in terms of an enemy attack or a false flag staged attack is one with a fatality rate under five percent. This way, 95% of the population becomes “carriers” while even a five percent death rate is enough to spread mass fear and terror and therefore accomplish the desired political aim.

A biological attack is very, very easy to blame on anyone you wish. All the evidence needed to convict someone of, for example, breaking into a laboratory, stealing biological weapons samples, then releasing them in a major airport can simply be fabricated at will. We’ve all seen, for example, Forrest Gump shaking hands with President Nixon (http://www.ugo.com/tv/guide-to-green-screens-forrest-gump), even though such an event never took place. Today’s video engineering technology makes it ridiculously easy for a government to fabricate convincing evidence and thereby blame anyone they wish.

Should a biological attack actually unfold, expect to see the CDC spearheading calls for mandatory “gunpoint” vaccinations of the entire population. Anyone who resists will be condemned a “threat to public health,” arrested, quarantined and forcibly vaccines. All the vaccines, of course, will be laced with infertility chemicals or stealth viruses (http://www.naturalnews.com/033584_Dr_Maurice_Hilleman_SV40.html). This is the ultimate goal of the globalists: to get the population to voluntarily line up to be injected with what are essentially infertility chemicals and thereby remove those individuals from the future of the human gene pool.

For review, here’s how a biological false flag would likely be structured:

Development of biological weapon with under 5% mortality but high spread rate –> False flag biological weapons release –> Blame framed on convenient enemy –> Outbreak of fear multiplied by the media –> CDC calls for mandatory vaccines –> People line up for vaccines –> Vaccines are laced with stealth infertility viruses –> Population reduction goal accomplished.

Bill Gates declares history and the human gene pool collapses by 50 – 90 percent, removing from the gene pool the DNA of people who are foolish enough to follow government medical instructions. In globalist circles, this is probably referred to as “natural selection,” and they may actually be right about that point.

Learn more details about surviving any false flag attack in my course, “How to protect and defend yourself, your family and your property during the coming collapse” at: www.HealthRangerLive.com

How to protect yourself AFTER the attack

This is where things get tricky. Surviving the initial attack is relatively straightforward, but making it through the subsequent police state will be nothing short of a nightmare.

Before every revolution of liberty, it seems, there must be a period of great suffering before awakening achieves a critical mass. People don’t realize what’s going on, in other words, until the situation gets really, really bad. And usually by that time the police state tyranny is deeply entrenched and the secret arrests (or mass murders) have already begun. (Read your history, folks, if this doesn’t already ring a bell for you.)

The ultimate answer to surviving the situation after the attack is to help defend and restore liberty in your country. During that effort, surviving means laying low and avoiding direct confrontation with the oppressive government while working to restore Democracy and defend the Republic.

You cannot individually achieve victory against a tyrannical police state by using force. No one person — or even a small group of people — can out-gun the military, for example. The real victory is achieved through information that ultimately educates the masses to the point where the military refuses to support an oppressive regime; hence the name “info war” to describe the process by which victory is achieved through education and the spread of liberating information.

Becoming part of the info war, even in the form of being an advocate of the “underground information railroad,” is crucial to restoring Democracy and the Republic. The laborious process of achieving an overthrow of any given tyranny may take years of dedication and suffering. During this time, all the basic supplies you need to live will be in short supply because they will be controlled by the government: food, medicine, electricity, gasoline, heating fuel, precious metals and probably even garden seeds. A large underground economy will spring up, and people will begin to engage in new crimes such as “seed smuggling” or “selling home-grown vegetables” — both of which will be felony crimes because they express a level of freedom that the tyrannical government will not tolerate. (See the movie “Hunger Games” for a dystopian futuristic depiction of this.)

Because of this, the more you take action TODAY to store food, medicine, seeds, silver, ammo and other basic necessities (even pencils and toilet paper), the better you’ll be able to cushion yourself against the starvation, disease and destitution put in place by the government itself. Governments gone bad inevitably do this because every tyrant drives his own population into poverty in order to create vast wealth gaps between the enslaved masses and the government rulers. North Korea is perhaps the best example of this today, but other examples abound across the span of history (Stalin, Mao, Hitler, etc).

Thus, once again, your best defense against the aftermath of a false flag attack is to have street smarts about avoiding arrest and staying out of trouble while also having a hidden store of essential goods that can keep you healthy, alive and “wealthy” in the barter sense. Meanwhile, fight to protect and defend the Constitution (if you’re an American) against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. Restore liberty, resist tyranny and stay alive.

Survival nutrition

Among all the topics I cover, I have perhaps become best known as a “survival nutritionist,” meaning I specialize in survival nutrition strategies. In the Middle Ages, kings maintained power over their enslaved populations by, in part, starving them to the point of stunted growth. This is why kings, knights and royal families were physically larger and intimidating: the peons were starved into small stature while the royal families consumed an excess of calories that simply were not allowed to the working poor.

The crucial point to understand here is that if the government can separate you from real food, they can eventually control you. So one of the best defenses against tyranny is to have your own stores of highly nutritious foods – superfoods are best. As a side note, Monsanto seeks corporate control over the world’s food supply through intellectual property claims over genetically modified seeds. This, too, is a form of corporate tyranny that parallels the aims of many governments.

Importantly, getting squared away with emergency preparedness nutrition does not, in my opinion, mean rush out and buy the cheap, low-cost “survival” foods commonly sold everywhere. Most of these foods are highly processed, nutritionally depleted, laced with MSG (yeast extract) and manufactured using GMOs. The absolute best source of emergency survival nutrition is none other than sprouting seeds and a sprouting tray kit.

These are all sold at Green PolkaDot Box, a supplier of mostly organic and non-GMO foods and groceries. Their supply of sprouting seeds is perfect for emergency preparedness.

The next best thing to store is superfood powders which include several ideal brands: Boku Superfood, Living Fuel, Enerfood, Healthforce, Vega, Rejuvenate and so on. I strongly recommend only high-end brands and to avoid cheap superfoods with a lot of filler such as soy lecithin. It’s also a good idea to store high nutrient density powders such as Camu Camu powder or Pomegranate powder, both of which deliver a storehouse of disease-preventing nutrition. (Pomegranate powder is available at Green PolkaDot Box. Camu Camu powder is available at health food stores or Amazon.com.)

The emergency food miracle: chia seeds

In terms of storable nutrition, chia seeds are simply one of the best all-around solutions:

• They can be easily sprouted and consumed as living sprouts.

• They can be soaked in water and mixed with almost any other smoothie, baking recipe, salad dressings, etc.

• They’re high in omega-3 fatty acids which will be difficult to acquire during hard times.

• They have a remarkably long shelf life.

• They’re high in magnesium, a mineral that’s often difficult to acquire.

• They contain amino acids, vitamins, fiber and other valuable plant-based nutrients.

• They’re delicious and easy to use in all sorts of foods.

• They can be planted to grow more chia seeds. They grow best in hot, dry climates such as Southern California, Nevada, Utah and Arizona, but will also do well in places like Texas and Florida if well-drained soils are available.

For this reason, I’m including some chia seed sources for you below. If you’re copying this story and pasting it on your own website, feel free to snip off that section of this story (but please give a link and credit to NaturalNews).

Best storable food staples

Beyond chia seeds, some of the best storable foods for fundamental nutrition include:

• Sardines packed in olive oil. (Very high RNA, calcium, omega-3s, etc.)

• Coconut oil (very high calories, very healthy)

• Sea salt (contains essential trace minerals)

• Raw honey (stores practically forever, useful as food and medicine, antibacterial)

• Garden seeds (for growing your own food) for an organic open-pollinated survival seed selection.

• Organic raisins (good shelf life, high nutrition, portable calories)

• Quinoa (complete protein, stores for a decade, cooks with just water)

These food staples are crucial for staying alive during a time when the government may be trying to “thin the herd” through a policy of starvation and forced immune suppression. You’ll also, of course, need a source of common carbohydrates such as wheat, kamut, rice, dried fruits, and so on. Contact your local Mormon cannery for free help on getting squared away with stored foods (Mormons are, without question, the best-prepared religious group in North America). For the record, I’m not affiliated with the Mormon church or any particular church for that matter. I just know the Mormons are the best at this particular skill set.

Filed under Africa, Asia, English, Latin America, North America, Politics, Special Reports, World Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Human Barcoding Now Being Megaphoned as Convenient

June 2, 2012

NY DAILY NEWS | JUNE 2, 2012

Would you barcode your baby?

Microchip implants have become standard practice for our pets, but have been a tougher sell when it comes to the idea of putting them in people.

Science fiction author Elizabeth Moon last week rekindled the debate on whether it’s a good idea to “barcode” infants at birth in an interview on a BBC radio program.

“I would insist on every individual having a unique ID permanently attached — a barcode if you will — an implanted chip to provide an easy, fast inexpensive way to identify individuals,” she said on The Forum, a weekly show that features “a global thinking” discussing a “radical, inspiring or controversial idea” for 60 seconds .

Moon believes the tools most commonly used for surveillance and identification — like video cameras and DNA testing — are slow, costly and often ineffective.

In her opinion, human barcoding would save a lot of time and money.

The proposal isn’t too far-fetched – it is already technically possible to “barcode” a human – but does it violate our rights to privacy?

Opponents argue that giving up anonymity would cultivate an “Orwellian” society where all citizens can be tracked.

“To have a record of everywhere you go and everything you do would be a frightening thing,” Stanley, senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Daily News.

He warned of a “check-point society” where everyone carries an internal passport and has to show their papers at every turn, he said.

“Once we let the government and businesses go down the road of nosing around in our lives…we’re going to quickly lose all our privacy,” said Stanley.

There are already, and increasingly, ways to electronically track people. Since 2006, new U.S. passports include radio frequency identification tags (RFID) that store all the information in the passport, plus a digital picture of the owner.

In 2002, an implantable ID chip called VeriChip was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The chip could be implanted in a person’s arm, and when scanned, could pull up a 16 digit ID number containing information about the user.

It was discontinued in 2010 amid concerns about privacy and safety.

Still scientists and engineers have not given up on the idea.

A handful of enterprising companies have stepped into the void left by VeriChip, and are developing ways to integrate technology and man.

Biotech company MicroCHIPS has developed an implantable chip to deliver medicine to people on schedule and without injection. And technology company BIOPTid has patented a noninvasive method of identification called the “human barcode.”

Advocates say electronic verification could help parents or caregivers keep track of children and the elderly. Chips could be used to easily access medical information, and would make going through security points more convenient, reports say.

But there are also concerns about security breaches by hackers. If computers and social networks are already vulnerable to hacking and identify theft, imagine if someone could get access to your personal ID chip?

Stanley cautioned against throwing the baby out with the bathwater each time someone invents a new gadget.

“We can have security, we can have convenience, and we can have privacy,” he said. “We can have our cake and eat it too.”

Filed under English, North America, World Tagged with , , , ,

The Corporate Internet Based Reconnaissance Operations

July 6, 2011

United States government contractors partner to spy on everything to “keep us safe”.  Internet Based Reconnaissance Operations (Echelon)

Tom Burghardt
Global Research
July 6, 2011

Last week, the White House released its National Strategy for Counterterrorism, a macabre document that places a premium on “public safety” over civil liberties and constitutional rights.

Indeed, “hope and change” huckster Barack Obama had the temerity to assert that the President “bears no greater responsibility than ensuring the safety and security of the American people.”

Pity that others, including CIA “black site” prisoners tortured to death to “keep us safe” (some 100 at last count) aren’t extended the same courtesy as The Washington Post reported last week.

As Secrecy News editor Steven Aftergood correctly points out, the claim that the President “has no greater responsibility than ‘protecting the American people’ is a paternalistic invention that is historically unfounded and potentially damaging to the political heritage of the nation.”

Aftergood avers, “the presidential oath of office that is prescribed by the U.S. Constitution (Art. II, sect. 1) makes it clear that the President’s supreme responsibility is to ‘…preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.’ There is no mention of public safety. It is the constitutional order that the President is sworn to protect, even if doing so entails risks to the safety and security of the American people.”

But as our former republic slips ever-closer towards corporate dictatorship, Obama’s mendacious twaddle about “protecting the American people,” serves only to obscure, and reinforce, the inescapable fact that it’s a rigged game.

Rest assured, “what happens in Vegas,” Baghdad, Kabul or Manama–from driftnet spying to political-inspired witchhunts toillegal detention–won’t, and hasn’t, “stayed in Vegas.”

Cyber Here, Cyber There, Cyber-Surveillance Everywhere

Last month, researcher Barrett Brown and the OpMetalGear network lifted the lid on a new U.S. Government-sponsored cyber-surveillance project, Romas/COIN, now Odyssey, a multiyear, multimillion dollar enterprise currently run by defense and security giant Northrop Grumman.

With some $10.8 billion in revenue largely derived from contracts with the Defense Department, Northrop Grumman was No. 2 on the Washington Technology 2011 Top 100 List of Prime Federal Contractors.

“For at least two years,” Brown writes, “the U.S. has been conducting a secretive and immensely sophisticated campaign of mass surveillance and data mining against the Arab world, allowing the intelligence community to monitor the habits, conversations, and activity of millions of individuals at once.”

Information on this shadowy program was derived by scrutinizing hundreds of the more than 70,000 HBGary emails leaked onto the web by the cyber-guerrilla collective Anonymous.

Brown uncovered evidence that the “top contender to win the federal contract and thus take over the program is a team of about a dozen companies which were brought together in large part by Aaron Barr–the same disgraced CEO who resigned from his own firm earlier this year after he was discovered to have planned a full-scale information war against political activists at the behest of corporate clients.”

Readers will recall that Barr claimed he could exploit social media to gather information about WikiLeaks supporters in a bid to destroy that organization. Earlier this year, Barr told the Financial Times he had used scraping techniques and had infiltrated WikiLeaks supporter Anonymous, in part by using IRC, Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites.

According to emails subsequently released by Anonymous, it was revealed that the ultra rightist U.S. Chamber of Commerce had hired white shoe law firm Hunton & Williams, and that Hunton attorneys, upon recommendation of an unnamed U.S. Department of Justice official, solicited a set of private security contractors–HBGary, HBGary Federal, Palantir and Berico Technologies (collectively known as Team Themis)–and stitched-up a sabotage campaign against WikiLeaks, journalists, labor unions, progressive political groups and Chamber critics.

Amongst the firms who sought to grab the Romas/COIN/Odyssey contract from Northrop when it came up for a “recompete” wasTASC, which describes itself as “a renowned provTASC, ider of advanced systems engineering, integration and decision-support services across the intelligence, defense, homeland security and federal markets.”

According to Bloomberg BusinessWeek, TASC’s head of “Cybersecurity Initiatives,” Larry Strang, was formerly a Vice President with Northrop Grumman who led that firm’s Cybersecurity Group and served as Northrop’s NSA Account Manager. Prior to that, Strang, a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel, was Vice President for Operations at the spooky Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC).

Brown relates that emails between TASC executives Al Pisani, John Lovegrow and former HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr, provided details that they “were in talks with each other as well as Mantech executive Bob Frisbie on a ‘recompete’ pursuant to ‘counter intelligence’ operations that were already being conducted on behalf of the federal government by another firm, SAIC, with which they hoped to compete for contracts.”

In fact, HBGary Federal and TASC may have been cats-paws for defense giant ManTech International in the race to secure U.S. Government cyber-surveillance contracts. Clocking in at No. 22on Washington Technology’s ”2011 Top 100 list,” ManTech earned some $1.46 billion in 2010, largely derived from work in “systems engineering and integration, technology and software development, enterprise security architecture, intelligence operations support, critical infrastructure protection and computer forensics.” The firm’s major customers include the Defense Department, Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon’s geek squad that is busily working to develop software for their Cyber Insider Threat (CINDER) program.

Both HBGary Federal and parent company HBGary, a California-based security firm run by the husband-wife team, Greg Hoglund and Penny Leavy, had been key players for the design of malware, undetectable rootkits and other “full directory exfiltration tools over TCP/IP” for the Defense Department according to documents released by the secret-shredding web site Public Intelligence.

Additional published documents revealed that they and had done so in close collaboration with General Dynamics (Project Cand Task Z), which had requested “multiple protocols to be scoped as viable options … for VoIP (Skype) protocol, BitTorrent protocol, video over HTTP (port 80), and HTTPS (port 443)” for unnamed secret state agencies.

According to Brown, it appears that Romas/COIN/Odyssey was also big on social media surveillance, especially when it came to “Foreign Mobile” and “Foreign Web” monitoring. Indeed, documents published by Public Intelligence (scooped-up by the HBGary-Anonymous hack) was a ManTech International-HBGary collaboration describing plans for Internet Based Reconnaissance Operations. The October 2010 presentation described plans that would hand “customers,” presumably state intelligence agencies but also, as revealed by Anonymous, corporate security entities and public relations firms, the means to perform “native language searching” combined with “non-attributable architecture” and a “small footprint” that can be “as widely or narrowly focused as needed.”

ManTech and HBGary promised to provide customers the ability to “Locate/Profile Internet ‘Points of Interest’” on “individuals, companies, ISPs” and “organizations,” and would do so through “detailed network mapping” that will “identify registered networks and registered domains”; “Graphical network representation based on Active Hosts”; “Operating system and network application identification”; “Identification of possible perimeter defenses” through “Technology Research, Intelligence Gap Fill, Counterintelligence Research” and “Customer Public Image Assessment.”

The presentation described the social media monitoring process as one that would “employ highly skilled network professionals (read, ex-spooks and former military intelligence operatives) who will use “Non-attributable Internet access, custom developed toolsets and techniques, Native Language and in-country techniques” that “utilize foreign language search engines, mapping tools” and “iterative researching methodologies” for searching “Websites, picture sites, mapping sites/programs”; “Blogs and social networking sites”; “Forums and Bulletin Boards”; “Network Information: Whois, Trace Route, NetTroll, DNS”; “Archived and cached websites.”

Clients who bought into the ManTech-HBGary “product” were promised “Rapid Non-attributable Open Source Research Results”; “Sourced Research Findings”; “Triage level Analysis”; “Vulnerability Assessment” and “Graphical Network and Social Diagramming” via data mining and extensive link analysis.

Undoubtedly, readers recall this is precisely what the National Security Agency has been doing since the 1990s, if not earlier, through their electronic communications intercept program Echelon, a multibillion Pentagon project that conducted corporate espionage for American multinational firms as researcher Nicky Hager revealed in his 1997 piece for Covert Action Quarterly.

Other firms included in Lovegrove’s email to Barr indicate that the new Romas/COIN/Odyssey “team” was to have included: “TASC (PMO [Project Management Operations], creative services); HBGary (Strategy, planning, PMO); Akamai (infrastructure); Archimedes Global (Specialized linguistics, strategy, planning); Acclaim Technical Services (specialized linguistics); Mission Essential Personnel (linguistic services); Cipher (strategy, planning operations); PointAbout (rapid mobile application development, list of strategic partners); Google (strategy, mobile application and platform development–long list of strategic partners); Apple (mobile and desktop platform, application assistance–long list of strategic partners). We are trying to schedule an interview with ATT plus some other small app developers.”

Recall that AT&T is the NSA’s prime telecommunications partner in that agency’s illegal driftnet surveillance program and has been the recipient of “retroactive immunity” under the despicable FISA Amendments Act, a law supported by then-Senator Barack Obama. Also recall that the giant tech firm Apple was recently mired in scandal over reports that their mobile phone platform had, without their owners’ knowledge or consent, speared geolocational data from the iPhone and then stored this information in an Apple-controlled data base accessible to law enforcement through various “lawful interception” schemes.

“Whatever the exact nature and scope of COIN,” Brown writes, “the firms that had been assembled for the purpose by Barr and TASC never got a chance to bid on the program’s recompete. In late September, Lovegrove noted to Barr and others that he’d spoken to the ‘CO [contracting officer] for COIN’.” The TASC executive told Barr that “the current procurement approach” was cancelled, citing “changed requirements.”

Apparently the Pentagon, or other unspecified secret state satrapy told the contestants that “an updated RFI [request for information]” will be issued soon. According to a later missive from Lovegrove to Barr, “COIN has been replaced by a procurement called Odyssey.” While it is still not entirely clear what Romas/COIN or the Odyssey program would do once deployed, Brown claims that “mobile phone software and applications constitute a major component of the program.”

And given Barr’s monomaniacal obsession with social media surveillance (that worked out well with Anonymous!) the presence of Alterian and SocialEyez on the procurement team may indicate that the secret state is alarmed by the prospect that the “Arab Spring” just might slip from proverbial “safe hands” and threaten Gulf dictatorships and Saudi Arabia with the frightening specter of democratic transformation.

Although the email from TASC executive Chris Clair to John Lovegrow names “Alterion” as a company to contact because of their their “SM2 tool,” in all likelihood this is a typo given the fact that it is the UK-based firm “Alterian” that has developed said SM2 tool, described on their web site as a “business intelligence product that provides visibility into social media and lets you tap into a new kind of data resource; your customers’ direct thoughts and opinions.”

This would be a highly-profitable partnership indeed for enterprising intelligence agencies and opaque corporate partners intent on monitoring political developments across the Middle East.

In fact, a 2010 press release, announced that Alterian had forged a partnership with the Dubai-based firm SocialEyez for “the world’s first social media monitoring service designed for the Arab market.”

We’re informed that SocialEyez, a division of Media Watch Middle East, described as “the leading media monitoring service in the Middle East,” offers services in “television, radio, social media, online news and internet monitoring across most sectors including commercial, government and PR.”

That Barr and his partners were interested in bringing these firms to the Romas/COIN table is not surprising considering that the Alterian/SocialEyez deal promises “to develop and launch an Arabic language interface for Alterian SM2 to make it the world’s first Arab language social media monitoring tool.” Inquiring minds can’t help but wonder which three-lettered American agencies alongside a stable of “corporate and government clients, including leading Blue Chips” might be interested in “maximising their social media monitoring investment”?

Pentagon “Manhunters” in the House

On an even more sinister note, the inclusion of Archimedes Global on the Romas/COIN team should set alarm bells ringing.

Archimedes is a small, privately-held niche security firm headquartered in Tampa, Florida where, surprise, surprise, U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) has it’s main headquarters at the MacDill Air Force Base. On their web site, Archimedes describes itself as “a diversified technology company providing energy and information solutions to government and businesses worldwide.” The firm claims that it “delivers solutions” to its clients by “combining deep domain expertise, multi-disciplinary education and training, and technology-enabled innovations.”

While short on information regarding what it actually does, evidence suggests that the firm is chock-a-block with former spooks and Special Forces operators, skilled in the black arts of counterintelligence, various information operations, subversion and, let’s be frank, tasks euphemistically referred to in the grisly trade as “wet work.”

According to The Washington Post, the firm was established in 2005. However, although the Post claims in their “Top Secret America” series that the number of employees and revenue is “unknown,” Dana Priest and William M. Arkin note that Archimedes have five government clients and are have speared contracts relating to “Ground forces operations,” “Human intelligence,” Psychological operations,” and “Specialized military operations.”

Brown relates that Archimedes was slated to provide “Specialized linguistics, strategy, planning” for the proposed Romas/COIN/Odyssey project for an unknown U.S. Government entity.

Based on available evidence however, one can speculate that Archimedes may have been chosen as part of the HBGary Federal/TASC team precisely because of their previous work as private contractors in human intelligence (HUMINT), running spies and infiltrating assets into organizations of interest to the CIA and Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) throughout the Middle East, Central- and South Asia.

In 2009, Antifascist Calling revealed that one of Archimedes Global’s senior directors, retired Air Force Lt. Colonel George A. Crawford, published a chilling monograph, Manhunting: Counter-Network Organizing for Irregular Warfare, for the highly-influential Joint Special Operations University (JSOU) at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa.

JSOU is the “educational component” of United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM). With a mission that touts its ability to “plan and synchronize operations” against America’s geopolitical adversaries and rivals, JSOU’s Strategic Studies Department “advances SOF strategic influence by its interaction in academic, interagency, and United States military communities.”

Accordingly, Archimedes “information and risk” brief claim they can solve “the most difficult communication and risk problems by seeing over the horizon with a blend of art and science.” And with focus areas that include “strategic communications, media analysis and support, crisis communications, and risk and vulnerability assessment and mitigation,” it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to infer that those well-schooled in the dark art of information operations (INFOOPS) would find a friendly home inside the Romas/COIN contract team.

With some 25-years experience “as a foreign area officer specializing in Eastern Europe and Central Asia,” including a stint “as acting Air and Defense Attaché to Kyrgyzstan,” Crawford brings an interesting skill-set to the table. Crawford writes:

Manhunting–the deliberate concentration of national power to find, influence, capture, or when necessary kill an individual to disrupt a human network–has emerged as a key component of operations to counter irregular warfare adversaries in lieu of traditional state-on-state conflict measures. It has arguably become a primary area of emphasis in countering terrorist and insurgent opponents. (George A. Crawford, Manhunting: Counter-Network Organization for Irregular Warfare, JSOU Report 09-7, The JSOU Press, Hurlburt Field, Florida, September 2009, p. 1)

Acknowledged manhunting masters in their own right, the Israeli settler-colonial security apparat have perfected the art of “targeted killing,” when they aren’t dropping banned munitions such as white phosphorus on unarmed, defenseless civilian populations or attacking civilian vessels on the high seas.

Like their Israeli counterparts who come highly recommended as models of restraint, an American manhunting agency will employ similarly subtle, though no less lethal, tactics. Crawford informs us:

When compared with conventional force-on-force warfare, manhunting fundamentally alters the ratio between warfare’s respective firepower, maneuver, and psychological elements. Firepower becomes less significant in terms of mass, while the precision and discretion with which firepower is employed takes on tremendous significance, especially during influence operations. Why drop a bomb when effects operations or a knife might do? (Crawford, op. cit., p. 11, emphasis added)

Alongside actual shooters, “sensitive site exploitation (SSE) teams are critical operational components for Pentagon “manhunters.” We’re told that SSE teams will be assembled and able to respond on-call “in the event of a raid on a suspect site or to conduct independent ‘break-in and search’ operations without leaving evidence of their intrusion.” Such teams must possess “individual skills” such as “physical forensics, computer or electronic exploitation, document exploitation, investigative techniques, biometric collection, interrogation/debriefing and related skills.”

As if to drive home the point that the target of such sinister operations are the American people and world public opinion, Crawford, ever the consummate INFOOPS warrior, views “strategic information operations” as key to this murderous enterprise. Indeed, they “must be delicately woven into planned kinetic operations to increase the probability that a given operation or campaign will achieve its intended effect.”

Personnel skilled at conducting strategic information operations–to include psychological operations, public information, deception, media and computer network operations, and related activities–are important for victory. Despite robust DoD and Intelligence Community capabilities in this area, efforts to establish organizations that focus information operations have not been viewed as a positive development by the public or the media, who perceive government-sponsored information efforts with suspicion. Consequently, these efforts must take place away from public eyes. Strategic information operations may also require the establishment of regional or local offices to ensure dissemination of influence packages and assess their impact. Thus manhunting influence may call for parallel or independent structures at all levels…” (Crawford, op. cit., pp. 27-28, emphasis added)

While we do not as yet have a complete picture of the Romas/COIN/Odyssey project, some preliminary conclusions can be drawn.

“Altogether, then,” Brown writes, “a successful bid for the relevant contract was seen to require the combined capabilities of perhaps a dozen firms–capabilities whereby millions of conversations can be monitored and automatically analyzed, whereby a wide range of personal data can be obtained and stored in secret, and whereby some unknown degree of information can be released to a given population through a variety of means and without any hint that the actual source is U.S. military intelligence.”

Although Brown’s initial research concluded that Romas/COIN/Odyssey will operate “in conjunction with other surveillance and propaganda assets controlled by the U.S. and its partners,” with a firm like Archimedes on-board, once information has been assembled on individuals described in other contexts as “radicals” or “key extremists,” will they subsequently be made to “disappear” into the hands of “friendly” security services such as those of strategic U.S. partners Bahrain and Saudi Arabia?

We’re reminded that “Barr was also at the center of a series of conspiracies by which his own company and two others hired out their collective capabilities for use by corporations that sought to destroy their political enemies by clandestine and dishonest means.”

Indeed, “none of the companies involved,” Brown writes, have been investigated; a proposed Congressional inquiry was denied by the committee chair, noting that it was the Justice Department’s decision as to whether to investigate, even though it was the Justice Department itself that made the initial introductions. Those in the intelligence contracting industry who believe themselves above the law are entirely correct.”

Brown warns that “a far greater danger is posed by the practice of arming small and unaccountable groups of state and military personnel with a set of tools by which to achieve better and better ‘situational awareness’ on entire populations” while simultaneously manipulating “the information flow in such a way as to deceive those same populations.”

Beginning, it should be noted, right here at home…

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In the U.S., Government wants to kill Fourth Amendment

November 26, 2010

Obama Administration working on legislation to hold suspects indefinitely without trial. Now we know what those ‘non-existent’ FEMA Camps are for.

NPR

It is starting to look like the president who campaigned on closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay may end up doing something wholly different: signing a law that would pave the way for terrorism suspects to be held indefinitely.

Administration officials are looking at the possibility at codifying detention without trial and are awaiting legislation that is supposed to come out of Congress early next year.

Analysts say two key events have conspired to force President Obama’s hand on indefinite detention legislation. Last week, a New York jury nearly acquitted Ahmed Ghailani, a young Tanzanian who was charged with more than 280 counts of murder and conspiracy for his alleged role in the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa; and Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives in midterm elections.

Case Highlights Administration’s Dilemma

Obama administration officials had thought the Ghailani case would be a slam-dunk. Four other men were convicted of the same crime in the same New York federal court back in 2002.

But in this case, after five days of deliberation the jury convicted Ghailani of a single charge of conspiracy.

“The jury came within one count of acquitting him entirely,” says Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “And had that happened that would have put the government in an enormously difficult position because if you hold a trial and somebody is acquitted, it kind of violates our sense of what a trial is to say, well, we’re going to hold him anyway.”

Ghailani was never going to walk out of the courtroom a free man because the Obama Justice Department, from Attorney General Eric Holder on down, has made clear that if any high-profile terrorism suspects are acquitted, they will never go free. They would be held as enemy combatants instead.

Juan Zarate, a former deputy national security adviser in the Bush administration and now a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says that’s a huge problem. When prosecutors can hold someone behind bars even without proving their case the criminal trial becomes a show trial.

“When the attorney general is asked if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed [the alleged Sept. 11 mastermind] or, in this case, Ghailani is acquitted, and the answer for all intents and purposes is he’ll remain in custody regardless of the verdict, that is a problematic answer in the context of the use of the criminal legal system,” Zarate says.

“Heads I win, tails you lose, is not the way our justice system is supposed to work,” he adds.

Possible Alternatives

If holding someone indefinitely as a fallback position is a bad idea, there are only a couple of alternatives. One is to try suspects in a military commission — which operates under different rules of evidence, although analysts are quick to say that the evidence that was barred from the federal trial in the Ghailani case probably wouldn’t have been admissible in a military commission either.

Another option is to imprison terrorism suspects without ever going to trial — to just hold them.

And that’s what lawmakers are looking at now. In August, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina quietly introduced a bill that would codify indefinite detention. He wanted to answer questions such as what kind of enemy combatant could be locked up without trial? How much evidence would government need to do that?

While the idea of holding suspects indefinitely without charge is against everything the American legal system stands for, it is happening already: Mohammed was captured in March 2003 and has been in Guantanamo Bay since September 2006.

What would be new are clear rules to govern the practice. Right now, the administration says that it can hold terrorism suspects under the laws of war, a principle that has been upheld by the courts. There is also some legal cover in the resolution Congress passed in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks that provides sweeping powers to the executive to keep America safe.

“We need a framework that is legal and defensible that balances the individuals’ rights with the right of the government to defend itself,” says Zarate. “The way the Obama administration has approached this has been less than clear. They have applied different legal frameworks for different problems and that has created confusion.”

Even if the Obama administration wanted to try low-level detainees in U.S. courts, it faces so much opposition from Congress it would be hard to do. And now, with the new Republican majority in the House, what was once very hard could become impossible.

That’s why analysts say that Obama, rather than close Guantanamo, will end up having to support a law that holds suspects indefinitely. As one administration official who is privy to the deliberations told NPR, “I can’t see a way around that outcome right now.”

Zarate says the mixed verdict in the Ghailani case shows that the administration needs to define detention better than it has. “The decision on signing legislation on indefinite detention may be crystallizing in certain ways, especially in the post-election environment,” he says. “They are going to begin to speak about it more publicly and more directly. I think in many ways they have already made this decision.”

Civil Liberties Groups Cry Foul

“It is un-American to hold people without charge or trial,” says Laura Murphy of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington office. “Codifying indefinite detention will end up legitimizing it.”

What, she asks, if the detainees suspected of terrorism are actually innocent? What kind of system would there be to determine that? Would there be any kind of judicial review? If this applies to terrorism now, she asks, how long before it applies to drug lords or human traffickers or organized crime?

Wittes of the Brookings Institution sees it differently. He says indefinite detention without rules, which essentially is what is happening now, should concern people more. Individual judges, U.S. attorneys and civil liberties lawyers are handling this on a case-by-case basis. And that is making the process murky.

“If your concern is not legitimizing it, lying about it is a very strange way to do that,” says Wittes. “And what we are doing is lying to ourselves about the detention which we engage in.”

Incoming House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith of Texas is working on a companion bill to Graham’s effort. His aides declined to provide any detail about legislation that is in the works.

And administration officials told NPR that they didn’t want to discuss the legislation before they actually see what’s in it.

What seems clear at this point, however, is that one of the things to come out of the new Congress is going to be something that deals squarely with detainee detention.

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Spy tech ‘monitors conversations’ launched in Europe

July 6, 2010

By Daniel Tencer

Privacy rights advocates and civil liberties campaigners in Europe are raising the alarm about a new surveillance system that

The Shadow Government has Eyes and Ears everywhere. Click image and learn the details

monitors conversations in public.

The surveillance system, dubbed Sigard, has been installed in Dutch city centers, government offices and prisons, and a recent test-run of the technology in Coventry, England, has British civil rights experts worried that the right to privacy will disappear in efforts to fight street crime.

The system’s manufacturer, Sound Intelligence, says it works by detecting aggression in speech patterns.

“Ninety percent of all incidents involving physical aggression are preceded by verbal aggression,” the Sound Intelligence Web site says. “The ability to spot verbal aggression before it turns into a violent outbreak delivers valuable time to security personnel and enables speedy intervention.”

According to the UK’s Sunday Telegraph, the city of Coventry recently finished a six-month test run of the system, which involved the installation of seven microphones around a crime-prone nightlife district. A spokesperson for the city said the system is “no longer in use.”

The Herald in Scotland reported last month that the system has also been tested in London, Glasgow, Birmingham and Manchester.

“In Hackney in London, the system detected up to six crimes a night, including fights and guns being fired,” the paper reported.

Sigard’s use is more widespread in the Netherlands, where the system’s manufacturer is located. According to the Sound Intelligence Web site, the system has been installed in Amsterdam’s train station, as well as police headquarters, and has also been installed inside a number of prisons and the city centers of Dordrecht and Groningen.

Sound Intelligence says that the technology focuses principally on tone of voice, and is not designed to listen to the content of conversations. But opponents say the technology is open to abuse.

“There can be no justification for giving councils or the police the capability to listen in on private conversations,” Dylan Sharpe of the UK’s Big Brother Watch told the Sunday Telegraph. “There is enormous potential for abuse, or a misheard word, causing unnecessary harm with this sort of intrusive and overbearing surveillance.”

In a sarcastic editorial, the Herald argued that crime could be eliminated altogether if the government were to install Sigard technology in all homes and offices.

Let’s install surveillance cameras and microphones in every room of every new home that is built. Make it a condition of planning consent. … It won’t just leave terrorists with no place to hide, it’ll expose criminals wherever they’re holed up or plotting. Isn’t this the logical extension of what is already happening, of what we’re allowing with barely a squeak of protest?

The police could be at the door, handcuffs at the ready, before a drunken man can punch his wife or say “domestic violence”. … Cameras in the home would eradicate child abuse. Burglary, too, would be obliterated since the thief would know the police had a ringside seat. Think of the benefits. Peace would reign in every household, the crime rate would plummet and prisons would no longer be overcrowded.

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