Federal Government: We can spy on you, even journalists

Just so we are all on the same page.  This did not occur under Bush.  This DID occur under Obama - you remember, the guy who made idiotic claims about Bush abuses and charges against the Attorney General under Bush, and how it would all be different under Obama.  You remember.  Well, it is a bit different.  In order for the abuse to have occured, the Attorney General HAD TO SIGN OFF ON THIS for it to have occured.

How is all that change working out for you, and your civil liberties?





Feds spy on reporter in leak probe

By: Josh Gerstein
Politico
February 24, 2011 11:06 PM EST



Federal investigators trying to find out who leaked information about a CIA attempt to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program obtained a New York Times reporter’s three private credit reports, examined his personal bank records and obtained information about his phone calls and travel, according to a new court filing.

The scope and intrusiveness of the government’s efforts to uncover reporter James Risen’s sources surfaced Thursday in the criminal case of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer facing federal criminal charges for allegedly disclosing classified information. Sterling is accused of giving Risen details about what Risen describes as the CIA’s plan to give Iran faulty nuclear blueprints, hoping to temporarily thwart the regime’s ambitions to build an atomic bomb.

In a motion filed in federal court in Alexandria, Sterling’s defense lawyers, Ed MacMahon Jr. and Barry Pollack, reveal that the prosecution has turned over “various telephone records showing calls made by the author James Risen. It has provided three credit reports—Equifax, TransUnion and Experian—for Mr. Risen. It has produced Mr. Risen’s credit card and bank records and certain records of his airline travel.”

The revelation alarmed First Amendment advocates, particularly in light of Justice Department rules requiring the attorney general to sign off on subpoenas directed to members of the media and on requests for their phone records. And Risen told POLITICO that the disclosures, while not shocking, made him feel “like a target of spying.”

“We’ve argued that I was a victim of harassment by the government. This seems to bolster that,” Risen said. “Maybe I should ask them what my credit score is.”

Sterling’s attorneys and a Justice Department spokeswoman declined POLITICO’s request for comment.

The government’s interest in Risen’s sources for his 2006 book, “State of War,” has been known since 2008. In particular, investigators have zeroed in on a chapter which details what Risen describes as a botched CIA effort to trip up Iran’s nuclear program. The scheme involved using a Russian defector to deliver the faulty blueprints to the Iranians, but the defector blew the CIA’s plot by alerting the Iranians to the flaws — negating the value of the program, and perhaps even advancing Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Risen was twice subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury to testify about his sources, but the first grand jury dissolved before a judge acted on Risen’s motion to quash the subpoena. Last year, U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema sided with Risen and quashed the second subpoena, though details of her reasoning haven’t been made public.

Soon after that decision, Sterling was indicted.

First Amendment advocates said the Justice Department’s use of business records to find out about Risen’s sources was troubling. Those records, they argue, could potentially expose a wide array of Risen’s sources and confidential contacts — information that might fall beyond the initial investigation that led to Sterling’s indictment.

“To me, in many ways, it’s worse than a direct subpoena,” said Jane Kirtley, a University of Minnesota law professor and former director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “Third-party subpoenas are really, really invidious…. Even if it is targeted, even if they’re trying to just look at the relevant stuff, they’re inevitably going to get material that exposes other things.”

Kirtley also said journalists often aren’t notified when the government asks telecom companies, banks or other service providers for their records.

Asked how journalists could credibly complain about such techniques when most also refuse more direct demands for information about their sources, Kirtley said reporters who become the focus of determined investigators face a “Hobson’s choice.”

“It’s the same thing as if the cops go to someone’s office with a search warrant and say, ‘Give us the information we want and we won’t tear the place apart,’” she said. “If you say ‘tear the place apart,’ all kinds of confidential information that you don’t think the police should have is going to end up in their hands.”

Lawyers tracking the case believed that both former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who was part of the Bush administration, and current Attorney General Eric Holder gave the go-ahead to subpoena Risen. Under Justice Department rules, the attorney general must approve a subpoena for a journalist and grant permission to obtain “telephone toll records of a member of the news media.”

It’s unclear whether the records investigators obtained about Risen’s phone calls came from his billing records or from records of incoming calls to Sterling or others. The Justice Department guidelines for investigations affecting journalists don’t appear to address travel, bank or credit card records.

Risen said the government never notified him that they were seeking his phone records. But he said he got an inkling in 2008 that investigators had collected some information about his calls.

“We heard from several people who had been forced to testify to the grand jury that prosecutors had shown them phone records between me and those people—not the content of calls but the records of calls,” he said. “As a result of what they told us, my lawyers filed a motion with the court as asking how the Justice Department got these phone records and whether or not they had gotten my phone records.”

“We wanted the court to help us decide whether they had abided by the attorney general’s guidelines,” Risen said. “We never got an answer from the court or the government.”

The new defense filings also offer the first official confirmation that Risen’s work was the focus of the investigation that led to the charges against Sterling. In addition to the phone, travel and financial records, Sterling’s defense said the prosecution handed over a copy of the cover of Risen’s book along with receipts and shipping records showing it was sold in Virginia.

While those familiar with the case immediately concluded that Sterling was a source for Risen, the journalist who got classified information from Sterling was referred to simply as “Author A” in the indictment, and was not named. Justice Department policy generally bars naming unindicted individuals in an indictment.

From 2004 to 2006, the New York Times fought a court battle to keep federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald from obtaining the telephone records of Times reporters Judith Miller and Philip Shenon. Fitzgerald wanted the information to help find out who leaked information that tipped off Islamic charities about federal raids on their offices.

A district judge ruled in the Times’ favor, but a federal appellate court overturned that decision. Fitzgerald ultimately obtained the records when the Supreme Court declined to step in; no one was ever charged for the leak.

Sterling’s indictment suggests that Risen urged the Times to publish details about the CIA’s attempt to stop Iran’s nuclear program, but Times editors declined after senior U.S. government officials warned that the disclosure could harm national security and endanger the life of the Russian intermediary. The information later appeared in Risen’s book.

The new details about the FBI’s investigation of Risen came in a motion that called on the government to provide more details about what specific information Sterling allegedly disclosed. Sterling's lawyers also filed a series of other motions challenging several counts of the indictment as duplicative. Some also sought to punish Sterling for acts he did not commit, such as Risen’s publication of the book, the defense argued.





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
obama

Dutch Children: Someone is watching them and it isn't Bush

Dutch to Open Electronic Files on Children

Associated Press

September 14 2005


AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - The Dutch government plans to open an electronic file on every child at birth as a tool to spot and protect the troubled kids of the future.

Beginning Jan. 1, 2007, all citizens will be tracked from cradle to grave in a single database — including health, education, family and police records — the health ministry said Tuesday.

As a privacy safeguard, no single person or agency will be able to access all contents of a file. But organizations can raise "red flags" in the dossier to caution other agencies about problems, ministry spokesman Jan Brouwer said.

The intention is to protect troubled children, Brouwer said. Until now, schools and police have been unable to communicate with each other about truancy records and criminality, which are often linked.

"Child protection services will say, 'Hey, there's a warning flag from the police. There's another one from school. There's another one from the doctor," Brouwer said. "Something must be going on and it's time to call the parents in for a meeting."

Every child will get a Citizens Service Number, making it easier to keep track of children with problems even when their families move, said Secretary of Health Clemence Ross.

"Safety, guidance, education and supervision are incredibly important for the development of children," Ross said.

All Dutch births are currently registered with local authorities.














Dutch

Children get electronic ID cards - Big Government Watches Over You (not Bush though)

Children to be given electronic identity cards



Electronic identity cards for all children under 12 are to be introduced in Belgium. They will bear a code designed to allow parents of missing children to be traced instantly.

The Telegraph Group Limited
Published: 00:00 June 25, 2006
The Gulf News

Brussels: Electronic identity cards for all children under 12 are to be introduced in Belgium. They will bear a code designed to allow parents of missing children to be traced instantly.

The announcement came as Belgian police continued to search for two young girls who vanished from the street outside a bar in the middle of the night a fortnight ago.

Though the ID cards would be useless in protecting children from an abductor or adult determined to do them harm, they are intended to offer a secure way of making sure a lost child can be reunited with family.

Belgians have been greatly sensitive to issues of missing children since the case a decade ago of Marc Dutroux, a paedophile rapist and killer who kidnapped six children, killing four of them, before being caught.

The new children's cards will carry a special code number and instructions on how to call a central missing child hotline.

 
[So these cards cannot help in tracking down the girls who went missing (and were found some time later dead - they had been raped and strangled) but lets give every child a card and number to feel safer.]
 
 
 
 





 
 
 
 
privacy

Are you being tracked? (and again, Bush is nowhere to be found)

Is RFID tracking you?



July 10, 2006
By Daniel Sieberg CNN



Radio frequency identification has been heralded as a breakthrough in tracking technology, and denounced as the next Big Brother surveillance tool.

RFID sounds futuristic: A transmitter smaller than a dime embedded in everything from a T-shirt to human skin, communicating data over a short distance to a reading device.

The technology has been around for decades -- the British used it to identify aircraft as friend or foe during World War II, and factory warehouses have used it more recently to make shipping more efficient.

So why is it getting so much attention now? The short answer is that RFID has moved into more common corners of society.

Today, it can be used to identify missing pets, monitor vehicle traffic, track livestock to help prevent disease outbreaks, and follow pharmaceuticals to fight counterfeit drugs. Many of us start our cars using RFID chips embedded in the ignition key.

RFID chips, injected under the skin, can store a medical history or be used to control access to secure areas. The next generation of passports and credit cards are hotbeds for RFID. It could make bar codes obsolete.

However, hackers and analysts are exposing potentially serious problems. Hackers could disable a car's RFID anti-theft feature, swap a product's price for a lower one, or copy medical information from an RFID chip.

"The dark side of RFID is surreptitious access," said Bruce Schneier, a security expert with Counterpane Internet Security Inc.

"When RFID chips are embedded in your ID cards, your clothes, your possessions, you are effectively broadcasting who you are to anyone within range," he said. "The level of surveillance possible, not only by the government but by corporations and criminals as well, will be unprecedented. There simply will be no place to hide."

But Mark Roberti, editor of RFID Journal, a trade publication that claims independence from the RFID industry, said the long-term convenience and cost-savings outweighs the potential pitfalls.

"Technology is neither good nor evil," Roberti wrote in an e-mail responding to questions from CNN. "Technology is a tool. All technologies can be used in positive or negative ways.

"The Internet is a great boon to businesses and consumers, but some use it [unscrupulously]. RFID is no different. It will be bring tremendous benefits to consumers and businesses. The key is to find ways to maximize the benefits and try to limit any potential abuses."

Most RFID chips or tags are passive, meaning they contain no battery power and can transmit data only when zapped with a reader. Active tags, which are more expensive, can carry some battery power.

Prices for the chips can range from several cents to a couple of dollars apiece, depending on the application and whether they are ordered in bulk. The cost has limited RFID's appeal. To compete with barcodes, RFID chips need to be priced at under a penny each. The cost is gradually coming down, though.

The storage space is extremely small, typically about 2KB, and the data on the tags can be read by equipment from a few inches to several feet away -- and sometimes a bit farther.

A group of hackers at the 2005 DefCon technology convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, used an antenna attached to an RFID reader to scan the information on a tag nearly 70 feet away. RFID proponents downplayed the demonstration, saying the apparatus was impractical and wouldn't work if the information on the RFID tag were encrypted, which is more often the case.

"The kind of RFID that is becoming widely used has no power source, and can send information over tens of feet. Compared to, say, a cell phone, which transmits personal identity and location information for miles, RFID's potential for misuse and abuse is quite trivial," Kevin Ashton, vice president at ThingMagic LLC, a manufacturer of RFID readers, wrote in an e-mail responding to CNN's questions.

"That said, companies that make and use RFID have a responsibility to make sure the technology is developed and adopted in ways that make it secure and useful."

That responsibility was recently addressed by a best-practices manifesto composed by the RFID industry. Participating companies included Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Visa U.S.A. and Proctor & Gamble.

The manifesto is meant to assuage consumer fears about how data could be collected, shared and stored. Key parts of the document include an agreement to notify consumers about RFID data collection and give them a choice when it comes to gathering personal information. But the manifesto doesn't suggest any penalties for not complying, and the onus would likely fall to the Federal Trade Commission to investigate any claims of harm or wrongdoing.

"Credit card companies have huge incentives to secure the transaction: They need to avoid customer complaints, counterfeiting and billing disputes, so it seems reasonable to assume high levels of security will have to be built in before such a system would be widely accepted," wrote ThingMagic's Ashton.

A company in Cincinnati, Ohio, recently delved into new territory with RFID tags by chipping its employees.

CityWatcher.com provides video surveillance for clients and police. The information it collects is the company's biggest asset and needs to be kept in a room that has more security than a lock and key, CEO Sean Darks said. The answer was an electronic lock, and the company has given its handful of employees the option of using an electronic key or getting an RFID chip implanted in their arm.

"It can't be read, it can't be tracked, it doesn't have GPS," Darks said. "It doesn't emit a signal, I do not know where my employees are unless I call them on a cell phone -- your cell phone has more GPS capability than an RFID chip does."

VeriChip Corp. is a Florida-based company that makes the government-approved, human-implantable RFID chips. A certified doctor injects the chip, which is about the size of a grain of rice.

If done for medical reasons, the RFID chip would contain a random 16-character string of numbers or letters connected to that person's medical chart. That way, in an emergency, doctors could access a patient's history even if the patient was incapable of communicating. But the technology is not available at all hospitals, and not every doctor knows to look for the implanted chips.

A few CityWatcher.com employees opted not to have the procedure done, saying the whole idea makes them nervous. They were given a key chain that contained an RFID chip. Regardless, Darks says the idea helps maintain security in the building -- and he sees some humor in the situation.

"What we like to say at CityWatcher is it helps with employee retention, because employees don't like to leave their arm if they leave the company," he said.

But this human-implant trend worries privacy advocates like Marc Rotenberg with the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

"A lot of these technologies have very useful applications," he said. "They can help large companies keep track of products, which is why companies such as Wal-Mart use RFID chips in their inventory management system. A lot of pet owners are using chips to keep track of their animals if they're lost.

"But it really seems to cross a line when technology that's used for inventory management or keeping track of pets is then placed in human beings," Rotenberg added. "And that raises ethical issues and privacy issues and probably some legal issues. I think people are going to be concerned about who uses the chip and who has access to it."

Despite these concerns, others say there are huge benefits to using RFID.

"At least 30 million people carry an RFID tag on them every day in their car keys or in their access control card to get into their office building or to buy gas or to pay a toll," wrote RFID Journal's Roberti. "Everywhere RFID has been rolled out in the consumer environment, consumers have overwhelmingly embraced it."

One new consumer application is in credit cards. Consumers could simply wave a credit card containing a passive chip at an RFID reader to pay for their purchases.

While there is concern that hackers could remotely read the card information, supporters argue it would be easier for merchants, and the speed of the processing time could shave off more than a dozen seconds per transaction, which would add up. They also say transactions would be no more or less secure than they are today.

"That is, if you buy stuff today with a credit card, that information is stored in a database," Roberti wrote. "When or if RFID is used to record sales, data will go in a database, the same one in fact. If the government wants access to the RFID data or the bar code data, it's essentially the same thing."

The controversy and discussion about RFID technology will not end anytime soon. But both sides agree that a sizable dose of debate is needed to hammer out the kinks. Meanwhile, the technology is appearing in an increasing number of places -- though even if you look around, you still might miss it.
















i spy

Color Printer? The Government is Tracking You (and Bush isn't around to blame)

Government Uses Color Laser Printer Technology to Track Documents


Practice embeds hidden, traceable data in every printed page.



By Jason Tuohey, PCWorld Nov 22, 2004 1:00 am


WASHINGTON--Next time you make a printout from your color laser printer, shine an LED flashlight beam on it and examine it closely with a magnifying glass. You might be able to see the small, scattered yellow dots printed there that could be used to trace the document back to you.

According to experts, several printer companies quietly encode the serial number and the manufacturing code of their color laser printers and color copiers on every document those machines produce. Governments, including the United States, already use the hidden markings to track counterfeiters.

Peter Crean, a senior research fellow at Xerox, says his company's laser printers, copiers and multifunction workstations, such as its WorkCentre Pro series, put the "serial number of each machine coded in little yellow dots" in every printout. The millimeter-sized dots appear about every inch on a page, nestled within the printed words and margins.

"It's a trail back to you, like a license plate," Crean says.

The dots' minuscule size, covering less than one-thousandth of the page, along with their color combination of yellow on white, makes them invisible to the naked eye, Crean says. One way to determine if your color laser is applying this tracking process is to shine a blue LED light--say, from a keychain laser flashlight--on your page and use a magnifier.

Crime Fighting vs. Privacy

Laser-printing technology makes it incredibly easy to counterfeit money and documents, and Crean says the dots, in use in some printers for decades, allow law enforcement to identify and track down counterfeiters.

However, they could also be employed to track a document back to any person or business that printed it. Although the technology has existed for a long time, printer companies have not been required to notify customers of the feature.

Lorelei Pagano, a counterfeiting specialist with the U.S. Secret Service, stresses that the government uses the embedded serial numbers only when alerted to a forgery. "The only time any information is gained from these documents is purely in [the case of] a criminal act," she says.

John Morris, a lawyer for The Center for Democracy and Technology , says, "That type of assurance doesn't really assure me at all, unless there's some type of statute." He adds, "At a bare minimum, there needs to be a notice to consumers."

If the practice disturbs you, don't bother trying to disable the encoding mechanism--you'll probably just break your printer.

Crean describes the device as a chip located "way in the machine, right near the laser" that embeds the dots when the document "is about 20 billionths of a second" from printing.

"Standard mischief won't get you around it," Crean adds.

Neither Crean nor Pagano has an estimate of how many laser printers, copiers, and multifunction devices track documents, but they say that the practice is commonplace among major printer companies.

"The industry absolutely has been extraordinarily helpful [to law enforcement]," Pagano says.

According to Pagano, counterfeiting cases are brought to the Secret Service, which checks the documents, determines the brand and serial number of the printer, and contacts the company. Some, like Xerox, have a customer database, and they share the information with the government.

Crean says Xerox and the government have a good relationship. "The U.S. government had been on board all along--they would actually come out to our labs," Crean says.

History

Unlike ink jet printers, laser printers, fax machines, and copiers fire a laser through a mirror and series of lenses to embed the document or image on a page. Such devices range from a little over $100 to more than $1000, and are designed for both home and office.

Crean says Xerox pioneered this technology about 20 years ago, to assuage fears that their color copiers could easily be used to counterfeit bills.

"We developed the first (encoding mechanism) in house because several countries had expressed concern about allowing us to sell the printers in their country," Crean says.

Since then, he says, many other companies have adopted the practice.

The United States is not the only country teaming with private industry to fight counterfeiters. A recent article points to the Dutch government as using similar anticounterfeiting methods, and cites Canon as a company with encoding technology. Canon USA declined to comment.
























i spy, on you.

Google and Big Brother: Makes CIA and KGB look like children

Google 'will be able to keep tabs on us all'


Alexi Mostrous and Rob Evans
The Guardian, Friday 3 November 2006

The internet will hold so much digital data in five years that it will be possible to find out what an individual was doing at a specific time and place, an expert said yesterday.

Nigel Gilbert, a professor heading a Royal Academy of Engineering study into surveillance, said people would be able to sit down and type into Google "what was a particular individual doing at 2.30 yesterday and would get an answer".

The answer would come from a range of data, for instance video recordings or databanks which store readings from electronic chips. Such chips embedded in people's clothes could track their movements. He told a privacy conference the internet would be capable of holding huge amounts of data very cheaply and patterns of information could be extracted very quickly. "Everything can be recorded for ever," he said.

He was speaking at a conference at which a report commissioned by Richard Thomas, the privacy watchdog, was launched. Mr Thomas has said Britain is "waking up to a surveillance society that is all around us" and that such "pervasive" surveillance is likely to spread.

Sir Stephen Lander, the head of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) and former head of MI5, defended surveillance by the government.

"Significant intrusion into the privacy of a small minority is justified to protect the safety and wellbeing of the majority," he said.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
privacy

Wireless World (and Bush isn't anywhere in sight)

Wireless World: Chips track license plates




Aug 12, 2005
Technology
UPI

A controversial plan to embed radio frequency identification chips in license plates in the United Kingdom also may be coming to the United States, experts told UPI's Wireless World.

The so-called e-Plate, developed by the British firm Hills Numberplates, is a license plate that also transmits a vehicle's unique identification via encryption that can be read by a small detector, whose output can be used locally or communicated to a distant host.

"RFID is all the rage these days," said Bradley Gross, chairman of Becker & Poliakoff, a law firm in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., "but my fear is that this use of the technology is tracking at its worst."

The reason for the concern in the legal and privacy-rights communities is that e-plates may expand the ability of police to track individuals by the movement of their vehicles.

A single RFID reader can identify dozens of vehicles fitted with e-plates moving at any speed at a distance of about 100 yards. The e-plate looks just like a standard plate, but it contains an embedded chip that cannot be seen or removed. It is self-powered with a battery life of up to 10 years.

"Police will be able to track your every move when you drive," said Liz McIntyre, an RFID expert and author of the forthcoming book, "Spychips: How Major Corporations and the Government Plan to Track Your Every Move With RFID" (Nelson Current, October 2005). "What if they put these readers at a mosque? They could tell who was inside at a worship service by which cars were in the parking lot."

Indeed, the makers of the technology boast that the e-plates can furnish access control, automated tolling, asset tracking, traffic-flow monitoring and vehicle crime and "non-compliance." The chips can be outfitted with 128 bit encryption to prevent hacking.

The problem is people other than the vehicle's owner quite often are at the wheel.

"Will this, ultimately, stop terrorism?" Gross asked. "The occupants of cars change continuously. Terrorists can steal cars."

Similar technology already has been used in the United States, experts said.

"The technology side of this is readily available, as it is used in the high-frequency battery-powered transmitters in the toll road systems like Fastrak," said attorney Dave Abel, with the international law firm Squire, Sanders & Dempsey LLP, who was an engineer before coming to the bar. "To use the toll road, a user signs up -- providing name, address, billing info, et cetera, which is stored in a database. Each time they drive past the reader station they are billed or a credit is deducted from an account."

Security access points could justify the expense, but placing them even at key intersections may not be very practical, according to lawyers at Pittiglio, Rabin, Todd & McGrath in Costa Mesa, Calif., a spokeswoman said.

The cost of roadside readers is significant -- although the price per chip is estimated to be only 20 cents.

Some experts said governments already are using the chips embedded in tollway access cards without heed to privacy rights. In Texas, for example, tollway authorities have been "making printouts of the records of every time you pass through a toll booth, what time you passed through," McIntyre said. "The government hasn't established a privacy policy for this, and people are not being informed that they are doing this. This is an instance of Big Brother on the highway."



 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
privacy

Obama and his continued trampling of our Civil Liberties

Reconsidering the election promises of 2008 - Obamessiah was the anti-Bush.  He was character to Bush's dirt.  He would shine a light on all the dark corners.  He would do housecleaning - as he joked, when he moved in.  No more government in secrecy.  No more intrusion into the lives of Americans - we were not criminals, the government should not be spying on Americans - we have rights after all, and he made comment after comment about the Bill of Rights and Constitution.  During the long campaign, he was in Philadelphia and he pulled the Constitution out of the closet where Bush had neglectfully stuck it.  He shook it off and told the people that he would uphold this Great Charter.

Obamessiah went on to tell the crowd in Philadelphia and everywhere he stopped, that he would rebuild relations with the countries of the world - relations that had been neglected or abused under Bush.

Two years later life is considerably different.  The world community is no closer than it was on October 30, 2008; the world community no longer fears or respects the United States.  We are not friends or allies, respected, or feared.  Bad.

Biden holds meetings in secret, even meetings on the transparecy of government are held in secret.  Rarely is anything Biden does not secret.  Yet no liberal groups are demanding access to those records like they did Cheney's meeting with energy executives (1 meeting of energy company executives with Cheney versus scores of meetings Biden holds in secret). 

Congress and the White House are not transparent - from Biden's secret meetings on everything to the intentional failure by Pelosi/Reid and Obama to post the bills up for debate on the internet for everyone to see and read before voting / signing.  Failed every time.  In fact, Obama has stopped using Congress and simply governs by fiat - he is coming close to using Executive Orders more than George H Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W Bush combined.

This is the difference liberals wanted?  A president who governs by fiat.  Liberals were apoplectic over Bush and the ruination of government as they saw it - with Obama, his appearance gives off the impression he doesn't care that he is ruining government.  With Bush - his actions were consistent with his values and the policies of one section or another of the American people.  Obama has lost the right, middle, and the left - he governs by fiat, unconcerned about his promises to anyone - but the big money donors.

Meanwhile, back here on earth, his cavalier attitude toward infringement of our rights has had an impact -


Govt 'creating vast domestic snooping machine'


Dec 20 07:27 AM US/Eastern
AFP


The government is creating a vast domestic spying network to collect information about Americans in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks and subsequent terror plots, The Washington Post reported Monday.

The government is using for this purpose the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators, the daily added.

The system collects, stores and analyzes information about thousands of US citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing, the report noted.

The government's goal is to have every state and local law enforcement agency in the country feed information to Washington to buttress the work of the FBI, noted the paper, which has conducted its own investigation of the matter.

According to the report, the network includes 4,058 federal, state and local organizations, each with its own counter-terrorism responsibilities and jurisdictions.

At least 935 of these organizations have been created since the 2001 attacks, The Post said.

The probe has revealed that technologies and techniques developed for use on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan have migrated into the hands of law enforcement agencies in the United States, the paper pointed out.

In addition, the FBI is building a database with the names and personal information of thousands of US citizens and residents, the report said.

The database is accessible to an increasing number of local law enforcement and military criminal investigators, the report noted.

In a bid to counter what is seen as a threat from radical Islam, some law enforcement agencies have hired as trainers people whose extremist views on Islam and terrorism are considered inaccurate and counterproductive by US intelligence agencies, the paper pointed out.

The cost of the network is difficult to measure, the paper said. But the Department of Homeland Security has given 31 billion dollars in grants since 2003 to state and local governments for homeland security and to improve their ability to find and protect against terrorists, The Post said.

Only this year, it gave 3.8 billion dollars to local law enforcement agencies.



















civil rights

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: Privacy in Public, DOES NOT Exist

Hey - start marching against Obama and his usurpation of your civil liberties.  if not, you have no right to ever protest a Republican president when he once again, infringes upon the civil liberties of some people living in the US.  You will have lost all credibility among all sentient beings.




Feds: Privacy Does Not Exist in ‘Public Places’




By David Kravets September 21, 2010
3:29 pm
WIRED





The Obama administration has urged a federal appeals court to allow the government, without a court warrant, to affix GPS devices on suspects’ vehicles to track their every move.

The Justice Department is demanding a federal appeals court rehear a case in which it reversed the conviction and life sentence of a cocaine dealer whose vehicle was tracked via GPS for a month, without a court warrant. The authorities then obtained warrants to search and find drugs in the locations where defendant Antoine Jones had travelled.

The administration, in urging the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to reverse a three-judge panel’s August ruling from the same court, said Monday that Americans should expect no privacy while in public.

“The panel’s conclusion that Jones had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the public movements of his Jeep rested on the premise that an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the totality of his or her movements in public places, ” Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Smith wrote the court in a petition for rehearing.

The case is an important test of privacy rights as GPS devices have become a common tool in crime fighting, and can be affixed to moving vehicles by an officer shooting a dart. Three other circuit courts have already said the authorities do not need a warrant for GPS vehicle tracking, Smith pointed out.

The circuit’s ruling means that, in the District of Columbia area, the authorities need a warrant to install a GPS-tracking device on a vehicle. But in much of the United States, including the West, a warrant is not required. Unless the circuit changes it mind, only the Supreme Court can mandate a uniform rule.

The government said the appellate panel’s August decision is “vague and unworkable” and undermines a law enforcement practice used “with great frequency.”

The legal dispute centers on a 1983 U.S. Supreme Court decision concerning a tracking beacon affixed to a container, without a court warrant, to follow a motorist to a secluded cabin. The appeals court said that decision did not apply to today’s GPS monitoring of a suspect, which lasted a month.

The beacon tracked a person, “from one place to another,” whereas the GPS device monitored Jones’ “movements 24 hours a day for 28 days.”

The government argued Monday that the appellate court’s decision “offers no guidance as to when monitoring becomes so efficient or ‘prolonged’ as to constitute a search triggering the requirements of the Fourth Amendment.”

The appeals court ruled the case “illustrates how the sequence of a person’s movements may reveal more than the individual movements of which it is composed.”

The court said that a person “who knows all of another’s travels can deduce whether he is a weekly churchgoer, a heavy drinker, a regular at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical treatment, an associate of particular individuals or political groups — and not just one such fact about a person, but all such facts.”

















obama administration

In Their Own Words: Laws Which Ban Books Are Fine, because they are never enforced.

Banning books - it is fine if the government passes a law that would ban books, because the law has never been enforced.


Comforting.  I have NEVER heard a Conservative argue in any way, shape, or form, that it was fine to have a law banning books.


The nominee to the Supreme Court thinks it is perfectly ok.



In her words.


















in their own words

Pass One for Justice, Goodbye Privacy

Justice does not know only one party, nor does it find a home in one party, or one man.  Justice is as universal as any idea in the history of man, and is and can be at home in any and every party, and any and every man alive today.  Yet some people have decided safety trumps liberty, comfort trumps freedom - Justice prevails against the tide of men's hopes and dreams, to ensure bad men are caught and punished at any expense possible.

It is not just Republicans, but the majority of Democrats who are pushing this - that same party so many believe was protecting them from the evil Retardicans.  The joke is on them.




House votes to expand national DNA arrest database



by Declan McCullagh
May 19, 2010 5:36 PM PDT

CNET


Millions of Americans arrested for but not convicted of crimes will likely have their DNA forcibly extracted and added to a national database, according to a bill approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday.

By a 357 to 32 vote, the House approved legislation that will pay state governments to require DNA samples, which could mean drawing blood with a needle, from adults "arrested for" certain serious crimes. Not one Democrat voted against the database measure, which would hand out about $75 million to states that agree to make such testing mandatory.

"We should allow law enforcement to use all the technology available to them...to reduce expensive and unjust false convictions, bring closure to victims by solving cold cases, better identify criminals, and keep those who commit violent crime from walking the streets," said Rep. Harry Teague, the New Mexico Democrat who sponsored the bill.

But civil libertarians say DNA samples should be required only from people who have been convicted of crimes, and argue that if there is probable cause to believe that someone is involved in a crime, a judge can sign a warrant allowing a blood sample or cheek swab to be forcibly extracted.

"It's wrong to treat someone as guilty before they're convicted," says Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute. "It inverts the concept of innocent until proven guilty."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership scheduled Tuesday's debate on the bill--called the Katie Sepich Enhanced DNA Collection Act of 2010--using a procedure known as the "suspension calendar" intended to be reserved for non-controversial legislation.

"Suspension of the rules is supposed to be for praising the winner of the NCAA championship or renaming Post Offices," Harper says. "Things like collecting Americans' DNA are supposed to be fully debated in Congress."

In a surprise move, as the U.S. Congress was expanding the FBI's DNA database, the U.K.'s new coalition government was pledging sharp curbs on its own databases.

Created in the mid-1990s, the UK National DNA Database originally was supposed to store data on convicted criminals, but grew to include records on more than 5 million Britons, including many who were only arrested on suspicion of a crime.

U.K. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg promised once-in-a-century privacy reforms in a speech on Wednesday: "We won't hold your Internet and e-mail records when there is just no reason to do so. CCTV will be properly regulated, as will the DNA database, with restrictions on the storage of innocent people's DNA. Britain must not be a country where our children grow up so used to their liberty being infringed that they accept it without question."

Background
 
The United States has followed a similar pattern: first, DNA was collected from convicted criminals, and then the practice was expanded to sweep in Americans arrested on suspicion of a crime.


A 2000 federal law called the DNA Analysis Backlog Elimination Act required that DNA samples be taken from anyone convicted of or on probation for certain serious crimes. This was challenged in court on Fourth and Fifth Amendment grounds, but a federal appeals court upheld (PDF) the DNA collection requirement as constitutional.

A second bill that President Bush signed in January 2006 said any federal police agency could "collect DNA samples from individuals who are arrested." Anyone who fails to cooperate is, under federal law, guilty of an additional crime.  [Understand that a federal police agency is, absent a US Marshal, the FBI, and by the time you have been arrested by the FBI, we are not talking about drunk driving or shoplifting.  We are talking federal crimes - INS, FBI, DEA ...]

In addition, federal law and subsequent regulations from the Department of Justice authorize any means "reasonably necessary to detain, restrain, and collect a DNA sample from an individual who refuses to cooperate in the collection of the sample." The cheek swab or blood tests can be outsourced to "private entities."   [This began by early 2009 - under Obama]

A May 2009 ruling from a federal judge in California was the first decision to say that police can forcibly take DNA samples from Americans who have been arrested but not convicted of a crime. U.S. Magistrate Judge Gregory Hollows said the requirement of DNA-sampling felony arrestees did not violate the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of "unreasonable searches and seizures"--but noted that he took no position on whether or not DNA sampling for misdemeanor offenses was reasonable and constitutional.

But that law applied only to federal agencies, and the bill approved this week would provide a strong incentive for state and local governments to follow suit.

If states do follow suit, it's difficult to overstate how many more DNA samples would flood into the FBI's Convicted Offender DNA Index System (CODIS) database. Federal agencies arrested about 133,000 people in 2004, according to data compiled by the Urban Institute under a Justice Department grant.

But local and state governments arrested nearly 14 million Americans that year, not counting traffic offenses, according to FBI data.

Rep. Teague's proposal would extend DNA sampling and testing to anyone arrested on suspicion of burglary or attempted burglary; aggravated assault; murder or attempted murder; manslaughter; sex acts that can be punished by imprisonment for more than one year; and sex offenses against minors. The attorney general would be required to report to Congress which states have and have not signed up for the DNA database.

Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Wash.), a former sheriff who spoke on the House floor in favor of the bill, said the measure is supported by the National Sheriffs' Association, the National District Attorney's Association, and the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN).

The legislation would allow states to receive 15 percent "bonuses" from the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program. The program gave out $165 million in local funding and $318 million in state funding for fiscal year 2009, not counting stimulus grants.

"We're strongly opposed to expanding collection," says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. He suggested the U.S. should follow the lead of the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled two years ago that holding DNA samples from people arrested but not convicted of a crime violates their privacy rights.   [I am loathe to agree with the Europeans on anything, but ... ]
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
civil liberties

Liberal icon catches up: Racist teabagger Noam Chomsky slams Obama, defends Tea Party, Palin



April 21, 4:28 PM
D.K. Jamaal - Post-Partisan Examiner


Not everyday that I find myself agreeing with a radical militant leftist like Noam Chomsky.

Or rather, not every day that Noam Chomsky agrees with a stubborn (left-leaning) centrist like me.

But last week while receiving the University of Wisconsin’s A.E. Havens Center’s award for lifetime contribution to critical scholarship, Chomsky warned that fascism looms if Americans are not careful:

“I’m just old enough to have heard a number of Hitler’s speeches on the radio, and I have a memory of the texture and the tone of the cheering mobs, and I have the dread sense of the dark clouds of fascism gathering…”

Well, la dee da. Now where have you heard something like that before? Right here, over and over again.

The very first article published here on Post-Partisan Examiner was a siren call, warning that Obama’s leadership would slide America towards corporate fascism. We have kept calling out the fascististic Washington-Wall Street corporate oligarchy and urging post-partisanship ever since. No one should put one hundred percent of one's faith, money, time, and support in one party one hundred percent of the time.

Chomsky's speech went on to cite a poll showing that at least half of independent voters sympathize more with the Tea Party than with any partisan movement or political figure, to slam Obama for coziness with Wall Street and Big Corporate, and to explain why the upset disaffection of tea partiers is “understandable”:

The level of anger and fear is like nothing I can compare in my lifetime. Ridiculing the tea party shenanigans is a serious error. For over 30 years, real incomes have stagnated or declined…The bankers, who are primarily responsible for the crisis, are now reveling in record bonuses while official unemployment is around 10 percent and unemployment in the manufacturing sector is at Depression-era levels. The financial industry preferred Obama to McCain. They expected to be rewarded and they were. Then Obama began to criticize greedy bankers and proposed measures to regulate them. And the punishment for this was very swift: they were going to shift their money to the Republicans. So Obama said bankers are ‘fine guys’ and assured the business world: ‘I, like most of the American people, don't begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.’ People see that and are not happy about it. People want some answers. They are hearing answers from only one place: Fox, talk radio, and Sarah Palin.

According to Chomsky, this is what is fueling “the indignation and rage of those cast aside.” Of course, Obama critics have been pointing this out all along.

While Obama’s Big Media pals have been denigrating the disaffected as racist, ignorant, hick teabaggers who represent a meaningless minority of the country we defended the movement as legitimate civil disobedience and the inevitable reaction to Obama’s blatant hypocrisy and poor leadership.

While deranged Palin haters have used every low, cruel, misogynistic trick in the book to knock her down, we have warned that she deserves to be treated with respect even when we disagree with her policy views.

We have constantly knocked Obama for his sellouts to Big Corporate and warned that Obamacrats are turning their backs on the working classes with their odious policy of endless bailouts for their bankster friends on the back of taxpayers.

Chomsky’s public truth-telling indicates that even the most hardcore leftists are waking up to the awful truths centrists warned about for two years.

We need more Noam Chomsky’s willing to admit reality and fewer lamestream media elites with their biased heads buried up the President’s butt. We need people on the left respected by the left who can see through Obamacratic empty rhetoric and announce to their friends on the left that the emperor has no clothes. That liberals and progressives have been duped. Obama is not who he said he was. He is not a change agent.

He is a tool of the regressive anti-Main Street, pro-Wall Street status quo which plots daily to subjugate working folks while consolidating more and more of America’s wealth into their own insatiably greedy hands.

Chomsky's statements will startle those who view he and Obama as two of the biggest living liberal heroes. They will be alone in their astonishment. Chomsky has merely admitted the obvious.

Hillary promoting PUMAs were the first to realize that Obama’s inexperience, incompetence, and corporate hackery would lead to disaster. They were followed by Republicans, then independents, and now Tea Partiers. Together, these group represent the growing majority whose votes will rescue America from Obamacratic corporate cronyism and remind politicians and pundits, once more, that Americans are the deciders.

Chomsky need not worry. The voting booth will save ourselves from ourselves. Democracy and the will of the people – and the right of the people to govern themselves as they see fit – will prevail again.

Obama can lay with the bankers all he wants: America will not be sacrificed upon a cross of credit default swaps.





 
 
 
 
 
obama

CNN Privacy Poll: Bad News for Liberals.

We always learn SOMETHING from a poll ... even if it is not always what the poll was trying to discover.

3.7 / 10 Democrats  ....  6.3 / 10 Independents  ...... 7 / 10 Republicans

What we learn from this poll is - some people who claim to be Republican are lying.  Why?  NO Republican, not even a Republican in a vegetative state, which many are in, would or could even think the thought let alone believe, that the government was not too large and too intrusive. Or these Republicans were formerly communists and relative to their former ideological belief system, the government is not too large.  This is not very likely.  What is more likely is - the poller calls, you answer. 
Poller:  Blah blah blah Would you be interested in taking a short research questionnaire about politics.
You:  [Thinking to yourself:  Sure, maybe I can say I support Obama and raise his sinking approval levels]  Yes.
Poller: Blah blah blah Democrat, Independent, Republican.
You: [Thinking to yourself, if I say Republican, and I say I fully support Obama, it will have a greater effect than if I say I am a far left liberal who can barely stand the guiy because he is too moderate, and then maybe finally people will give him a break]  Republican.
Poller:  Blah blah blah government too large blah blah privacy
You:  Of course not, it is serving the people, it can help the people now.  Of course it isn't too large.


I am pretty sure of the above having happened.  So you will argue well, the Republicans would do the same.  Perhaps, but the results do not bear that out.

What we have in this country are:
Republicans who are Conservative on the right, followed by (loving left) Republicans who are moderate; followed by Republicans who are centrist - right on some, left on others.  Democrats have the same, moving from right to left:  Centrist Democrats who are right on some issues and left on others.  Then you have the liberals followed by leftists.  Probably 30% of Democrats sit at the center area.  Republicans similar. 

So it probably breaks down, with + or - margins of error:

   20% Looney Left; 50% Liberal; 30% Centrist /  10-15-20% Independent  /    30% Moderate Republican / 65% Conservative / 5% Looney Right

So why do these numbers not add up.

You can find the more or less accurate numbers of voters in this country who are registered Democrat and same with Republican.  My first guess which is wrong, but not off by more than 4-5% - is 40% Democrat /  20% Independent / 40% Republican.

Which means 8% of Democrats are part of the looney left.  It means that 2% of Republicans are the Looney Right.  It should be clear how I came up with the 8 and 2.  Right or wrong given a margin of + or - it is, I am reasonably certain, more correct than not in reflecting the fringes.  Yet you could say you see Tea Party nuts and other right wing fringe calling Obama another Hitler, yet you do not see Looney Left acting out ... but you do, they are just not as visible today because their Messiah is in office.  Code Pink, Cindy Sheehan - true members of the looney fringe.  Moveon.org - looney left. Yet they are quite quiet even though Obama is furthering the war as Bush did.  More Americans have died in Afghanistan in the last two months than in the course of the war for 8 years.  No Code Pink.  No Cindy.  No Moveon.org.  Hmmm.

And the point then - Probably more likely 56% or 58% who fear the government today.  That bodes very badly for Democrats.  Very.  Even if future polls never reflect this concern and ask about economic well-being or job security or ... this result bodes very badly for them!!  Very.




CNN Poll: Majority says government a threat to citizens' rights

February 26th, 2010
CNN Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser



Washington (CNN) – A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national poll.

Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government's become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Forty-four percent of those polled disagree.

The survey indicates a partisan divide on the question: only 37 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Independents and nearly 7 in 10 Republicans say the federal government poses a threat to the rights of Americans.

According to CNN poll numbers released Sunday, Americans overwhelmingly think that the U.S. government is broken - though the public overwhelmingly holds out hope that what's broken can be fixed.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted February 12-15, with 1,023 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the overall survey.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
privacy

Dem Democrats, da is jus plain silla sumtimes - Harry Reid and his Historical Revisionism

Harry Reid's History Lesson




Harry Reid compares the fight for health-care reform to the emancipation and women's suffrage movements.

 By JOHN FUND
Opinion Journal
December 8, 2009


Majority Leader Harry Reid tarred opponents of his health care bill yesterday as the equivalent of those who opposed equal rights for women and civil rights for blacks.

In a remarkable statement on the Senate floor, Mr. Reid lambasted Republicans for wanting to "slow down" on health care. "You think you've heard these same excuses before? You're right," he said. "In this country there were those who dug in their heels and said, 'Slow down, it's too early. Let's wait. Things aren't bad enough' -- about slavery. When women wanted to vote, [they said] 'Slow down, there will be a better day to do that -- the day isn't quite right. . . .'"

He wrapped up his remarks as follows: "When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today."

Senator Reid's comments were quickly condemned. "Hyperbole. It is over the top. It reminds me of earlier people talking about Nazis," said Juan Williams of NPR and Fox News, author of "Eyes on the Prize," a definitive history of the civil rights movement.

Historians also faulted Mr. Reid's curious reference to the Senate civil rights debates of the 1960s. After all, it was Southern Democrats who mounted an 83-day filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill. The final vote to cut off debate saw 29 Senators in opposition, 80% of them Democrats. Among those voting to block the civil rights bill was West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, who personally filibustered the bill for 14 hours. The next year he also opposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Mr. Byrd still sits in the Senate, and indeed preceded Mr. Reid as his party's majority leader until he stepped down from that role in 1989.

The final reason Mr. Reid's comments were so inapt and offensive is that the battles for women's suffrage and civil rights he referred to were about expanding freedom. That's not what the 2,074-page health care bill being debated in the Senate today does, with its 118 new regulatory boards and commissions. Mr. Reid may reach his needed 60 votes to pass his bill this month, but he is pursuing it using the most tawdry and deplorable of tactics.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
liars

DNA and Obama

I understand, everything is not about Obama. I understand very well. the problem is, I don't think Obamessiah fans understand this. When it was Bush, everything that may have had any connection with civil liberties, however far removed from the White House, was tied to Bush - an indirect attack.

What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

This is happening under Obamessiah. So why aren't liberals screaming about Obama being responsible??




SEATTLE TIMES

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Controversial measure would require DNA sampling at arrest

By Jennifer Sullivan
Seattle Times staff reporter

OLYMPIA — Suspects arrested in cases as minor as shoplifting would have to give a DNA sample before they are even charged with a crime if a controversial proposal is approved by the Legislature.

State criminal defense groups and the American Civil Liberties Union say the House bill is unconstitutional. It would mandate that police or jail staff collect DNA from all adults and juveniles arrested on suspicion of a felony or gross misdemeanor.

More than a dozen states already allow law enforcement to collect DNA from suspects before they are convicted. Three more states, including Washington, are considering such proposals this year.

"It is good technology. It solves crimes," said Don Pierce, executive director of the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, which has long pushed for DNA tests at the time of arrest. "We take fingerprints at the time of arrest, which in many ways is a lot more intrusive."

Currently, police in Washington state collect DNA from people convicted of a felony and many misdemeanor sex-related crimes after they are sentenced. Police must get a search warrant or permission from the suspect to obtain DNA before a conviction.

The sample usually is taken by swabbing the inside of a person's cheek.

A separate bill in the Senate also would allow for DNA collection before conviction — but only after formal charges are filed.

The House bill, HB-1382, is sponsored by Rep. Mark Miloscia, D- Federal Way. He testified in support of his bill Tuesday before the Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Committee. The committee could vote on the measure as early as today.

"This bill would take the next step in the use of DNA technology to help catch individuals who have gone out and harmed people," Miloscia said.

The DNA would be submitted to the State Patrol and the FBI databases, which are used to match suspects with unsolved crimes. Under the bill, authorities would destroy samples and DNA profiles obtained from people who weren't charged, were found not guilty or whose convictions were overturned.

Miloscia said each DNA test costs $82. A rough estimate shows the program could cost $1 million over two years.

Miloscia suggested that the state could apply for federal money to help cover the cost, and legislative staff said fees charged to certain criminals also could offset the cost. Prosecutors, however, said only a small percentage of those ordered to pay the fees actually do.

Jack King, staff attorney for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in Washington, D.C., said his organization has been fighting similar DNA-collection proposals since 2004.

"DNA samples reveal the most personal, private information about a person's physical and mental makeup," King said. "It is terribly unfair to an arrestee."

King said he believes that seizing biological evidence before conviction violates constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

Shankar Narayan, legislative director of the ACLU of Washington, said Miloscia's bill "takes the presumption of innocence and turns it on its head."

"The fact is that a lot of people who are arrested aren't charged with anything. Even people who are charged might never be convicted," Narayan said.

[To read the rest of the article, click on the title link]






law enforcement

Guantanamo - The Innocent Speak

Two ex-Guantanamo inmates appear in Al-Qaeda video


January 24, 2009




WASHINGTON (AFP) — Two men released from the US "war on terror" prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have appeared in a video posted on a jihadist website, the SITE monitoring service reported.

One of the two former inmates, a Saudi man identified as Abu Sufyan al-Azdi al-Shahri, or prisoner number 372, has been elevated to the senior ranks of Al-Qaeda in Yemen, a US counter-terrorism official told AFP.

Three other men appear in the video, including Abu al-Hareth Muhammad al-Oufi, identified as an Al-Qaeda field commander. SITE later said he was prisoner No. 333.

A Pentagon spokesman, Commander Jeffrey Gordon, on Saturday declined to confirm the SITE information.

"We remain concerned about ex-Guantanamo detainees who have re-affiliated with terrorist organizations after their departure," said Gordon.

"We will continue to work with the international community to mitigate the threat they pose," he said.

On the video, al-Shihri is seen sitting with three other men before a flag of the Islamic State of Iraq, the front for Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

"By Allah, imprisonment only increased our persistence in our principles for which we went out, did jihad for, and were imprisoned for," al-Shihri was quoted as saying.

Al-Shiri was transferred from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia in 2007, the US counter-terrorism official said.

The other men in the video are identified as Commander Abu Baseer al-Wahayshi and Abu Hureira Qasm al-Rimi (also known as Abu Hureira al-Sana'ani).

The Defense Department has said as many as 61 former Guantanamo detainees -- about 11 percent of 520 detainees transferred from the detention center and released -- are believed to have returned to the fight.

The latest case highlights the risk the new US administration faces as it moves to empty Guantanamo of its remaining 245 prisoners and close the controversial detention camp within a year.





al qaida

Bush, Rendition, and Bill.

Do you see why liberals who attack Bush and have attacked Bush for his policies really need to be careful. When you peel back the layers from the Clinton period, we will find the very same behavior - ONLY - Congress will never have approved of much of what was done.

The upside: Even if the rabid left want Bush to be incited or investigated ... wise old owls will ensure it never happens, because - what Bush did, if anything, Bill did, only Congress never gave him the authority to do much of it.


Did Leon Panetta know about 'extraordinary renditions' under Clinton?
Alex Spillius at Jan 6, 2009

Liberals might be in for a nasty shock with Leon Panetta, the man Barack Obama wants to lead the CIA.

The selection of the former White House chief of staff to Bill Clinton has been welcomed by many Democrats for his denunciations of torture and all round management abilities.

But according to one former agent, Michael Scheuer, the extraordinary rendition programme that has so tainted the agency during the Bush administration actually began in the Clinton administration, when Panetta would, or should, have been fully aware of it.

Scheuer is a curious beast. An opponent of the Iraq War, he was the head of the CIA's get-bin-Laden unit from 1996 to 1999, and he should know what he is talking about. But he is very pro-rendition and was critical of the choice of Panetta on US networks today, mostly because he is an outsider. His claim that Clinton/Panetta started/knew about the outsourcing of torture was repeated by William Kristol and others.

Criticism of Panetta's selection has centred on his lack of spook experience, though that didn't help George Tenet deliver accurate intelligence on Saddam Hussein.

At what promises to be a lively confirmation hearing, senators might be well served to ask Panetta what he knew about agreements to send terror suspects to the likes of Egypt and Syria, where they were likely to be tortured.





Obama

Russia: Has no authority to speak for anyone

Russian activists assail government treason bill

Wed Dec 17, 7:50 am ET

MOSCOW – Russian rights activists say that a new law drafted by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's Cabinet would allow authorities to label any government critic a traitor.

The draft extends the definition of treason from breaching Russia's external security to damage to the nation's constitutional order, sovereignty or territorial integrity.

A group of prominent rights activists, including head of the Moscow Helsinki Group Lyudmila Alexeyeva and head of Civic Assistance Svetlana Gannushkina, said in a statement Wednesday that passage of the bill would return the nation's justice system to the times of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's purges.

The government systematically rolled back Russia's post-Soviet political freedoms during Putin's eight-year presidential tenure.
************************************

And from Russia / Putin, we waste our time listening to them lecture us on ... anything.

Bush and his - looking into souls. Please. Russia is ever more the resurrection of an earlier time. We all see it, not as bad, not as insidious ... yet, but it is happening, and some misguided, naive individuals in this country want to cut the military. You are begging for a military confrontation that you arenot prepared to stand up to.










Russia

Losercrats beware - It's Coming to Get You!

SICK SURVEILLANCE: GOOGLE REPORTS FLU SEARCHES, LOCATIONS TO FEDS
Tue, Nov 11 2008

GOOGLE will launch a new tool that will help federal officials "track sickness"."Flu Trends" uses search terms that people put into the web giant to figure out where influenza is heating up, and will notify the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in real time!

GOOGLE, continuing to work closely with government, claims it would keep individual user data confidential: "GOOGLE FLU TRENDS can never be used to identify individual users because we rely on anonymized, aggregated counts of how often certain search queries occur each week."

Engineers will capture keywords and phrases related to the flu, including thermometer, flu symptoms, muscle aches, chest congestion and others. Dr. Lyn Finelli, chief of influenza surveillance at CDC: "One thing we found last year when we validated this model is it tended to predict surveillance data. The data are really, really timely. They were able to tell us on a day-to-day basis the relative direction of flu activity for a given area. They were about a week ahead of us. They could be used... as early warning signal for flu activity."Thomas Malone, professor at M.I.T.: "I think we are just scratching the surface of what's possible with collective intelligence."Eric Schmidt, GOOGLE's chief executive vows: "From a technological perspective, it is the beginning."


*********************************

My dear friendly Losercrats -

I understand you will all be going through a series of withdrawals soon enough. When President Bush leaves office, you will not have any bogeymen to use as straw men in any of your irrationally devised and illogically presented arguments or claims. I am sorry.

It gets worse.

Over the last eight years, according to you - MOST of your civil liberties have been taken away. I will be very eager to watch as Obama reverses all those nefarious acts Bush perpetrated, and gives back to the American people all the civil liberties Bush took away.

I will be VERY eager to receive all those rights back and following your delusional vitriol, HE WILL RETURN ALL liberties taken away. How soon after January 20th should I expect the rescission to go into effect and a full restoration of civil liberties occur?

He was the candidate of change ... and this would be serious change, and the Congress if all Democratic and they care about civil liberties ... I will be very eager to find out when we can expect a return!

In the meantime, not to ruffle what feathers you have left, but the bigger issue has always been the private sector - NOT THE GOVERNMENT.

The above article is not in and of itself an issue, it is extrapolating from what we now know, to what could very well happen with just as few strokes of the keyboard!

Have a nice day.

You may now return the tin foil to its appropriate place.








Obama

France and Civil Liberties

New security database angers many in France

Sep 9, 2008
Associated Press


PARIS (AP) - A new French security database that could track anyone deemed a "possible threat to public order"—even minors as young as 13—has outraged privacy crusaders and put France's conservative government on the defensive.

Critics have collected some 130,000 signatures against the database—known by the acronym Edvige—which they contend is better suited for a police state than a modern European democracy.

President Nicolas Sarkozy sought to quell the uproar Tuesday, summoning his prime minister, national police chief and top intelligence officer for a special meeting.

Though Sarkozy stressed the crime-fighting benefits of the database, he ordered the interior minister to open immediate talks about it to ensure that it "protect freedoms," according to an official in his office. The official was not authorized to be publicly named.

Le Parisien daily's Tuesday edition quoted lawyer Jean-Marc Fedida as saying Edvige opens up "the possibility of tracking the entire population of France."

Edvige replaces an obsolete 1991 database that helped France's police surveillance agency track politicians, labor leaders and other activists—anyone who resorted to violence or supported the use of violence.

But Edvige goes further, gathering personal information on health and sexual orientation, dropping the minimum age for surveillance from 18 to 13 and casting a wider net, allowing security officials to track anyone considered a "possible threat to public order."

[to read the rest of the article, click on the title link]