DOJ white paper outlines the legal reasoning for assassinating American citizens.

A leaked internal memorandum from the Office of Legal Counsel for the Obama administration entitled, “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al Qa’ida or An Associated Force” explains the White House’s justification for conducting targeted killings. The Obama administration claims that this document does not exist, yet the 16-page white paper originating with the Department of Justice (DoJ) has been given to select members of the Senate.

This document outlines in detail the legal reasoning used by the Obama administration for carrying out targeted assassinations of American citizens with suspected ties to al-Qaeda. No proof is necessary for any American to be put on this list; simply the federal government’s suspicions are sufficed.

Broken down into a three-part “test” to justify targeted assassinations, the white paper states:

1. An informed, high-level official of the U.S. government has determined that the targeted American poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States
2. Capture is infeasible
3. The operation is conducted in a manner consistent with the four fundamental principles of the laws of war governing the use of force

There are specific references to the use of drone attack as not in violation of the “due process rights” afforded Americans under the authority of the US Constitution.

The white paper includes redefinitions and expansions of self-defense and imminent attack with the ideology of a “broader concept of imminence” without the necessity of actual intelligence to support those assumptions. If the American is thought to be a threat to the US, they could become eligible of these targeted assassinations.

Language such as “informed, high-level” US government official could independently determine that a US citizen was “recently” involved with al-Qaeda in undetermined “activities” and be found without proof to be a sure threat by committing a possible attack on the US.

This briefing paper was extracted from another document that surfaced in 2011 and states that due process is not applicable in cases where a US citizen is placed on the White House kill list. The document explains that “judicial enforcement of such orders would require the court to supervise inherently predictive judgments by the president and his national security advisers as to when and how to use force against a member of an enemy force against which Congress has authorized the use of force.”

Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, remarked that the paper was “a profoundly disturbing document. “It’s hard to believe that it was produced in a democracy built on a system of checks and balances. It summarizes in cold legal terms a stunning overreach of executive authority — the claimed power to declare Americans a threat and kill them far from a recognized battlefield and without any judicial involvement.”

In May of 2012, Obama gave his chief of counter-terrorism advisor, John Brennan, a promotion. Brennan has been designated as the one person in the Obama administration who is in charge of choosing who will be assassinated.

Brennan, who was a CIA official during the Bush administration, recently remarked that drone killings were moral, ethical and just.

Brennan will work with the State Department and the Pentagon (along with various federal agencies) in creating target lists; deciding who lives and who dies. Brennan’s recommendation will be delivered directly to Obama for final consideration.

How the process will be enacted is a classified matter; however advocacy groups are alarmed and are demanding that the Obama administration make use of the legal process in the US before ordering people killed by drones.
http://www.occupycorporatism.com/leaked-document-outlines-legal-justification-for-targeted-assassination-of-americans/

Boston's police chief wants to use drones to spy on Americans:

Next year's Boston Marathon could be watched over by drones.

The city's police commissioner, Ed Davis, told the Boston Herald that using the aerial surveillance technology during next year's race is "a great idea."

"I don’t know that would be the first place I’d invest money, but certainly to cover an event like this, and have an eye in the sky that would be much cheaper to run than a helicopter is a really good idea," Davis said.

Davis' interest in drones comes after the Boston Marathon bombing that killed three and injured more than 260 on April 15.

Davis also told WBZ NewsRadio that, "there are certainly serious privacy concerns that we have to consider before we do something like that.”

The Herald praised the idea in an editorial on Friday, arguing that "there may be no more useful tool" to help law enforcement prevent another attack:

Surveillance drones can be a useful tool for law enforcement, and like it or not they’re coming to a city near you. It is important that their use be restrained, with proper oversight to prevent abuse. But in an emergency situation, there may be no more useful tool.

Privacy advocates like the American Civil Liberties Union have repeatedly sounded the alarm over the growing use of domestic drones. The group argues that, because the technology is relatively inexpensive, drones are likely to be used more and more frequently across the country.

The ACLU also warns that, unlike police helicopters, drones pose unique and potentially dangerous privacy concerns if they aren't tightly regulated.

Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald has expressed similar concerns:

The fact is that drones vest vast new powers that police helicopters and existing weapons do not vest: and that’s true not just for weaponization but for surveillance. Drones enable a Surveillance State unlike anything we’ve seen. Because small drones are so much cheaper than police helicopters, many more of them can be deployed at once, ensuring far greater surveillance over a much larger area. Their small size and stealth capability means they can hover without any detection, and they can remain in the air for far longer than police helicopters.

Some Massachusetts legislators are already looking at stopping the spread of drones in their state before law enforcement agencies capitalize on the aircraft’s surveillance capabilities: in January, Republican State Senator Robert L. Hedlund introduced S.B. 1664, “An Act to regulate the use of unmanned aerial vehicles.”

If Sen. Hedlund’s bill is passed, Massachusetts law enforcement will be limited with how they operate drones within the state. The senator’s act has been approved by a number of colleagues in the state capitol, and if enacted it will forbid police agencies from using UAVs for dragnet surveillance. Hedlund’s law limits drone to single out only persons of interest named in official court warrants, and biometric matching technology would not be allowed to be implemented on any other person picked up by a drone’s cameras.

Earlier this month, the Florida State Senate voted unanimously to ban law enforcement agencies there to conduct overhead spy missions using unmanned aerial vehicles except in situations where the DHS believes that drones could deter a high-risk terrorist attack. 
http://rt.com/usa/boston-marathon-surveillance-drones-452/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/27/boston-police-drones-marathon_n_3169613.html 

Drone industry report claims drones are great for the economy:

The robotic warfare arms race has gone global, with unmanned aerial vehicles taking center stage. A new U.S. study by the Association For Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) shows why drone proliferation continues to ramp up at a nearly exponential rate: it has become one of the fastest growing areas of the U.S. economy. A report entitled, "The Economic Impact of Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration in the United States" is clear in its conclusion that competition for jobs and tax dollars created by drone tech development is likely to provide the impetus to loosen state regulations on drone use. The AUVSI is projecting 70,000 new jobs in the first three years of full integration.

Cenk Uygar in the video below, the AUVSI has a vested interest in promoting drone use despite the organization's "non-profit" status. From their About Us page they don't hide their goals and connections:

 The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International is the world's largest non-profit organization devoted exclusively to advancing the unmanned systems and robotics community. Serving more than 7,500 members from government organizations, industry and academia, AUVSI is committed to fostering, developing, and promoting unmanned systems and robotic technologies. AUVSI members support defense, civil and commercial sectors. (Read full mission statement and their goals for the world HERE

The disturbing history behind U.S. drone assassinations:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2013/05/06/130506crbo_books_coll 

The world is a battlefield: Jeremy Scahill on "Dirty Wars" and Obama’s expanding drone attacks:

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/4/24/the_world_is_a_battlefield_jeremy

Uncertainties remain as FAA integrates drones into American skies:

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/04/29/189894/uncertainties-remain-as-faa-integrates.html#.UX-3BN7D-Uk#storylink=cpy

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/04/29/189894/uncertainties-remain-as-faa-integrates.html#.UX-3BN7D-Uk

Will U.S. troops fire on American citizens? 

http://intellihub.com/2013/04/28/will-u-s-troops-fire-on-american-citizens-2/

New report shows 313 people of color were shot by police, security guards, and vigilantes in America last year.

Operation Ghetto Storm: 2012 Annual Report on the Extrajudicial Killings of 313 Black People by Police, Security Guards, and Vigilantes."

Every 28 hours in 2012 someone employed or protected by the US government killed a Black man, woman, or child! This startling fact is revealed in Operation Ghetto Storm.
 
The United States is one of the most repressive and brutal societies in the world, particularly to oppressed peoples like Blacks, Native Americans, and Latinos. The rates of extrajudicial killings on the US rival only those perpetrated against the Indigenous people of Palestine, Mexico, Guatemala and the Amazonian region, and African‐descendants in Brazil and Colombia. 

“When we started this investigation in early 2012, we knew a serious human rights crisis was confronting the Black community”, says Kali Akuno, an organizer with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM). “However, we did not have a clear sense of its true depth until we compiled and examined the annual figures. We have uncovered outrageous rates of extrajudicial killings–rates, that when they are found in countries like Mexico or Brazil, are universally condemned. The same outrage inside the U.S. also demands immediate action.”

Given recent revelations in the case of Floyd et al v New York City that challenge “stop-and-frisk”, the study demonstrates that NYPD violations of human rights are endemic throughout the U.S. For example, racial profiling that singles out Black people for looking, driving or behaving “suspiciously” leads to at least 43% of Black peoples’ fatal encounters with police. Only 13% of those who were killed were involved in allegedly violent criminal activity that physically threatened others’ lives. These and many more of the Report’s findings reveal the deadly impact of systemic racism in the U.S.

Akuno further points out, “Operation Ghetto Storm follows the trail of extrajudicial killings to the rise of militarized police forces and their occupation of Black communities. And explores how systemic racism has led to increased militarization and repression, which in turn has exacerbated the human rights crises devastating Black communities.”

He added, “This report breaks new ground by going beyond reliance on police department press releases and investigating as fully as possible the context and consequences of each killing. This investigative journalism serves as an example of respect for Black life so often neglected in public conversations.”

Arlene Eisen, member of the Malcolm X Solidarity Committee and the author of the Report, explained, “Any one of these people killed could have been my son or your husband or daughter. Regardless of education, class, behavior or dress, nowhere is a Black person safe from potentially-fatal racial profiling, invasive policing, constant surveillance and overriding suspicion.”

Based on a year of research, Eisen concluded, “police departments and government agencies throughout the United States go to great lengths to hide the data on extrajudicial killings, particularly the race of the murder victims. I am quite sure that there were more than 313 Black people killed by the police in 2012. Social movements in the United States must demand this information and must demand an end to these killings.”
http://mxgm.org/operation-ghetto-storm-2012-annual-report-on-the-extrajudicial-killing-of-313-black-people/

Appeals Court upholds DUI conviction of man who popped a breath mint during a traffic stop.

Texas - Use of breath mints can be considered evidence a driver is intoxicated, according to a divided Texas Court of Appeals ruling delivered earlier this month. The three-judge panel made the decision in the case of limousine service driver Robert Richardson who was stopped in Lewisville, Texas on August 25, 2010 while transporting customers from the airport.

Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Fulford was about to issue a speeding ticket to a motorcycle on Interstate 35E when he noticed Richardson's Chevy Tahoe change lanes without signaling, almost hitting the motorcycle. Trooper Fulford was concerned primarily about the bad driving, but in the back of his mind he thought it could also be a case of driving under the influence (DUI). Once stopped, there was a mild odor of alcohol in the Tahoe, the passengers denied drinking, and Richardson was nervous. Trooper Fulford told Richardson he would write him a warning for his failure to signal before changing lanes. When he returned from his squad car with a warning notice in hand, Trooper Fulford said he noted an "overwhelming" odor of breath mints.

"Did you just take a breath mint?" Trooper Fulford asked.

When Richardson said yes, he was ordered out of the Tahoe. From there, he was arrested and convicted of DUI. Richardson appealed, arguing the traffic stop was complete after the trooper handed him back his driver's license with a warning, and that anything that happened beyond that point amounted to an illegal detention. The Texas judges acknowledged the principle that once a traffic stop concludes, it should not be used as a fishing expedition for unrelated criminal activity. The court had to decide whether the use of breath mints constituted a specific articulable fact suggesting another crime had been committed beyond the bad lane change.

The appellate judges agreed with the trial court that all of the clues Trooper Fulford picked up on prior to smelling the breath mints combined to provide the suspicion needed to make the search reasonable and consistent with the Fourth Amendment.

"These facts, which Trooper Fulford identified during his testimony at the suppression hearing, were sufficient to provide him with reasonable suspicion that Richardson had been driving while intoxicated," Justice Anne Gardner ruled for the court. "We overrule Richardson's sole point. Having overruled Richardson's sole point, we affirm the trial court's judgment."
http://thenewspaper.com/news/40/4087.asp

Richardson v. Texas ruling: http://thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/2013/tx-mints.pdf

New article exposes forensic science as being "fraught with errors."

A target article recently published in Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition (JARMAC) reviews various high-profile false convictions. It provides an overview of classic psychological research on expectancy and observer effects and indicates in which ways forensic science examiners may be influenced by information such as confessions, eyewitness identification, and graphical evidence.

The target article authors, Saul Kassin and Jeff Kukucka, of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and Itiel Dror, University College, London, point out that when the instrument of analysis is a human examiner, then even evidence considered by the public to be highly objective, such as fingerprint evidence, is actually subjective in its judgment. Therefore, they argue, there is a potential for confirmation bias because psychological research shows that "people tend to seek, perceive, interpret, and create new evidence in ways that verify their preexisting beliefs."

The authors reveal that even DNA evidence, more famously known for exonerating wrongfully convicted people, has contributed to false convictions, especially when other, flawed, evidence chronologically precedes it, such as a mistaken eyewitness identification or false confession.
"Popular TV programs, such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, communicate a false belief in the powers of forensic science, a problem that can be exacerbated when forensic science experts overstate the strength of the evidence," explained leading author, Saul Kassin.

The study does not just point out flaws – it details many things that can be done to limit or avoid these problems, both during an investigation and during a trial. The authors propose various best practice recommendations to reduce confirmation biases. During the investigation, for example, an easy solution would be to shield forensic examiners from everything other than the evidence they are examining. This minimizes chances of fitting the evidence to a known suspect.

"The target article describes an important force that has the potential to erode the quality of our judicial system. Solving the problem will require psychological researchers, legal scholars and forensic scientists communicating with one another– a process that is fostered by the exchange of ideas," says Ronald Fisher, Editor-in-Chief of JARMAC, and Professor of psychology at Florida International University.

The forensic confirmation bias- Problems, perspectives and proposed solutions pdf:
http://ac.els-cdn.com/S2211368113000028/1-s2.0-S2211368113000028-main.pdf?_tid=bd61eb8e-b180-11e2-b2ea-00000aacb360&acdnat=1367317906_cbcf2846c98d8728d57d28e93c5627d2

Link to the Journal of applied research in memory & cognition has many useful articles:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/22113681

Forensic science is not as dependable as you might think:
http://www.bendbulletin.com/article/20120422/NEWS0107/204220388/

The making of the U.S. internal security apparatus, how America has become a suveillance state.

For over one hundred years U. S. government authorities have imported draconian police state techniques and technology developed overseas back to the American homeland, whether involving torture, surveillance, and suspension of human rights and liberties, using the overseas country as a laboratory for counterinsurgency and rearming local security forces for repression. We saw evidence of this recently on the streets in Boston and Watertown with martial law maneuvers used in Iraq and Afghanistan. I witnessed Professor Alfred W. McCoy deliver these same illuminating remarks at the University of Tulsa and had an opportunity to briefly discuss aspects of his internationally recognized research on CIA covert operations, the global narcotics trade, and the origins of the National Security State with him. He is the author of The Politics  of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Traffic (New York: Lawrence  Hill Books, revised, 2003), and Policing  America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the  Surveillance State (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009). From suppressing the Filipino Insurrection following the Spanish-American War to the destructive counterinsurgency campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, these martial exercises in unlawful, extra-constitutional behavior have continued unabated. And like the prodigal son of New Testament scriptures, they have come home.

Watch the video by Alfred McCoy:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/136825.html 

America is becoming a police state:

Bill Maher called Boston police officers “unprofessional” on Friday for shooting at the boat where Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was hiding even though it turned out he was unarmed.

“I agree that we shouldn’t have given the kid his Miranda rights because he probably had information. We wanted to take him alive. We all agree with that.… there could’ve been bombs out there, there could’ve been an accomplice. So we wanted to take him alive. If you agree with that then what the cops did there was unprofessional. That’s called contagious fire,” Maher said on HBO’s “Real Time.”

According to reports, no gun was found inside the boat after Tsarnaev was captured, although the Boston Police commissioner had earlier said that cops had exchanged fire with the suspect.

Maher also said that America is becoming a “police state.”

“I want to talk about the police, who I am a supporter of… Look at this, I mean if this is what you have – why don’t you invade a country? …. I mean go up to Canada – take their oil… This country is becoming a police state. And it is very troubling to me,” Maher said, while showing pictures of police officers patrolling the city and searching for Tsarnaev.
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/bill-maher-boston-police-90700.html 
  
How the U.S. funds NATO: The rise of the global police force

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Police Operational Mentor and Liaison Team (POMLT) combines police forces from over 20 countries to “coach, teach, mentor, provide the conduit for liaison, and when necessary, support the operational planning and employment of the ANP unit to which they are aligned in order to support the development of a professional, sufficient and self-sustaining ANP.”

This year, NATO facilitated an airstrike against the CIA – created Taliban in Ghazni, Afghanistan. It was confirmed by local authorities that “”The NATO planes went there to assist the police, but the post was bombed and four police were killed. Two civilians present were also killed.”

Because of the rise of the BRICs nations, the NATO believes that countries will need to rely on this international police force “to manage a range of threats and challenges.”

The perception of the international community is that the BRICs nations are “torn internally between accepting the status quo . . . only if their power in the institution is increased; or trying to fashion a new system altogether.”

NATO has grown into a “UN-US crafted attempt to build history’s first, first of all largest military bloc of 28 members, with 3 nuclear powers – nothing like this has ever existed before.”

In 2011, then US Defense Secretary Robert Gates admonished the US government for “willing and eager for American taxpayers to assume the growing security burden left by reductions in European defense budgets.”

Gates acknowledged that with the US contributing $711.8 million to NATO operations in foreign nations translates to 1/5 to ¼ of NATO’s overall budget.

Andrew Bacevich, professor at Boston University, commented that the US spends more on NATO than “all other nations on the planet combined.”

According to the Congressional Budget Service, in 2009 – 2010 the US government, through the Department of the Army’s Operations and Maintenance account, provided between $408 million and $431 million.

The 2012 Department of Defense (DoD) Military Construction Program and Budget (MCPB) document shows a contribution to funding for NATO surveillance programs and intelligence operations, mobility, logistics with a focus on transportation and infrastructure.

The US contributed $282 million to NSIP under the guise of ongoing military operations that seek to preserve peace while NATO itself as focused its efforts on national politics and economics.
http://www.occupycorporatism.com/how-the-us-funds-nato-the-rise-of-the-global-police-force/

The U.S. gov't. and corporations are the criminals spying on Americans:

Verizon has patented technology that turns a DVR into a personal spying tool to watch Americans in their own homes.

Verizon is calling this endeavor FierceCable that is able to display “acute sensitivity in customers’ living rooms: argument sounds prompt ads for marriage counseling, and sounds of cuddling.”

Verizon explains: “If the detection system determines that a couple is arguing, a service provider would be able to send an ad for marriage counseling to a TV or mobile device in the room. If the couple utters words that indicate they are cuddling, they would receive ads for a romantic getaway vacation, a commercial for a contraceptive, a commercial for flowers, or commercials for romantic movies.”

The patent is entitled “Methods and Systems for Presenting an Advertisement Associated with an Ambient Action of a User” and filed by Brian F. Roberts who invented the technology on behalf of Verizon Patent and Licensing INC. Under the guise of perfecting marketing and advertising, the spying “method includes a media content presentation system presenting a media content program comprising an advertisement break, detecting an ambient action performed by a user during the presentation of the media content program, selecting an advertisement associated with the detected ambient action, and presenting the selected advertisement during the advertisement break.”

In home ambient activities such as “eating, exercising, laughing, reading, sleeping, talking, singing, humming, cleaning, and playing a musical instrument; as well as cuddling, fighting, participating in a game or sporting event” can be surveilled using this technology. All cellular phones can interact with this device as a separate mode of surveillance.

It is as simple as speaking a word, and the MCPS is activated. Embedded “computer-executable instructions” working in tandem with the MCPS will allow specified advertisements through the utilization of “depth sensors, image sensors, audio sensors and a thermal sensor.”

In 2008, Comcast patented infrared camera technology that will recognize individuals in their living room. The sensors inside a cable box will the person and anticipate their television viewing preferences.

Retailers have begun to use surveillance mannequins manufactured by EyeSee who are equipped with facial recognition cameras embedded in their eyes that can decipher a customer’s age, gender and race. Under the guise of marketing better to the public, shoppers are subjected to giving up personal data without their expressed consent which could be sold to the intelligence community and used against them if profiled and retained by the NCTC or another federal surveillance agency.

Recently, the CVS Caremark Corporation began requiring employees to disclose personal health information (including weight, blood pressure, and body fat levels) or else pay an annual $600 fine. Workers must make this information available to the company’s employee “Wellness Program” and sign a form stating that they’re doing so voluntarily.

CVS argues this will help workers “take more responsibility for improving their health.” At one level, this makes a certain sense. Because the company is paying for their employees’ health insurance, they naturally prefer healthier workers. But at a deeper level, CVS’ action demonstrates a growing problem with our current system of employer-provided health insurance. If our bosses must pay for our health care, they will inevitably seek greater control over our lifestyles.

ObamaCare requires large employers to offer health insurance to workers (or else pay a penalty). As a result, more people are discussing how best to link employment to healthy behavior. For example, the New England Journal of Medicine recently featured a pair of high-profile editorials debating the merits of allowing companies to discriminate against smokers, “for their own good.”

Furthermore, ObamaCare pays government grants to encourage companies to implement these “wellness programs.” Hence, employers who wouldn’t otherwise concern themselves with workers’ lifestyles now have an incentive to do so in order to collect federal funds.

The flip side of coupling health insurance to employment. Some employers (like Regal Cinema) are cutting back on worker hours to reduce those insurance costs. Others will still cover their employees — but will want to monitor those employees’ health and activities.

In December of 2012, the Obama administration gave their consent to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to mandate black box event data recorders (EDR) be installed in all new cars in the US.

The information recorded by EDRs includes:
• vehicle speed
• whether the brake was activated in the moments before a crash
• crash forces at the moment of impact
• information about the state of the engine throttle
• air bag deployment timing and air bag readiness prior to the crash
• whether the vehicle occupant’s seat belt was buckled

Advanced EDRs can collect detailed information about drivers and their driving habits; including the size and weight of the driver, the seat position, the habits of the driver as well as passengers.

The excuse is the EDRs gather information about car crashes in the moments leading up to the accident that manufacturers can use to improve their safety measures when constructing vehicles. 
However, the government regulation utilizes surveillance technology with policies that do not outline the expressed use of the data collected in the EDRs.
http://www.occupycorporatism.com/us-gov-and-corporations-are-the-criminals-spying-on-americans/ 
http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulhsieh/2013/04/25/big-brother-has-a-new-face-and-its-your-boss/?partner=yahootix 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/26/supreme-court-eavesdropping-law-doj-argument
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2315863/Big-brother-switch-fridge-Power-giants-make-millions--pay-sinister-technology.html

Common Core State Standards is a giant surveillance program targeting our nation's students.

Awareness is growing rapidly about the recent initiative to bring Common Core State Standards to schools across America. Although the standards were supposedly proposed by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) — giving the illusion that the agenda is “state-led,” it was the federal government that endorsed the plan by offering $4 billion in grant money through Obama’s Race to the Top program to cooperating states.

Representative Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.) recently decided to take action and write a letter to U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan and is currently seeking co-signers from congressional colleagues. Congressman Luetkemeyer addressed several issues of concern with Common Core — and in the last half of his letter he emphasized the crux of the problem: data mining.

“We understand that as a condition of applying for [Race to the Top] grant funding, states obligated themselves to implement a State Longitudinal Database System (SLDS) used to track students by obtaining personally identifiable information,” Luetkemeyer said. “We formally request a detailed description of each change to student privacy policy that has been made under your leadership, including the need and intended purpose for such changes.”

Parents might reasonably assume that the “personally identifiable information” collected for the database will include students' test scores and perhaps other measures of academic proficiency. But they would be much less likely to imagine that the federal snoopers envision something far more extensive and invasive than merely tracking academic performance. According to the Department of Education’s February 2013 report Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance: Critical Factors for Success in the 21st Century, “Researchers are exploring how to gather complex affective data and generate meaningful and usable information to feed back to learners, teachers, researchers, and the technology itself. Connections to neuroscience are also beginning to emerge.” (Emphasis added.)

So far, nine states across the country have already agreed to adopt the data mining process, with parents having no say in this decision. Schools in New York, Delaware, Colorado, Massachusetts, Kentucky, Illinois, Louisiana, Georgia, and North Carolina have committed to “pilot testing” and information dissemination via sending students’ personal information to a database managed by inBloom, Inc., a private organization funded largely by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This digital warehouse will store the data and then sell it to “education technology companies, content providers and developers to support the creation of products compatible with this infrastructure,” according to the inBloom website.

The fact that Common Core Standards require children’s personal information to be relinquished to a database that emerged only three months ago and then sold to unspecified companies is worrisome to many parents and educators. “It leads to total control and total tracking of the child,” said Mary Black, curriculum director for Freedom Project Education, an organization that provides classical K-12 online schooling. “It completely strips the child of his or her own privacy.”

Schools will not only collect objective facts about students but gain a more intimate knowledge as well — even profiles of students’ attitudes and predictions of their futures that could then be used by the schools to shape outcomes. The DOE released a brief in October 2012 entitled “Enhancing, Teaching and Learning Through Educational Data Mining and Learning Analytics,” in which the following was stated about data mining procedures:

A student learning database (or other big data repository) stores time-stamped student input and behaviors captured as students work within the system. A predictive model combines demographic data (from an external student information system) and learning/behavior data from the student learning database to track a student’s progress and make predictions about his or her future behaviors or performance, such as future course outcomes and dropouts.

Within the February report, the DOE displayed photographs of the actual technology that will be used on students, if the department’s plan is fully implemented. What they call the “four parallel streams of affective sensors” will be employed to effectively “measure” each child. The “facial expression camera,” for instance, “is a device that can be used to detect emotion.... The camera captures facial expressions, and software on the laptop extracts geometric properties on faces.” Other devices, such as the “posture analysis seat,” “pressure mouse,” and “wireless skin conductance sensor,” which looks like a wide, black bracelet strapped to a child’s wrist, are all designed to collect “physiological response data from a biofeedback apparatus that measures blood volume, pulse, and galvanic skin response to examine student frustration.”
http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/education/item/15213-data-mining-students-through-common-core?goback=.gde_62979_member_236481372

Louisiana withdraws student data from inBloom:

Louisiana state Superintendent John White's decision to withdraw student data from inBloom, a nonprofit organization, and to have discussions with parents in the state about privacy concerns about data being stored that included students' age, sex, and grade level. The Louisiana controversy could also offer some lessons on how states handle privacy in education in the years ahead, with all the emphasis on tracking students' academic progress.

"Any product that could help our kids, and help our teachers help our kids, is something that we're going to at least take a look at," White said when I interviewed him April 26. "We're going to go to our families and have a discussion about our data-storage practices, not having anything to do with inBloom."

What is inBloom? According to the corporate language on its website, it is "a nonprofit provider of technology services that allow states and public school districts to better integrate student data and third-party applications to support sustainable, cost-effective personalized learning." It gets philanthropic dollars from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (which also provides support to Education Week and edweek.org). You can get a sense of inBloom's goals from its website's "core components" section, where it talks about connecting student data to actual instruction using the appropriate technology, and using information from both state and local sources.

Other districts partnering with inBloom include New York City, two districts in Illinois, and one district in North Carolina. However, other than Louisiana, no state is working wholesale with inBloom, although three others, Delaware, Georgia, and Kentucky, are slated to have pilot programs this year.

In Louisiana, White said, the state had been storing student data with inBloom so that vendors in the state's Course Choice program, which allows students to enroll in academic and career education programs offered by institutions from around the state, could verify basic student information like name, sex, and birth date submitted by parents in Course Choice applications.

InBloom has a "privacy commitment" page where it tries to allay fears about violations of students' privacy. It says, for example, that, "Neither inBloom nor any other participating agency or vendor may sell, assign, lease or commercially exploit confidential student data," and that its backers, like the Gates Foundation, don't have any access to that confidential data.

The privacy and security section of inBloom's website states that, "inBloom, Inc. cannot guarantee the security of the information stored in inBloom or that the information will not be intercepted when it is being transmitted."
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/state_edwatch/2013/04/john_white_backtracks_on_controversial_inbloom_deal_in_louisiana.html

Rutherford Institute tells Court, man carrying an anti-police sign is protected under our 1st. Amendement rights.

Washington, DC — Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute presented oral arguments in federal court today in defense of a free speech lawsuit filed on behalf of a 45-year-old African-American man who was arrested for standing silently in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building while wearing a sign expressing his concerns about police abuse and the government’s disparate treatment of African-Americans and Hispanics. The court appearance came in response to a motion by the government to dismiss the Institute’s lawsuit, which was filed on behalf of activist Harold Hodge in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.  The lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of a federal law that makes it unlawful to display any flag, banner or device designed to bring into public notice a party, organization, or movement while on the grounds of the U.S. Supreme Court. In asking that the Marshal of the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia be enjoined from enforcing 40 U.S.C. § 6135, Rutherford Institute attorneys assert that the statute is vague, overbroad and invalid as applied to the kind of peaceful protest engaged in by Hodge.

“What we’re dealing with is a government that wants its citizenry to remain deaf, mute and blind—ignorant about the violations of their rights taking place daily and incapable of voicing their discontent,” said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. “Thankfully, we still have the First Amendment, which ensures that Americans can speak freely, assemble and petition their government for a redress of grievances. However, these freedoms are only relevant as long as people like Harold Hodge continue to exercise their rights and hold the government accountable when it attempts to undermine or do away with those rights.”

On January 28, 2011, Harold Hodge quietly and peacefully stood in the plaza area near the steps leading to the United States Supreme Court Building, wearing a 3’ X 2’ sign around his neck that proclaimed: “The U.S. Gov. Allows Police To Illegally Murder And Brutalize African Americans And Hispanic People.” The plaza is in all relevant respects like a public square or park, where citizens have by long-tradition been allowed to meet and express their views on matters of public interest and importance. However, a police officer informed Hodge that he was violating the law and issued him three warnings to leave the Supreme Court plaza. Hodge refused, was handcuffed and placed under arrest for violating 40 U.S.C. § 6135. Hodge was then taken to a holding cell within the Supreme Court building. Thereafter, he was transported to U.S. Capitol Police Headquarters where he was booked and given a citation. The charge was dismissed in September 2011 after Hodge complied with an agreement to stay away from the Supreme Court building and grounds for six months. In asking the U.S. District Court to declare 40 U.S.C. § 6135 unconstitutionally vague and overbroad in violation of the First Amendment, Rutherford Institute attorneys are seeking a declaration of Hodge’s First Amendment right to engage in peaceful, non-disruptive political speech on the plaza of the Supreme Court building.
https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/on_the_front_lines/oral_argument_rutherford_institute_calls_on_court_to_protect_1st_am_rights
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/03/08/taking-liberties-first-amendment-and-right-to-protest/

The Rutherford Institute's complaint in Hodge v. Talkin:
https://www.rutherford.org/files_images/general/04-26-2013_Hodge_Complaint.pdf

Miranda Rights 2013

For more information about Miranda rights please read - "Terrorism, Miranda, and Related Matters" http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/terror/R41252.pdf

Hospitals are deporting undocumented immigrants that can't pay for care-often while the patient is unconscious.

Working for Big Brother, hospitals under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, use "Medical Repatriation" to send hundreds of immigrants across the country back to their native countries often while unconscious.

Des Moines, Iowa - Days after they were badly hurt in a car accident, Jacinto Cruz and Jose Rodriguez-Saldana lay unconscious in an Iowa hospital while the American health care system weighed what to do with the two immigrants from Mexico.

The men had health insurance from jobs at one of the nation's largest pork producers. But neither had legal permission to live in the U.S., nor was it clear whether their insurance would pay for the long-term rehabilitation they needed.

So Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines took matters into its own hands: After consulting with the patients' families, it quietly loaded the two comatose men onto a private jet that flew them back to Mexico, effectively deporting them without consulting any court or federal agency.

When the men awoke, they were more than 1,800 miles away in a hospital in Veracruz, on the Mexican Gulf Coast.

Hundreds of immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally have taken similar journeys through a little-known removal system run not by the federal government trying to enforce laws but by hospitals seeking to curb high costs. A recent report compiled by immigrant advocacy groups made a rare attempt to determine how many people are sent home, concluding that at least 600 immigrants were removed over a five-year period, though there were likely many more.

In interviews with immigrants, their families, attorneys and advocates, The Associated Press reviewed the obscure process known formally as "medical repatriation," which allows hospitals to put patients on chartered international flights, often while they are still unconscious. Hospitals typically pay for the flights.

"The problem is it's all taking place in this unregulated sort of a black hole ... and there is no tracking," said law professor Lori Nessel, director of the Center for Social Justice at Seton Hall Law School, which offers free legal representation to immigrants.

"It really is a Catch-22 for us," said Dr. Mark Purtle, vice president of Medical Affairs for Iowa Health System, which includes Iowa Methodist Medical Center. "This is the area that the federal government, the state, everybody says we're not paying for the undocumented."

Hospitals are legally mandated to care for all patients who need emergency treatment, regardless of citizenship status or ability to pay. But once a patient is stabilized, that funding ceases, along with the requirement to provide care. Many immigrant workers without citizenship are ineligible for Medicaid, the government's insurance program for the poor and elderly.

That's why hospitals often try to send those patients to rehabilitation centers and nursing homes back in their home countries.

Civil rights groups say the practice violates U.S. and international laws and unfairly targets one of the nation's most defenseless populations.

"They don't have advocates, and they don't have people who will speak on their behalf," said Miami attorney John De Leon, who has been arguing such cases for a decade.

Estimating the number of cases is difficult since no government agency or organization keeps track.

The Center for Social Justice and New York Lawyers for the Public Interest have documented at least 600 immigrants who were involuntarily removed in the past five years for medical reasons. The figure is based on data from hospitals, humanitarian organizations, news reports and immigrant advocates who cited specific cases. But the actual number is believed to be significantly higher because many more cases almost certainly go unreported.
http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/national/medical-repatriation-us-hospitals-send-hundreds-of-immigrants-back-home
http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2013/04/24/US-hospitals-repatriating-sickinjured-undocumented-immigrants/UPI-21001366847321/

(VIDEO) Hospitals deporting undocumented immigrants that can't pay for care—often while the patient is unconscious:

https://www.rebelmouse.com/MuckReads/hospitals_deporting_undocument-150383305.html

(Report) Discharge, deportation, and dangerous journey: A study of the practice of medical  repatriation:
http://www.nylpi.org/images/FE/chain234siteType8/site203/client

Medical Repatriation: Examining the legal and ethical implications of an emerging practice:

http://law.wustl.edu/journal/32/Zoellner.pdf

DHS has begun exploiting Americans fear by claiming we need more security of our mass transit system.

 

Counterterrorism experts are arguing that security on America’s mass transit lines must be tightened in light of the  foiled plot to attack a Toronto passenger train.

Fox News reports that  the  plan to attack Canada’s transit system highlights  security holes that exist in America’s commuter system, and the challenges involved in reinforcing security. “The millions of Americans who take public transportation need to be assured that everything possible is being done to ensure their security and safety,” American Public Transportation Association president and CEO Michael Melaniphy told Fox News on Monday, adding that federal funding should be increased.

Security analysts say that public transit systems are hard to defend  because of their open architecture, many access points, and large number of passengers. R recent incidents, however, only serve to emphasize the need to make public transportation more secure.

Scott Weber, a former counsel for DHS, told Fox News that “the threat lies everywhere.”

“This country has to change its outlook on day-to-day life,” Weber said. “We can’t let out guard down.”

Melaniphy thinks investments should be made on state-of-the-art surveillance, explosive and chemical-detection systems,  enhanced communication technology, anti-terrorism patrol teams, first responder training, and public education campaigns.

DHS, through its Transit Security Grant Program, has given more than $547 million to sixty mass transit and passenger rail system in twenty-five different states. The Transportation Security Administration, which is responsible for allocating the money, divided the funds on a “risk-based prioritization in determining eligible passenger rail and transit agencies, funding allocations and evaluations for award,” according to TSA Web site. In 2012 the grant program provided $87.5 million to beef up security measures at the country’s passenger rail, intra-city bus networks, and ferry systems.

The police state build-up: Checkpoints in Metro D.C. area:

Article first appeared in CopBlock.org:

During evening rush tonight in Arlington, Virginia, the build up of the massive police state was pretty well known at the ticket gates of the courthouse metro station. Members of the TSA and special units of the DHS were present there, where they have no legal authority. They were assisting police officers of the Washington Metro Transit Authority, who also had no legal justification or authority to be doing what they were doing. K9 teams were also present. Tables were set up for bags and personal belongings to be unlawfully searched by these coward and rogue cops, most of which (TSA and DHS) by our american law and constitution aren’t even supposed to exist, let alone have any law enforcement role in a state like the Commonwealth of Virginia or any other of our nations 50 states.

It’s totally illegal for Metro transit PD to conduct warrant-less searches, and this illegal checkpoint was also trying to prohibit photography of both the checkpoint and the men and women in uniforms with badges who were conducting the Nazi-Germany-like searches. Under our 1st amendment, photography is allowed anywhere deemed public in america. Being that federal taxes, as well as local taxes, help pay for metro services, you can know the whole metro system is a public space, and anything federal is also public. Under our 4th amendment, it’s against the law for any law enforcement to stop us, ID us, check our things without proper consent or established and articulated probable cause or maybe even a warrant signed by a judge. Our 5th amendment protects us from talking to the police; we do not under any circumstances ever have to answer any question the police may ask us.

The TSA and the DHS teamed up with the metro transit cops tonight in Arlington,Va and set up a huge, unlawful, illegal checkpoint. It’s not the business or authority of any police agency to know who you are, where you live, what you have in your work briefcase or bookbag, etc.If you want to enslave yourself and follow the sheep into the metro station, allowing yourself or belongings to be searched, fine, that is your choice…but you may regret it one day.
http://www.copblock.org/30218/the-police-state-build-up-checkpoints-in-the-metro-d-c-area/ 

Boston and the Obama Administration's use of false emergencies to undermine freedom:

 Article was written by Andrew Napolitano and first appeared in Lew Rockwell.com:

The government's fidelity to the Constitution is never more tested than in a time of crisis. The urge to do something – or to appear to be doing something – is nearly irresistible to those whom we have employed to protect our freedom and to keep us safe. Regrettably, with each passing violent crisis – Waco, Oklahoma City, Columbine, 9/11, Newtown and now the Boston Marathon – our personal freedoms continue to slip away, and the government itself remains the chief engine of that slippage.

The American people made a pact with the devil in the weeks and months following 9/11 when they bought the Bush-era argument that by surrendering liberty they could buy safety. But that type of pact has never enhanced either liberty or safety, and its fruits are always bitter.

The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It was written to create and to restrain the federal government. Every person who works for any government in the U.S. has taken an oath of fidelity to the Constitution, not unlike the presidential oath, which induces a promise to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.

The pact with the devil occurred in the fall of 2001, when then President George W. Bush and Congress decided that they would use the machinery of the federal government to secure safety, rather than liberty. So, the Bush-inspired Patriot Act permits federal agents to write their own search warrants, and the Bush-inspired new FISA statutes permit search warrants of some Americans' phone calls without a showing of probable cause as the Constitution requires, and the Bush-era intimidation of telephone service providers permitted our overseas spies to snoop on our domestic phone calls. None of this has enhanced safety, and all of it has diminished liberty.

In the Obama administration, the devil has demanded more. In the past five years, we have seen federal spies capturing the keystrokes on our computers, local police using federal dollars to install cameras and microphones on nearly every street corner, and, the latest lamentable phenomenon, the use of false emergencies to undermine freedom.

The Obama administration's radical reinterpretation of the natural and constitutional right to remain silent is unprecedented, terrifying and disingenuous. Think about this: The governor of Massachusetts, the superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police, the mayor of Boston, the Boston police commissioner, and the head of the Boston FBI office all proclaimed on Saturday morning that the danger had passed and Boston and its suburbs could return to normal. Yet the attorney general in Washington told his FBI agents in Boston to disregard those officials and instead pretend that the public safety was still jeopardized and then expand a 10-second window to 72 hours.

The Constitution was written to preserve freedom by restraining the government. The courts from time to time have required the government to respect the natural law, as well. But when the attorney general arbitrarily changes the law to suit the demands of the people when they are weeping, it fundamentally undermines our freedoms. And a pact with the devil is the most dangerous of all, because his appetite can never be sated.
 
http://www.lewrockwell.com/napolitano/napolitano97.1.html

Animetrics a high-tech facial recognition software company may have been used to help ID bombing suspects.

Conway, NH - The president of a local high-tech facial recognition software company was recently interviewed by Fox News about its possible role in helping law enforcement agencies in the days following the Boston Marathon bombings of April 15.

Animetrics president and CEO Paul Schuepp said he was interviewed by Fox News' Greta Van Susterin on her “On the Record” program Wednesday evening and he was featured again Thursday demonstrating the company's ForensicaGPS software's capabilities for three-dimensional facial recognition and its possible use by law enforcement officials investigating the Boston Marathon bombings.

“I was called Tuesday for an interview in Biometric Update, and they asked me questions about how our software might be used. Fox News saw that, and they called me, saying that Greta would like to interview me,” said Schuepp.

He drove down to Boston Wednesday, and was interviewed under a canopy tent at a corner of Boston Common near the crime scene on Boylston Street.

“The correspondent and producer were there, and I was to be on at 10:30 p.m., as Greta's show airs from 10 to 11 p.m. Greta, who was in Washington, D.C., was to ask me some questions over a four- to five-minute span, but then at the same exact time, she got the call about the explosion at the fertilizer plant in Texas, so she had to cut me short. She asked me two questions and published it on her video site,” said Schuepp.

The correspondent was interested in learning more, however, so he and fellow crew members came Thursday to Schuepp's friend's condo in Charlestown where Schuepp was staying.

“They spent an hour with me,” said Schuepp, “and pulled together an almost four-minute segment which aired Thursday night. During the segment, I demonstrated the software on my PC and was able to explain how facial recognition analysis was being used by the FBI to try and identify the faces shown in photographs from the crime scene.”

The FBI uses Animetrics' software at its forensic laboratory in Quantico, Va. In addition, Schuepp said, the company donated facial recognition software last week after the bombings to the FBI's National Crime Information Center in Clarksburg, W. Va.

“They have a facial identification unit there,” said Schuepp. “They are in the process of getting licensed software from us, but due to logistics, they had not gotten them yet. We talked with them and allowed them to download it for use for free. I am not sure they used it, but I do know they downloaded it and got it running.”

The company's software is able to take a two-dimensional photograph of a subject and convert it to a three-dimensional model.

From the three-dimensional model, a close match can be made.
http://www.conwaydailysun.com/index.php/newsx/local-news/106744-animetrics-3-d-software-possibly-used-to-id-boston-marathon-bombing-suspects

Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed.

The Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy in Washington DC.  The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents about the Israel lobby, most obtained through Freedom of Information Act filings with law enforcement officials and US intelligence agencies.  The Archive also serves as a repository for records that briefly enter the pubic domain but vanish into obscurity for lack of mainstream press interest.

The Archive is dedicated to preserving and contextualizing the historical records about the Israel lobby's operations in the US while educating Americans through enhanced access to both recent and older primary source material.
  
AIPAC lobbies the Reagan Administration: http://irmep.org/ILA/reagan/

(Video) Police officer has sex with a hooker then busts her.

Boston made sure it's considered a "high terror threat" by DHS so they could receive Security Initiative grants

Terrorism has been in the headlines in Boston before. Ten al-Qaida hijackers departed from Boston's Logan airport on Sept. 11, 2001. And in 2012, Tarek Mehanna of Sudbury, Mass., a Boston suburb, was convicted of conspiracy to provide material support to al-Qaida.

But when the Department of Homeland Security originally assessed the threat of terror to 65 American metropolitan areas in 2003, Boston barely made the top 10. As a result, the city did not initially receive a security seed grant for $100,000,000, designed to help metropolitan areas acquire personnel, equipment and training to prevent and recover from acts of terrorism. Then Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and the state legislature lobbied DHS to include the city in the program. On April 11, 2003, the Boston Herald reported:

All 12 Massachusetts lawmakers sent a letter yesterday to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge requesting information about why Boston was not one of the cities that received $100 million as part of the Urban Area Security Initiative.

In 2009, Boston was re-classified as one of ten "tier 1" cities, making it eligible for more funds than metropolitan areas that face a lesser risk of terror. From 2003 to 2012, Boston received a total of $173,318,428 from the Urban Area Security Initiative program, or UASI, according to data compiled by Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn. 

According to 2010 U.S. Census data, Boston's metro area comes in 10th, with a population of 4,552,402. By comparison, the No. 1 region New York has a population of 18,897,109.

The UASI is currently the largest DHS grant program. Congress authorized $500.4 million for UASI allocations in the 2013 fiscal year.

In 2011, the DHS cut 31 cities from the UASI program in an effort to control costs.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/04/boston-comes-in-10th-in-funds-received-for-high-threat-urban-areas.html

Police Commissioners exploiting American's fears want drones & more surveillance cameras to spy on us

Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis is pushing for a city-run system of eye-level street surveillance technology and making a case for a dedicated NYPD-style anti-terrorism unit to protect Boston from another soft-target strike like the deadly marathon bombing.

“We need to gather all the information we can as to what happened and make a determination as to the overall commitment the city of Boston has to the threat of terrorism,” Davis said. “That’s very, very important to me. It’s very important to the mayor. I’m sure there will be a lot of questions about that.”

Davis said he would also consider deploying domestic reconnaissance drones to hover above next year’s Boston Marathon.

“Drones are a great idea. I don’t know that would be the first place I’d invest money, but certainly to cover an event like this, and have an eye in the sky that would be much cheaper to run than a helicopter is a really good idea,” he said.

The use of domestic surveillance drones to hunt terrorists in U.S. cities has been hotly debated, but yesterday New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said they were all but inevitable.

Davis said he’s envisioning a partnership between the city and businesses to buy and monitor lower-mounted cameras positioned more strategically to capture people’s faces. He said he has no cost estimate, and that he’s not sure whether he will request additional money or find it within the budget.
http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/04/davis_arm_us_with_cameras_drones

Three reasons the Boston bombing case should not change our attitudes about privacy:

1. The Boston investigation came to a successful end without needing increased surveillance power. Even if you accept the necessity of widespread surveillance, there's no sign that there wasn't enough of it. The public spaces of Boston were already filled with enough private cameras to close the net on the suspects. Ubiquitous public cameras—watched always by officials with power over us—raise obvious problems, as the American Civil Liberties Union has noted, of criminal abuse, institutional abuse, personal abuse on the part of officials, discrimination, and rampant voyeurism. 

2. The Boston bombing does not represent an unprecedented mortal threat requiring unprecedented police powers. Bombings in America were slightly more common in the 1990s than after the War on Terror launched in 2001. Farther back—yet still within living memory—domestic bombings were almost a daily occurrence. In 1969 and 1970, over a thousand explosive or incendiary bombs were set off in the U.S. More recently, in 1975, terror groups from the Weather Underground to the Puerto Rican separatists of the FALN carried out several public bombings, including at a popular New York restaurant (four dead), the LaGuardia Airport baggage claim (11 dead), and the U.S. State Department (no casualties).

Bomb violence, like gun violence, is much less common in the U.S. today than it was in the recent past—a past we survived without turning the country into a fishbowl for police.

3. Universal surveillance just ain't us. For libertarians who like to reduce all questions of policy or justice to strict property rights, surveillance can be a tricky issue. There is nothing inherently rights-violating about private cameras on private property, and libertarians who aren't anarchists can make a case for government surveillance on public property too. But although it is settled law that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in public spaces—and thus no constitutional barrier per se to universal public surveillance—such a notion clearly offends something at the core of the American vision of limited government power.

Americans resonate to slogans such as "Give me liberty or give me death" and "Don't tread on me," and our Constitution deliberately limits government authority. We are the land of the free and home of the brave, not the land of the watched and home of the scared. The eagle on our national seal does not clutch a banner reading "Only the Guilty Have Reason to Fear."

Universal surveillance is a recurring theme in our cultural concept of totalitarian nightmares ("Big Brother is Watching You"), and that says something about our culture. Traditional notions of American dignity reject being watched and searched without a very good reason; and even with that reason, we want constrained methods.
http://reason.com/archives/2013/04/23/three-reasons-the-boston-bombing-case-sh

Drone industry invokes Boston bombings in PR pitch:

In the wake of the Boston bombings, the president of the largest Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) organization wasted no time in pushing for drones - as some predicted those in the industry would.

Michael Toscano, president of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, said UASs could have provided critical situational awareness for first responders and law enforcement in Boston.

"UAS could be an important tool in the tool kit for first responders in the event of an emergency," he assured US News and World Report. "Whether it is in response to a natural disaster or a tragedy like we saw in Boston, UAS can be quickly deployed to provide first responders with critical situational awareness in areas too dangerous or difficult for manned aircraft to reach. Our industry is working to develop technologies to provide first responders with the best tools possible to do their jobs safely as they work to protect our communities."

This came as no surprise to those worried about the loss of civil liberties and privacy concerns with the use of drones.

Shahid Buttar, the Executive Director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, predicted this type of action immediately following the bombing. He told Wisconsin Reporter it was only a matter of time before someone used the event to call for drones to help in these types of situations.
http://cnsnews.com/blog/joe-schoffstall/drone-industry-invokes-boston-bombings-pr-pitch

NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly wants more surveillance cameras:

The city’s security “Ring of Steel’’ must be widened, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said yesterday.

Touring the Police Department’s Lower Manhattan Security Initiative — a center where scores of workers scour constant images from 4,000 cameras around town — Kelly said he wants to “increase significantly’’ the amount of surveillance-video equipment feeding into the site.

“We have roughly 4,000 cameras that are monitored in this center,’’ he said, referring to a surveillance system that also includes images from private security cameras.

“I’d like to see that increase significantly and to other boroughs,’’ he said of the coverage. “We’re mostly focused in Manhattan here.”
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/kelly_more_cameras_8P5Tsi6TpoTnuIB1xOaRMI

Boston search shines spotlight on surveillance cameras:

Ben Wizner, who directs the speech, privacy and technology project at the American Civil Liberties Union, says he doesn't object to the way police used surveillance in Boston.

"I think, in some ways, this is an easy case because when there's a crime of this nature, there's no problem whatsoever for the police to get any kind of permission they need from judges in order to conduct surveillance," Wizner says.

Wizner says that means going to a judge to get a warrant for the images on privately owned cameras or taking advantage of an emergency exception in the law to get that footage more quickly. But he warns that surveillance can go too far.

"The questions that we have are: Do we want a society in which cameras are literally everywhere and we can't walk down the street holding someone's hand without being recorded in a government database? And then, what happens to all of this personal footage, almost all of which does not capture terrorists, when the event has been solved?" he adds.

The ACLU says it wants authorities to be careful about storing those images of innocent people in law enforcement databases with no time limit for erasing them.
http://www.npr.org/2013/04/23/178599913/boston-search-shines-spotlight-on-surveillance-cameras

Reporter asks White House if U.S. airstrikes that kill Afghan civilians qualify as ‘Terrorism’

Matthew Keys, the social media editor at Reuters, posted audio of a reporter asking White House Press Secretary Jay Carney if U.S. bombings that kill innocent civilians in Afghanistan constitute an “act of terror” given the labeling of the Boston Marathon bombing as “terrorism”. She specifically refers to a U.S. airstrike earlier this month that killed 11 children, just the latest in a seemingly endless line of Afghan civilian deaths at the hands of the U.S. government.

Carney completely dodged the questions, pointing instead to the 9/11 terrorist attacks to justify U.S. bombings in Afghanistan. After a long-winded answer excusing U.S. conduct, Carney concludes, “ we take great care in the prosecution of this war.”

Here's the transcription:

REPORTER: I send my deepest condolence to the victims and families in Boston. But President Obama said that what happened in Boston was an act of terrorism. I would like to ask, Do you consider the U.S. bombing on civilians in Afghanistan earlier this month that left 11 children and a woman killed a form of terrorism? Why or why not?

JAY CARNEY: Well, I would have to know more about the incident and then obviously the Department of Defense would have answers to your questions on this matter. We have more than 60,000 U.S. troops involved in a war in Afghanistan, a war that began when the United States was attacked, in an attack that was organized on the soil of Afghanistan by al Qaeda, by Osama bin laden and others and more than 3,000 people were killed in that attack. And it has been the President’s objective once he took office to make clear what our goals are in Afghanistan and that is to disrupt, dismantle and ultimately defeat al Qaeda. And with that as our objective to provide enough assistance to Afghan National Security Forces and the Afghan government to allow them to take over security for themselves. And that process is underway and the United States has withdrawn a substantial number of troops and we are in the process of drowning down further as we hand over security lead to Afghan forces. And it is certainly the case that I refer you to the defense department for details that we take great care in the prosecution of this war and we are very mindful of what our objectives are.

At the very least, this serves as another example of the utter meaninglessness of the word “terrorism”.
http://raniakhalek.com/2013/04/17/reporter-asks-white-house-if-u-s-airstrikes-that-kill-afghan-civilians-qualify-as-terrorism/

Manufacturing hysteria: A history of scapegoating, surveillance, and secrecy in modern America: 


Historian and writer Jay Feldman spends little time on the administrations of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton, but touches on the George W. Bush years, when the USA Patriot Act was passed and the Terrorism Information and Prevention System, a sophisticated nationwide snitch operation, failed to gain purchase; apparently many Americans balk at the notion of spying on each other.

At the same time, increasing technological sophistication facilitates the systematization of political paranoia and makes surveillance harder to detect. “Manufacturing Hysteria” is a cautionary, liberalizing history – and a book that serves as a philosophical call to arms.

The picture he paints about surveillance, and secrecy in modern America is dark.

Too often politicians and their minions have tried to scare the hell out of the American people in order to advance considerably less exalted goals: the propaganda campaign during World War I aimed at stirring hatred of all things German; the Red Scare of the 1920s engineered by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer; the forced deportation of Mexican immigrants during the same decade; the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II; the anti-Communist hysteria whipped up during the late 1940s and early ’50s by the House Un-American Activities Committee and Sen. Joe McCarthy; the campaign against homosexuals in the State Department during the same period; the Patriot Act and other intrusions on civil liberties in the wake of 9/11; and, most recently, the anti-immigrant frenzy in Arizona. Feldman writes:

“Since World War I, this pattern has played out repeatedly in the United States in periods of real or exaggerated crisis. Democratic and Republican administrations alike have scapegoated ‘dangerous’ minorities — be they ethnic, racial, political, religious, or sexual — citing them as the excuse for using a variety of lawful and unlawful methods to stifle opposition and curb civil liberties. It is most often carried out in the name of national security. . . . Nativism, certainly, had been a force in American life since the early nineteenth century, but it was during World War I that the government established the precedent of manipulating nativist fears as a way of clamping down on civil liberties and curtailing dissent.”

The book is useful because it allows the reader to have the entire history of surveillance & secrecy outlined in a single volume. As more recent events have made plain, the susceptibility of the American populace to appeals based on fear and prejudice has not been eradicated. Indeed, the incredibly mean political mood of the moment leaves no doubt that fear and resentment — of Latino immigrants, of Arabs and Muslims, blacks and of homosexuals — remain powerful resources for unscrupulous politicians, whose numbers have not noticeably diminished since the days of McCarthy. 
http://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Hysteria-History-Scapegoating-Surveillance/dp/0375425349