U.S. Internal Policy + Surveillance Society

[Nonc Hilaire]

CNN should have asked Clark if he referred to enemies of the US Constitution or of the current administration.

[YMix]

The message of Clark to lone radicalized wolf hunger killers: don't tell anyone, shave your beard, wear casual cloths or 3d suit. A tatoo on your arm I Love Jesus will do miracles too. Nobody will see you coming. Piece of cake.

Carry a Bible at all times. Quote from it extensively.

[Nonc Hilaire]

The message of Clark to lone radicalized wolf hunger killers: don't tell anyone, shave your beard, wear casual cloths or 3d suit. A tatoo on your arm I Love Jesus will do miracles too. Nobody will see you coming. Piece of cake.

Carry a Bible at all times. Quote from it extensively.

Carry a Bible at all time, but pull your extensive quotes from "Poor Richard's Almanac" and tell people they are Biblical.

[Heracleum Persicum]

.



South Korea’s hacking scandal unravels
South Korean lawmakers and activists changing their smart-phone habits as a hacking scandal unravels controversial methods of the National Intelligence Service.
The spy agency infecting the smart-phones of South Koreans.


.

[YMix]

CISA: the dirty deal between Google and the NSA that no one is talking about
July 29, 2015, 02:30 pm

One of the things that civil liberties activists like to lament about is that the general public seems to care more about Google and Facebook using their personal data to target advertising than the government using it to target drone strikes.

The reality is that both types of abuse are dangerous, and they work hand in hand.

It’s hard to find a more perfect example of this collusion than in a bill that’s headed for a vote soon in the U.S. Senate: the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, or CISA.

CISA is an out and out surveillance bill masquerading as a cybersecurity bill. It won’t stop hackers. Instead, it essentially legalizes all forms of government and corporate spying.

Here’s how it works. Companies would be given new authority to monitor their users -- on their own systems as well as those of any other entity -- and then, in order to get immunity from virtually all existing surveillance laws, they would be encouraged to share vaguely defined “cyber threat indicators” with the government. This could be anything from email content, to passwords, IP addresses, or personal information associated with an account. The language of the bill is written to encourage companies to share liberally and include as many personal details as possible.

That information could then be used to further exploit a loophole in surveillance laws that gives the government legal authority for their holy grail -- “upstream” collection of domestic data directly from the cables and switches that make up the Internet.

Thanks to Edwards Snowden, we know that the NSA, FBI, and CIA have already been conducting this type of upstream surveillance on suspected hackers. CISA would give the government tons of new domestic cyber threat indicators to use for their upstream collection of information that passes over the Internet. This means they will be gathering not just data on the alleged threat, but also all of the sensitive data that may have been hacked as part of the threat. So if someone hacks all of Gmail, the hacker doesn’t just get those emails, so does the U.S. government.

The information they gather, including all the hacked data and any incidental information that happens to get swept up in the process, would be added to massive databases on people in the U.S. and all over the world that the FBI, CIA, and NSA are free to query at their leisure. This is how CISA would create a huge expansion of the “backdoor” search capabilities that the government uses to skirt the 4th Amendment and spy on Internet users without warrants and with virtually no oversight.

All of this information can be passed around the government and handed down to local law enforcement to be used in investigations that have nothing to do with cyber crime, without requiring them to ever pull a warrant. So CISA would give law enforcement a ton of new data with which to prosecute you for virtually any crime while simultaneously protecting the corporations that share the data from prosecution for any crimes possibly related to it.

There’s little hope for ever challenging this system in court because you’ll never know if your private information has been shared under CISA or hoovered up under a related upstream collection. In a particularly stunning display of shadyness, the bill specifically exempts all of this information from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act or any state, local, or tribal law.

The members of Congress who are pushing hardest for the bill, unsurprisingly, have taken more than twice as much money from the defense industry than those who are opposing it. These politicians claim that CISA is intended to beef up U.S. cybersecurity and stop foreign hackers from ruining everything, but, as their funders in the defense industry know well, it will really just give the government more data and create new opportunities for contractors to sell their data analysis services.

The world’s cybersecurity experts say that CISA won’t stop cyber attacks, but it will create a gaping loophole for law enforcement agencies from the NSA right down to your local police departmentto access people’s private information without a warrant. Systems like this have chilling effects on our willingness to be ourselves and speak openly on the Internet, which threatens our most basic rights.

The Internet makes a lot of good things possible, but it also makes it possible for corporations and governments to exploit us in ways they never could before. The debate over CISA is not about hackers, or China, or cybersecurity -- it’s about whether we want to further normalize ubiquitous monitoring, warrantless surveillance, and unfettered manipulation of our vulnerabilities, or if we want to protect the Internet as a promising platform for freedom and self expression.

[YMix]

US spied on Japan government, companies: WikiLeaks

The US spy agency targeted Japanese politicians, its top central banker and major firms for years, WikiLeaks said on Friday, in the latest revelations about Washington’s snooping on allies.

The intercepts exposing US National Security Agency activities follow other documents released by the whistleblower group that revealed spying on allies including Germany and France, straining relations.

Japan is one of Washington’s key allies in the Asia-Pacific region and they regularly consult on defence, economic and trade issues.

The leaks comes as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe moves to expand the role of Japan’s military, a move applauded by Washington but deeply unpopular at home.

The claims of spying on trade officials could prove particularly sensitive after high-profile talks kicked off this week in Hawaii aimed at hammering out a vast free-trade bloc encompassing 40 percent of the world’s economy.

The United States, Japan, and 10 other Pacific Rim countries are looking to finalise the most ambitious trade deal in decades.

But Washington and Tokyo — the biggest economies in the negotiations — have sparred over auto sector access and Tokyo’s concerns about including agricultural products in the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership.

“The reports demonstrate the depth of US surveillance of the Japanese government, indicating that intelligence was gathered and processed from numerous Japanese government ministries and offices,” WikiLeaks said.

There was “intimate knowledge of internal Japanese deliberations” on trade issues, nuclear policy, and Tokyo’s diplomatic relations with Washington, it said.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did not appear to be a direct target of wiretapping but senior politicians were, including Trade Minister Yoichi Miyazawa, while Bank of Japan governor Haruhiko Kuroda was also in the sights of US intelligence, WikiLeaks said.

Tokyo did not immediately react to the leaked documents.

[Mr. Perfect]

Too bad there is no President to put an end to all this.

[Doc]

Julian Assange bites the socialist hand that is feeding him.



http://bigstory.ap.org/article/6f41d498 ... opposition

APNewsBreak: Email leak suggests Ecuador spied on opposition

By FRANK BAJAK and RAPHAEL SATTER

Aug. 6, 2015 3:13 PM EDT
LIMA, Peru (AP) — Ecuadorean opposition activist Dr. Carlos Figueroa was being pursued by the state when his email and Facebook accounts were hacked. Several dozen of his colleagues have similarly had their digital lives violated. All blamed President Rafael Correa's government, but no one had proof.

The Associated Press has found compelling evidence that Figueroa was indeed hacked by Ecuador's domestic intelligence agency, with software tailor-made by an Italy-based company called Hacking Team that outfits governments with digital break-in tools.

That would tag Figueroa as the first publicly identified target from a catalog of more than 1 million company emails stolen by an unknown hacker and leaked online last month.

AP's finding also casts doubt both on Hacking Team's claims that its intrusion tools, which intercept phone calls, collect emails and record keystrokes, are for use against serious criminals, not dissidents, and on assertions by Ecuadorean officials that they do not spy on domestic opponents.

The purloined Hacking Team emails have thrown back the curtain on state-sponsored hacking across the world, drawing outrage in South Korea — where a spy caught up in the scandal killed himself — and Cyprus, whose intelligence chief resigned following the disclosures.

They were gathered and made easily searchable online by WikiLeaks, the secret-spilling website whose founder Julian Assange has been holed up in Ecuador's London embassy since 2012.

Evidence that Ecuador's spies hacked Figueroa are in a series of emails exchanged between its SENAIN domestic intelligence agency and Hacking Team shortly after Figueroa was convicted of criminal libel in March 2014 and sentenced to six months in prison for allegations he made about Correa's actions during a 2010 police revolt. Figueroa had skipped the court appearance, considering the verdict a foregone conclusion, and was in hiding.

The emails show that SENAIN employee Luis Solis sent a flurry of requests to Hacking Team for booby-trapped Microsoft Office documents and malicious links — so many that customer support engineer Bruno Muschitiello suggested Solis ease up. "The target may suspect something," Muschitiello wrote on April 11, 2014.

The target isn't named explicitly, but Solis dropped hints as he struggled with the digital burglary technology. The biggest clue was a phony invitation to a medical conference that he apparently created. The first 14 characters of the target's email address are visible in a screenshot he sent to Muschitiello. It reads "dr.carlosfigue.," a near match for the "dr.carlosfigueroa" address Figueroa was using at the time.

On May 5, Solis sent Muschitiello a screenshot of his control panel displaying 13 infected devices. One is named "MobilFigueroa" — "Figueroa's cellphone."

Muschitiello did not return messages sent by the AP, and Solis could not be located. A person who answered the phone at the extension for SENAIN's communications office, and who would not identify himself, said Solis did not work at the agency.

Figueroa, a gastroenterologist who is a fierce opponent of Correa's leftist government, said he is not certain he received the bogus email invitation to the medical conference. He said he received many strange emails at the time that he assumed were attackware and quickly deleted — but still got hacked.

"I had four email accounts and problems with all of them," he said. "I also had problems with Facebook. At one point, it seems like they attacked all my communications on social media."

"We all just assume our telephones are permanently tapped," he told the AP.

Figueroa was arrested and emerged from hiding in July 2014 to visit his 75-year-old mother, who died of pancreatic cancer while he served out his prison term.

At no point, he said, did any state agency obtain a court order to eavesdrop on him. And the government still hasn't returned the two laptops and two cellphones it seized when he was arrested, he said.

Last week, SENAIN director Rommy Vallejo told a select group of reporters that his agency did not spy on political opponents. But he refused to discuss its ties to Hacking Team.

His comments followed Correa's denial that SENAIN had a contract with the company.

Other Hacking Team emails reviewed by AP suggest both statements are misleading.

The reviewed emails indicated that SENAIN has a 610,000 euro (more than $650,000) three-year deal with Hacking Team through a third party, which took effect in November 2013 and let SENAIN infect 30 devices at a time.

Email evidence also suggests that other dissidents and environmentalists were in SENAIN's crosshairs.

While Figueroa was under attack, the emails show, SENAIN was using Hacking Team tools to craft booby-trapped documents with titles like "Questions - Yasuni" — a reference to the pristine Amazon wilderness reserve known as Yasuni. Correa's plans to drill for oil there have prompted stiff resistance from environmentalists, many of whom have complained of being targets of government hacking and surveillance.

Anonymous hackers may have been targeted as well. A document seen by AP appeared designed to infect someone with an interest in the online vigilante movement.

Hacking Team spokesman Eric Rabe refused to discuss particulars when asked about the Figueroa case and company business in Ecuador, saying it is company policy not to identify clients.

The company has said it sells its digital break-in tools to government agencies for use against serious criminals, including terrorists, pedophiles and drug traffickers.

Rabe also said it is company practice to deal with clients' operations at arm's length. Technical assistance is offered on request "but not in regard to ... specific surveillance operations. Clients don't want outsiders involved." He said Hacking Team cancels contracts if clients use its tools to break the law.

Ecuador's human rights record is tamer than some other previous Hacking Team clients, such as Sudan, Ethiopia and Russia. But its government has been criticized by rights groups for harassing journalists, imposing stiff fines on critical media and ordering an environmental group dissolved.

As the attack on Figueroa suggests, the campaign is increasingly being carried out online.

"Every day there are complaints by opposition activists that their email has been broken into, their websites violated," said Cesar Ricuarte, director of the independent Fundamedios press watchdog group. "A kind of digital war, really, is going on in Ecuador."

[Typhoon]

Bloomberg | A ex-cop's fight against lie detectors

[Endovelico]

America: A Land Where Justice Is Absent
by Paul Craig Roberts

America’s First Black President is a traitor to his race and also to justice.

Obama has permitted the corrupt US Department of Justice (sic), over which he wields authority, to overturn the ruling of a US Federal Court of Appeals that prisoners sentenced illegally to longer terms than the law permits must be released once the legal portion of their sentence is served. The DOJ, devoid of all integrity, compassion, and sense of justice, said that “finality” of conviction was more important than justice. Indeed, the US Justice (sic) Department’s motto is: “Justice? We don’t need no stinkin’ justice!”

Alec Karakatsanis, a civil rights attorney and co-founder of Equal Justice Under Law, tells the story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/18/opini ... .html?_r=1

See also here: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Obama- ... 0-644.html

The concept of “finality” was an invention of a harebrained Republican conservative academic lionized by the Republican Federalist Society. In years past conservatives believed—indeed, still do—that the criminal justice system coddles criminals by allowing too many appeals against their unlawful convictions. The appeals were granted by judges who thought that the system was supposed to serve justice, but conservatives demonized justice as something that enabled criminals. A succession of Republican presidents turned the US Supreme Court into an organization that only serves the interests of private corporations. Justice is nowhere in the picture.

Appeals Court Judge, James Hill, a member of the court that ruled that prisoners did not have to serve the illegal portion of their sentences, when confronted with the Obama/DOJ deep-sixing of justice had this to say:

“A judicial system that values finality over justice is morally bankrupt.”

Obama’s DOJ says that there are too many black prisoners illegally sentenced to be released without upsetting the crime-fearful white population. According to Obama’s Justice (sic) Department, the fears of brainwashed whites take precedence over justice. Judge Hill said that the DOJ “calls itself, without a trace of irony, the Department of Justice.”

Judge Hill added: We used to call such systems as people sitting in prison serving sentences that were illegally imposed “gulags.” “Now we call them the United States.”

America is a gulag. We are ruled by a government that is devoid of all morality, all integrity, all compassion, all justice. The government of the United States stands for one thing and one thing only: Evil.

It is just as Chavez told the United Nations in 2006 referring to President George W. Bush’s address to the assembly the day before: “Yesterday, at this very podium, Satan himself stood speaking as if he owned the world. You can still smell the sulfur.”

If you are an American and you cannot smell the sulfur, you are tightly locked down in The Matrix. God help you. There is no Neo to rescue you. And you are too brainwashed and ignorant to be rescued by me.

You are part of the new Captive Nation.

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/08 ... g-roberts/

MOST interesting!...

[YMix]

Police secretly track cellphones to solve routine crimes

BALTIMORE — The crime itself was ordinary: Someone smashed the back window of a parked car one evening and ran off with a cellphone. What was unusual was how the police hunted the thief.

Detectives did it by secretly using one of the government’s most powerful phone surveillance tools — capable of intercepting data from hundreds of people’s cellphones at a time — to track the phone, and with it their suspect, to the doorway of a public housing complex. They used it to search for a car thief, too. And a woman who made a string of harassing phone calls.

In one case after another, USA TODAY found police in Baltimore and other cities used the phone tracker, commonly known as a stingray, to locate the perpetrators of routine street crimes and frequently concealed that fact from the suspects, their lawyers and even judges. In the process, they quietly transformed a form of surveillance billed as a tool to hunt terrorists and kidnappers into a staple of everyday policing.

The suitcase-size tracking systems, which can cost as much as $400,000, allow the police to pinpoint a phone’s location within a few yards by posing as a cell tower. In the process, they can intercept information from the phones of nearly everyone else who happens to be nearby, including innocent bystanders. They do not intercept the content of any communications.

Dozens of police departments from Miami to Los Angeles own similar devices. A USA TODAY Media Network investigation identified more than 35 of them in 2013 and 2014, and the American Civil Liberties Union has found 18 more. When and how the police have used those devices is mostly a mystery, in part because the FBI swore them to secrecy.

[...]

[noddy]

you would have to be pretty special in the head to think that all this information is sitting there but somehow 'checks and balances' stop it from being looked at.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Of course, especially as we start getting away from the initial reasons for the use of the technology and first generation of people with that power. Remember how we were told it would never-ever happen, that it was so far out of the realm of possibility that only a degenerate conspirazoid would think that way?

It's almost like our top people in tech, government, et al., are working really hard 24/7 to prove all those guys in bunkers with tinfoil hats on right!

[noddy]

Of course, especially as we start getting away from the initial reasons for the use of the technology and first generation of people with that power. Remember how we were told it would never-ever happen, that it was so far out of the realm of possibility that only a degenerate conspirazoid would think that way?

It's almost like our top people in tech, government, et al., are working really hard 24/7 to prove all those guys in bunkers with tinfoil hats on right!

they dont have to work 24/7 to make it happen, its builtin in to the technology.

the internet works by copying messages from machine to machine until it reaches the destination.

aslong as you remember that using the internet is having a conversation on public transport, you have healthy expectations.

--

their is some technical development (but mostly political) in making sure all the stuff across different platforms gets linked together nicely in a solid single identity but the basic skill of watching whats happening on the internet is childs play.

we didnt need terrorism for the police to gain access to the old phone and mail systems, just reasonable suspicion, the only thing holding it back was the technical difficulty of doing it

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Of course, especially as we start getting away from the initial reasons for the use of the technology and first generation of people with that power. Remember how we were told it would never-ever happen, that it was so far out of the realm of possibility that only a degenerate conspirazoid would think that way?

It's almost like our top people in tech, government, et al., are working really hard 24/7 to prove all those guys in bunkers with tinfoil hats on right!

they dont have to work 24/7 to make it happen, its builtin in to the technology.

the internet works by copying messages from machine to machine until it reaches the destination.
the internet works by copying messages from machine to machine until it reaches the destination.
the internet works by copying messages from machine to machine until it reaches the destination.
the internet works by copying messages from machine to machine until it reaches the destination.
the internet works by copying messages from machine to machine until it reaches the destination.

aslong as you remember that using the internet is having a conversation on public transport, you have healthy expectations.

heh, I just meant they work hard 24/7 building and implementing the technology and testing it out on tinfoil-hat subjects. I picture 1000s of people in lab coats testing out the top secret stuff on some poor soul in a suit of aluminum armor to see what riles him the most!

[noddy]

'my butt' is awesome - it not only provides easy central searching of all your goodies it changes the business model on YOUR DATA from ownership to rent.

no conspiracy or secret tech is needed, people feed the beast willingly.

im just waiting for it to be illegal and not just suspicious to not have a smart phone on you at all times.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

'my butt' is awesome - it not only provides easy central searching of all your goodies it changes the business model on YOUR DATA from ownership to rent.

no conspiracy or secret tech is needed, people feed the beast willingly.

im just waiting for it to be illegal and not just suspicious to not have a smart phone on you at all times.

Maybe I'm taking this too lightly, but you lost me with 'my butt'

so I typed that into google and....very interesting results

[noddy]

ahha. purple smelly flower, im such a south east asian fruit.

my c.loud to butt plugin strikes again

[Endovelico]

The Raping of America: Mile Markers on the Road to Fascism
By John W. Whitehead August 24, 2015
http://www.rutherford.org/publications_ ... to_fascism

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”—Martin Luther King Jr.

There’s an ill will blowing across the country. The economy is tanking. The people are directionless, and politics provides no answer. And like former regimes, the militarized police have stepped up to provide a façade of law and order manifested by an overt violence against the citizenry.

Despite the revelations of the past several years, nothing has changed to push back against the American police state. Our freedoms—especially the Fourth Amendment—continue to be choked out by a prevailing view among government bureaucrats that they have the right to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.

Despite the recent outrage and protests, nothing has changed to restore us to our rightful role as having dominion over our bodies, our lives and our property, especially when it comes to interactions with the government.

Forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases—these are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials. Thus far, the courts have done little to preserve our Fourth Amendment rights, let alone what shreds of bodily integrity remain to us.

Indeed, on a daily basis, Americans are being forced to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to clear the nearly insurmountable hurdle that increasingly defines life in the United States.

In other words, we are all guilty until proven innocent.

Worst of all, it seems as if nothing will change as long as the American people remain distracted by politics, divided by their own prejudices, and brainwashed into believing that the Constitution still reigns supreme as the law of the land, when in fact, we have almost completed the shift into fascism.

In other words, despite our occasional bursts of outrage over abusive police practices, sporadic calls for government reform, and periodic bouts of awareness that all is not what it seems, the police state continues to march steadily onward.

Such is life in America today that individuals are being threatened with arrest and carted off to jail for the least hint of noncompliance, homes are being raided by police under the slightest pretext, and roadside police stops have devolved into government-sanctioned exercises in humiliation and degradation with a complete disregard for privacy and human dignity.

Consider, for example, what happened to Charnesia Corley after allegedly being pulled over by Texas police for “rolling” through a stop sign. Claiming they smelled marijuana, police handcuffed Corley, placed her in the back of the police cruiser, and then searched her car for almost an hour. They found nothing in the car.

As the Houston Chronicle reported:

Returning to his car where Corley was held, the deputy again said he smelled marijuana and called in a female deputy to conduct a cavity search. When the female deputy arrived, she told Corley to pull her pants down, but Corley protested because she was cuffed and had no underwear on. The deputy ordered Corley to bend over, pulled down her pants and began to search her. Then…Corley stood up and protested, so the deputy threw her to the ground and restrained her while another female was called in to assist. When backup arrived, each deputy held one of Corley’s legs apart to conduct the probe.

As shocking and disturbing as it seems, Corley’s roadside cavity search is becoming par for the course in an age in which police are taught to have no respect for the citizenry’s bodily integrity.

For instance, 38-year-old Angel Dobbs and her 24-year-old niece, Ashley, were pulled over by a Texas state trooper on July 13, 2012, allegedly for flicking cigarette butts out of the car window. Insisting that he smelled marijuana, he proceeded to interrogate them and search the car. Despite the fact that both women denied smoking or possessing any marijuana, the police officer then called in a female trooper, who carried out a roadside cavity search, sticking her fingers into the older woman’s anus and vagina, then performing the same procedure on the younger woman, wearing the same pair of gloves. No marijuana was found.

David Eckert was forced to undergo an anal cavity search, three enemas, and a colonoscopy after allegedly failing to yield to a stop sign at a Wal-Mart parking lot. Cops justified the searches on the grounds that they suspected Eckert was carrying drugs because his “posture [was] erect” and “he kept his legs together.” No drugs were found.

Leila Tarantino was subjected to two roadside strip searches in plain view of passing traffic during a routine traffic stop, while her two children—ages 1 and 4—waited inside her car. During the second strip search, presumably in an effort to ferret out drugs, a female officer “forcibly removed” a tampon from Tarantino. Nothing illegal was found. Nevertheless, such searches have been sanctioned by the courts, especially if accompanied by a search warrant (which is easily procured), as justified in the government’s pursuit of drugs and weapons.

Meanwhile, four Milwaukee police officers were charged with carrying out rectal searches of suspects on the street and in police district stations over the course of several years. One of the officers was accused of conducting searches of men’s anal and scrotal areas, often inserting his fingers into their rectums and leaving some of his victims with bleeding rectums. Halfway across the country, the city of Oakland, California, agreed to pay $4.6 million to 39 men who had their pants pulled down by police on city streets between 2002 and 2009.

It’s gotten so bad that you don’t even have to be suspected of possessing drugs to be subjected to a strip search.

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Florence v. Burlison, any person who is arrested and processed at a jail house, regardless of the severity of his or her offense (i.e., they can be guilty of nothing more than a minor traffic offense), can be subjected to a strip search by police or jail officials without reasonable suspicion that the arrestee is carrying a weapon or contraband.

Examples of minor infractions which have resulted in strip searches include: individuals arrested for driving with a noisy muffler, driving with an inoperable headlight, failing to use a turn signal, riding a bicycle without an audible bell, making an improper left turn, engaging in an antiwar demonstration (the individual searched was a nun, a Sister of Divine Providence for 50 years). Police have also carried out strip searches for passing a bad check, dog leash violations, filing a false police report, failing to produce a driver’s license after making an illegal left turn, having outstanding parking tickets, and public intoxication. A failure to pay child support can also result in a strip search.

It must be remembered that the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was intended to prevent government agents from searching an individual’s person or property without a warrant and probable cause (evidence that some kind of criminal activity was afoot). While the literal purpose of the amendment is to protect our property and our bodies from unwarranted government intrusion, the moral intention behind it is to protect our human dignity.

Unfortunately, the indignities being heaped upon us by the architects and agents of the American police state—whether or not we’ve done anything wrong—don’t end with roadside strip searches. They’re just a foretaste of what is to come.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the government doesn’t need to strip you naked by the side of the road in order to render you helpless. It has other methods, less subtle perhaps but equally humiliating, devastating and mind-altering, of stripping you of your independence, robbing you of your dignity, and undermining your rights.

With every court ruling that allows the government to operate above the rule of law, every piece of legislation that limits our freedoms, and every act of government wrongdoing that goes unpunished, we’re slowly being conditioned to a society in which we have little real control over our lives. As Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone and an insightful commentator on human nature, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”

Indeed, not only are we developing a new citizenry incapable of thinking for themselves, we’re also instilling in them a complete and utter reliance on the government and its corporate partners to do everything for them—tell them what to eat, what to wear, how to think, what to believe, how long to sleep, who to vote for, whom to associate with, and on and on.

In this way, we have created a welfare state, a nanny state, a police state, a surveillance state, an electronic concentration camp—call it what you will, the meaning is the same: in our quest for less personal responsibility, a greater sense of security, and no burdensome obligations to each other or to future generations, we have created a society in which we have no true freedom.

Government surveillance, police abuse, SWAT team raids, economic instability, asset forfeiture schemes, pork barrel legislation, militarized police, drones, endless wars, private prisons, involuntary detentions, biometrics databases, free speech zones, etc.: these are mile markers on the road to a fascist state where citizens are treated like cattle, to be branded and eventually led to the slaughterhouse.

If there is any hope to be found it will be found in local, grassroots activism. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., it’s time for “militant nonviolent resistance.”

First, however, Americans must break free of the apathy-inducing turpor of politics, entertainment spectacles and manufactured news. Only once we are free of the chains that bind us—or to be more exact, the chains that “blind” us—can we become actively aware of the injustices taking place around us and demand freedom of our oppressors.

Why do so many Americans put up with this?...

[YMix]

A flight in the right direction:

California lawmakers approve drone trespassing crime bills

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- California lawmakers advanced legislation Monday seeking to rein in the use of privacy-invading drones, passing one bill to prevent the use of drones by paparazzi and another making it a trespassing violation to fly drones over private property without permission.

In the state Senate, lawmakers voted 40-0 to approve AB856 by Assemblyman Ian Calderon, D-Whittier, classifying drone use to take pictures or video on private property as an invasion of privacy. "This bill will make paparazzi accountable for the breach of private property boundaries," said Sen. Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont, who carried the bill in the Senate.

Meanwhile, the Assembly voted 43-11 on AB856 by Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, which would create a trespass crime for operating a drone less than 350 feet above ground over private property without consent.

Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Glendale, who presented Jackson's bill, said it makes sense to extend property rights upward as drones become more popular.

"If you drive on someone's property with a car, you're trespassing. If you're looking on someone's property to break in, you're trespassing. It makes no sense that a drone should be able to look in your window and the operator should not be guilty of the same trespass," Gatto said.

Assemblywoman Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, was among several Assembly lawmakers who worried the proposal would harm a growing industry and stifle innovation. She has a drone manufacturer in her district, she said.

"Don't regulate an industry out of business," Grove said.

Other lawmakers suggested the state should wait for federal regulators to develop policies.

Gatto said the bill would not affect businesses because the bill maintains a drone corridor and only targets "people up to no good."

Both bills return to their house of origin for another vote.

© 2015 The Associated Press.

[YMix]

FGwlhnk6pDE

I hope this is a joke.

[noddy]

create a trespass crime for operating a drone less than 350 feet above ground over private property without consent

this makes the ruling largely useless.

wide angle lens on gopro type cameras are mostly useless at 100metres - high density sensors with bigger zooms are not.

besides, it appears to be only california protecting its celebrititties from papsmears, it doesnt cover the real surveillance operators.

[YMix]

besides, it appears to be only california protecting its celebrititties from papsmears, it doesnt cover the real surveillance operators.

Mostly, yeah.

[noddy]

NFI how accurate or comprehensive it is but it appeals to my bird watcherness.

[Endovelico]

Denver Police Arrest “Jury Nullification” Activist for Passing Out Informational Pamphlets
Michael Krieger | Posted Monday Aug 24, 2015 at 4:18 pm
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2015/08/24 ... pamphlets/

Most of you will be familiar with the concept of jury nullification. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans are not. This is precisely why Mark Iannicelli set up a “Jury Info” booth outside the Lindsay-Flanigan Courthouse in Denver. In a nutshell, jury nullification is the idea that jurors can “can ignore the law and follow their conscience when they believe the law would dictate a miscarriage of justice.” In other words, jurors have the right to judge the law as well as the facts. As you will see in the video at the end, this concept has centuries of precedence in these United States behind it.

When you recognize the vast power that such a concept holds, you recognize why it would be so hated by statists and authoritarians across the land. That is precisely why Mr. Iannicelli was arrested and charged with handing out information.

For a little background, read the following from the Denver Post:

Denver prosecutors have charged a man with seven counts of jury tampering after they say he tried to influence jurors by passing out literature on jury nullification on Monday.

Mark Iannicelli, 56, set up a small booth with a sign that said “Juror Info” in front of the city’s Lindsay-Flanigan Courthouse courthouse, prosecutors say.

The Denver District Attorney’s Office says Iannicelli provided jury nullification flyers to jury pool members.

Jury nullification is when jurors believe a defendant is guilty of the charges but reject the law and return a not guilty verdict.

In response to what appears to be a clear attack on freedom of speech, the Denver Post editorial board published an admirable defense of Mr. Iannicelli several weeks after his arrest. Here are a few excerpts:

It is astonishing that Denver police would arrest someone for handing out political literature outside a courthouse.

It’s even more astonishing that prosecutors would charge that person with seven felony counts of jury tampering.

Now, fortunately, civil rights attorney David Lane has filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of other jury nullification activists. They want an injunction to stop the city from violating their First Amendment rights should they too wish to pass out literature.

They deserve to get one.

Jury nullification is understandably controversial — and is especially resented by courts and prosecutors. It is the notion that jurors can ignore the law and follow their conscience when they believe the law would dictate a miscarriage of justice. But it is hardly a new concept.

In the 19th century, Northern juries refused to convict abolitionists for harboring runaway slaves. In the 20th century, juries often balked at enforcing Prohibition and later, on occasion, at what they considered overly harsh drug laws or laws governing sexual behavior.

Jury nullification had a darker strain, too, as Southern juries would sometimes refuse to convict white defendants guilty of racial violence.

The point is that jury nullification is not some crank theory concocted out of the blue.

As First Amendment scholar Eugene Volokh has written, “It’s clear that it’s not a crime for jurors to refuse to convict even when the jury instructions seem to call for a guilty verdict.”

Those who believe the public needs to know about this possibility should have every right to publicize their views — even outside a courthouse.

Their jury nullification literature, as it happens, merely offered general statements, such as, “Juror nullification is your right to refuse to enforce bad laws and bad prosecutions.”

Four years ago, prosecutors in New York City charged a retired chemistry professor with jury tampering after he stood outside a federal courthouse handing out information on jury nullification. But Judge Kimba M. Wood of federal district court wouldn’t buy it. She ruled that prosecutors needed to show the protester meant to influence jurors in a specific case, and dismissed all charges.

Denver officials should be held to no less of a standard.

(...)

A very interesting concept, and one which should be systematically used by US jurors while fighting the securitarian state...