Scientific Dictatorship

U.S. Government Used Taxpayer Funds to Buy, Sell Weapons During 'Fast and Furious,' Documents Show

Fox News

Labels: ATF, BATFE, Department of Justice, Justice Department, Operation Fast and Furious

Guitar Frets: Environmental Enforcement Leaves Musicians in Fear

Wall Street Journal
Federal agents swooped in on Gibson Guitar Wednesday, raiding factories and offices in Memphis and Nashville, seizing several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. The Feds are keeping mum, but in a statement yesterday Gibson's chairman and CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, defended his company's manufacturing policies, accusing the Justice Department of bullying the company. "The wood the government seized Wednesday is from a Forest Stewardship Council certified supplier," he said, suggesting the Feds are using the aggressive enforcement of overly broad laws to make the company cry uncle...[Full Article]

Labels: Gibson Guitar, Justice Department

Federal court blocks Obama Administration attempt to spy on cell phones without a warrant

The Obama Administration's effort to obtain your location from cell phone towers without a warrant was rebuffed Wednesday by a federal court.

The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that the Justice Department cannot obtain information about which cell phone towers mobile phones communicate with without a warrant.

The decision was first reported by Wired's David Kravets, and has received almost no coverage in the press. The Obama Administration is seeking to reverse an earlier ruling giving judges the authority to require a warrant for the government to obtain cell phone tracking data...

[Full Article]

Labels: big brother, cell phones, Department of Justice, Justice Department, surveillance

Department of Justice Lists Survivalists, Constitutionalists in Extremism Guide

Public Intelligence

A recent Department of Justice guide for investigators of criminal and extremist groups lists “constitutionalists” and “survivalists” alongside organizations like Al-Qaeda and the Aryan Brotherhood. The 120-page, “Law Enforcement Sensitive” guide to “Investigating Terrorism and Criminal Extremism – Terms and Concepts” describes itself as “a glossary designed primarily as a tool for criminal justice professionals to enhance their understanding of words relating to extremist terminology, phrases, activities, symbols, organizations, and selected names that they may encounter while conducting criminal investigations or prosecutions of members of extremist organizations.”

Constitutionalist, defined by Random House’s 2010 Dictionary as an “adherent or advocate of constitutionalism or of an existing constitution”, is described in the report as a “generic term for members of the ‘patriot’ movement”. Survivalists are described in the document as fearing a “coming collapse of civilization” and are trying to prepare themselves for this collapse. Such individuals are said to have “typically stockpiled food, water, and weapons, especially the latter, and instructed themselves on topics ranging from first aid to childbirth to edible plants”...

[Full Article]

Labels: Department of Justice, DOJ, extremists, guide, Justice Department

9 Tied To Militia Charged In Plot To Murder Officers

April 20, 2010
	U.S. Marshals Service, via Associated Press From top left, David Brian Stone Sr., of Clayton, Mich,; David Brian Stone Jr., of Adrian, Mich,; Jacob Ward, of Huron, Ohio; Tina Mae Stone; from bottom left, Michael David Meeks, of Manchester, Mich.; Kristopher T. Sickles, of Sandusky, Ohio; Joshua John Clough, of Blissfield, Mich.; and Thomas William Piatek, of Whiting, Ind.

WASHINGTON — Nine members of a Michigan-based Christian militia group have been indicted on sedition and weapons charges in connection with an alleged plot to murder law enforcement officers in hopes of setting off an antigovernment uprising.

In court filings unsealed Monday, the Justice Department accused the nine people of planning to kill an unidentified law enforcement officer, then plant improvised explosive devices of a type used by insurgents in Iraq to attack the funeral procession.

Eight of the defendants were arrested over the weekend in raids in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. A ninth remained at large, the Justice Department said. The indictments against them were returned last Tuesday. The defendants were identified as members of Hutaree, described by federal prosecutors as an anti-government extremist organization based in Lenawee County, Mich., and which advocates violence against local, state and federal law enforcement. The group saw local and state police as “foot soldiers” for the federal government, which it viewed as its enemy, along with participants in what they deemed to be a “New World Order,” according to the indictment...

[Webmaster - This whole story keeps getting goofier and goofier. These individuals don't look like they could find their way to the bathroom much less put together some idiotic assassination plot on their own. Again, I'll bet they were provocateured and guided by the Feds (informant or agent) from the start so that could take the fall later on. Then, the Feds try to make the case these "dangerous, crazy Christian militia conspiracy theorists" are lurking around every corner. In a nutshell, the Feds using these defendants (dupes) for two main objectives:

1. Fear-Mongering...terrorize the public into making them accept further loss of liberty and create a perceived need for Federal intervention

2. Demonize ALL of the following: militia members / Christians / "so-called" conspiracy theorists

Doesn't it make you wonder why the Feds haven't pulled down the website (http://www.hutaree.com) of these "crazy-dangerous" militia members yet? All better to scare us with...]

Militia Raids Part Of Government Effort To Provoke Violence, Purge Dissent

...Comments made by a well known former militia leader indicate that the Hutaree were regarded by other militia outfits as radical and reckless “low-hanging fruits”.

Mike Vanderboegh, who has close connections with the militia movement in Michigan and all over the country, was critical of the Hutaree, saying that they “have indicated in the past that, much like John Brown, they WANTED to start a civil war, which is why no responsible militia group in Michigan was willing to ally with them.”

Vanderboegh described the group as “a perfect target” for the feds, adding that the raids could have provoked a nationwide uprising if they had turned violent.

As we highlighted earlier this month, following the highly suspicious Pentagon shooting, recent history proves that domestic terror, far from being a militia plot or an “extremist fringe” threat, is a government specialty.

Just a brief reprisal of the last handful of major terror cases in the United States instantly reminds us that in every single instance the plot was artificially engineered by the federal government and then later seized upon, with the enthusiastic support of the corporate media, as justification for more funding, more power, and more authority to denounce critics of the war on terror and dissent against the state in general...

Labels: Hutaree, Indiana, Justice Department, Michigan, militia, Ohio

How Safe Is Your Facebook From The Feds?

In the slides of what appears to be a DOJ PowerPoint presentation from Aug. 2009 titled "Obtaining and Using Evidence from Social Networking Sites," the major social networking sites are examined for their utility and tendency to cooperate.

Facebook is described as "Often cooperative with emergency requests."

MySpace "requires a search warrant for private messages/bulletins less than 181 days old."

Under the Twitter heading, they list the "good news" that "most Twitter content is public," but then go on to list several bits of "bad news" like "Stated policy of producing data only in response to legal process" and "no contact phone number."

And while the DOJ had very little to say about getting info from LinkedIn, they do point out that the business-centric network "can be used to identify experts" and to "check background of defense experts." Which is kind of scary, considering how they also point out that "profile information is not checked for reliability."

Labels: Department of Justice, DOJ, Facebook, Justice Department, MySpace, Twitter

Feds Look To Facebook To Track Suspects, Make Arrests

MADISON (WKOW) -- If you think embarrassment is the worst that could happen if your photos and ramblings on Facebook are made public, think again. New documents from federal law enforcement agencies show that big brother is, in fact, watching.

An open records request submitted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation turned up internal training documents from the Department of Justice, IRS, and more.

The IRS uses Facebook, other social networking websites, and even Google Street View to track taxpayers.

For more on how law enforcement uses social networking posted by the EFF, click here...

Labels: EFF, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Facebook, Internal Revenue Service, IRS, Justice Department, privacy, surveillance

Documents Posted By EFF Concerning Law Enforcement Use Of Social Media

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and UC Berkeley Samuelson Clinic has documents that outline the use of social media by government agencies in investigations from the Internal Revenue Service and Department of Justice Criminal Division. These documents are being released through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case the organizations had filed jointly.

Read the post by the EFF on the documents and future release of records.

In the released documents is a training manual from the IRS (PDF) on how to use social media and Google maps to investigate tax cases. Also under the FOIA case, the Justice Department released a presentation entitled "Obtaining and Using Evidence from Social Networking Sites."...

Labels: big brother, EFF, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Internal Revenue Service, Internet, IRS, Justice Department, privacy, surveillance

Documents Detail US Law Enforcement Use Of Social Networks

WASHINGTON — Criminals beware! US law enforcement authorities may be stalking you on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn or Twitter.

Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) reveal some of the ways the FBI and tax agents are allowed to use social networks for investigative purposes.

The documents were posted this week on the website of the EFF after being obtained through a lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information Act by the San Francisco-based electronic rights group and the Samuelson Clinic of the University of California, Berkeley...

Labels: EFF, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Facebook, Internal Revenue Service, IRS, Justice Department, MySpace, privacy, surveillance, Twitter

Can The FBI Secretly Track Your Cell Phone

The Justice Department is poised this week to publicly defend a little-known law-enforcement practice that critics say may be the "sleeper" privacy issue of the 21st century: the collection of cell-phone "tracking" records that identify the physical locations where the phones have been...

Labels: FBI, Justice Department, privacy, surveillance