Scientific Dictatorship

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuET0kpHoyM 

Labels: NSA, Russia Today, surveillance, video

Report: London no safer for all its CCTV cameras

Civil rights group Big Brother Watch has accused Britain of having an out-of-control surveillance culture that is doing little to improve public safety.

Christian Science Monitor

London

London is considered the most spied-on city in the world, courtesy of its ubiquitous CCTV cameras, purportedly there to reduce crime. But according to a recent report, there's been little or no change in London's crime rates since they were more widely installed in the mid 1980s.

Privacy activists are worried that Britain will become the bleak totalitarian society George Orwell painted in his classic novel “1984,” where citizens were spied on and personal freedom sacrificed for the benefit of an all-powerful state.

“We are sleepwalking into a surveillance society where we’re watched from control rooms by anonymous people, says Emma Carr of the BBW. “The worrying thing is that we don’t actually know how many CCTV cameras there are out there."...[Full Article]

Labels: big brother, Britain, England, London, surveillance

Labels: big brother, surveillance

Spying on Europe’s farms with satellites and drones

BBC

Farmers who claim more EU subsidies than they should, or who break Common Agricultural Policy rules, are now more likely to be caught out by a camera in the sky than an inspector calling with a clipboard. How do they feel about being watched from above?

Imagine a perfect walk in the country, a few years from now - tranquillity, clean air, birdsong in the trees and hedgerows, growing crops swaying in the breeze.

Suddenly a model plane swoops overhead.

But there is no-one around manipulating radio controls. This is not a toy, but a drone on a photographic mission.

Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometres up in space, the same patch of land is being photographed by a satellite, which clearly pinpoints individual trees and animals.

What is there to spy on here? No secret military installations, just farmland...[Full Article]

Labels: Britain, drones, farms, satellite, spying, surveillance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1punjkon-hU

Uploaded by PigMine3 on Jan 20, 2012

From: http://www.youtube.com/user/AssociatedPress

[ PigMine is on FaceBook, please Like here: http://www.facebook.com/PigMineNews ]

January 20, 2011 - The police department in the city of East Orange, New Jersey is installing red spotlights to remotely shine on those police believe are about to commit a crime. (Jan. 20)

Labels: big brother, New Jersey, police, precrime, surveillance

Malls track shoppers' cell phones on Black Friday

CNN

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Attention holiday shoppers: your cell phone may be tracked this year.

Starting on Black Friday and running through New Year's Day, two U.S. malls -- Promenade Temecula in southern California and Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, Va. -- will track guests' movements by monitoring the signals from their cell phones.

While the data that's collected is anonymous, it can follow shoppers' paths from store to store.

The goal is for stores to answer questions like: How many Nordstrom shoppers also stop at Starbucks? How long do most customers linger in Victoria's Secret? Are there unpopular spots in the mall that aren't being visited?

While U.S. malls have long tracked how crowds move throughout their stores, this is the first time they've used cell phones.

But obtaining that information comes with privacy concerns...[Full Article]

Labels: big brother, cell phones, surveillance

New Street Lights To Have “Homeland Security” Applications

High-tech system to include speakers, video surveillance, emergency alerts

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, October 26, 2011

UPDATE: Presumably in response to this article being linked on the Drudge Report, the company behind ‘Intellistreets’, Illuminating Concepts, has now pulled the video from You Tube entirely, presumably nervous about the negative publicity that could be generated from concerns about street lights being used for “Homeland Security” purposes – their words, not ours. We have added an alternative version of the clip below, but it may be subject to removal at any time. The video is still available on the company’s website.

New street lights that include “Homeland Security” applications including speaker systems, motion sensors and video surveillance are now being rolled out with the aid of government funding.

The Intellistreets system comprises of a wireless digital infrastructure that allows street lights to be controlled remotely by means of a ubiquitous wi-fi link and a miniature computer housed inside each street light, allowing for “security, energy management, data harvesting and digital media,” according to the Illuminating Concepts website.

According to the company’s You Tube video of the concept, the primary capabilities of the devices include “energy conservation, homeland security, public safety, traffic control, advertising, video surveillance.”

In terms of Homeland Security applications, each of the light poles contains a speaker system that can be used to broadcast emergency alerts, as well as a display that transmits “security levels” (presumably a similar system to the DHS’ much maligned color-coded terror alert designation), in addition to showing instructions by way of its LED video screen.

The lights also include proximity sensors that can record both pedestrian and road traffic. The video display and speaker system will also be used to transmit Minority Report-style advertising, as well as Amber Alerts and other “civic announcements”.

With the aid of grant money from the federal government, the company is about to launch the first concept installation of the system in the city of Farmington Hills, Michigan.

Using street lights as surveillance tools has already been advanced by several European countries. In 2007, leaked documents out of the UK Home Office revealed that British authorities were working on proposals to fit lamp posts with CCTV cameras that would X-ray scan passers-by and “undress them” in order to “trap terror suspects”.

Dutch police also announced last year that they are developing a mobile scanner that will “see through people’s clothing and look for concealed weapons”.

So-called ‘talking surveillance cameras’ that use a speaker system similar to the Intellistreets model are already being used in UK cities like Middlesborough to bark orders and reprimand people for dropping litter and other minor offenses. According to reports, one of the most common phrases used to shame people into obeying instructions is to broadcast the message, “We are watching you.”

The transformation of street lights into surveillance tools for Homeland Security purposes will only serve to heighten concerns that the United States is fast on the way to becoming a high-tech police state, with TSA agents being empowered to oversee that control grid, most recently with the announcement that TSA screeners would be manning highway checkpoints, a further indication that security measures we currently see in airports are rapidly spilling out onto the streets.

The ability of the government to use street lights to transmit “emergency alerts” also dovetails with the ongoing efforts to hijack radio and television broadcasts for the same purpose, via FEMA’s Emergency Alert System.

The federal government is keen to implement a centralized system of control over all communications, with the recent announcement that all new cell phones will be required to comply with the PLAN program (Personal Localized Alerting Network), which will broadcast emergency alert messages directly to Americans’ cell phones using a special chip embedded in the receiver. The system will be operational by the end of the year in New York and Washington, with the rest of the country set to follow in 2012.

The notion of using the street lights as communication tools to broadcast “alerts” directly from the federal government is also consistent with Homeland Security’s program to install Orwellian ‘telescreens’ that play messages by Janet Napolitano and other DHS officials in Wal-Mart stores across the country.

The fact that the federal government is funding the implementation of ‘Intellistreets’ comes as no surprise given that the nation’s expanding networks of surveillance cameras are also being paid for with Department of Homeland Security grants.

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

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.

Labels: big brother, Intellistreets, Paul Joseph Watson, surveillance

Big Sis To Monitor Twitter For Signs Of Social Unrest

Federal agency concerned about riots breaking out in United States

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Tuesday, November 1, 2011

The wave of civil unrest that has swept the globe over the past year has prompted the Department of Homeland Security to step up its monitoring of Twitter and other social networks in a bid to pre-empt any sign of social dislocation within the United States.

“Department of Homeland Security Undersecretary Caryn Wagner said the use of such technology in uprisings that started in December in Tunisia shocked some officials into attention and prompted questions of whether the U.S. needs to do a better job of monitoring domestic social networking activity,” reports the Associated Press.

Wagner announced that the federal agency would implement new guidelines that would focus on “gleaning information from sites such as Twitter and Facebook for law enforcement purposes.”

Under the new framework, when the department receives information about a “potential threat,” it will then ask its contractors to look for relevant search references using “open source” information.

Although it’s somewhat naive to think that Homeland Security wasn’t already scanning the likes of Facebook and Twitter for social trends and signs of civil unrest, the fact that its now being announced publicly illustrates the increasing concern that riots which have hit the Middle East and Europe over the last 18 months will soon manifest themselves inside the United States.

Indeed, US law enforcement bodies are already scanning Twitter and Facebook for signs of unrest. Having launched a specialized unit to focus on gleaning clues from social media websites, the NYPD Disorder Control Unit recently brought together police from all five of the city’s boroughs to rehearse what the response would be “should out-of-control riots break out here”.

Social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter came in for harsh condemnation following the UK riots, with Prime Minister David Cameron advocating authorities have the power to shut down access during times of public disorder, mimicking the Communist Chinese system of Internet censorship, which is used to curtail political protests.

Although the Occupy Wall Street movement has been the only real expression of civil unrest in the United States thus far, a worsening economic climate almost guarantees the prospect of an increase in social disorder across the globe.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO), a prominent UN agency, warned yesterday that the world faces an imminent “dramatic downturn” in employment, and a new recession which in turn would lead to greater social unrest, particularly in European countries.

In preparation for potential riots inside the United States, the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Institute issued a report in November 2008 entitled Known Unknowns: Unconventional Strategic Shocks in Defense Strategy Development.

The report lays out the strategy for how authorities would respond to “purposeful domestic resistance,” wherein U.S. troops would be deployed domestically to counter civil unrest. The report was issued weeks after the onset of the 2008 financial crisis, and included a potential “economic collapse” as one of the scenarios under which troops would be used inside the U.S. to restore order.

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

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.

Labels: Department of Homeland Security, DHS, monitoring, social media, surveillance, Twitter

Internet firms co-opted for surveillance: experts

(Reuters) - Internet companies such as Google, Twitter and Facebook are increasingly co-opted for surveillance work as the information they gather proves irresistible to law enforcement agencies, Web experts said this week.

Although such companies try to keep their users' information private, their business models depend on exploiting it to sell targeted advertising, and when governments demand they hand it over, they have little choice but to comply...[Full Article]

Labels: big brother, privacy, surveillance

'Stingray' Phone Tracker Fuels Constitutional Clash

Wall Street Journal

For more than a year, federal authorities pursued a man they called simply "the Hacker." Only after using a little known cellphone-tracking device—a stingray—were they able to zero in on a California home and make the arrest.

A stingray's role in nabbing the alleged "Hacker"—Daniel David Rigmaiden—is shaping up as a possible test of the legal standards for using these devices in investigations. The FBI says it obtains appropriate court approval to use the device.

Stingrays are one of several new technologies used by law enforcement to track people's locations, often without a search warrant. These techniques are driving a constitutional debate about whether the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, but which was written before the digital age, is keeping pace with the times.

On Nov. 8, the Supreme Court will hear arguments over whether or not police need a warrant before secretly installing a GPS device on a suspect's car and tracking him for an extended period. In both the Senate and House, new bills would require a warrant before tracking a cellphone's location...[Full Article]

Labels: FBI, privacy, Stingray, surveillance, tracking

FBI is on your cell phone. Do you care?

World Net Daily

Here we are in 2011, with our federal, state and local governments having the technological ability to track and store in massive databases what we say on the phone, in emails, on Facebook, on Twitter and the myriad other digital means in which we communicate. The Obama administration has the power to punish an American for providing "material support" to our terrorist enemies.

Moreover, as I and others have reported, the Department of Justice's Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) Initiative, or NSI, enlists We the People to spy on possible seditious Americans among us and report them to the FBI and local and state police...[Full Story]

Labels: FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, surveillance

Animation: Suspect America

Published September 7, 2011 - 9:00am

By: Carrie Ching, Center for Investigative Reporting

After 9/11, the government began encouraging local police, private security and everyday Americans to report so-called "suspicious activity" that may indicate a security threat. More than 15,000 reports are already compiled in one database that can be searched nationwide by law enforcement authorities. Taking photos of landmarks, walking "nervously" and writing in a notebook are all activities that have led to people being stopped and questioned. Could you be next?

Labels: big brother, surveillance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNlJYSIzjoU

Uploaded by MikeHansonArchives on Aug 30, 2011

Labels: big brother, police state, surveillance, video

CIA aided New York police in spying on Muslims: report

Raw Story

Despite a prohibition on spying within the United States, the Central Intelligence Agency played a key role in transforming the New York Police Department's intelligence unit into a cutting edge spy shop dedicated to gathering information on Muslims, and not just in New York.

That's according to a new report out Wednesday by The Associated Press, which claims a veteran CIA agent helped train one of the NYPD's detectives in advanced surveillance methods. They also sent an undercover agent to work in the department, the report says.

With the CIA's help, the NYPD has gathered information on cab drivers, street level food vendors, ethnic book stores, Internet cafes and even mosques, sending snoops in to listen to sermons -- all without a hint of federal, state or local oversight...[Full Article]

Labels: Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, intelligence, Muslim, NYPD, surveillance

Warrantless “emergency” surveillance of Internet communications by DOJ up 400%

Federal Jack

(Christopher Soghoian) According to an official DOJ report, the use of “emergency”, warrantless requests to ISPs for customer communications content has skyrocketed over 400% in a single year.

The 2009 report (pdf), which I recently obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request (it took DOJ 11 months (pdf) to give me the two-page report), reveals that law enforcement agencies within the Department of Justice sought and obtained communications content for 91 accounts. This number is a significant increase over previous years: 17 accounts in 2008 (pdf), 9 accounts in 2007 (pdf), and 17 accounts in 2006 (pdf)...[Full Article]

Labels: Department of Justice, DOJ, surveillance

Big Brother is watching you: The town where EVERY car is tracked by police cameras

UK Daily Mail

A sleepy Home Counties market town has become the first in Britain to have every car passing through it tracked by police cameras.

Royston, in Hertfordshire, has had a set of police cameras installed on every road leading in and out of it, recording the numberplate of every vehicle that passes them.

The automatic number-plate recognition system will check the plates against a variety of databases, studying them for links to crimes, and insurance and tax records, and alerting police accordingly.

There were just seven incidents of vehicle crime in the town last month, and residents believe the unmarked cameras are an invasion of their privacy...[Full Article]

Labels: big brother, Britain, license plate, surveillance

Bill Approved To Create Massive Surveillance Database Of Internet Users

Privacy busting legislation a “stalking horse for a massive expansion of federal power”

Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
July 25, 2011

Legislation that will force Internet providers to store information on all their customers and share it with the federal government and law enforcement agencies was significantly beefed at the last minute yesterday and approved by a U.S. House of Representatives committee.

Under the guise of protecting children from internet pornographers, the House Judiciary committee voted 19-10 to approve a bill that will require Internet Service Providers to store temporarily assigned IP addresses for future government use.

In addition, the bill was re-written yesterday to also include the enforced retention of customers’ names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers and bank account numbers.

As Declan McCullagh of CNet reports, the panel rejected an amendment that would have clarified that only IP addresses must be stored.

“The bill is mislabeled,” said Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the panel. “This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It’s creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes.”

It represents “a data bank of every digital act by every American” that would “let us find out where every single American visited Web sites,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who led Democratic opposition to the bill. The Californian Representative described the legislation as a “mess of a bill” and a “stalking horse for a massive expansion of federal power”.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., noted that the bill would open a Pandora’s box of government abuse.

“This is not about child porn. It never has been and never will be,” Issa said. “This is a convenient way for law enforcement to get what they couldn’t get in the PATRIOT Act.”

Advocates for the legislation include the National Sheriffs’ Association, which has said it “strongly supports” mandatory data retention. The bill has also attracted endorsements from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, as well as the FBI.

In a last ditch effort to derail the bill, the ACLU, along with dozens of other privacy watchdog groups penned a letter (PDF) to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith earlier this week, noting that “any data retention mandate is a direct assault on bedrock privacy principles.”

“The data retention mandate in this bill would treat every Internet user like a criminal and threaten the online privacy and free speech rights of every American, as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have recognized,” Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said.

“Requiring Internet companies to redesign and reconfigure their systems to facilitate government surveillance of Americans’ expressive activities is simply un-American. Such a scheme would be as objectionable to our Founders as the requiring of licenses for printing presses or the banning of anonymous pamphlets.” Bankston added.

“This is China-style law enforcement, treating everyone as a potential suspect and requiring the collection of personal information just in case it might later be useful to the government,” said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel for the Washington based Center for Democracy and Technology, in an interview with Bloomberg.

A fortnight ago, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) appealed before the House Judiciary Committee, asking that Congress recognize the fact that retaining identifying information would put at risk “99.9% of Internet users.”

EPIC President Marc Rotenberg pointed out that it is more prudent to seek data minimization rather than data retention, in the wake of increased risk of data breaches and identity theft. Rotenberg noted that enforced data retention would make ISPs more vulnerable to hackers, citing the LulzSec group, which recently claimed responsibility for temporarily shutting down a CIA website and other high-profile hacks.

“Minimizing stored user data reduces incentives for hackers to attack data storage systems by reducing the amount of data available to steal. Minimization also reduces the costs of data breaches,” Rotenberg said in prepared testimony.

Rotenberg suggested that the data could be used to bring criminal charges that were unrelated to child pornography, noting that any mandatory retention of data would be accessible to police investigating any crime.

“Although this data retention requirement has been introduced as part of a bill focused on child sexual exploitation, there is no evidence to suggest that the majority of law enforcement requests for customer subscriber information relate to child protection cases.” Rotenberg argued.

The bill would also allow access to the data by attorneys litigating civil disputes in divorce, insurance fraud, and other cases that have nothing to do with the protection of children on the internet.

“It would give the government sweeping authority to mandate the collection and retention of personal information obtained by business from their customers, or generated by the business in the course of providing services, for subsequent examination without any reason to believe that information is relevant or necessary for a criminal investigation,” Rotenberg further testified.

Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., had proposed an amendment to the bill that would have limited use of the data to child-pornography or terrorism cases, but it was withdrawn at the last minute, as Lamar Smith claimed that limiting the use of the information to child-pornography investigations could “undermine current cases on other issues”.

Rep. Scott also attempted to add an amendment to allocate $45 million a year to pay for more than 200 additional federal investigators and prosecutors dedicated to child pornography cases. Clearly a real move to crack down on child porn peddlers was unwelcome, however, as this too was struck down by committee members who claimed the funding wasn’t available.

The legislation, with all it’s privacy stripping measures intact, will now be scheduled for a full House debate.

——————————————————————

Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.net, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.

Labels: big brother, Internet, surveillance

NSA Admits It Tracks Americans Via Cell Phones

Surveillance has been going on for over a decade

Steve Watson & Paul Joseph Watson
Prisonplanet.com
July 25, 2011

The general counsel of the National Security Agency testified to a Senate hearing yesterday that he believes the agency has the authority to track Americans via cell phones.

“There are certain circumstances where that authority may exist,” said Matthew Olsen the current nominee to head up the National Counterterrorism Center.

Olsen made the comments to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence as Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) repeatedly asked if the government has the authority to “use cell site data to track the location of Americans inside the country.”

Olsen added that the reason his answer was not definitive was that “it is a very complicated question”, assuring the committee that the NSA would provide more information in a future memo.

Sen. Wyden recently wrote (full letter below) to the Director of National Intelligence demanding to know whether the CIA and the NSA “have the authority to collect the geolocation information of American citizens for intelligence purposes.”

“If yes, please explain the specific statutory basis for this authority,” the letter, co signed by Sen. Mark Udall (D., Colo.) states.

The Senators also requested information on how many Americans have been monitored under authority granted by 2008 legislation amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. “Have any apparently law-abiding Americans had their communications collected by the government?” the letter asks.

Two months ago Wyden expressed concern that the law relating to surveillance is unclear. “The law is being secretly interpreted by the executive branch” Wyden noted.

Along with Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah), Wyden has introduced a joint bill that would force any government agency to secure a search warrant and show probable cause before tracking the location of any American.

The issue of cell phone tracking blew up earlier this year when it was revealed that computer researchers discovered a hidden file that allows Apple to track the location of iPhone and iPad users. Google’s collection of location from cellphones has also been open to question.

As we have previously highlighted, however, since October 2001, the FCC has mandated that all wireless carriers track the location of their users down to within 50 feet.

Under the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the FCC mandated that by October 1, 2001 a quarter of all new cellphones be equipped with GPS functionality that would allow authorities to track the location of users. By the end of 2002, this became a mandatory requirement of allnew cellphones.

As Geek.com reported back in October 2001, “Because cellphone calls to 911 (estimated at around 140,000 per year) do not give the 911 operator location information, the FCC mandated that wireless companies “be able to locate 67 percent of callers to 911 within 50 meters that elect the handset solution while those using network technology must be able to locate the caller within 100 meters.” Wireless companies must also have one-quarter of the new cellphones they offer equipped to provide that location information by the end of the year, and all new cellphones so equipped by the end of next year.”

As a PC World article written in August 2001, two months before the first phase of the new FCC rules were enacted, asked, “The FCC requires cell phone companies to track you, in order to find you when you call 911–but what about your privacy?”

“Cell phone tracking was propelled by the Federal Communications Commission, which adopted enhanced 911 rules to cover wireless services. For E911′s first phase, cellular carriers must be able to pinpoint, to the nearest cell tower, the location of someone calling 911. For Phase II, carriers must be able to pinpoint a 911 caller’s location to within 50 to 300 meters,” states the article.

Your cellphone has been tracking you in real time for the lion’s share of the last decade, so why has it taken the media nearly 10 years to notice? Because in 2001, when such measures could have been made illegal, there was no iPhone, there was no app store, and the smart phones being used were extremely crude compared to today’s models, which are no less than mini-laptops.

In 2001, cellphones did little else than make calls and send text messages – these services didn’t require GPS technology. People weren’t addicted to their cellphones like they are today, they didn’t use them to catalogue, record and process every aspect of their existence.

The likes of Apple have worked hard over the last decade to make hundreds of millions of people dependent on their gadgets, creating an army of addicts who couldn’t care less that their cellphone is transmitting their every move directly to Steve Jobs. In their eyes, the choice between sacrificing their privacy and sacrificing their precious “apps” is an easy one to make. Privacy can’t book a table at a restaurant in a few taps of a finger, nor can it tell you the weather forecast or where the nearest ATM is located.

If the debate had been allowed to run its course in 2001, when cellphone tracking was first being adopted, the outcome may have been different. But since cellphone companies have been tracking their users for the best part of a decade, in line with government mandates, the recent controversy is merely part of the acclimatization process to achieve calm subservience and acceptance of the fact that true privacy is dead, and as Henry Blodget explains, Apple’s omnipresent brainwashing campaign has helped keep the outrage to a minimum.

Sen. Ron Wyden’s letter inquiring over tracking of Americans by federal intelligence agencies:

July 14, 2011

The Honorable James R. Clapper, Jr. Director of National Intelligence Washington, DC 20511

Dear Director Clapper:

In the coming months Congress is likely to consider various legislative initiatives that would modify different aspects of domestic surveillance law. We believe that the debate over these initiatives will be better informed if Congress and the public are provided with more unclassified information about how these initiatives will affect current intelligence authorities and activities.

The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 significantly modified the US government’s surveillance authorities with regard to individuals believed to be located outside the United States. These new authorities are currently scheduled to expire in late 2012, and Congress could begin considering possible extensions or revisions to these authorities later this year. Since any thorough consideration will require an understanding of how the FISA Amendments Act has been interpreted and implemented, we ask that you provide unclassified answers to the following questions:

• In a December 2007 Statement of Administration Policy on the FISA Amendments Act, the Office of Management and Budget said that it would “likely be impossible” to count the number of people located in the United States whose communications were reviewed by the government pursuant to the FISA Amendments Act. Is this still the case? If so, is it possible to estimate this number with any accuracy?

• Official documents released in 2010 noted that there have been multiple incidents in which intelligence agency personnel have failed to comply with the FISA Amendments Act, and that “Certain types of compliance incidents continue[d] to occur.” Please elaborate on these compliance incidents to the extent possible, and explain why you believe that they have continued to recur.

• Have any apparently law-abiding Americans had their communications collected by the government pursuant to the FISA Amendments Act?

• Are any significant interpretations of the FISA Amendments Act currently classified?

Turning to another area of surveillance law, recent advances in geolocation technology have made it increasingly easy to secretly track the movements and whereabouts of individual Americans on an ongoing, 24/7 basis. Law enforcement agencies have relied on a variety of different methods to conduct this sort of electronic surveillance, including the acquisition of cell phone mobility data from communications companies as well as the use of tracking devices covertly installed by the law enforcement agencies themselves.

Unfortunately, the law has not kept up with these advances in technology. As a result, courts in different jurisdictions have issued diverse, conflicting rulings about the evidence and procedures required for the government to surreptitiously track an individual’s movements using a mobile electronic device. Congress is now considering multiple legislative proposals that would attempt to establish clear rules for this sort of surveillance and will need to determine at some point whether it is necessary to update the laws that apply to intelligence investigations as well as the laws that apply to law enforcement investigations.

While there is a substantial amount of public information available regarding different interpretations of this area of the law (including the executive branch’s interpretation and the interpretations of various courts) all of these interpretations apply to law enforcement authorities, not intelligence authorities. Clearly Congress needs to also understand how intelligence authorities are being interpreted as it begins to consider legislation on this issue. For this reason, we request that you also provide unclassified answers to the following questions:

• Do government agencies have the authority to collect the geolocation information of American citizens for intelligence purposes?

• If yes, please explain the specific statutory basis for this authority. And to the extent that this statutory basis imposes any procedural requirements, such as judicial review or approval by particular officials, please describe these requirements.

• If no, please explain the statutory basis for this prohibition.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. We look forward to your prompt response.

Sincerely,

Ron Wyden Mark Udall United States Senator United States Senator

——————————————————————

Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.net, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.

Labels: National Security Agency, NSA, surveillance

Atlanta OKs surveillance center; cameras to watch city

Atlanta Journal Constitution

Big Brother is coming to Atlanta. Or is it a watchful eye that will make walking city streets safer?

On Monday, the Atlanta City Council approved a measure to network and monitor thousands of public and privately owned security cameras throughout Atlanta.

The cameras and images will be part of a new multi-million dollar video integration center, designed to compile and analyze footage from the network..

To start, images from as many as 500 cameras -- some city-owned and some private -- are expected to flow into the center, providing images from Piedmont Park to Underground Atlanta. The center will use software that can identify "suspicious" behavior and allow monitors to quickly deploy public safety personnel. The software is also capable of pinpointing where gunshots originate from.

The center is being built by a $2.6 million federal grant from the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department. The Atlanta Police Foundation – which funds the camera network operated by the Midtown Blue, a private security agency -- is also raising money to operate the center. The city has not determined yet how much it will cost to operate the center annually, but the Council is committed to establishing virtually blanket video monitoring of the city...[Full Article]

Labels: Atlanta, big brother, Georgia, surveillance, video surveillance

The CIA Put A Ton Of Cash Into A Software Firm That Monitors Your Online Activity

Business Insider

by Robert Johnson
July 7, 2011

Image: Jonathon Narvey via flickr

American intelligence communities are interested in your YouTube video, flickr uploads, tweets -- even your online book purchases -- and for over a year they've been laying down some serious cash to get a better look at all of them.

According to Wired, the tech-focused investment firm In-Q-Tel, that works with the CIA, is investing in Visible Technologies who perform social media monitoring and analytics.

This is the first major shift in the spy community's commitment to monitoring public conversations that fill the Internet in blog posts, web uploads, purchases, TV shows, podcasts, YouTube videos, and articles every day.

Visible pulls from over 500,000 every 24 hours, grabbing more than one million posts, conversations, images, videos, and Amazon purchases. Clients get tailored real-time results of what's happening based upon desired keywords.

Once Visible has a handle on what's being said it "scores" each post and labels it negative or positive, mixed or benign. It also factors the influence of the author, or conversation, weighing each comment separately. The end-user interface then allows clients to tag user comments, and dialogue on them with colleagues.

While the program could benefit global security, the possibility for abuse is epic.

“Anything that is out in the open is fair game for collection,” says Steven Aftergood, who tracks intelligence issues at the Federation of American Scientists. But “even if information is openly gathered by intelligence agencies it would still be problematic if it were used for unauthorized domestic investigations or operations.

Intelligence agencies or employees might be tempted to use the tools at their disposal to compile information on political figures, critics, journalists or others, and to exploit such information for political advantage. That is not permissible even if all of the information in question is technically ‘open source.’”

When the CIA became an end user like Dell, AT&T and Microsoft who all use it to track customers -- what they do with the data they've purchased is entirely up to them.

The size of the CIA's investment in Visible is unknown, but the infusion of cash is supposed to be sufficient to enhance the company's foreign language capabilities.

A screen grab from the interface Image: Wired

This is the first in a two part series tht examines the CIA's investment in online trending.

Labels: Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, monitoring, privacy, surveillance