Photo Credit: APThe former head of MI5 Dame Stella Rimington has called for British people to inform security services if they suspect their neighbours maybe extremists.
Dame Stella, who supports the Government’s controversial ‘snoopers’ charter’, said people need to be more alert because it is impossible for security services to spot every threat.
She called for a wartime vigilance and for people to be the Government’s ‘eyes and ears’ following the killing of Lee Rigby.
The 78-year-old, who was MI5’s first female Director General, said: ‘The community has the responsibility to act as the eyes and ears, as they did during the war … where there were all these posters up saying the walls have ears and the enemy is everywhere.
‘There have often been indications in the community, whether it’s Muslim or anywhere else, that people are becoming extremists and spouting hate phrases.’
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-29 04:00:402016-04-11 11:20:07Ex-Head of British Spy Agency Calls on Everyone to Spy on Neighbors
Photo Credit: France 24Germany’s railway operator plans to deploy mini drones to catch vandals who deface its trains with graffiti, with the aerial vehicles shooting thermal images of its train depots at night.
Deutsche Bahn plans to soon start testing the vehicles which have four helicopter-style rotors and can shoot high-resolution pictures.
“We are going to use this technology in problem areas, where taggers are most active,” a spokesman who asked not to be named told AFP.
A “pilot” remotely steers the vehicles at heights of up to 150 metres (500 feet) and speeds of up to 54 kilometres (33 miles) per hour.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-28 02:02:042016-04-11 11:20:13German Railways to use Mini Drones to Stop Graffiti
Photo Credit: Mediaite‘Co-Conspirator’: Fox News Reporter James Rosen’s Private Emails Given To Justice Dept. By Google
By Noah Rothman. As a result of Fox News Channel’s State Department reporter James Rosen’s 2009 investigation into the government’s response to North Korea’s repeated provocations, it was reported on Monday that the Department of Justice tracked Rosen’s movements as well as subpoenaed telephone and email records. According to the DoJ’s subpoena, Google surrendered Rosen’s emails, who is described as “an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator,” to the government. Read more from this story HERE.
Washington Times Writer: Fox news Scandal Goes ‘Much Deeper,’ W.H. Sitting on Something Top Obama Aides ‘Terrified’ about.
By Jason Howerton. Washington Times columnist Joseph Curl on Monday said the Obama administration’s developing scandal involving the monitoring of Fox News reporter James Rosen’s email accounts goes “much deeper.” Read more from this story HERE.
Judge Napolitano: Naming Fox’s Rosen a Possible Criminal Is ‘Chilling’
By Greg Richter. The naming of a journalist as a possible co-conspirator in a criminal case of leaked classified information is “chilling,” Judge Andrew Napolitano says.
“The Supreme Court has ruled that when the government makes it difficult for you to do your job as a journalist by scaring off your sources or watching your every move, that’s called ‘chilling.'” Napolitano said Monday on Fox News Channel. “Chilling is a constitutional phrase meaning the government hasn’t directly silenced me, but it’s made it more difficult for me to speak.”
Fox News correspondent James Rosen was named a possible co-conspirator in a Justice Department affidavit, it was learned Monday. His personal emails were searched as part of the investigation.
Napolitano, a former New Jersey Superior Court judge and analyst for Fox News Channel, said it was not a crime for a journalist to ask for, receive, or publish classified information. Nothing in the affadavit claims Rosen did anything more than what journalists are legally allowed to do as part of their jobs, he said. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-21 02:58:252016-04-11 11:20:43Google Gave Feds Fox News Reporter’s Email Without a Warrant and Other Obama Outrages
Photo Credit: James SarmientoCommon Core means government agencies will gather and store all sorts of private information on every schoolchild into a longitudinal database from birth through all levels of schooling, plus giving government the right to share and exchange this nosy information with other government and private agencies, thus negating the federal law that now prohibits that. This type of surveillance and control of individuals is the mark of a totalitarian government.
Common Core reminds us of how Communist China gathered nosy information on all its schoolchildren, stored it in manila folders called dangans and then turned the file over to the kid’s employer when he left school.
The New York Times once published a picture of a giant Chinese warehouse containing hundreds of thousands of these folders. That was in the pre-Internet era when information was stored on paper; now data collection and storage are efficiently managed on computers in a greater invasion of privacy.
Common Core is encrusted with lies. It is not, as advertised, “state” written; it is a national project created in secret without any input from teachers or state legislatures. It is not “internationally benchmarked”; that never happened.
The readings assigned in the CC English standards are 50 percent “informational” texts instead of great American and English literature and classics. The result is that CC standards are very political.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-14 20:56:062016-04-11 11:21:16Backlash Against Common Core
Photo Credit: EspartaThe Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.
The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. It was not clear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of the calls.
In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown, but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.
In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies.
“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know,” Pruitt said.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-13 23:22:362016-04-11 11:21:22DOJ Siezed Associated Press Phone Records in “Massive and Unprecedented Intrusion”
Photo Credit: Getty Images Apple receives so many police demands to decrypt seized iPhones that it has created a “waiting list” to handle the deluge of requests, CNET has learned.
Court documents show that federal agents were so stymied by the encrypted iPhone 4S of a Kentucky man accused of distributing crack cocaine that they turned to Apple for decryption help last year.
An agent at the ATF, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, “contacted Apple to obtain assistance in unlocking the device,” U.S. District Judge Karen Caldwell wrote in a recent opinion. But, she wrote, the ATF was “placed on a waiting list by the company.”
A search warrant affidavit prepared by ATF agent Rob Maynard says that, for nearly three months last summer, he “attempted to locate a local, state, or federal law enforcement agency with the forensic capabilities to unlock” an iPhone 4S. But after each police agency responded by saying they “did not have the forensic capability,” Maynard resorted to asking Cupertino.
Because the waiting list had grown so long, there would be at least a 7-week delay, Maynard says he was told by Joann Chang, a legal specialist in Apple’s litigation group. It’s unclear how long the process took, but it appears to have been at least four months.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-12 22:25:022016-04-11 11:21:27Apple Deluged by Federal Demands to Decrypt iPhones
Photo Credit: National Institutes of HealthThe immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system.
Buried in the more than 800 pages of the bipartisan legislation (.pdf) is language mandating the creation of the innocuously-named “photo tool,” a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID.
Employers would be obliged to look up every new hire in the database to verify that they match their photo.
This piece of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act is aimed at curbing employment of undocumented immigrants. But privacy advocates fear the inevitable mission creep, ending with the proof of self being required at polling places, to rent a house, buy a gun, open a bank account, acquire credit, board a plane or even attend a sporting event or log on the internet. Think of it as a government version of Foursquare, with Big Brother cataloging every check-in.
“It starts to change the relationship between the citizen and state, you do have to get permission to do things,” said Chris Calabrese, a congressional lobbyist with the American Civil Liberties Union. “More fundamentally, it could be the start of keeping a record of all things.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-12 01:07:552016-04-11 11:21:32Biometric Database of All Adult Americans Hidden in Immigration Reform
Photo Credit: IBTimesWarrants? We don’t need no stinking warrants.
According to new documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, government officials may not always obtain warrants when they snoop through our emails, Facebook messages, and other electronic communications — and the FBI apparently doesn’t even believe it’s legally required to do so.
The documents, which were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request and posted on the ACLU website, suggest that the U.S. Department of Justice is flouting a 2010 federal appeals court ruling that declared warrantless access to email a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
That ruling, a criminal appeal of U.S. v. Warshak, stated that the government must obtain a warrant before it can secretly seize and search emails stored by email service providers. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation noted at the time, “the court found that email users have the same reasonable expectation of privacy in their stored email as they do in their phone calls and postal mail.”
However, an FBI “Operations Guide” — made public for the first time by the ACLU — tells a more nuanced story. Revised in June of last year, the guide makes exemptions for email stored by a service provider for more than 180 days. That’s basically any message sitting in your Gmail or Facebook folder for longer than six months. Most email messages are stored on cloud servers, and with virtually unlimited storage space, many email users see no need to delete old messages.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-12 01:05:472016-04-11 11:21:32ACLU Finally Figures Out What Restoring Liberty Has Been Saying for Months: All Emails, Facebook Messages are Under FBI Surveillance
Photo Credit: Christopher GregoryThe Obama administration, resolving years of internal debate, is on the verge of backing a Federal Bureau of Investigation plan for a sweeping overhaul of surveillance laws that would make it easier to wiretap people who communicate using the Internet rather than by traditional phone services, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.
The F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, has argued that the bureau’s ability to carry out court-approved eavesdropping on suspects is “going dark” as communications technology evolves, and since 2010 has pushed for a legal mandate requiring companies like Facebook and Google to build into their instant-messaging and other such systems a capacity to comply with wiretap orders. That proposal, however, bogged down amid concerns by other agencies, like the Commerce Department, about quashing Silicon Valley innovation.
While the F.B.I.’s original proposal would have required Internet communications services to each build in a wiretapping capacity, the revised one, which must now be reviewed by the White House, focuses on fining companies that do not comply with wiretap orders. The difference, officials say, means that start-ups with a small number of users would have fewer worries about wiretapping issues unless the companies became popular enough to come to the Justice Department’s attention.
Still, the plan is likely to set off a debate over the future of the Internet if the White House submits it to Congress, according to lawyers for technology companies and advocates of Internet privacy and freedom.
“I think the F.B.I.’s proposal would render Internet communications less secure and more vulnerable to hackers and identity thieves,” said Gregory T. Nojeim of the Center for Democracy and Technology. “It would also mean that innovators who want to avoid new and expensive mandates will take their innovations abroad and develop them there, where there aren’t the same mandates.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-08 02:31:092016-04-11 11:21:49Obama Admin. Poised to Back FBI’s Demand For Wiretap Access to Online Communications
During an interview with CNN this past week, a retired FBI counter-terrorism agent let it slip that the U.S. government is recording all cell phone conversations.
The interview concerned the FBI’s investigation of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s widow, Katherine Russell, and what, if anything, she knew about the Boston Marathon bombings. The CNN panel speculated on the FBI’s efforts to determine if Russell were a part of the conspiracy.
The CNN host, Erin Burnett, thinking that the feds could gain access to Russell’s old voice mails but couldn’t actually listen to her old phone calls, observed, “there’s no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them.”
The former agent, Tim Clemente, disagreed:
No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It’s not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.
Burnett knew immediately that Clemente was referring to Russell’s old phone calls and asked incredulously, ” So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.”
Clemente answered, “No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.”
The former counter-terrorism agent’s revelation is not the first time former federal officials have admitted that Washington is engaged in extensive warrantless surveillance of all US citizens. This past fall, NSA whistle-blower William Binney, a 32-year veteran of the NSA was widely interviewed about his work that allowed federal agencies to conduct near-universal surveillance of digital communications.
In his interviews, Mr. Binney voiced sincere regret for his contribution to this Orwellian eavesdropping program, noting that he intended it for use internationally, not domestically:
Additionally, in a federal court case several weeks ago, the FBI admitted to the use of another warrantless tool that selectively targeted cell phone conversations and revealed the participants’ locations.
And Congress seems to be going right along with it. In March, experts testified before the House arguing that federal law should be changed to explicitly permit the permanent storage of virtually all of Americans’ text messages and emails.
We have little time to turn this around. The enormous, unlawful power that the central government is accumulating is a real threat to the constitutional freedoms entrusted to us by our Founders.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-06 02:25:392016-04-11 11:21:57Retired FBI Counter-Terrorism Agent Confirms NSA Whistle-Blowers: Feds are Recording All Cell Phone Conversations (+videos)
