This story has been reported in partnership between The New York Times, the Guardian and ProPublica based on documents obtained by The Guardian.
Not limiting their activities to the earthly realm, American and British spies have infiltrated the fantasy worlds of World of Warcraft and Second Life, conducting surveillance and scooping up data in the online games played by millions of people across the globe, according to newly disclosed classified documents.
Fearing that terrorist or criminal networks could use the games to communicate secretly, move money or plot attacks, the documents show, intelligence operatives have entered terrain populated by digital avatars that include elves, gnomes and supermodels.
The spies have created make-believe characters to snoop and to try to recruit informers, while also collecting data and contents of communications between players, according to the documents, disclosed by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden. Because militants often rely on features common to video games — fake identities, voice and text chats, a way to conduct financial transactions — American and British intelligence agencies worried that they might be operating there, according to the papers.
Takeaways: How Spy Agencies Operate In Virtual Worlds
GATHERING INTELLIGENCE: U.S. and British intelligence agencies — including the Central Intelligence Agency, Defense intelligence agency and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters — have operated in virtual worlds and gaming communities to snoop and try to recruit informants. For example, according to Snowden documents, the U.S. has conducted spy operations in Second Life (pictured), where players create human avatars to socialize, buy and sell goods and explore exotic virtual destinations. (Second Life image via Linden Lab)
Online games might seem innocuous, a top-secret 2008 NSA document warned, but they had the potential to be a “target-rich communication network” allowing intelligence suspects “a way to hide in plain sight.” Virtual games “are an opportunity!,” another 2008 NSA document declared.
But for all their enthusiasm — so many CIA, FBI and Pentagon spies were hunting around in Second Life, the document noted, that a “deconfliction” group was needed to avoid collisions — the intelligence agencies may have inflated the threat.
The documents do not cite any counterterrorism successes from the effort, and former American intelligence officials, current and former gaming company employees and outside experts said in interviews that they knew of little evidence that terrorist groups viewed the games as havens to communicate and plot operations.
Games “are built and operated by companies looking to make money, so the players’ identity and activity is tracked,” said Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution, an author of “Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know.” “For terror groups looking to keep their communications secret, there are far more effective and easier ways to do so than putting on a troll avatar.”
The surveillance, which also included Microsoft’s Xbox Live, could raise privacy concerns. It is not clear exactly how the agencies got access to gamers’ data or communications, how many players may have been monitored or whether Americans’ communications or activities were captured.
One American company, the maker of World of Warcraft, said that neither the NSA nor its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters, had gotten permission to gather intelligence in its game. Many players are Americans, who can be targeted for surveillance only with approval from the nation’s secret intelligence court. The spy agencies, though, face far fewer restrictions on collecting certain data or communications overseas.
“We are unaware of any surveillance taking place,” said a spokesman for Blizzard Entertainment, based in Irvine, Calif., which makes World of Warcraft. “If it was, it would have been done without our knowledge or permission.”
A spokeswoman for Microsoft declined to comment. Philip Rosedale, the founder of Second Life and a former chief executive officer of Linden Lab, the game’s maker, declined to comment on the spying revelations. Current Linden executives did not respond to requests for comment.
A Government Communications Headquarters spokesman would neither confirm nor deny any involvement by that agency in gaming surveillance, but said that its work is conducted under “a strict legal and policy framework” with rigorous oversight. An NSA spokeswoman declined to comment.
Intelligence and law enforcement officials became interested in games after some became enormously popular, drawing tens of millions of people worldwide, from preteens to retirees. The games rely on lifelike graphics, virtual currencies and the ability to speak to other players in real time. Some gamers merge the virtual and real worlds by spending long hours playing and making close online friends.
In World of Warcraft, players share the same fantasy universe — walking around and killing computer-controlled monsters or the avatars of other players, including elves, animals or creatures known as orcs. In Second Life, players create customized human avatars that can resemble themselves or take on other personas — supermodels and bodybuilders are popular — who can socialize, buy and sell virtual goods, and go places like beaches, cities, art galleries and strip clubs. In Microsoft’s Xbox Live service, subscribers connect online in games that can involve activities like playing soccer or shooting at each other in space.
According to American officials and documents that Mr. Snowden provided to The Guardian, which shared them with The New York Times and ProPublica, spy agencies grew worried that terrorist groups might take to the virtual worlds to establish safe communications channels.
In 2007, as the NSA and other intelligence agencies were beginning to explore virtual games, NSA officials met with the chief technology officer for the manufacturer of Second Life, the San Francisco-based Linden Lab. The executive, Cory Ondrejka, was a former Navy officer who had worked at the NSA with a top-secret security clearance.
He visited the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Md., in May 2007 to speak to staff members over a brown bag lunch, according to an internal agency announcement. “Second Life has proven that virtual worlds of social networking are a reality: come hear Cory tell you why!” said the announcement. It added that virtual worlds gave the government the opportunity “to understand the motivation, context and consequent behaviors of non-Americans through observation, without leaving U.S. soil.”
Ondrejka, now the director of mobile engineering at Facebook, said through a representative that the NSA presentation was similar to others he gave in that period, and declined to comment further.
Even with spies already monitoring games, the NSA thought it needed to step up the effort.
“The Sigint Enterprise needs to begin taking action now to plan for collection, processing, presentation and analysis of these communications,” said one April 2008 NSA document, referring to “signals intelligence.” The document added, “With a few exceptions, NSA can’t even recognize the traffic,” meaning that the agency could not distinguish gaming data from other Internet traffic.
By the end of 2008, according to one document, the British spy agency, known as GCHQ, had set up its “first operational deployment into Second Life” and had helped the police in London in cracking down on a crime ring that had moved into virtual worlds to sell stolen credit card information. The British spies running the effort, which was code-named “Operation Galician,” were aided by an informer using a digital avatar “who helpfully volunteered information on the target group’s latest activities.”
Though the games might appear to be unregulated digital bazaars, the companies running them reserve the right to police the communications of players and store the chat dialogues in servers that can be searched later. The transactions conducted with the virtual money common in the games, used in World of Warcraft to buy weapons and potions to slay monsters, are also monitored by the companies to prevent illicit financial dealings.
In the 2008 NSA document, titled “Exploiting Terrorist Use of Games & Virtual Environments,” the agency said that “terrorist target selectors” — which could be a computer’s Internet Protocol address or an email account — “have been found associated with Xbox Live, Second Life, World of Warcraft” and other games. But that document does not present evidence that terrorists were participating in the games.
Still, the intelligence agencies found other benefits in infiltrating these online worlds. According to the minutes of a January 2009 meeting, GCHQ’s “network gaming exploitation team” had identified engineers, embassy drivers, scientists and other foreign intelligence operatives to be World of Warcraft players — potential targets for recruitment as agents.
At Menwith Hill, a Royal Air Force base in the Yorkshire countryside that the NSA has long used as an outpost to intercept global communications, American and British intelligence operatives started an effort in 2008 to begin collecting data from World of Warcraft.
One NSA document said that the World of Warcraft monitoring “continues to uncover potential Sigint value by identifying accounts, characters and guilds related to Islamic extremist groups, nuclear proliferation and arms dealing.” In other words, targets of interest appeared to be playing the fantasy game, though the document does not indicate that they were doing so for any nefarious purposes. A British document from later that year said that GCHQ had “successfully been able to get the discussions between different game players on Xbox Live.”
By 2009, the collection was extensive. One document says that while GCHQ was testing its ability to spy on Second Life in real time, British intelligence officers vacuumed up three days’ worth of Second Life chat, instant message and financial transaction data, totaling 176,677 lines of data, which included the content of the communications.
For their part, players have openly worried that the NSA might be watching them.
In one World of Warcraft discussion thread, begun just days after the first Snowden revelations appeared in the news media in June, a human death knight with the user name “Crrassus” asked whether the NSA might be reading game chat logs.
“If they ever read these forums,” wrote a goblin priest with the user name “Diaya,” “they would realize they were wasting” their time.
Even before the American government began spying in virtual worlds, the Pentagon had identified the potential intelligence value of video games. The Pentagon’s Special Operations Command in 2006 and 2007 worked with several foreign companies — including an obscure digital media business based in Prague — to build games that could be downloaded to mobile phones., according to people involved in the effort. They said the games, which were not identified as creations of the Pentagon, were then used as vehicles for intelligence agencies to collect information about the users.
The SAIC headquarters in McLean, Va., and the company’s island in Second Life. (The Meridian Group, SAIC)
Eager to cash in on the government’s growing interest in virtual worlds, several large private contractors have spent years pitching their services to American intelligence agencies. In one 66-page document from 2007, part of the cache released by Mr. Snowden, the contracting giant SAIC promoted its ability to support “intelligence collection in the game space,” and warned that online games could be used by militant groups to recruit followers and could provide “terrorist organizations with a powerful platform to reach core target audiences.”
It is unclear whether SAIC received a contract based on this proposal, but one former SAIC employee said that the company at one point had a lucrative contract with the CIA for work that included monitoring the Internet for militant activity. An SAIC spokeswoman declined to comment.
In spring 2009, academics and defense contractors gathered at the Marriott at Washington Dulles International Airport to present proposals for a government study about how players’ behavior in a game like World of Warcraft might be linked to their real-world identities. “We were told it was highly likely that persons of interest were using virtual spaces to communicate or coordinate,” said Dmitri Williams, a professor at the University of Southern California who received grant money as part of the program.
After the conference, both SAIC and Lockheed Martin won contracts worth several million dollars, administered by an office within the intelligence community that finances research projects.
It is not clear how useful such research might be. A group at the Palo Alto Research Center, for example, produced a government-funded study of World of Warcraft that found “younger players and male players preferring competitive, hack-and-slash activities, and older and female players preferring noncombat activities,” such as exploring the virtual world. A group from the nonprofit SRI International, meanwhile, found that players under age 18 often used all capital letters both in chat messages and in their avatar names.
Those involved in the project were told little by their government patrons. According to Nick Yee, a Palo Alto researcher who worked on the effort, “We were specifically asked not to speculate on the government’s motivations and goals.”
Information security, especially at schools that provide training on the subject, in for-profit higher education should not be a premium. It would make a really great story to send an “undercover” technician to DeVry and Rasmussen campuses to observe their incredible service delivery.
Rasmussen’s portal has long had a SQL injection vulnerability that has been published on the internet several times. It still remains uncorrected.
Rasmussen College and DeVry Institute of Technology are both HLC accredited schools with for-profit business models. Both schools often claim, “the same accreditation as Harvard” and other quality Universities. Surprisingly, the two institutions have a lot more in common. From sharing questionable leadership to providing questionable placement practices for students and even extremely questionable security policies, these institutions are the embodiment of the flaws of American education.
The curriculum, and curriculum for partner schools as mentioned later, is created by individuals that rarely have any current knowledge in the subjects. Course material is often incorrect or misunderstood by the instructors. The policy of both institutions require instructors with Masters Degrees, but because they do not invest in qualified candidates they will allow, for example, an individual with a Masters Degree in Business to teach OpenGL Programming based on course material created by an individual with no programming experience.
Rasmussen and DeVry not only share the same accreditation, but the sponsorship was provided with the same seed money. The two institutions share employees, transferring their employees back and forth. One such employee is Todd Pombert, a newly appointed Vice President of Infrastructure and Technology for Rasmussen College. Having very little professional experience when compared to individuals at similar roles, it was insisted Todd be given this role by Gerald Gagliardi. Gerald Gagliardi is on the board of directors for businesses like NetWolves and Rasmussen College itself. A shrewd investor from Boca Raton, Mr. Gagliardi is shrewd investor that has used his resources to create successful people and businesses as he decides. There is no altruism here.
Rasmussen College, Inc. itself, along with it’s sister company Deltak Innovation which is now owned by John Wiley & Sons in an attempt to break into online courseware, is reorganizing. Rasmussen Collge will be its own entity with I.T. services provided by Collegis Managed Services. These are the same employees but now with a different title. Services provided include lead generation, hosting online courses with the Angel, Blackboard and Moodle LMS systems; retaining student data and more. Customers of Collegis include Purdue University, University of Florida, Gonzaga, Benedictine, Lubbock, Anna Maria College and more – if a school’s online URL includes learntoday.info it is a Rasmussen (now Collegis) resource. Similarly, if the URL begins with “engage” then it is most likely a Collegis resource. These schools are outsourcing to Collegis hosting some of their online courses. There are no operational controls, no security officer and no practice in providing even the smallest amount of protection for the data these schools have hosted with Collegis. In particular, many colleges are Jesuit schools that are preyed upon for their association to other Jesuit colleges.
In the case of Todd Pombert this individual was promoted to a very senior role with no practical or noticeable work experience that should be required for a leader in an industry requiring critical care in student information security. A drop-out from his Master’s Degree, this individual maintains this position only because of the multi-level-marketing that DeVry and Rasmussen consider as qualifications for employment. There is no Security Officer for Rasmussen College. There is no reputable third party providing those services. Todd Pombert does not have the qualifications to adhere to industry practices that provide protection, confidentiality and integrity to managed services exposing flaws to their customers. Worse, an educational institution cannot provide and does not insist on the training required to keep students of Rasmussen and its partners safe. The lack of knowledge is so blatant that Todd Pombert keeps an archive of every email he received at DeVry to use as reference at Rasmussen. From confidential information, business plans, document templates and even financial data, much of DeVry’s history and future decisions are recorded unsecured on a “competitor” owned laptop with no disk encryption.
The school has all of the students in the same domain as contractors, faculty, staff and the board of directors. Not only does this create conflicts, but it allows any domain user (ie: student, contractor, etc) to browse the domain for information about any other user. Students are free to attempt to brute force Executive passwords giving them access to unencrypted financial information of other students and more. The network services between campus and the datacenter is the same class A network – you can reach the Chicago based datacenter from a school in Fargo from any ethernet jack. There are no standard, practical security mechanisms in place to prevent such a thing.
Students are forced to use a password convention that they often can’t change – firstname.lastname password: fl1234. This 6 character password utilizes the last four digits of the student’s social security number. None of the websites have any protection from common brute force attacks. If you know the name of a student (Joe Smith) then you know 1/3 of his password (jsXXXX) and it is trivial to use the portal, online courses or other services to continually guess 0000-9999. This exposes the student to possible fraud from someone acquiring their personal identifying information as well as allows an intruder to view the student’s grades, financial data email to the student with the same password and any academic work the student has previously submitted.
Staff manage students through a public RDP system at class.learntoday.info. There is no password policy assigned. Staff are free to use passwords including their own names and more. If an intruder gains access to the RDP system all student financial data is stored unencrypted on a Windows file share.
The wireless network for Rasmussen is WEP. WEP is a long outdated mechanism for securing a wireless network. Modern approaches to attacking WEP networks can allow an intruder to gain access within minutes. Again, financial data for students and the school itself are not encrypted in-place or in-flight. An attacker is able to gain access to any information just by being near a campus or corporate site.
There is no NAP, no RADIUS no 802.1X. The networks are completely unprotected. Coincidentally, both schools teach courses that promote the use of tools capable of easily harvesting corporate, student and financial data like Wireshark and Snort.
Even basic controls have been neglected. The printers and copiers throughout all sites run default settings with no authentication and the web interface enabled. Anyone can request a re-print of jobs including social security numbers or financial data.
The employee portal itself did not follow practical standards and did not have SSL protecting employee information from being broadcast in plain text. That includes the passwords of financial aid employees as well as C-level visitors to local campuses.
These points above may not even be considered the most critical flaws in the service provided. The practices of Rasmussen and DeVry are a blight on Higher Education as a whole. Their practices should be considered, and some are outright, criminally negligent.
Rasmussen and DeVry continue to pay their questionable leadership large amounts of money. This is a clear misappropriation. If even a fraction of Todd Pombert’s salary was spent on security reviews, operational controls or educating Todd Pombert then these schools would not be risking disastrous consequences for their students and students of large, responsible institutions like Purdue and the University of Florida.
For Rasmussen (Collegis) hosted instances of online platforms nearly all of the content has the same ACL. There is nothing protecting content from one school from being used in another school’s offering or worse – being copied by an intruder.
Finally, to add insult to injury, while these schools are raking in student tuition to pay higher amounts of money to irresponsible leadership, they are placing students with Bachelor’s degrees as minimum wage Gamestop clerks. They claim this to be “in-field” placement for Information Technology students. The subject of ballooning student loans is covered in-depth lately and there is no need to remind you that these students will never be able to pay their debt for an education they received at profit for individuals just as qualified as graduates.
Below is a letter claimed to be written by a former music executive who says he witnessed a secret meeting in 1991 where the prison industrial complex encouraged the music industry to promote rap artists who glorify crime with the goal of encouraging listeners to get locked up in prison, so the private prisons could make more money. It’s a very interesting read, but unless others come forward and confirm his story, there is no way to verify whether or not this meeting took place. This letter first surfaced on HipHopisRead.com after the admin claims he received it in his email anonymously on April 24, 2012. The spelling and grammatical errors have been left as they were in the original and have not been corrected. This ‘Dot’ Connects to Others, namely Prisons – for – Profit, Police Militarization, and plans for Martial Law by way of Racial Divide. All of which we’ve documented for some time. The buttons below will auto-search those keywords.
After more than 20 years, I’ve finally decided to tell the world what I witnessed in 1991, which I believe was one of the biggest turning point in popular music, and ultimately American society. I have struggled for a long time weighing the pros and cons of making this story public as I was reluctant to implicate the individuals who were present that day. So I’ve simply decided to leave out names and all the details that may risk my personal well being and that of those who were, like me, dragged into something they weren’t ready for.
Between the late 80’s and early 90’s, I was what you may call a “decision maker” with one of the more established company in the music industry. I came from Europe in the early 80’s and quickly established myself in the business. The industry was different back then. Since technology and media weren’t accessible to people like they are today, the industry had more control over the public and had the means to influence them anyway it wanted. This may explain why in early 1991, I was invited to attend a closed door meeting with a small group of music business insiders to discuss rap music’s new direction. Little did I know that we would be asked to participate in one of the most unethical and destructive business practice I’ve ever seen.
The meeting was held at a private residence on the outskirts of Los Angeles. I remember about 25 to 30 people being there, most of them familiar faces. Speaking to those I knew, we joked about the theme of the meeting as many of us did not care for rap music and failed to see the purpose of being invited to a private gathering to discuss its future. Among the attendees was a small group of unfamiliar faces who stayed to themselves and made no attempt to socialize beyond their circle. Based on their behavior and formal appearances, they didn’t seem to be in our industry. Our casual chatter was interrupted when we were asked to sign a confidentiality agreement preventing us from publicly discussing the information presented during the meeting. Needless to say, this intrigued and in some cases disturbed many of us. The agreement was only a page long but very clear on the matter and consequences which stated that violating the terms would result in job termination. We asked several people what this meeting was about and the reason for such secrecy but couldn’t find anyone who had answers for us. A few people refused to sign and walked out. No one stopped them. I was tempted to follow but curiosity got the best of me. A man who was part of the “unfamiliar” group collected the agreements from us.
Quickly after the meeting began, one of my industry colleagues (who shall remain nameless like everyone else) thanked us for attending. He then gave the floor to a man who only introduced himself by first name and gave no further details about his personal background. I think he was the owner of the residence but it was never confirmed. He briefly praised all of us for the success we had achieved in our industry and congratulated us for being selected as part of this small group of “decision makers”. At this point I begin to feel slightly uncomfortable at the strangeness of this gathering. The subject quickly changed as the speaker went on to tell us that the respective companies we represented had invested in a very profitable industry which could become even more rewarding with our active involvement. He explained that the companies we work for had invested millions into the building of privately owned prisons and that our positions of influence in the music industry would actually impact the profitability of these investments. I remember many of us in the group immediately looking at each other in confusion. At the time, I didn’t know what a private prison was but I wasn’t the only one. Sure enough, someone asked what these prisons were and what any of this had to do with us. We were told that these prisons were built by privately owned companies who received funding from the government based on the number of inmates. The more inmates, the more money the government would pay these prisons. It was also made clear to us that since these prisons are privately owned, as they become publicly traded, we’d be able to buy shares. Most of us were taken back by this. Again, a couple of people asked what this had to do with us. At this point, my industry colleague who had first opened the meeting took the floor again and answered our questions. He told us that since our employers had become silent investors in this prison business, it was now in their interest to make sure that these prisons remained filled. Our job would be to help make this happen by marketing music which promotes criminal behavior, rap being the music of choice. He assured us that this would be a great situation for us because rap music was becoming an increasingly profitable market for our companies, and as employee, we’d also be able to buy personal stocks in these prisons. Immediately, silence came over the room. You could have heard a pin drop. I remember looking around to make sure I wasn’t dreaming and saw half of the people with dropped jaws. My daze was interrupted when someone shouted, “Is this a f****** joke?” At this point things became chaotic. Two of the men who were part of the “unfamiliar” group grabbed the man who shouted out and attempted to remove him from the house. A few of us, myself included, tried to intervene. One of them pulled out a gun and we all backed off. They separated us from the crowd and all four of us were escorted outside. My industry colleague who had opened the meeting earlier hurried out to meet us and reminded us that we had signed agreement and would suffer the consequences of speaking about this publicly or even with those who attended the meeting. I asked him why he was involved with something this corrupt and he replied that it was bigger than the music business and nothing we’d want to challenge without risking consequences. We all protested and as he walked back into the house I remember word for word the last thing he said, “It’s out of my hands now. Remember you signed an agreement.” He then closed the door behind him. The men rushed us to our cars and actually watched until we drove off.
A million things were going through my mind as I drove away and I eventually decided to pull over and park on a side street in order to collect my thoughts. I replayed everything in my mind repeatedly and it all seemed very surreal to me. I was angry with myself for not having taken a more active role in questioning what had been presented to us. I’d like to believe the shock of it all is what suspended my better nature. After what seemed like an eternity, I was able to calm myself enough to make it home. I didn’t talk or call anyone that night. The next day back at the office, I was visibly out of it but blamed it on being under the weather. No one else in my department had been invited to the meeting and I felt a sense of guilt for not being able to share what I had witnessed. I thought about contacting the 3 others who wear kicked out of the house but I didn’t remember their names and thought that tracking them down would probably bring unwanted attention. I considered speaking out publicly at the risk of losing my job but I realized I’d probably be jeopardizing more than my job and I wasn’t willing to risk anything happening to my family. I thought about those men with guns and wondered who they were? I had been told that this was bigger than the music business and all I could do was let my imagination run free. There were no answers and no one to talk to. I tried to do a little bit of research on private prisons but didn’t uncover anything about the music business’ involvement. However, the information I did find confirmed how dangerous this prison business really was. Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. Eventually, it was as if the meeting had never taken place. It all seemed surreal. I became more reclusive and stopped going to any industry events unless professionally obligated to do so. On two occasions, I found myself attending the same function as my former colleague. Both times, our eyes met but nothing more was exchanged.
As the months passed, rap music had definitely changed direction. I was never a fan of it but even I could tell the difference. Rap acts that talked about politics or harmless fun were quickly fading away as gangster rap started dominating the airwaves. Only a few months had passed since the meeting but I suspect that the ideas presented that day had been successfully implemented. It was as if the order has been given to all major label executives. The music was climbing the charts and most companies when more than happy to capitalize on it. Each one was churning out their very own gangster rap acts on an assembly line. Everyone bought into it, consumers included. Violence and drug use became a central theme in most rap music. I spoke to a few of my peers in the industry to get their opinions on the new trend but was told repeatedly that it was all about supply and demand. Sadly many of them even expressed that the music reinforced their prejudice of minorities.
I officially quit the music business in 1993 but my heart had already left months before. I broke ties with the majority of my peers and removed myself from this thing I had once loved. I took some time off, returned to Europe for a few years, settled out of state, and lived a “quiet” life away from the world of entertainment. As the years passed, I managed to keep my secret, fearful of sharing it with the wrong person but also a little ashamed of not having had the balls to blow the whistle. But as rap got worse, my guilt grew. Fortunately, in the late 90’s, having the internet as a resource which wasn’t at my disposal in the early days made it easier for me to investigate what is now labeled the prison industrial complex. Now that I have a greater understanding of how private prisons operate, things make much more sense than they ever have. I see how the criminalization of rap music played a big part in promoting racial stereotypes and misguided so many impressionable young minds into adopting these glorified criminal behaviors which often lead to incarceration. Twenty years of guilt is a heavy load to carry but the least I can do now is to share my story, hoping that fans of rap music realize how they’ve been used for the past 2 decades. Although I plan on remaining anonymous for obvious reasons, my goal now is to get this information out to as many people as possible. Please help me spread the word. Hopefully, others who attended the meeting back in 1991 will be inspired by this and tell their own stories. Most importantly, if only one life has been touched by my story, I pray it makes the weight of my guilt a little more tolerable.
Thank you.
KRS One saw the reality of the situation a long time ago.
He tried to warn us. How relevant are these lyrics today?
Ask Yourself Why You’ve Never Heard of this OG Truth-Bomb dropper
Now here’s a little truth, open up your eye While you’re checkin’ out the boom-bap, check the exercise Take the word overseer, like a sample Repeat it very quickly in a crew, for example Overseer, overseer, overseer, overseer Officer, officer, officer, officer Yeah,officerfromoverseer You need a little clarity? Check the similarity! The overseer rode around the plantation The officer is off, patrollin’ all the nation The overseer could stop you, “What you’re doing?” The officer will pull you over just when he’s pursuing The overseer had the right to get ill And if you fought back, the overseer had the right to kill The officer has the right to arrest And if you fight back they put a hole in your chest
Conscious hip-hop is often confused with its musical cousin, political hip-hop, possibly because they both speak to social turmoil.
A disdain for commercialism is another common thread that weaves the two styles together. Politically charged songs by rappers such as Dead Prez and Public Enemy are usually delivered in a militant fashion.
September 6, 2012: Decrypted Matrix with Max Maverick on Revealing Talk Radio
Prison Industrial Complex Explained: Learn how Corporations are outsourcing & privatizing labor costs to the Prison Industry and how there are massive profits exploding from within this corrupted Incarceration System. Slave Labor Camps, Return of the Debtor Prisons, Products most often created by Prisoners, Recent Wallstreet investments & the Goldman Sachs connection. SERCO, UNICOR, Federal Prison Industries, Inc. and the astronomical nationwide per-capita figures that will make your head spin.
In 2008, the National Security Agency illicitly—if accidentally—intercepted a “large number” of phone calls from Washington, D.C. because an error confused Egypt’s country code—“20”—with, yes, “202.”
That fact, one of many startling ones from Barton Gellman’s new blockbuster Washington Post story based on documents given to him by Edward Snowden, is so catchy and memorable that I almost worry about it. That is, I worry people will just think of that and fail to grasp that this was actually one of the more anodyne NSA abuses revealed by these newly disclosed top-secret documents, including an internal audit. In fact, in the year preceding the May 2012 audit, there were 2,776 violations (another eye-grabber, suggestively alike the totemic 1,776).
I think more troubling is that the NSA deliberately fed international communications (which it is permitted to monitor in certain ways) through U.S. fiber-optic cables, commingling those kosher foreign emails with domestic ones—which the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (or FISC, and it is generally a rubber stamp) ruled unconstitutional.
I also think more troubling is that last year, the NSA retained more than 3,000 files of telephone call records in defiance of an FISC order (!). How many calls involving how many people were on each file is unknown, by the way.
I think it is pretty messed up that all of this information solely concerns violations that occurred at the NSA’s headquarters in Maryland. “Three government officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified matters, said the number [of violations] would be substantially higher if it included other NSA operating units and regional collection centers,” Gellman reports.
Here’s the audit, for those not faint of heart or jargon (an appendix is provided).
There is a valuable, vital debate to be had over how much the federal government, in its intelligence programs, ought to be permitted to violate Americans’ privacy in an effort to protect Americans from a dangerous world that includes people who want to kill Americans. There are many different places where the important red lines can be drawn in this debate. It is a debate strewn with well-intentioned, conscientious people who would draw those lines at very different places. Let’s even be generous and stipulate that the question of whether the statutorily provided oversight of these programs is sufficient belongs, as well, to that debate.
The terrifying thing is that we are not having that debate. As these documents are the latest things to demonstrate, the various overseers as well as the public do not have access to the information that even the current rules assert they should have. That is how I can state with certainty that we are not having that vital debate: We do not have the means to have that debate with any kind of authority; therefore, no matter how much we discuss these issues, we are not having that debate.
The most important thing about the Egypt-D.C. confusion isn’t that U.S. calls were collected in violation of rules, for instance. It is that, after this violation was uncovered, it was not reported to oversight staff.
In a separate, in many ways equally important Post article, Carol D. Leonnig reports that FISC’s chief judge is hopelessly dependent on the NSA in order for it to perform its statutorily mandated oversight. “The FISC does not have the capacity to investigate issues of noncompliance,” the judge, Reggie B. Walton, told her, “and in that respect the FISC is in the same position as any other court.” Obama, Leonnig noted, has explicitly held FISC up as assurance that the programs do have strong oversight. But it should be obvious that outside oversight that depends on the purely internal machinations of the thing that is supposed to be overseen is not accountable oversight.
Lawmakers are not blameless. They may access unredacted documents, albeit in a secure room where they lack the ability to take notes. They might theoretically then, even, pull a Mike Gravel and read the results into the record on the House or Senate floor. Gellman reports that “fewer than 10 percent of lawmakers” presently have the ability actually to do this in practice. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman, was unaware of the May 2012 audit until she was contacted for the Post story.
But mainly this is on the NSA, which is to say, on the administration. President Obama pledged last Friday to make these surveillance programs “more transparent.” He argued, “It’s not enough for me as president to have confidence in these programs. The American people need to have confidence in them, as well.”
Yet the administration did not disclose, say, the lapses Gellman reported. In fact, the NSA retroactively placed an on-the-record interview with its director of compliance off the record, according to Gellman. It did this after Obama’s speech extolling the importance of and promising transparency. In a sense, we got his wished-for transparency. We can see right through him now.
The IRS, currently in the midst of scandals involving the targeting of conservative groups and lavish taxpayer-funded conferences, is ordering surveillance equipment that includes hidden cameras in coffee trays, plants and clock radios.
The IRS wants to secure the surveillance equipment quickly – it posted a solicitation on June 6 and is looking to close the deal by Monday, June 10. The agency already has a company lined up for the order but is not commenting on the details.
“The Internal Revenue Service intends to award a Purchase Order to an undisclosed Corporation,” reads the solicitation.
“If you feel that you can provide the following equipment, please respond to this email no later than 4 days after the solicitation date,” the IRS said.
Among the items the agency will purchase are four “Covert Coffee tray(s) with Camera concealment,” and four “Remote surveillance system(s)” with “Built-in DVD Burner and 2 Internal HDDs, cameras.”
The IRS also is buying four cameras to hide in plants: “(QTY 4) Plant Concealment Color 700 Lines Color IP Camera Concealment with Single Channel Network Server, supports dual video stream, Poe [Power over Ethernet], software included, case included, router included.”
Finishing out the order are four “Color IP Camera Concealment with single channel network server, supports dual video stream, poe, webviewer and cms software included, audio,” and two “Concealed clock radio.”
“Responses to this notice must be received by this office within 3 business days of the date of this synopsis by 2:00 P.M. EST, June 10, 2013,” the IRS said. Interested vendors are to contact Ricardo Carter, a Contract Specialist at the IRS.
“If no compelling responses are received, award will be made to the original solicited corporation,” the IRS said.
The original solicitation was only available to private companies for bids for 19 business hours.
The notice was posted at 11:07 a.m. on June 6 and had a deadline of 2:00 p.m. on Monday. Taking a normal 9-to-5 work week, the solicitation was open for bids for six hours on Thursday, eight hours on Friday, and five hours on Monday, for a total of 19 hours.
The response date was changed on Monday, pushed back to 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, June 11.
The location listed for the solicitation is the IRS’s National Office of Procurement, in Oxon Hill, Md.
“The Procurement Office acquires the products and services required to support the IRS mission,” according to its website.
In recent weeks the IRS has been at the center of multiple scandals, admitting to targeting Tea Party groups and subjecting them to greater scrutiny when applying for non-profit status during the 2010 and 2012 elections.
A report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration revealed that groups with names like “patriot” in their titles were singled out, required to complete lengthy personal questionnaires (often multiple times) and having their nonprofit status delayed, sometimes for more than three years.
Last week a second Inspector General report detailed nearly $50 million in wasteful spending by the agency on conferences, in which employees stayed at luxurious Las Vegas hotels, paid a keynote speaker $17,000 to paint a picture of U2 singer Bono, and spent $50,000 on parody videos of “Star Trek.”
Requests for comment from the IRS and Mr. Carter were not returned before this story was posted.
CNSNews.com asked IRS spokesmen Dean Patterson and Anthony Burke to explain the reasoning behind the solicitation, where the surveillance equipment will be used, why the request was so urgent, and whether the request has anything to do with the recent scandals at the IRS.
The Obama regime which was already in the midst of three high profile scandals now has a fourth one to deal with. Top secret documents were recently leaked to the Washington Post and the London Guardian detailing a vast government surveillance program code named PRISM. According to the leaked documents, the program allows the National Security Agency (NSA) back door access to data from the servers of several leading U.S. based Internet and software companies. The documents list companies such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and Apple as some of the participants in the program. There have also been other reports indicating that the NSA is able to access real-time user data from as many as 50 separate American companies. Under the program, the NSA is able to collect information ranging from e-mails, chats, videos, photographs, VoIP calls and more. Most importantly is the fact that PRISM allows the NSA to obtain this data without having to make individual requests from the service providers or without having to obtain a court order. To say that this is a violation of the Fourth Amendment which forbids unreasonable searches and seizures would be a gross understatement. This is actually much more than that. This is a program designed specifically to serve as a Big Brother like control grid and to end privacy as we know it.
The NSA is quickly building a real life version of 1984’s Big Brother.
It is now painfully obvious that James Clapper the Director of National Intelligence when testifying before the Senate this past March blatantly lied when asked by Senator Ron Wyden if the NSA was involved in collecting data from the American people. Clapper flatly denied that the NSA was engaged in these types of domestic surveillance activities. What makes the situation such a joke is that the Obama regime is not focused on the fact that Clapper lied to the Senate which in of itself is unlawful. Instead they have been more focused on determining the source of the leak that exposed these broad abuses of power. This is probably not surprising considering that this is a regime that rewards corruption by promoting people involved in all sorts of questionable activity. The promotion of Susan Rice as Obama’s new National Security Advisor is a perfect example of this considering her involvement in spreading bogus Benghazi related talking points. On the other hand, the Obama regime has severely punished a variety of whistleblowers who have dared to expose any wrong doing.
At least the Obama regime won’t have to spend much time and energy trying to identify the whistleblower as this person who leaked these documents has already come forward publically. At his own request the Guardian revealed his identity as Edward Snowden a 29-year old Information Technology specialist who has been working at the NSA for different contractors including Booz Allen Hamilton and Dell. Snowden had previously worked at an NSA office in Hawaii but boarded a flight to Hong Kong a few weeks ago where he has stayed since turning over these documents to the media. He expects that he will never set foot on U.S. soil again and may possibly seek political asylum in a country like Iceland. The Guardian interviewed Snowden over several days and has recently posted an interview transcript that provides more detail on the abuses he became aware of and why he decided to come forward as a whistleblower. In the interview Snowden confirms that the NSA has the infrastructure that allows them to intercept almost any type of data that you can imagine from phone records, e-mails to credit cards. He also reveals how the U.S. government is engaged in hacking systems everywhere around the world and how the NSA has consistently lied to Congress about their activities. There is little doubt that Snowden is thus far one of the most important whistleblowers to come along in the 21st century and he will likely face retaliation considering the vast reach and capabilities of the U.S. intelligence community.
Many individuals within the Obama regime including Obama himself have claimed that this type of widespread data collection is needed to fight terrorism and is used for national security purposes. Even if we were to assume that the war on terror is real, this claim is ridiculous and absurd on its face. It would be one thing if they were collecting information based upon a specific criteria identified by legitimate human intelligence. Instead they are collecting indiscriminate amounts of information which makes it much more difficult to analyze and target anything that might indicate a potential threat. If the NSA’s goal is really to detect and target terrorism than all they are doing is making their job more difficult by vastly increasing the noise they have to filter through. Either the people running the NSA are incredibly stupid or the goal of this program is to establish the infrastructure necessary to centrally collect data from communications everywhere around the world.
Other evidence to support this notion is the fact that the NSA is building a huge new facility in Utah that is being designed to store an enormous amount of data. A Fox News report indicates that when completed the facility will be able to store billions of terabytes worth of information. It is hard to fathom how the NSA would need this much storage space unless it was being used to collect and store any and all communications.
The Obama regime has tried to justify all of this by saying that PRISM helped stop an alleged New York City subway bomb plot back in 2009. This has been proven to be factually incorrect as regular police work and help from the British were larger factors in stopping the plot. This is assuming you even believe the official story of this terror plot to begin with. The government and more specifically the FBI have manufactured so many fake terror plots that it is difficult to determine fact from fiction at this point. So with this said, there is really no proof that PRISM has even helped to stop any so-called terror plot. They are collecting information simply for the sake of collecting information with no probable cause or reasonable justification.
At this point it is an undeniable fact that the NSA has been illegally collecting information on the American people. For years what has been dismissed as conspiracy theory is now without question a conspiracy fact. It is laughable that Obama and his assorted cronies are even trying to defend this program as a useful tool to fight terrorists. It is more likely that this program is being used to help find people domestically who dislike the government and would potentially fight back against it. A striking similarity to what is depicted in George Orwell’s dystopic novel 1984 where political dissidents are identified as thought criminals. A tool the NSA uses called Boundless Informant which counts and categorizes the information they collect shows that more data is actually gathered from domestic sources in the U.S. than from Russia. So based off of this one could argue that the NSA almost seems to view the American people as more of a threat to national security than the Russians.
The three scandals the Obama regime was dealing with prior to this new scandal are all grounds for impeachment and one could easily argue that this one is many times worse than the previous three. Obama should resign in disgrace but being that he’s a narcissist who seems unwilling to admit making any mistakes it is highly doubtful he will do this. Obama and the rest of the useful idiots in his regime who have tried to defend and justify this and other criminal programs need to be forcibly removed from office and put on trial. The criminal activity from the Obama regime is so vastly transparent it has become a complete and total joke to anyone who is even remotely paying attention.
In this broadcast of the Cybertribe News Network, a North Carolina Police Lieutenant calls in to give his first hand knowledge of preparations being made within his own department to train and prepare for martial law in the United States, possibly in the coming year.
Many similar reports are starting to trickle in from all across the country, through various independent media resources and even organizations like Oath Keepers.
The consensus is that a major economic event is expected, and that it will be used to provide cover for the institution of draconian policies being readied behind the curtain.
The exact timing of this event is not clear, but we do know the planning is being done, and that provisions are being put in place.
The following officer’s admissions are another startling indicator of just how close to the precipice we really are…
SHTFplan Editor’s Note: The following interview is both informative and terrifying, and essential reading for anyone concerned about what comes next.
What the DHS Insider suggests is about to happen is exactly what many of us fear – a police state takeover of America, with urban centers to be pacified first, all outspoken critics of the government to be silenced, and travel restrictions across the United States to come shortly thereafter.
The dollar collapse, riots, the mobilization of domestic law enforcement, gun control, rationing of food and gas, suspension of the U.S. Constitution and a complete lock-down of America as we know it. According to the report, sinister forces within the U.S. government operating at the highest levels of our country’s political, financial, intelligence and military hierarchies have set into motion a series of events that will leave the populace so desperate for government intervention that they’ll willingly surrender their liberty for the perceived security of a militarized police state.
Interviewer Doug Hagmann cites an anonymous source operating deep inside the Department of Homeland Security, which may leave many skeptical of the accuracy of the reports. But the fact is, were such events being planned behind the scenes we certainly wouldn’t be given official mainstream warning. If real, the report is a game changer, and it makes sense that anyone privy to such information would want to keep their identity hidden. Whistle blowers in America who expose the corruption of officials in our government are treated not as patriots, but as traitors, and are often branded as psychos or terrorists.
What’s most alarming is the speed at which these events may play out.
23 December 2012: After a lengthy, self-imposed informational black-out, my high-level DHS contact known as “Rosebud” emerged with new, non-public information about plans being discussed and prepared for implementation by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the near future. It is important to note that this black-out was directly related to the aggressive federal initiative of identifying and prosecuting “leakers,” at least those leaks and leakers not sanctioned by the executive office – the latter of which there are many.
Due to those circumstances, my source exercised an abundance of caution to avoid compromising a valuable line of communication until he had information he felt was significant enough to risk external contact. The following information is the result of an in-person contact between this author and “Rosebud” within the last 48 hours. With his permission, the interview was digitally recorded and the relevant portions of the contact are provided in a conversational format for easier reading. The original recording was copied onto multiple discs and are maintained in secure locations for historical and insurance purposes.
Meeting
The following began after an exchange of pleasantries and other unrelated discussion:
DH: Do I have your permission to record this conversation?
RB: You do.
DH: I’ve received a lot of e-mail from people wondering where you went and why you’ve been so quiet.
RB: As I told you earlier, things are very dicey. Weird things began to happen before the election and have continued since. Odd things, a clampdown of sorts. I started looking and I found [REDACTED AT THE REQUEST OF THIS SOURCE], and that shook me up. I’m not the only one, though, that found a [REDACTED], so this means there’s surveillance of people within DHS by DHS. So, that explains this cloak and dagger stuff for this meeting.
DH: I understand. What about the others?
RB: They are handling it the same way.
DH: I’ve received many e-mails asking if you are the same person giving information to Ulsterman. Are you?
RB: No, but I think I know at least one of his insiders.
DH: Care to elaborate?
RB: Sorry, no.
DH: Do you trust him or her. I mean, the Ulsterman source?
RB: Yes.
DH: Okay, so last August, you said things were “going hot.” I printed what you said, and things did not seem to happen as you said.
RB: You’d better recheck your notes and compare [them] with some of the events leading up to the election. I think you’ll find that a full blown campaign of deception took place to make certain Obama got back into office. The polls, the media, and a few incidents that happened in the two months before the election. I guess if people are looking for some big event they can point to and say “aha” for verification, well then I overestimated people’s ability to tell when they are being lied to.
DH: What specific incidents are you referring to?
RB: Look at the threats to Obama. Start there. The accusations of racism. Then look at the polls, and especially the judicial decisions about voter ID laws. Bought and paid for, or where there was any potential for problems, the judges got the message, loud and clear. Then look at the voter fraud. And not a peep from the Republicans. Nothing. His second term was a done deal in September. This was planned. Frankly, the Obama team knew they had it sewn up long before election day. Benghazi could have derailed them, but the fix was in there, so I never saw anything on my end to suggest a ready-made solution had to be implemented.
DH: What’s going on now?
RB: People better pay close attention over the next few months. First, there won’t be any meaningful deal about the fiscal crisis. This is planned, I mean, the lack of deal is planned. In fact, it’ necessary to pave the way for what is in the short term agenda.
DH: Wait, you’re DHS – not some Wall Street insider.
RB: So you think they are separate agendas? That’s funny. The coming collapse of the U.S. dollar is a done deal. It’s been in the works for years – decades, and this is one of the most important cataclysmic events that DHS is preparing for. I almost think that DHS was created for that purpose alone, to fight Americans, not protect them, right here in America. But that’s not the only reason. There’s the gun issue too.
DH: So, what are you seeing at DHS?
RB: We don’t have a lot of time, tonight – our meeting – as well as a country. I mean I have heard – with my own ears – plans being made that originate from the White House that involve the hierarchy of DHS. You gotta know how DHS works at the highest of levels. It’s Jarrett and Napolitano, with Jarrett organizing all of the plans and approaches. She’s the one in charge, at least from my point of view, from what I am seeing. Obama knows that’s going on and has say, but it seems that Jarrett has the final say, not the other way around. It’s [screwed] up. This really went into high gear since the election.
But it’s a train wreck at mid management, but is more effective at the lower levels. A lot of police departments are being gifted with federal funds with strings attached. That money is flowing out to municipal police departments faster than it can be counted. They are using this money to buy tanks, well, not real tanks, but you know what I mean. DHS is turning the police into soldiers.
By the way, there has been a lot of communication recently between Napolitano and Pistole [TSA head]. They are planning to use TSA agents in tandem with local police for certain operations that are being planned right now. This is so [deleted] important that you cannot even begin to imagine. If you get nothing else out of this, please, please make sure you tell people to watch the TSA and their increasing involvement against the American public. They are the stooges who will be the ones to carry out certain plans when the dollar collapses and the gun confiscation begins.
DH: Whoa, wait a minute. You just said a mouthful. What’s the agenda here?
RB: Your intelligence insider – he knows that we are facing a planned economic collapse. You wrote about this in your articles about Benghazi, or at least that’s what I got out of the later articles. So why the surprise?
DH: There’s a lot here. Let’s take it step by step if you don’t mind.
RB: Okay, but I’m not going to give it to you in baby steps. Big boy steps. This is what I am hearing. Life for the average American is going to change significantly, and not the change people expect. First, DHS is preparing to work with police departments and the TSA to respond to civil uprisings that will happen when there is a financial panic. And there will be one, maybe as early as this spring, when the dollar won’t get you a gumball. I’m not sure what the catalyst will be, but I’ve heard rumblings about a derivatives crisis as well as an oil embargo. I don’t know, that’s not my department. But something is going to happen to collapse the dollar, which has been in the works since the 1990′s. Now if it does not happen as soon as this, it’s because there are people, real patriots, who are working to prevent this, so it’s a fluid dynamic. But that doesn’t change the preparations.
And the preparations are these: DHS is prepositioning assets in strategic areas near urban centers all across the country. Storage depots. Armories. And even detainment facilities, known as FEMA camps. FEMA does not even know that the facilities are earmarked for detainment by executive orders, at least not in the traditional sense they were intended. By the way, people drive by some of these armories everyday without even giving them a second look. Commercial and business real estate across the country are being bought up or leased for storage purposes. Very low profile.
Anyway, I am hearing that the plan from on high is to let the chaos play out for a while, making ordinary citizens beg for troops to be deployed to restore order. but it’s all organized to make them appear as good guys. That’s when the real head knocking will take place. We’re talking travel restrictions, which should no be a problem because gas will be rationed or unavailable. The TSA will be in charge of travel, or at least be a big part of it. They will be commissioned, upgraded from their current status.
They, I mean Jarrett and Obama as well as a few others in government, are working to create a perfect storm too. This is being timed to coincide with new gun laws.
DH: New federal gun laws?
RB: Yes. Count on the criminalization to possess just about every gun you can think of. Not only restrictions, but actual criminalization of possessing a banned firearm. I heard this directly from the highest of my sources. Plans were made in the 90′s but were withheld. Now, it’s a new day, a new time, and they are riding the wave of emotion from Sandy Hook., which, by the way and as tragic as it was, well, it stinks to high heaven. I mean there are many things wrong there, and first reports are fast disappearing. The narrative is being changed. Look, there is something wrong with Sandy Hook, but if you write it, you’ll be called a kook or worse.
DH: Sure
RB: But Sandy Hook, there’s something very wrong there. But I am hearing that won’t be the final straw. There will be another if they think it’s necessary.
DH: Another shooting?
RB: Yes.
DH: That would mean they are at least complicit.
RB: Well, that’s one way of looking at it.
DH: Are they? Were they?
RB: Do your own research. Nothing I say, short of bringing you photographs and documents will convince anyone, and even then, it’s like [DELETED] in the wind.
DH: So…
RB: So what I’m telling you is that DHS, the TSA and certain, but not all, law enforcement agencies are going to be elbow deep in riot control in response to an economic incident. At the same time or close to it, gun confiscation will start. It will start on a voluntary basis using federal registration forms, then an amnesty, then the kicking-in of doors start.
Before or at the same time, you know all the talk of lists, you know, the red and blue lists that everyone made fun of? Well they exist, although I don’t know about their colors. But there are lists of political dissidents maintained by DHS. Names are coordinated with the executive branch, but you know what? They did not start with Obama. They’ve been around in one form or another for years. The difference though is that today, they are much more organized. And I’ll tell you that the vocal opponents of the politics of the global elite, the bankers, and the opponents of anything standing in their way, well, they are on the top of the list of people to be handled.
DH: Handled?
RB: As the situations worsen, some might be given a chance to stop their vocal opposition. Some will, others won’t. I suppose they are on different lists. Others won’t have that chance. By that time, though, it will be chaos and people will be in full defensive mode. They will be hungry, real hunger like we’ve never experienced before. They will use our hunger as leverage. They will use medical care as leverage.
DH: Will this happen all at once?
RB: They hope to make it happen at the same time. Big cities first, with sections being set apart from the rest of the country. Then the rural areas. There are two different plans for geographical considerations. But it will all come together.
DH: Wait, this sounds way, way over the top. Are you telling me… [Interrupts]
RB: [Over talk/Unintelligible] …know who was selected or elected twice now. You know who his associates are. And you are saying this is way over the top? Don’t forget what Ayers said – you talked to Larry Grathwohl. This guy is a revolutionary. He does not want to transform our country in the traditional sense. He will destroy it. And he’s not working alone. He’s not working for himself, either. He has his handlers. So don’t think this is going to be a walk in the park, with some type of attempt to rescue the country. Cloward-Piven. Alinsky. Marx. All rolled into one. And he won’t need the rest of his four years to do it.
DH: I need you to be clear. Let’s go back again, I mean, to those who speak out about what’s happening.
RB: [Edit note: Obviously irritated] How much clearer do you want it? The Second Amendment will be gone, along with the first, at least practically or operationally. The Constitution will be gone, suspended, at least in an operational sense. Maybe they won’t actually say that they are suspending it, but will do it. Like saying the sky is purple when it’s actually blue. How many people will look a the sky and say yeah, it’s purple? They see what they want to see.
So the DHS, working with other law enforcement organizations, especially the TSA as it stands right now, will oversee the confiscation of assault weapons, which includes all semi-automatic weapons following a period of so-called amnesty. It also includes shotguns that hold multiple rounds, or have pistol grips. They will go after the high capacity magazines, anything over, say 5 rounds.
They will also go after the ammunition, especially at the manufacturer’s level. They will require a special license for certain weapons, and make it impossible to own anything. More draconian than England. This is a global thing too. Want to hunt? What gives you the right to hunt theiranimals? Sound strange? I hope so, but they believe they own the animals. Do you understand now, how sick and twisted this is? Their mentality?
The obvious intent is to disarm American citizens. They will say that we’ll still be able to defend ourselves and go hunting, but even that will be severely regulated. This is the part that they are still working out, though. While the plans were made years ago, there is some argument over the exact details. I know that Napalitano, even with her support of the agenda, would like to see this take place outside of an E.O. [Executive Order] in favor of legislative action and even with UN involvement.
DH: But UN involvement would still require legislative approval.
RB: Yes, but your still thinking normal – in normal terms. Stop thinking about a normal situation. The country is divided, which is exactly where Obama wants us to be. We are as ideologically divided as we were during the Civil War and that rift is growing every day. Add in a crisis – and economic crisis – where ATM and EBT cards will stop working. Where bank accounts will contain nothing but air. They are anticipating a revolution and a civil war rolled into one (emphasis added by this author).
Imagine when talk show hosts or Bloggers or some other malcontent gets on the air or starts writing about the injustice of it all, and about how Obama is the anti-Christ or something. They will outlaw such talk or writing as inciting the situation – they will make it illegal by saying that it is causing people to die. The Republicans will go along with everything as it’s – we have – a one party system. Two parties is an illusion. It’s all so surreal to talk about but you see where this is headed, right?
DH: Well, what about the lists?
RB: Back to that again, okay. Why do you think the NSA has surveillance of all communications? To identify and stop terrorism? Okay, to be fair, that is part of it, but not the main reason. The federal agencies have identified people who present a danger to them and their agendas. I don’t know if they are color coded like you mentioned, red blue purple or peach mango or whatever, but they exist. In fact, each agency has their own. You know, why is it so [deleted] hard for people to get their heads around the existence of lists with names of people who pose a threat to their plans? The media made a big deal about Nixon’s enemies list and everyone nodded and said yeah, that [deleted], but today? They’ve been around for years and years.
DH: I think it’s because of the nature of the lists today. What do they plan to do with their enemies?
RB: Go back to what Ayers said when, in the late 60′s? 70′s? I forget. Anyway, he was serious. But to some extent, the same thing that happened before. They – the people on some of these lists – are under surveillance, or at least some, and when necessary, some are approached and made an offer. Others, well, they can be made to undergo certain training. Let’s call it sensitivity training, except on a much different level. Others, most that are the most visible and mainstream are safe for the most part. And do you want to know why? It’s because they are in the pockets of the very people we are talking about, but they might or might not know it. Corporate sponsorship – follow the money. You know the drill. You saw it happen before, with the birth certificate.
It’s people that are just under the national radar but are effective. They have to worry. Those who have been publicly marginalized already but continue to talk or write or post, they are in trouble. It’s people who won’t sell out, who think that they can make a difference. Those are the people who have to worry.
Think about recent deaths that everybody believes were natural or suicides. Were they? People are too busy working their [butts] off to put food on the table to give a damn about some guy somewhere who vapor locks because of too many doughnuts and coffee and late nights. And it seems plausible enough to happen. This time, when everything collapses, do you think they will care if it is a bullet or a heart attack that takes out the opposition? [Deleted] no.
DH: That’s disturbing. Do you… [interrupts]
RB: Think about the Oklahoma City bombing in ’95. Remember how Clinton blamed that on talk radio, or at least in part. Take what happened then and put it in context of today. Then multiply the damnation by 100, and you will begin to understand where this is going. People like Rush and Hannity have a narrow focus of political theater. They’ll still be up and running during all of this to allow for the appearance of normal. Stay within the script, comrade.
But as far as the others, they have certain plans. And these plans are becoming more transparent. They are getting bolder. They are pushing lies, and the bigger the lie, the easier it is to sell to the people. They will even try to sell a sense of normalcy as things go absolutely crazy and break down. It will be surreal. And some will believe it, think that it’s only happening in certain places, and we can draw everything back once the dust settles. But when it does, this place will not be the same.
DH: Will there be resistance within the ranks of law enforcement? You know, will some say they won’t go along with the plan, like the Oath Keepers?
RB: Absolutely. But they will not only be outnumbered, but outgunned – literally. The whole objective is to bring in outside forces to deal with the civil unrest that will happen in America. And where does their allegiance lie? Certainly not to Sheriff Bob. Or you or me.
During all of this, and you’ve got to remember that the dollar collapse is a big part of this, our country is going to have to be redone. I’ve seen – personally – a map of North America without borders. Done this year. The number 2015 was written across the top, and I believe that was meant as a year. Along with this map – in the same area where this was – was another map showing the United States cut up into sectors. I’m not talking about what people have seen on the internet, but something entirely different. Zones. And a big star on the city of Denver.
Sound like conspiracy stuff on the Internet? Yup. But maybe they were right. It sure looks that way. It will read that way if you decide to write about this. Good luck with that. Anyway, the country seemed to be split into sectors, but not the kind shown on the internet. Different.
DH: What is the context of that?
RB: Across the bottom of this was written economic sectors. It looked like a work in progress, so I can’t tell you any more than that. From the context I think it has to do with the collapse of the dollar.
DH: Why would DHS have this? I mean, it seems almost contrived, doesn’t it?
RB: Not really, when you consider the bigger picture. But wait before we go off into that part. I need to tell you about Obamacare, you know, the new health care coming up. It plays a big part – a huge [deleted] part in the immediate reshaping of things.
DH: How so?
RB: It creates a mechanism of centralized control over people. That’s the intent of this monster of a bill, not affordable health care. And it will be used to identify gun owners. Think your health records are private? Have you been to the doctor lately? Asked about owning a gun? Why do you think they ask, do you think they care about your safety? Say yes to owning a gun and your information is shared with another agency, and ultimately, you will be identified as a security risk. The records will be matched with other agencies.
You think that they are simply relying on gun registration forms? This is part of data collection that people don’t get. Oh, and don’t even think about getting a script for some mood enhancement drug and being able to own a gun.
Ayers and Dohrn are having the times of their lives seeing things they’ve worked for all of their adult lives actually coming to pass. Oh, before I forget, look at the recent White House visitor logs.
DH: Why? Where did that come from?
RB: Unless they are redacted, you will see the influence of Ayers. Right now. The Weather Underground has been reborn. So has their agenda.
DH: Eugenics? Population control?
RB: Yup. And re-education camps. But trust me, you write about this, you’ll be called a kook. It’s up to you, it’s your reputation, not mine. And speaking about that, you do know that this crew is using the internet to ruin people, right? They are paying people to infiltrate discussion sites and forums to call people like you idiots. Show me the proof they say. Why doesn’t you source come forward? If he knows so much, why not go to Fox or the media? To them, if it’s not broadcast on CNN, it’s not real. Well, they’ve got it backwards. Very little on the news is real. The stock market, the economy, the last presidential polls, very little is real.
But this crew is really internet savvy. They’ve got a lot of people they pay to divert issues on forums, to mock people, to marginalize them. They know what they’re doing. People think they’ll take sites down – hack them. Why do that when they are more effective to infiltrate the discussion? Think about the birth certificate, I mean the eligibility problem of Obama. Perfect example.
DH: How soon do you see things taking place?
RB: They already are in motion. If you’re looking for a date I can’t tell you. Remember, the objectives are the same, but plans, well, they adapt. They exploit. Watch how this fiscal cliff thing plays out. This is the run-up to the next beg economic event.
I can’t give you a date. I can tell you to watch things this spring. Start with the inauguration and go from there. Watch the metals, when they dip. It will be a good indication that things are about to happen. I got that little tidbit from my friend at [REDACTED].
NOTE: At this point, my contact asked me to reserve further disclosures until after the inauguration.
Douglas J. Hagmann and his son, Joe Hagmann host The Hagmann & Hagmann Report, a live Internet radio program broadcast each weeknight from 8:00-10:00 p.m. ET.
Douglas Hagmann, founder & director of the Northeast Intelligence Network, and a multi-state licensed private investigative agency. Doug began using his investigative skills and training to fight terrorism and increase public awareness through his website.
DH: Wait, this sounds way, way over the top. Are you telling me… [Interrupts]
RB: [Over talk/Unintelligible] …know who was selected or elected twice now. You know who his associates are. And you are saying this is way over the top? Don’t forget what Ayers said – you talked to Larry Grathwohl. This guy is a revolutionary. He does not want to transform our country in the traditional sense. He will destroy it. And he’s not working alone. He’s not working for himself, either. He has his handlers. So don’t think this is going to be a walk in the park, with some type of attempt to rescue the country. Cloward-Piven. Alinsky. Marx. All rolled into one. And he won’t need the rest of his four years to do it.
DH: I need you to be clear. Let’s go back again, I mean, to those who speak out about what’s happening.
RB: [Edit note: Obviously irritated] How much clearer do you want it? The Second Amendment will be gone, along with the first, at least practically or operationally. The Constitution will be gone, suspended, at least in an operational sense. Maybe they won’t actually say that they are suspending it, but will do it. Like saying the sky is purple when it’s actually blue. How many people will look a the sky and say yeah, it’s purple? They see what they want to see.
So the DHS, working with other law enforcement organizations, especially the TSA as it stands right now, will oversee the confiscation of assault weapons, which includes all semi-automatic weapons following a period of so-called amnesty. It also includes shotguns that hold multiple rounds, or have pistol grips. They will go after the high capacity magazines, anything over, say 5 rounds.
They will also go after the ammunition, especially at the manufacturer’s level. They will require a special license for certain weapons, and make it impossible to own anything. More draconian than England. This is a global thing too. Want to hunt? What gives you the right to hunt their animals? Sound strange? I hope so, but they believe they own the animals. Do you understand now, how sick and twisted this is? Their mentality?
The obvious intent is to disarm American citizens. They will say that we’ll still be able to defend ourselves and go hunting, but even that will be severely regulated. This is the part that they are still working out, though. While the plans were made years ago, there is some argument over the exact details. I know that Napalitano, even with her support of the agenda, would like to see this take place outside of an E.O. [Executive Order] in favor of legislative action and even with UN involvement.
DH: But UN involvement would still require legislative approval.
RB: Yes, but your still thinking normal – in normal terms. Stop thinking about a normal situation. The country is divided, which is exactly where Obama wants us to be. We are as ideologically divided as we were during the Civil War and that rift is growing every day. Add in a crisis – and economic crisis – where ATM and EBT cards will stop working. Where bank accounts will contain nothing but air. They are anticipating a revolution and a civil war rolled into one (emphasis added by this author).
Imagine when talk show hosts or Bloggers or some other malcontent gets on the air or starts writing about the injustice of it all, and about how Obama is the anti-Christ or something. They will outlaw such talk or writing as inciting the situation – they will make it illegal by saying that it is causing people to die. The Republicans will go along with everything as it’s – we have – a one party system. Two parties is an illusion. It’s all so surreal to talk about but you see where this is headed, right?
DH: Well, what about the lists?
RB: Back to that again, okay. Why do you think the NSA has surveillance of all communications? To identify and stop terrorism? Okay, to be fair, that is part of it, but not the main reason. The federal agencies have identified people who present a danger to them and their agendas. I don’t know if they are color coded like you mentioned, red blue purple or peach mango or whatever, but they exist. In fact, each agency has their own. You know, why is it so [deleted] hard for people to get their heads around the existence of lists with names of people who pose a threat to their plans? The media made a big deal about Nixon’s enemies list and everyone nodded and said yeah, that [deleted], but today? They’ve been around for years and years.
DH: I think it’s because of the nature of the lists today. What do they plan to do with their enemies?
RB: Go back to what Ayers said when, in the late 60’s? 70’s? I forget. Anyway, he was serious. But to some extent, the same thing that happened before. They – the people on some of these lists – are under surveillance, or at least some, and when necessary, some are approached and made an offer. Others, well, they can be made to undergo certain training. Let’s call it sensitivity training, except on a much different level. Others, most that are the most visible and mainstream are safe for the most part. And do you want to know why? It’s because they are in the pockets of the very people we are talking about, but they might or might not know it. Corporate sponsorship – follow the money. You know the drill. You saw it happen before, with the birth certificate.
It’s people that are just under the national radar but are effective. They have to worry. Those who have been publicly marginalized already but continue to talk or write or post, they are in trouble. It’s people who won’t sell out, who think that they can make a difference. Those are the people who have to worry.
Think about recent deaths that everybody believes were natural or suicides. Were they? People are too busy working their [butts] off to put food on the table to give a damn about some guy somewhere who vapor locks because of too many doughnuts and coffee and late nights. And it seems plausible enough to happen. This time, when everything collapses, do you think they will care if it is a bullet or a heart attack that takes out the opposition? [Deleted] no.
DH: That’s disturbing. Do you… [interrupts]
RB: Think about the Oklahoma City bombing in ’95. Remember how Clinton blamed that on talk radio, or at least in part. Take what happened then and put it in context of today. Then multiply the damnation by 100, and you will begin to understand where this is going. People like Rush and Hannity have a narrow focus of political theater. They’ll still be up and running during all of this to allow for the appearance of normal. Stay within the script, comrade.
But as far as the others, they have certain plans. And these plans are becoming more transparent. They are getting bolder. They are pushing lies, and the bigger the lie, the easier it is to sell to the people. They will even try to sell a sense of normalcy as things go absolutely crazy and break down. It will be surreal. And some will believe it, think that it’s only happening in certain places, and we can draw everything back once the dust settles. But when it does, this place will not be the same.
DH: Will there be resistance within the ranks of law enforcement? You know, will some say they won’t go along with the plan, like the Oath Keepers?
RB: Absolutely. But they will not only be outnumbered, but outgunned – literally. The whole objective is to bring in outside forces to deal with the civil unrest that will happen in America. And where does their allegiance lie? Certainly not to Sheriff Bob. Or you or me.
During all of this, and you’ve got to remember that the dollar collapse is a big part of this, our country is going to have to be redone. I’ve seen – personally – a map of North America without borders. Done this year. The number 2015 was written across the top, and I believe that was meant as a year. Along with this map – in the same area where this was – was another map showing the United States cut up into sectors. I’m not talking about what people have seen on the internet, but something entirely different. Zones. And a big star on the city of Denver.
Sound like conspiracy stuff on the Internet? Yup. But maybe they were right. It sure looks that way. It will read that way if you decide to write about this. Good luck with that. Anyway, the country seemed to be split into sectors, but not the kind shown on the internet. Different.
DH: What is the context of that?
RB: Across the bottom of this was written economic sectors. It looked like a work in progress, so I can’t tell you any more than that. From the context I think it has to do with the collapse of the dollar.
DH: Why would DHS have this? I mean, it seems almost contrived, doesn’t it?
RB: Not really, when you consider the bigger picture. But wait before we go off into that part. I need to tell you about Obamacare, you know, the new health care coming up. It plays a big part – a huge [deleted] part in the immediate reshaping of things.
DH: How so?
RB: It creates a mechanism of centralized control over people. That’s the intent of this monster of a bill, not affordable health care. And it will be used to identify gun owners. Think your health records are private? Have you been to the doctor lately? Asked about owning a gun? Why do you think they ask, do you think they care about your safety? Say yes to owning a gun and your information is shared with another agency, and ultimately, you will be identified as a security risk. The records will be matched with other agencies.
You think that they are simply relying on gun registration forms? This is part of data collection that people don’t get. Oh, and don’t even think about getting a script for some mood enhancement drug and being able to own a gun.
Ayers and Dohrn are having the times of their lives seeing things they’ve worked for all of their adult lives actually coming to pass. Oh, before I forget, look at the recent White House visitor logs.
DH: Why? Where did that come from?
RB: Unless they are redacted, you will see the influence of Ayers. Right now. The Weather Underground has been reborn. So has their agenda.
DH: Eugenics? Population control?
RB: Yup. And re-education camps. But trust me, you write about this, you’ll be called a kook. It’s up to you, it’s your reputation, not mine. And speaking about that, you do know that this crew is using the internet to ruin people, right? They are paying people to infiltrate discussion sites and forums to call people like you idiots. Show me the proof they say. Why doesn’t you source come forward? If he knows so much, why not go to Fox or the media? To them, if it’s not broadcast on CNN, it’s not real. Well, they’ve got it backwards. Very little on the news is real. The stock market, the economy, the last presidential polls, very little is real.
But this crew is really internet savvy. They’ve got a lot of people they pay to divert issues on forums, to mock people, to marginalize them. They know what they’re doing. People think they’ll take sites down – hack them. Why do that when they are more effective to infiltrate the discussion? Think about the birth certificate, I mean the eligibility problem of Obama. Perfect example.
DH: How soon do you see things taking place?
RB: They already are in motion. If you’re looking for a date I can’t tell you. Remember, the objectives are the same, but plans, well, they adapt. They exploit. Watch how this fiscal cliff thing plays out. This is the run-up to the next beg economic event. I can’t give you a date. I can tell you to watch things this spring. Start with the inauguration and go from there. Watch the metals, when they dip. It will be a good indication that things are about to happen. I got that little tidbit from my friend at [REDACTED].
NOTE: At this point, my contact asked me to reserve further disclosures until after the inauguration.
Paranoia is reputed to destroy you. But if you’re a whistleblower in search of a safe, neutral outlet, it just might save you instead.
Par:AnoIA, short for Potentially Alarming Research: Anonymous Intelligence Agency, is a website designed to collect leaks, allow project participants to work on them, and release them in a way that draws the attention of the public. The Releases section of the site, for example, currently features 1.9 gigs of information from American intel corporation Innodata.
The leaks site developed in part by necessity. WikiLeaks’ touted anonymous submission system has been offline for a year. OpenLeaks never materialized. And Cryptome is… Cryptome, meaning it neither edits nor markets its documents to the public at large.
Simply put, if WikiLeaks is a PR agency for documents and Cryptome is a leak dissemination site, Par:AnoIA aims to have the best of both. Launched in March after a year and a half of development, the site picks up where Anonleaks.ch, an earlier Anonymous leaks site, left off—literally. (Par:AnoIA currently hosts HBGary documents, which were inherited from Anonleaks.ch.) Following a July profile in Wired’s Threat Level blog, it’s suddenly the hottest disclosure site still up and running. More recently, Par:AnoIA published the private information of 3,900 members of the International Pharmaceutical Federation, and a pile of documents related to the Cambodian government, a move dubbed Operation The Pirate Bay.
The Daily Dot reached out on Twitter and, after some back-and-forth that included the stipulation that all chat and Twitter handles would be disguised, sat down for a Web chat with half a dozen key members of Par:AnoIA. We’ve given them letters of the alphabet instead of usernames.
Let’s establish the tone with this excerpt from their front-page manifesto:
Thou hath interrupted our tea moment and hath made us stand up with our backs against thine wall. But hear us; we shall fight back for it is the only choice we hath left. With our whole hearts we shall support this cause. We shan’t enjoy the fight but it is our only option to protect the ones that are not protected, the ones we love and for thine fairness. It is known to us thou doth not fear damage of the collateral kind and thou loveth to contain and restrict innocent peasants.
As Cryptome founder John Young pointed out, Par:AnoIA, being Anonymous, at least has a sense of humor, which differentiates it from the rest of the serious disclosure industry. As you can see from our introduction to the Web chat:
raincoaster has joined #paranoia
<raincoaster> Well, I’m in.
<A> lol
<A> in
<A> out
<A> left
<A> right
<A> up down left right right left down up a b a b a x y
So far, so typical. Anonymous may be trying to make the world a better place, but the hacktivist collective has always been in it for the lulz, too.
“[W]e’re not as srs,” C wrote in regards to Anonymous.
B wanted one thing clarified. “Let it be known that paranoia is not a hacker group.” They are a publishing group, meaning they won’t go out and create their own leaks.
The leak/disclosure community considers itself collegial, although no one else does. Quite the contrary, it can be competitive and even petty. There were no tears at WikiLeaks when rival site OpenLeaks failed to materialize. Cryptome founder John Young has taken pains to distance himself from WikiLeaks, on whose board he originally served. And, of course, whistleblowers and hackers alike are paranoid all the time, for obvious reasons.
For example, on July 12, a WikiLeaks supporter called Par:AnoIA out on Twitter for their choice of top-level domain registrar, Neustar, which Buzzfeed has called “the Keyzer Söze of surveillance,” the law enforcement’s data surveillance provider of choice. @Par:AnoIA, who at that point had fewer than 2,000 followers, said the whole thing was just another pointless flame war that distracted from the issue at hand.
One member explained, “To be honest, we are indifferent to WikiLeaks. They just should not start trying to tell people we host honeypots for feds.” In other words, WikiLeaks accused Par:AnoIA of being a front for the FBI, a sensitive subject given the arrest of former hacker turned informant Hector “Sabu” Monsegur.
“We don’t strive to be unique; why should we?” C asked.
“We just do what we think is good and right, and i think we can do it with minimal efforts, at least in a financial sense. we are not here for competition. We don’t strive to be the best. We just want to offer the best we can.”
Unlike most Anonymous projects, Par:AnoIA does ask for donations in the form of Bitcoins, an international online currency that’s difficult to trace and favored by hackers. They told us publicly that the money goes for server costs. John Young of Cryptome estimates his own server costs at around $100 per month, and he has relatively high traffic, so it’s logical to estimate their costs at less than half that.
They volunteer their time, and they volunteer a lot of it: They read each and every document that comes in. They do not edit the documents in any way, although they will not guarantee publication of every document. Archivists are philosophically split on whether their duty is owed to the documents or to the users, and Par:AnoIA clearly comes down on the side of the documents, as does Cryptome. Its redaction policy means WikiLeaks is on the other side of this prickly, barbed-wire fence.
What does that mean day-to-day? Would they refuse to release a document because it could change the world in a way they didn’t like? According to the Web chat consensus, the only leak they’d withhold would be nuclear launch codes. C explained that, “Public information is better than information in secret hands. We make spies obsolete.”
They’re not relying on the general public for the leaks but rather on people within their existing networks. B said they would never run out of sources. “You always make new connections.” C added, “Our connections extend daily.”
You don’t need an engraved invitation, though, or even a Guy Fawkes mask; the site can accept submissions from anyone. The Anons dismissed the idea of accepting links via email only, for security, context, and philosophical reasons. The point is not simply to take information in, but to take it in in the original form and to also post it in a form the public can access without going through some interstitial person or process.
“You need to have a nice working site where people can just click and read and even see a summary, see evidence that this whole shit is corrupted like fuck,” C said. “Research is another vector. We do that already on a limited basis.”
The first project Par:AnoIA tackled was the Arrest Tracker, correlating all the arrests of Anons worldwide by Anon name. You’d think this would be for PR or media purposes. You’d be wrong. The Arrest Tracker is an old-school wiki (fans of Wikipedia will recognize the aesthetics) that’s thoroughly annotated, with links to newspaper reports of court appearances and schedules. C explained: “We actually started that for ourselves so we can check wtf was going on. Real names are only mentioned if disclosed in media, of course. Everything has a source. It’s no foo, it’s facts. I hate foo.”
The members of Par:AnoIA claimed to not have plans to monetize their content, nor did they desire to market their materials like WikiLeaks does, making media partnerships and controlling the flow of information.
“We do shit when we have time, interest .. and .. meh,” C replied. “All media are the same, 14 reader blog or Fox News. I hate the idea of elitism. Eure, some initial attention is nice.. but in the end…it’s our releases that will speak.”
“I’d like see Bush & Co at the Hague…and…. something that would set Manning free,” B added, referring to alleged WikiLeaks cooperative Bradley Manning.
Knocking out private security and intel corporations like HBGary also remains a priority for the future.
C put it best, in typical chat humor: “I would like to have that document that really buttfucks the whole establishment in a bad way.
“I know it’s out there, on some server, somewhere, hand us enough leaks and we will find it!”
Following recent developments where the FBI released documents recording supposed UFO crashes in the Roswell area this amazing footage allegedly showing a UFO crash survivor has been leaked onto the internet. The individual who released the footage has remained anonymous, reportedly for their own protection. The footage came to light on All News Web, a well known paranormal and UFO website. According to Michael Cohen, the renowned Australian ufologist and psychic, the humanoid alien visitor is from the Zeta Reticuli star system.
Newly released internal emails from the U.S. private security firm Stratfor state that in 2007 the Bush Administration and CIA ordered the Drug Enforcement Agency to back off a major drug trafficking investigation of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s half brother.
Ahmed Wali Karzai was an influential power broker in Afghanistan before he was assassinated in July 2011.
The brother of President Karzai of Afghanistan is under investigation by DEA as a major narcotics trafficker. For political reasons, DEA has beentold to backoff [sic] by the White House and CIA.DEA is seeing a direct nexus between terrorism and narcotics in Afghanistan with narcotics sales being used to fund jihadist operations.
After a Stratfor analyst asks “how close is karzai to this brother?” Burton replies:
Was described to me as close. Karzai will end up being another Noreiga.
Off the record — DEA will proceed and take ’em (both?) down anyway, once this White House disappears.
As I’ve said before, every country we have touched, turns to shit.
WikiLeaks has published 2,694 out of what it says is a cache of 5 million internal Stratfor emails (dated between July 2004 and December 2011) obtained by the hacker collective Anonymous around Christmas.
UPDATE: As redditor WhoShotJR notes, current and former American officials told the New York Times in 2009 that Ahmed Karzai received regular payments from the CIA since 2001.
The quite strange unarmed bird-like drone which was recovered by Pakistani forces in August of 2011 apparently did not just fly over Pakistan, but was also apparently spotted by Iraqi insurgents at least two years before making its way to Pakistan.
A reader of The Aviationist tipped them off to a video posted on May 28, 2009 showing the drone captured by the Iraqi Hezbollah in Iraq which is eerily similar to the drone which was captured in Pakistan.
The providence of the drone is shrouded in a thick veil of mystery since no nation would take responsibility for the device which has, according to Danger Room, “silver wings and a span about the size of a grown man’s outstretched arms, the drone was clearly more than a hobbyist’s toy: the remains of a camera were near the crash site, a camera that fit into the robotic bird’s belly, ostensibly for spying on insurgents.”
Danger Room points out that the drone is quite similar to, but definitely not exactly the same as, Festo’s “SmartBird” drone.
The dimensions of the two drones are similar and the designs obviously look alike as well although, “It’s clearly not the same drone, as the wings are obviously different: the mystery drone’s wings are straighter and more sharply angled than the SmartBird’s sleeker, more rounded wings, which mimic those of the gull,” according to Danger Room.
The nation or entity behind the drone is difficult to determine outside from speculation based on the nations currently involved in operations in Pakistan.
However, Danger Room seems to think it belong so the U.S. in writing, “Iraqi Hezbollah date its photos of the mystery drone to May 2009 in Basra, a major city in southern Iraq. Back then, U.S. troops were training their Iraqi counterparts on new-line intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems. Hmm.”
While the video and screenshots don’t reveal any technical information on the drone which is all that new, it does show that the drone in Iraq and that in Pakistan are closely related.
Both have a design which relies on flapping wings, a trapezoidal tail feather and a spherical camera placed in the belly of the bird.
However, the drone recovered in Pakistan has a tailfin on the underside of the rear feather which the drone in Iraq is missing and the version found in Iraq is a duller color than the reflective silver drone in Pakistan.
“The fact that it was probably already flying in Iraq two years before crashing in Pakistan, proves that the bird-like UAV is not a toy but a small combat proven spy drone,” writes The Aviationist’s David Cenciotti.
This deals a significant blow to those who have repeatedly claimed that it was actually just a DIY drone, evidenced by Danger Room tagging the latest post with “DIY Drones.”
However, since we really have no idea who made the drone or who was operating it, one cannot say with certainty that it is not a DIY creation of some group somewhere although I find this quite unlikely.
Ultimately, it’s impossible to speculate on the issue with any degree of certainty since we know very little about the drone and its origin but it will be fascinating to see if more information comes out or if more appearances of the strange device begin to surface.
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The New York City Police Department (NYPD) really has gone rogue; at least that’s what a high-level FBI official believes.
Among the 5 million emails the group Anonymous hacked from the servers of private intelligence firm Stratfor in February, one seems to not only confirm the controversial NYPD surveillance activities uncovered by the Associated Press, but hints at even worse civil liberties violations not yet disclosed. Anonymous later turned the emails over to WikiLeaks, with which Truthout has entered into an investigative partnership.
I keep telling you, you and I are going to laugh and raise a beer one day, when everything Intel (NYPD’s Intelligence Division) has been involved in during the last 10 years comes out – it always eventually comes out. They are going to make [former FBI Director J. Edgar] Hoover, COINTEL, Red Squads, etc look like rank amatures [sic] compared to some of the damn right felonious activity, and violations of US citizen’s rights they have been engaged in.
The description of alleged NYPD excesses was leveled by an unnamed FBI “senior official” in late November 2011, in an email sent to Fred Burton, vice president for intelligence at the Austin, Texas-based Stratfor and former deputy chief of the counterterrorism division at the State Department. Burton then sent the official’s email to what appears to be a listserv known as the “Alpha List.”
Burton did not identify the senior FBI official in the email he sent to the listserv. He describes him as a “close personal friend,” and claims he “taught him everything that he knows.” He also instructs members of the listserv not to publish the contents of the email and to use it only for background.
Stratfor, in a statement released after some of the emails were made public, said some of the emails “may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies; some may be authentic” but “having had our property stolen, we will not be victimized twice by submitting to questioning about them.”
What’s particularly stunning about the FBI senior official’s description of NYPD Intelligence Division activities, is how he connects them to previous instances when his own agency bent and broke the law in pursuit of intelligence on perceived enemies of the state throughout the 20th century – and concludes the NYPD Intelligence Division’s violations are worse. As Pulitzer Prize-winning author and former New York Times reporter Tim Weiner writes in his new book, “Enemies: A History of the FBI,” the Bureau has been “America’s closest counterpart” to a secret police.
In the email, Burton queried the FBI official to gain a better understanding of why the FBI declined to get involved with a case involving an alleged “lone wolf” terrorist and al-Qaeda sympathizer named Jose Pimentel, a 27-year-old American of Dominican descent, accused of trying to build three pipe bombs to detonate in New York City.
The FBI official responded by describing some turf and relationship issues between NYPD intelligence officials and NYPD and FBI investigators on New York City’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. It appears the FBI senior official was responding to a news story about Pimentel’s arrest published by the far-right leaning Newsmax, headlined “FBI- NYPD Tensions Highlighted in Terror Case,” which was attached to an email Stratfor analysts had sent around the office.
There are two issues with this case (off the record of course).
One is the source (confidential informant) was a nightmare and was completely driving the investigation. The only money, planning, materials etc the bad guy got was from … the source. The source was such a maron [sic], he smoked dope with the bad guy while wearing an NYPD body recorder – I heard in open source [sic] yesterday btw [by the way], he is going to be charged with drug possession based on the tape. Ought to go over very nicely when he testifies against the bad guy, don’t you think?
Issue two is that the real rub is between NYPD Intel, [Intelligence Division] and NYPD – JTTF [Joint Terrorism Task Force], not the FBI per se. The NYPD JTTF guys are in total sync with the Bureau and the rest of the partners who make up the JTTF – I understand there are something like 100 NYPD dics [detectives] assigned to the JTTF. NYPD Intel (Cohen, et al) on the other hand, are completely running their own pass patterns. They hate their brother NYPD dics on the JTTF and are trying to undermine them at every turn. They are also listening to [former CIA official David] Cohen [the head of NYPD’s Intelligence Division] who, near as anybody can tell, never had to make a criminal case or testify in court.
Joint Terrorism Task Forces are FBI-led counterterrorism investigative units that combine federal, state and local law enforcement in an effort to detect and investigate terrorist activity and prevent attacks before they occur. Originally created in the 1980s, the creation of JTTFs nationwide was accelerated after 9-11. Currently, 104 JTTFs operate nationwide and are considered one of the most important assets in the federal government’s muscular counterterrorism architecture.
After reviewing the Stratfor email thread for Truthout, Michael German, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington Legislative Office and a former FBI agent who infiltrated white supremacist terrorist organizations, described the FBI official’s criticism of the NYPD’s intelligence as “doubly ironic.”
“The FBI has engaged in widespread spying on the Muslim American community as well, including counting mosques and mapping Muslim neighborhoods, infiltrating mosques with informants, and using the guise of community outreach to spy on Muslim religious and advocacy organizations,” German told Truthout. “But more critically, because the FBI is charged with enforcing the civil rights laws in this country, including violations under color of law.
“This agent suggests the FBI knew the NYPD Intelligence agents were involved in widespread ‘felonious’ activity in violation of Americans’ civil rights, yet the FBI does not appear to have opened a civil rights investigation or done anything to stop this illegal activity. Our laws are designed to apply equally to protect all of us, including to protect us from illegal police activity. When the FBI abdicates this responsibility, all Americans suffer.”
Responding to the background information from the FBI senior official, Sean Noonan, a “tactical analyst” with Stratfor, wrote in an email sent to the “Alpha List,” “The point that the divide is within NYPD is contradictory to how they would like present it. [sic]. The way the pro-NYPD stories cover it is that NYPD CT/Intel [counterterrorism/intelligence] has successfully gained influence within the JTTF, almost to the point of having infiltrated it.”
German, however, tells Truthout that the rift between the NYPD’s intelligence analysts and NYPD investigators assigned to the FBI’s JTTF, as revealed by the senior FBI official’s email, is consistent with his experience.
“Criminal investigators, like those assigned to the JTTFs, typically find information produced by these intelligence analysts to be useless, whether they’re NYPD intelligence or FBI intelligence,” he said.
And no matter how bad the mutual acrimony between NYPD intelligence analysts and New York City’s JTTF has gotten, German isn’t surprised that the FBI has declined to investigate allegations of the NYPD Intelligence Division breaking the law.
“The FBI didn’t open investigations when it discovered other government agencies engaging in torture and illegal wiretapping either,” he said.
But eventually, the senior FBI official predicts in his email to Burton, the extent of NYPD’s alleged crimes will be revealed.
“As Rush Limbaugh likes to say, ‘don’t doubt me on this,'” he wrote at the end of his correspondence.
Matthew Harwood is a journalist in Washington, DC, and a frequent contributor to the Guardian’s Comment is Free. His writing has appeared in The Washington Monthly, Progress Magazine (U.K.) as well as online at Columbia Journalism Review, CommonDreams, and Alternet. He is currently working on a book about evangelical Christian rhetoric and aggressive US foreign policy. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mharwood31.
Jason Leopold is lead investigative reporter of Truthout. He is the author of the Los Angeles Times bestseller, News Junkie, a memoir. Visit jasonleopold.com for a preview. His most recent investigative report, “From Hopeful Immigrant to FBI Informant: The Inside Story of the Other Abu Zubaidah,” is now available as an ebook. Follow Jason on Twitter: @JasonLeopold.
Anonymous has a way of releasing massive collections of information that raise many more questions than they answer.
Case in point: On Monday night, the segment of the hacker group that calls itself Antisec announced that it had dumped 1,000,001 unique device identifier numbers or UDIDs for Apple devices–the fingerprints that Apple, apps and ad networks use to identify the iPhone and iPads of individual users–that it claims to have stolen from the FBI. In a long statement posted with links to the data on the upload site Pastebin, the hackers said they had taken the Apple data from a much larger database of more than 12 million users’ personal information stored on an FBI computer.
While there’s no easy way to confirm the authenticity or the source of the released data, I downloaded the encrypted file and decrypted it, and it does seem to be an enormous list of 40-character strings made up of numbers and the letters A through F, just like Apple UDIDs. Each string is accompanied by a longer collection of characters that Anonymous says is an Apple Push Notification token and what appears to be a username and an indication as to whether the UDID is attached to an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch.
In their message, posted initially in the Anonymous twitter feed AnonymousIRC, the hackers say they used a vulnerability in Java to access the data on an FBI Dell laptop in March of this year. They say the database included not only the UDIDs, but also “user names, name of device, type of device, Apple Push Notification Service tokens, zipcodes, cellphone numbers, addresses, etc.” Anonymous claims that the amount of data about each users was highly variable, and that it only released enough data to the public “to help a significant amount of users to look if their device are listed there or not.”
The Antisec statement also took the opportunity to mock the recent appearance of NSA Director and General Keith Alexander at the hacker conference Defcon, where he made a recruiting pitch to attendees. “It was an amusing hypocritical attempt made by the system to flatter hackers into becoming tools for the state,” Anonymous’ statement reads. “We decided we’d help out Internet security by auditing FBI first.”
If the UDIDs are determined to be real, just what that means about law enforcement and Apple users’ privacy isn’t entirely clear. Much more than passwords or even email addresses, UDIDs are already spread around the Internet by app developers and advertisers–a study by one privacy researcher in 2011 found that 74% of the apps he tested sent a user’s UDID to a remote server. But the same researcher also found that five out of seven social gaming networks he tested allowed users to log in with only their UDID, making a stolen UDID equivalent to a stolen password.
“We never liked the concept of UDIDs since the beginning indeed,” reads the Anonymous statement. “Really bad decision from Apple. Fishy thingie.”
Regardless, if the FBI has in fact collected 12 million Apple UDIDs–or even just one million–it will have some explaining to do to privacy advocates. In its release, Anonymous argues that the massive dump of users’ personal information, which it says has been stripped of many of the most identifying details, is designed raise awareness of the FBI’s alleged gadget-tracking shenanigans. “…We will probably see their damage control teams going hard lobbying media with bullshits to discredit this,” the statement reads at one point. “But well, whatever, at least we tried and eventually, looking at the massive number of devices concerned, someone should care about it.”
For now, Anonymous refuses to answer more questions about its release–at least from the press. Before granting any interviews, it’s demanding that Gawker writer Adrian Chen, who has been especially critical of Anonymous, appears on Gawker’s home page in a “huge picture of him dressing a ballet tutu and shoe on the head.”
Handwritten note detailing Met police strategy suggests there should be no escape, no matter how he leaves embassy
A police officer holds notes on Julian Assange’s exile at the Ecuadorean embassy in London. The left side of the document has been pixellated due to sensitive information. Photograph: Lewis Whyld/PA
It is the “restricted” official document that sums up the Metropolitan police‘s tactics towards Julian Assange. “Action required: Assange to be arrested under all circumstances,” says the handwritten note that was photographed under a policeman’s arm on Friday detailing a “summary of the current position” on Assange’s exile inside the Ecuadorean embassy in Knightsbridge.
It is no surprise that a fugitive from a European arrest warrant that demands removal to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault should face such a fate. Police officers are stationed right up against the front and back of the embassy where Assange has sought sanctuary and he recently claimed to have heard them “swarming” behind the fire escape.
There should be no escape, the note suggests, ordering that Assange is arrested if “he comes out with dip [presumably a diplomat] … as dip bag [which allows immunity from search for diplomatic communications, and which could be as large as a suitcase, crate or even a shipping container], in dip car …. in dip vehicle.”
The note mentions “SS10 to liaise”. The Met police press office said it had no idea what this might mean. Could it be a misspelling of SO10, the colloquial name for the Met’s covert operations group? The later mention of SO20 suggests what Assange and his supporters have always feared: that the western powers that WikiLeaks has done so much to embarrass might consider him some sort of terrorist. SO20 is the Met’s counter-terrorism protective security command.
The text below is translated from the official Spanish transcript of today’s press statement issued by Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño Aroca, explaining Ecuador’s decision to grant asylum to Julian Assange. Here is a backup text in case Ecuadorian govt. website goes down : backup 1, backup 2.
This translation was crowd-sourced with the help of @DUVFree, BCK, BM, and other anonymous volunteers. Thanks for your contribution!
Note: links inserted in brackets have been added by WLPress for reference
Declaration by the Government of the Republic of Ecuador on Julian Assange’s asylum application
Ecuadorian nationals show their support for Assange outside of the Embassy of Ecuador in London.
On June 19, 2012, the Australian national Mr. Julian Assange appeared at the premises of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to request that the Ecuadorean State provide him with diplomatic protection, thus invoking the existing Diplomatic Asylum rules. The applicant had made his asylum request based on his fear of eventual political persecution by a third country, the same country whom could use his extradition to the Kingdom of Sweden to enable an expedited subsequent extradition.
The Government of Ecuador, faithful to the asylum procedures and with the utmost attention to this case, has reviewed and evaluated all aspects of this case, particularly the arguments presented by Mr. Assange to support the fear he feels regarding this situation as a threat to his life, personal safety and freedoms.
It is important to note that Mr. Assange has taken the decision to seek asylum and protection of Ecuador over alleged allegations of “espionage and treason,” which “instigate fear of the possibility of being handed over to the United States of America by British, Swedish or Australian authorities,“ said Mr. Assange, since the USA is chasing him for releasing compromising information sensitive to the U.S. Government. The applicant mentions that he “is a victim of persecution in various countries, which is deduced not only from their ideas and actions, but of his work of publishing information which compromises the powerful, uncovers the truth and therefore exposes corruption and abuses of human rights of citizens around the world.”
Therefore, according to the applicant, the indictment for crimes of a political nature is the basis for his asylum request, because in his judgement he is facing a situation involving an imminent danger which he cannot escape. In order to assess his fear of possible political persecution, and that this persecution could end up becoming a situation which curtails and violates his rights, integrity, and could become a risk to his personal safety and freedom, the Government of Ecuador has considered the following:
Julian Assange is an award-winning communications professional internationally known for his struggles for freedom of expression, press freedom and human rights in general;
Mr. Assange shared privileged documents and information generated by various sources that affected employees, countries and organizations with a global audience;
That there is strong evidence of retaliation by the country or countries that produced the information disclosed by Mr. Assange, retaliation that may endanger his safety, integrity, and even his life;
That, despite Ecuador’s diplomatic efforts, countries which have been asked togive adequate safeguards for the protection and safety for the life of Mr. Assange have refused to facilitate them;
That Ecuadorian authorities are certain of the possibility that Mr. Assange could be extradited to a third country outside the European Union without proper guarantees for their safety and personal integrity;
That legal evidence clearly shows that, given an extradition to the United States of America, it would be unlikely for Mr. Assange to receive a fair trial, and likely that he would be judged by special or military courts, where there is a high probability of suffering cruel and degrading treatment, and be sentenced to life imprisonment or capital punishment, which would violate his human rights;
That while Mr. Assange must answer for the investigation in Sweden, Ecuador is aware that the Swedish prosecutor has had a contradictory attitude that prevented Mr. Assange the full exercise of the legitimate right of defense;
Ecuador is convinced that the procedural rights of Mr. Assange have been infringed upon during the investigation;
Ecuador has observed that Mr. Assange lacks the protection and assistance that should be received from the State of which he is a citizen;
That, following several public statements and diplomatic communications by officials from Britain, Sweden and the USA, it is inferred that these governments would not respect international conventions and treaties, and would give priority to domestic law, in violation of explicit rules of universal application and,
That, if Mr. Assange is remanded to custody in Sweden (as is customary in this country), a chain of events would begin that would prevent further protective measures from being taken to avoid possible extradition to a third country.
Thus, the Government of Ecuador believes that these arguments lend support to the fears of Julian Assange, and it believes that he may become a victim of political persecution, as a result of his dedicated defense of freedom of expression and freedom of press as well as his repudiation of the abuses of power in certain countries, and that these facts suggest that Mr. Assange could at any moment find himself in a situation likely to endanger life, safety or personal integrity. This fear has driven him to exercise the right to seek and receive asylum in the Embassy of Ecuador in the UK.
Article 41 of the Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador clearly defines the right of asylum. Under this provision, the rights of asylum and refugee status are fully recognized in Ecuador in accordance with international law and instruments of human rights. According to this constitutional provision:
“Persons who find themselves in a situation of asylum and refuge shall enjoy special protection to ensure the full exercise of their rights. The State shall respect and ensure the principle of non-refoulement [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-refoulement], and shall provide emergency legal and humanitarian assistance.”
Similarly, the right to asylum is enshrined in Article 4.7 of the Foreign Service Act of 2006 (Ley Orgánica del Servicio Exterior), which establishes the ability of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Integration of Ecuador to hear cases of diplomatic asylum, in accordance with laws, treaties, and international norms and laws.
It should be stressed that our country has stood out in recent years to accommodate a large number of people who have applied for territorial asylum or refugee status, having unconditionally respected the principle of non-refoulement and non-discrimination, while it has taken steps to provide refugee status in an expeditious manner, taking into account the circumstances of applicants, mostly Colombians fleeing armed conflicts in their own country. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has praised Ecuador’s refugee policy, and highlighted the important fact that the country has not confined these people to camps, but has integrated them into Ecuadorian society, with full enjoyment of their human and natural rights.
Ecuador places the right of asylum in the category of universal human rights and beliefs, therefore, that the effective implementation of this right requires international cooperation that our countries can provide, without which it would be fruitless, and the institution would be totally ineffective. For these reasons, and recalling the obligation of all States to assist in the protection and promotion of human rights as provided by the United Nations Charter, we invite the British Government to lend its assistance in achieving this purpose.
To that effect, the state of Ecuador can confirm, following analysis of the legal institutions related to asylum, that the foundation of these rights has set out fundamental principles of general international law, the same as for its universal scope and importance, because of its consistance with the general interest of the entire international community, and full recognition by all states. These principles, which are set forth in various international instruments are as follows:
a) Asylum in all its forms is a fundamental human right creating obligations erga omnes, ie “for all” states.
b) Diplomatic asylum, refuge (or territorial asylum), and the right not to be extradited, expelled, delivered or transferred, are comparable human rights, since they are based on the same principles of human protection: non-refoulement and non-discrimination without any adverse distinction based on race, color, sex, language, religion or belief, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status or any other similar criteria.
c) All these forms of protection are governed by the principles pro person (i.e. more favorable to the individual), equality, universality, indivisibility, interrelatedness and interdependence.
d) The protection occurs when the State granting asylum, required refuge, or powers of protection, consider that there is a risk or fear that the protected person may be a victim of political persecution, or is charged with political offenses.
e) The State granting asylum qualifies the causes of asylum and extradition case, weigh the evidence.
f) No matter which of its forms or modality, asylum always has the same cause and lawful object, i.e. political persecution, which makes it permissible, and to safeguard the life, personal safety and freedom of the protected person, which is its legitimately intended purpose.
g) The right of asylum is a fundamental human right, therefore, belongs to jus cogens, i.e. the system of mandatory rules of law recognized by the international community as a whole, for which no derogation is permitted, making null all treaties and provisions of international law which oppose it.
h) In cases not covered by existing law, the human person remains under the protection of the principles of humanity and the dictates of public conscience, or are under the protection and rules of the principles of jus gentium [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_gentium] derived from established customs, the principles of humanity and from dictates of public conscience [http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/full/470?opendocument].
i) The lack of international agreement or domestic legislation of States cannot legitimately be invoked to limit, impair or deny the right to asylum.
j) The rules and principles governing the rights to asylum or refuge, no extradition, no handing over, no expulsion and no transfer are convergent, to the extent necessary to enhance the protection and provide it with maximum efficiency. In this sense, they are complementary to the international human rights law, the right of asylum and refugee law, and humanitarian law.
k) The rights of protection of the human being are based on ethical principles and universally accepted values and therefore have a humanistic, social, solidaric, peaceful and humanitarian character.
l) All States have a duty to promote the progressive development of international human rights through effective national and international action.
Ecuador has judged that the laws applicable to the asylum case of Mr. Julian Assange comprise the entire set of principles, standards, mechanisms and procedures provided for international human rights instruments (whether regional or universal), which include among their provisions the right to seek, receive and enjoy asylum for political reasons, the conventions governing the right of asylum and refugee law, and which recognize the right not to be delivered, returned, or expelled when credible fear of political persecution exists; conventions governing extradition law recognize the right not to be extradited when this measure covers political persecution, and conventions governing humanitarian law, recognize the right not to be transferred when there is a risk of political persecution. All these forms of asylum and international protection are justified by the need to protect this person from possible political persecution, or a possible accusation of political crimes and / or crimes related to the latter, which in the opinion of Ecuador, not only endanger Mr. Assange, but also pose a serious injustice committed against him.
It is undeniable that states, having agreed to numerous and substantive international instruments (many of them legally-binding), have the obligation to provide protection or asylum to persons persecuted for political reasons and have expressed their desire to establish a legal institution to protect human rights and fundamental freedoms based on a general practice accepted as law, which confers on such obligations a mandatory nature, erga omnes [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erga_omnes], linked to the respect, protection and progressive development of human rights and fundamental freedoms that are part of jus cogens [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peremptory_norm]. Some of these instruments are mentioned below:
a) United Nations Charter of 1945, Purposes and Principles of the United Nations: the obligation of all members to cooperate in the promotion and protection of human rights;
b) Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948: right to seek and enjoy asylum in any country, for political reasons (Article 14);
c) Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, 1948: right to seek and enjoy asylum for political reasons (Article 27);
d) Geneva Convention of August 12, 1949, relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War: the protected person should in no case be transferred to a country where they fear persecution for his political views ( Article 45);
e) Convention on the Status of Refugees 1951 and Protocol of New York, 1967: prohibits returning or expelling refugees to countries where their lives and freedom would be threatened (Art. 33.1);
f) Convention on Diplomatic Asylum, 1954: The State has the right to grant asylum and classify the nature of the offense or the motives of persecution (Article 4);
g) Convention on Territorial Asylum of 1954: the State is entitled to admit to its territory such persons as it considers necessary (Article 1), when they are persecuted for their beliefs, political opinions or affiliation, or acts that may be considered political offenses ( Article 2), the State granting asylum may not return or expel a refugee who is persecuted for political reasons or offenses (Article 3); also, extradition is not appropriate when dealing with people who, according to the requested State, be prosecuted for political crimes , or common crimes committed for political purposes, or when extradition is requested obeying political motives (Article 4);
h) European Convention on Extradition of 1957, prohibits extradition if the requested Party considers that the offense is a political charge (Article 3.1);
i) 2312 Declaration on Territorial Asylum of 1967 provides for the granting of asylum to persons who have that right under Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including persons struggling against colonialism (Article 1.1). It prohibits the refusal of admission, expulsion and return to any State where he may be subject to persecution (Article 3.1);
j) Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties of 1969, provides that the rules and principles of general international law imperatives do not support a contrary agreement, the treaty is void upon conflicts with one of these rules (Article 53), and if there arises a new peremptory norm of this nature, any existing treaty which conflicts with that provision is void and is terminated (Article 64). As regards the application of these Articles, the Convention allows States to claim compliance with the International Court of Justice, without requiring the agreement of the respondent State, accepting the court’s jurisdiction (Article 66.b). Human rights are norms of jus cogens.
k) American Convention on Human Rights, 1969: right to seek and enjoy asylum for political reasons (Article 22.7);
l) European Convention for the Suppression of Terrorism of 1977, the requested State is entitled to refuse extradition when there is a danger that the person is prosecuted or punished for their political opinions (Article 5);
m) Inter-American Convention on Extradition of 1981, the extradition is not applicable when the person has been tried or convicted, or is to be tried in a court of special or ad hoc in the requesting State (Article 4.3), when, under the classification of the requested State, whether political crimes or related crimes or crimes with a political aim pursued, and when, the circumstances of the case, can be inferred that persecution for reasons of race, religion or nationality; that the situation of the person sought may be prejudiced for any of these reasons (Article 4.5). Article 6 provides, in reference to the right of asylum, that “nothing in this Convention shall be construed as limiting the right of asylum, when appropriate.”
n) African Charter on Human and Peoples of 1981, pursued individual’s right to seek and obtain asylum in other countries (Article 12.3);
p) Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union 2000: establishes the right of diplomatic and consular protection. Every citizen of the Union shall, in the territory of a third country not represented by the Member State of nationality, have the protection of diplomatic and consular authorities of any Member State, under the same conditions as nationals of that State (Article 46).
The Government of Ecuador believes it is important to note that the rules and principles recognized in the international instruments mentioned above and in other multilateral agreements take precedence over domestic law of States, because these treaties are based on universal rules guided by intangible principles, whereof deriving greater respect, protection and fulfillment of human rights against unilateral attitudes of such States. This would compromise international law, which should instead be strengthened in order to consolidate the respect of fundamental rights in terms of integration and ecumenical character.
Furthermore, since Assange applied for asylum in Ecuador, we have maintained high-level diplomatic talks with the United Kingdom, Sweden and the United States.
In the course of these conversations, our country has sought to obtain strict guarantees from the UK government that Assange would face, without hindrance, an open legal process in Sweden. These safeguards include that after facing his legal responsibilities in Sweden, that he would not be extradited to a third country; that is, ensuring that the Specialty Rule [http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmstand/d/st030114/am/30114s01.htm] is not waived. Unfortunately, despite repeated exchanges of messages, the UK at no time showed signs of wanting to reach a political compromise, and merely repeated the content of legal texts.
Assange’s lawyers invited Swedish authorities to take Assange statements in the premises of the Embassy of Ecuador in London. Ecuador officially conveyed to Swedish authorities its willingness to host this interview without interference or impediment to the legal processes followed in Sweden. This measure is absolutely legally possible. Sweden did not accept.
On the other hand, Ecuador raised the possibility that the Swedish government establish guarantees to not subsequently extradite Assange to the United States. Again, the Swedish government rejected any compromise in this regard.
Finally, Ecuador wrote to the U.S. government to officially reveal its position on Assange’s case. Inquiries related to the following:
If there is an ongoing legal process or intent to carry out such processes against Julian Assange and/or the founders of the WikiLeaks organization;
Should the above be true, then under what kind of legislation, and how and under what conditions would such persons be subject to under maximum penalties;
Whether there is an intention to request the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States.
The U.S. response has been that it cannot provide information about the Assange case, claiming that it is a bilateral matter between Ecuador and the United Kingdom.
With this background, the Government of Ecuador, true to its tradition of protecting those who seek refuge in its territory or on the premises of its diplomatic missions, has decided to grant diplomatic asylum to Mr. Assange, based on the application submitted to the President of the Republic, transmitted in writing in London, dated June 19, 2012, and supplemented by letter written in London dated June 25, 2012, for which the Government of Ecuador, after a fair and objective assessment of the situation described by Mr. Assange, according to his own words and arguments, endorsed the fears of the appellant, and accepts that there are indications which lead to the conclusion that he may face political persecution, or that such persecution could occur if timely and necessary measures are not taken to avoid it.
The Government of Ecuador is certain that the British Government knows how to assess the justice and righteousness of the Ecuadorian position, and consistent with these arguments, it is confident that the UK will offer safe passage guarantees necessary and relevant to the asylum, so that their governments can honor with action the fidelity owed to law and international institutions that both nations have helped shape along their common history.
It also hopes to maintain unchanged the excellent ties of friendship and mutual respect which bind Ecuador and the United Kingdom and their people, as they are also engaged in promoting and defending the same principles and values, and because they share similar concerns about democracy, peace, and well being, which are only possible if the fundamental rights of everyone are respected.
Former senior intelligence officials have created a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology — and have installed it across the US under the radar of most Americans, according to emails hacked by Anonymous.
Every few seconds, data picked up at surveillance points in major cities and landmarks across the United States are recorded digitally on the spot, then encrypted and instantaneously delivered to a fortified central database center at an undisclosed location to be aggregated with other intelligence. It’s part of a program called TrapWire and it’s the brainchild of the Abraxas, a Northern Virginia company staffed with elite from America’s intelligence community. The employee roster at Arbaxas reads like a who’s who of agents once with the Pentagon, CIA and other government entities according to their public LinkedIn profiles, and the corporation’s ties are assumed to go deeper than even documented.
The details on Abraxas and, to an even greater extent TrapWire, are scarce, however, and not without reason. For a program touted as a tool to thwart terrorism and monitor activity meant to be under wraps, its understandable that Abraxas would want the program’s public presence to be relatively limited. But thanks to last year’s hack of the Strategic Forecasting intelligence agency, or Stratfor, all of that is quickly changing.
Hacktivists aligned with the loose-knit Anonymous collective took credit for hacking Stratfor on Christmas Eve, 2011, in turn collecting what they claimed to be more than five million emails from within the company. WikiLeaks began releasing those emails as the Global Intelligence Files (GIF) earlier this year and, of those, several discussing the implementing of TrapWire in public spaces across the country were circulated on the Web this week after security researcher Justin Ferguson brought attention to the matter. At the same time, however, WikiLeaks was relentlessly assaulted by a barrage of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, crippling the whistleblower site and its mirrors, significantly cutting short the number of people who would otherwise have unfettered access to the emails.
On Wednesday, an administrator for the WikiLeaks Twitter account wrote that the site suspected that the motivation for the attacks could be that particularly sensitive Stratfor emails were about to be exposed. A hacker group called AntiLeaks soon after took credit for the assaults on WikiLeaks and mirrors of their content, equating the offensive as a protest against editor Julian Assange, “the head of a new breed of terrorist.” As those Stratfor files on TrapWire make their rounds online, though, talk of terrorism is only just beginning.
Mr. Ferguson and others have mirrored what are believed to be most recently-released Global Intelligence Files on external sites, but the original documents uploaded to WikiLeaks have been at times unavailable this week due to the continuing DDoS attacks. Late Thursday and early Friday this week, the GIF mirrors continues to go offline due to what is presumably more DDoS assaults. Australian activist Asher Wolf wrote on Twitter that the DDoS attacks flooding the WikiLeaks server were reported to be dropping upwards of 40 gigabytes of traffic per second on the site.
According to a press release (pdf) dated June 6, 2012, TrapWire is “designed to provide a simple yet powerful means of collecting and recording suspicious activity reports.” A system of interconnected nodes spot anything considered suspect and then input it into the system to be “analyzed and compared with data entered from other areas within a network for the purpose of identifying patterns of behavior that are indicative of pre-attack planning.”
In a 2009 email included in the Anonymous leak, Stratfor Vice President for Intelligence Fred Burton is alleged to write, “TrapWire is a technology solution predicated upon behavior patterns in red zones to identify surveillance. It helps you connect the dots over time and distance.” Burton formerly served with the US Diplomatic Security Service, and Abraxas’ staff includes other security experts with experience in and out of the Armed Forces.
What is believed to be a partnering agreement included in the Stratfor files from August 13, 2009 indicates that they signed a contract with Abraxas to provide them with analysis and reports of their TrapWire system (pdf).
“Suspicious activity reports from all facilities on the TrapWire network are aggregated in a central database and run through a rules engine that searches for patterns indicative of terrorist surveillance operations and other attack preparations,” Crime and Justice International magazine explains in a 2006 article on the program, one of the few publically circulated on the Abraxas product (pdf). “Any patterns detected – links among individuals, vehicles or activities – will be reported back to each affected facility. This information can also be shared with law enforcement organizations, enabling them to begin investigations into the suspected surveillance cell.”
In a 2005 interview with The Entrepreneur Center, Abraxas founder Richard “Hollis” Helms said his signature product:
“can collect information about people and vehicles that is more accurate than facial recognition, draw patterns, and do threat assessments of areas that may be under observation from terrorists.” He calls it “a proprietary technology designed to protect critical national infrastructure from a terrorist attack by detecting the pre-attack activities of the terrorist and enabling law enforcement to investigate and engage the terrorist long before an attack is executed,” and that, “The beauty of it is that we can protect an infinite number of facilities just as efficiently as we can one and we push information out to local law authorities automatically.”
An internal email from early 2011 included in the Global Intelligence Files has Stratfor’s Burton allegedly saying the program can be used to “[walk] back and track the suspects from the get go w/facial recognition software.”
Since its inception, TrapWire has been implemented in most major American cities at selected high value targets (HVTs) and has appeared abroad as well. The iWatch monitoring system adopted by the Los Angeles Police Department (pdf) works in conjunction with TrapWire, as does the District of Columbia and the “See Something, Say Something” program conducted by law enforcement in New York City, which had 500 surveillance cameras linked to the system in 2010. Private properties including Las Vegas, Nevada casinos have subscribed to the system. The State of Texas reportedly spent half a million dollars with an additional annual licensing fee of $150,000 to employ TrapWire, and the Pentagon and other military facilities have allegedly signed on as well.
In one email from 2010 leaked by Anonymous, Stratfor’s Fred Burton allegedly writes, “God Bless America. Now they have EVERY major HVT in CONUS, the UK, Canada, Vegas, Los Angeles, NYC as clients.” Files on USASpending.gov reveal that the US Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense together awarded Abraxas and TrapWire more than one million dollars in only the past eleven months.
News of the widespread and largely secretive installation of TrapWire comes amidst a federal witch-hunt to crack down on leaks escaping Washington and at attempt to prosecute whistleblowers. Thomas Drake, a former agent with the NSA, has recently spoken openly about the government’s Trailblazer Project that was used to monitor private communication, and was charged under the Espionage Act for coming forth. Separately, former NSA tech director William Binney and others once with the agency have made claims in recent weeks that the feds have dossiers on every American, an allegation NSA Chief Keith Alexander dismissed during a speech at Def-Con last month in Vegas.
As I posted a few days ago here on this blog the link up between the shooter’s father and the LIBOR scandal is likely a substantial background element that may point to something much bigger going on here.
This recent article by Grace Powers reposted here in with a link to the whole report, is very clear and concise, an excellent overview of the evidence and where it is leading.
Note: I believe Jack Blood broke this story originally regarding the background of Jame Holmes’ father and how that factors in… The links to the Batman movie scenario are also here in Jack Blood’s original article.
Robert Holmes, the shooting suspect’s father, is a senior lead scientist with FICO, the American credit score company. He was scheduled to testify in the next few weeks before a US Senate panel that is investigating the largest bank fraud scandal in world history. This banking fraud threatens to destabilize and destroy the Western banking system.
Robert Holmes not only uncovered the true intent of the massive LIBOR banking fraud, but his “predictive algorithm model” also traced the trillions of “hidden”dollars to the exact bank accounts of the elite classes who stole it. In other words, Robert Holmes could NAME NAMES! Those names WOULD AWAKEN THE WORLD to the depth of government and corporate corruption which could include members of Congress, Wall Street, Federal Reserve and EU executives and could even include US Presidential candidates and the British Royal family.
The motives for the massacre are:
1) To silence whistelblower Robert Holmes whose son is now facing a possible death sentence
2) To influence the upcoming vote on the UN Global Small Arms Treaty which could result in gun confiscation and disarming world citizens. The UN treaty could override national sovereignty and give a license to federal governments to assert preemptive gun control powers over state regulatory powers…..continued at
With regard to the Batman movie scenario I also think it is significant and not outlined in Jack Blood’s analysis, that the Dark Knight ends up working for the “government” who are portrayed as the good guys in order to stop what I took to be a free energy device that was reconfigured into a “fusion reactor” aka neutron bomb according to the movie. The enemy in other words becomes “free energy devices” which according to the subliminal message can be turned into dangerous weapons (a position that the Illuminati takes to redirect the public away from the exploration into zero-point or what is commonly known as “free energy”). In the movie, the Dark Knight flies the activated device out over the waters around NYC and detonates it, saving the city (and himself) in the process.
It is also notable that the destruction of a stadium is one of the key scenes in the movie… imploding from an underground explosion…
Jack Blood is quite correct with regard to the link between the PROMIS SOFTWARE / OCTOPUS investigation where journalist Danny Casolaro was found dead in a hotel room, supposedly having strangled himself in a bathtub.
The Promis Software story has not reached the mainstream and is key to understanding the DEVELOPMENT OF AI and tracing not only banking transactions but for use in targeting and profiling and a myriad of other capabilities. Whereas the software that the shooter’s father was working on “detects financial fraud” it may be considered a potential and very serious threat to the Promis system and quite possibly be able to detail involvement of the perpetrators in the LIBOR and other banking frauds going on right now.
What comes to mind is the idea here that this enitre scenario as played out in the Aurora Colorado theater was created by an AI that detected a rival software that would threaten those it is SERVING… and therefore constructed a counter to that threat in the form of targeting this apparently quite brilliant (PhD candidate) James Holmes…
In other words, the warning is certainly clear to his father Robert Holmes and likely the entire firm called FICO, Fair Issac Corporation. FAIR ISSAC sounds to me like the name of a robot… I would surmise what we have here is a battle between robots or ARTIFICIALLY INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS. The is something MUCH GREATER going on here than meets the eye or has been yet revealed.
Note that the Credit reporting organization certainly appears on surface to be a loyal part of the surveillance aparatus of the NWO. So how is it that an individual, Robert Holmes, became such a threat to the system, such that his son was sacrificed on the alter of mind control in service of sending such a message?
Yes, lesser objectives such as gun control and public terror is always a goal of such operations. But in light of the links as mentioned in the above articles to the Olympics, what we have here is a picture that begins to look like a multi-city op that has at it’s core a larger objective.
THE GEOMETRIC CONSTRUCTION AKA DARKLY MAGICAL ACT
I am convinced, based on all of the evidence and my previous points that there is much more going on here. The battle of the robots/AI systems may be the only real indicator of something more diabolical and more far reaching than what we have discovered so far.
I suggest that this is a geometrical carefully formulated plot that goes from Aurora Colorado (goddess of the Golden Dawn) to the London Olympics with the Silverstein ownership in the background echoing the Twin Towers of 911, to a third point… that has yet to be revealed. At the very least there will emerge 3 locations creating a triangle because as any magician knows, (whether in service to the dark or the light) that is the very minimum needed when casting a spell or taking an action aimed at changing or affecting ‘reality’.
Spoiler Alert: No Mention of James Holmes ‘Arrested’. This Alone is EXTREMELY Suspicious!!!
POLICE SCANNER LOG AURORA POLICE AND FIRE FULL LOG AND TRANSCRIPT
ZERO EDITS TIME CODE ACCURATE
(2 channels, police right speaker channel, fire left speaker channel)
5:23 Shooter still inside Theater 9
6:40 “Need 3 or 4 ambulances”, “behind the theater, we’ve got a suspect in gas mask”
7:00 Unidentified officer 1: “That white car in the rear of the lot, is that a suspect (James Holmes sitting calmly in his car parked closest to the fire exit door)?
Unidentified officer 2: “Yes, we’ve got rifles (on the ground), gas mask (on the ground), (?) now I’ve got an open door going into the theater.”
Unidentified officer 1: “Hold your position, hold your suspect.” (presumed arrest of James Holmes without violence, all 100 witnesses and survivors are under arrest)
7:30 Do not go into the movie theater, set up perimeter around entire mall
7:45 5 patients need ambulance
8:51 Need rescue inside auditorium multiple victims
9:30 taking victim to hospital in police car (too many police cars not enough ambulances)
9:42 7 down in Theater 9
10:00 Need Denver PD help (Aurora PD can’t handle it)
10:20 “One of the shooters” (plural) in a blue plaid shirt
12:30 “I only have 1 ambulance, where are my ambulances at?”
12:45 Dying girl crying in pain and terror
1:00:07 315 and 314, first shooting at century theatres, 14 300 East Alameda avenue, they’re saying somebody’s shooting in the auditorium. 01:00:16
01:00:30 315 and 314 there is at least 1 person that’s been shot but they’re saying there’s hundreds of people just running around. 01:00:36
01:03:42 315 be advised i think somebody’s sprayed some gas over there too. 01:03:46
01:03:59 316 i need a rescue in here hot, see we got a guy shot. Inside of theater 9? Just outside of theater 9. 01:04:08
01:04:25 team 6 we got another person outside shot in the leg, a female, i got people running outside the theater that are shot in room 9. 01:04:33
01:04:39 318 i got another victim on the north side of this theater the parking lot. 01:04:43
01:05:05 from what I’m smelling inside I can – smells like it’s OC, maybe 2
01:05:14 get us some damn gas masks for theater 9 we can’t get in it
01:06:14 16 I need a marked car behind the theater stable side,suspect in a gas mask. 01:06:22
01:06:50 everyone hold the air one second, cars where that white car in the rear of the lot, is that a suspect? YES! we’ve got rifles, gas masks, you can see him ive got a open door going into the theater, OK hold that position, hold that suspect! 01:07:05
01:09:23 16 I got 7 down in theater 9! & down! 01:09:28
01:09:58 one of the shooters might be wearing a white and blue plaid shirt 01:10:03
01:10:09 I’ve got a child victim, I need rescue at the back door of theater 9 now! 01:10:13
01:12:29 (woman crying hysterically, help!) 01:12:34 (heard in the background; it’s a woman with a groaning cry)
01:13:07 I’ve got one victim eviscerated 01:13:09
01:14:21 I need somebody to shut this movie off in 9, how do we shut the movie off in 9?
01:14:29 everybody get on this, it’s an assault rifle, we got magazines down inside, everybody watch out for the assault rifle. 01:14:35
01:14:55 do I have permission to start taking some of these victims via car? We’ve got a whole bunch of people shot out here and no rescue … yes, load ‘em up, get ‘em in cars, get ‘em out of here.
01:15:08 we have one we cannot move in theater 9
01:15:23 notify all the hospitals we’ve got people coming in
01:16:12 if they are mobile, get them outside. We’ve got a few that are not mobile.
01:23:47 the guy’s still in theater 9 im working on a backboards for taht female. 01:23:51
01:25:01 suspect is going to be male, unknown race, black camo outside outfit believed to be wearing a vest, gas mask and multiple long guns. 01:25:10
14:25 Clearing rest of the theaters now
14:50 Magazine found from rifle, assault rifle found outside Theater 9 (at exit door, white vehicle of James Holmes is parked closest to exit door)
15:15 Request permission to take victims to hospital in police car, “I’ve got a whole lot of victims and no rescue (ambulance). Load em up get em in a car get em out of here!”
15:25 Cannot move victims in Theater 9, need ambulance
17:30 Taking victims to hospital in police cars, no ambulances
17:40 Rifle 5.56 caliber (found at exit door to theater, closest car parked was James Holmes’ white car)
18:26 Police cruiser 6 taking 2 more victims to hospital, shot in neck
18:30 “Has anyone been upstairs in the theater? Bodies upstairs? Working on it now.”
19:00 Moving bodies by police cars (no ambulances)
19:40 Ambulance enroute to Theater 9
20:00 Need Rescue in theater for multiple victims, police officers will only be there for security
20:30 Searching theater employees to see if they are shooters (so no shooter has been arrested yet)
21:20 Police evacuating victims in patrol cars (no ambulances)
21:30 Victim count 20 total need ambulance, more ambulances coming from out of city
22:00 Set up triage for treatment transport (to let dying victims go ahead and die, let ambulatory victims wait)
23:20 Set up police command post south east of Aurora Mall
23:40 “Still have a lot of people shot on east side need (police) cars there” (no ambulances)
24:20 Still searching theater and parking lot for shooter suspects
24:30 “Tac 16, 21, one of the construction workers said somebody just came out of parking lot male red backpack headed towards Alameda.”
24:50 “We have a male dressed in black with red backpack going towards north east.”
25:00 Dispatcher says 2 suspects, 1 dressed in black plus 1 with red backpack
25:10 “Suspect is going to be male, unknown race, black cammo (police SWAT) outfit, believed to be wearing a (bullet resistant police SWAT) vest, (police gas mask and multiple (police) long guns.” (James Holmes not yet under arrest)
25:30 Dispatcher repeats description of suspect in police SWAT uniform carrying police guns
26:20 Still calling for police cars to transport dying victims (no ambulances)
27:00 Fire chief called, police command post moved to front of theater
27:10 “Metro 10 OK. Clear. Listed James Holmes.” (White car vehicle registration?)
27:40 Need more police cars to transport victims (no ambulances)
28:00 “I want no cars leaving this lot! I want this (parking) lot locked down! No cars leaving!”
28:20 Police cars arrive from Denver, Englewood and Littleton (Columbine High School massacre) to transport dying victims (no ambulances)
30:00 Fire channel: “We have a number of people dead in the theater. We are in a Mass Casualty Situation at this time.”
30:31 Police Aurora Any unit. Unknown problem. 1690 South Moline st., 1690 South Moline st. We have a report of an unknown problem, at least three people dragging a person into an unknown description vehicle and last seen northbound on the street.
31:00 1690 South Moline Street
31:30 “Denver Tac 37 go with your update. Suspect in all black (police SWAT uniform), black tactical vest, black tactical helmet, (?), gas mask, black tactical gear, at least 1 handgun, (long gun, 1 possible additional long gun.” (James Holmes still not arrested)
33:00 “Where do you want press and family members to stage?”
33:40 15 Denver patrol cars arrive to help transport dying victims (no ambulances)
35:20 “Inside of the theater has been cleared. Working on cars out in the parkign lot now.” (James Holmes still sitting in parking lot?)
36:20 Starting to clear cars in parking lot looking for suspects (James Holmes not yet under arrest)
37:00 Littleton police officer needs medical treatment,
37:10 Police: Jail vans to be used to transport dead bodies to morgue. Fire: Just leave dead bodies for now.
38:10 “Clear the suspect’s car with bomb unit” (No criminal background check of James Holmes. No vehicle license tag check of James Holmes’ white Hyundai car parked closest to exit door. No mention that James Holmes is under arrest. No mention of arresting officer’s name. No mention of what clothing color James Holmes is wearing, nor if he is wearing black police SWAT uniform. James Holmes’ jail booking photo does not show him wearing black police SWAT uniform only orange prisoner jump suit.)
38:30 “Secondary device” need bomb squad for suspect’s vehicle, all police to leave area behind Theater 9
39:10 “SWAT inside in gas masks has theater contained and secure”
39:20 “Sending police to suspect’s address to do surveillance at this point.”
40:00 All uninjured movie survivors are under arrest, not allowed to leave the area
40:20 Moving dead bodies outside of theater to parking lot (no photos taken of crime scene?)
40:40 “We have witnesses who left who say they did see the shooter who have blood spatter on them who are not injured. What do you want us to do with those people?”
42:30 Police have all victims cleared (false statement), don’t know about victims still attended by ambulance crews
43:00 Police find 2 more victims to transport to hospital, “Not moving yet.”
44:00 Request Arapaho Sheriff Air 1 helicopter to do flyover of theater
45:00 I really need somebody to confirm the white vehicle outside the theater plates. Check white vehicle tag 119ROC (James Holmes) “Check with key witnesses inside the theater. We need to confirm suspect descriptions (black SWAT police uniform, gas mask and helmet, no one saw face. 5′ 9″ tall shooter but James Holmes is 6′ 3″). I want to make sure we’re not looking for anybody else.” (So the investigation and search for suspects ends right here. No mention of James Holmes’ name.)
46:40 No more victims or witnesses allowed to leave, all survivors under arrest
47:00 “Victim with shrapnel in his face. Is there another ambulance?”
52:00 Fire: “Be sure the patients inside (the theater) are black patients. Extraction team of 5 medics.” (Black means Deceased)
52:52 Bomb squad enroute
53:30 Parents of victims to go to command post, need more officers for security of command post, every officer in metro area is on scene
56:30 Secure suspect’s vehicle (James Holmes)
57:00 “I had another witness say green camoflage pants.” Stop all radio communications, unable to figure out how to patch radio channels together
58:20 “Open door at mall.” Bring dogs to search mall.
1:00:00 No police at Childrens Hospital to interview victims or suspects
1:01:40 Police to arrest news media? Media moved to command post.
1:02:40 Fire: “Need confirmation that all the (dead) victims in theater are black.” (repeated 3 times, for Obama’s race war, but all were white)
1:03:30 Police: “Doctor said a bomb went off somewhere.”
1:06:30 ETA Arapahoe Sheriff Air 1 helicopter arrive in 1 minute
1:10:30 Hyundai Accent Tennessee plate 074VPD suspected bomb third vehicle directly in front of doors, “possible it’s just a thermos but hard to tell.” (not James Holmes)
1:12:20 Vehicle tag 074VPD “clear address in Columbia Tennessee” (Heather Wolfe Smith and school teacher Lucas Smith who was shot from Knoxville TN?)
1:13:00 “Does anyone know if there’s a family looking for the 10 year old victim? Female.”
1:16:30 “Talking to people making statements, sounds like we have possible 2 shooters, 1 that was in Theater 8 seated, another one that came in from the outside into Theater 9. Sounds like it was a coordinated attack.”
1:17:00 Dispatch: “Every unit, possible 2nd shooter still at large. Keep the media away from them.”
1:23:30 All witnesses and survivors still under arrest
1:27:00 Secondary (bomb) device found
1:28:00 Secondary device was found in the main (parking) lot of the theater, all units to evacuate (red plastic gas can in James Holmes’ car trunk?)
1:33:30 Need camera to photograph witnesses before they can be released from arrest
1:35:20 Witnesses under arrest not allowed to use restroom
1:36:20 DUI hit and run arrest at mall at shooting crime scene, no name or tag given by Colorado highway patrol
1:38:40 Still no camera to photograph 50 witnesses under arrest
1:39:30 100 witnesses on West side, perhaps taken to Gateway High School to remain under arrest
1:42:30 Take photo of every witness, only release non eyewitnesses from arrest, all other witnesses taken to Gateway High School under arrest
1:44:30 No cars allowed to leave parking lot, witnesses must find their own ride home
1:48:20 Start search of suspect’s vehicle with bomb dog (James Holmes)
1:48:50 Search gray charcoal vehicle with Tennessee plates 2 door hatchback Hynundai
1:55:20 Give police business cards to witnesses
1:57:30 Victor 50 to Edward 10 switch to phone so no recording of audio
1:57:40 Bomb dog requested on Paris
1:59:30 Family looking for pregnant female taken to hospital by police and missing 9 year old child, shot in face and chest
2:00:10 Gunshot victim walk in to hospital
2:01:30 Robot entering towards car for suspected bomb inspection
AT NO TIME WAS THERE ANY DESCRIPTION OF THE ARREST OF JAMES HOLMES, NO NAMES NOR NUMBERS OF ANY POLICE OFFICER WHO ARRESTED JAMES HOLMES, NO DESCRIPTION OF WHAT JAMES HOLMES WAS WEARING, NO BACKGROUND CHECK OF JAMES HOLMES BY DRIVER LICENSE NUMBER. THE BJAIL BOOKING PHOTO DOES NOT SHOW WHAT JAMES HOLMES WAS WEARING. DURING A REAL ARREST THE OFFICERS WILL NAME ALL THESE EVENTS IN THE RADIO TRANSMISSIONS. PRESUMABLY THERE ARE SECRET RADIO CHANNELS AND CELLPHONE RECORDINGS THAT LITIGANTS MUST SUBPOENA AND SEEK IMMEDIATE PUBLIC RECORDS DEMANDS BEFORE RECORDINGS ARE DESTROYED. NONE OF THE POLICE OFFICERS ARE IDENTIFIED BY NAME OR NUMBER ON THE RADIO AUDIO RECORDING. NO DETECTIVES WERE EVER REQUESTED OR NAMED IN THE RADIO BROADCASTS.
TRANSCRIPT FROM FIRE RESCUE
What follows is a partial transcript of the dispatch tapes from the Aurora fire and police departments regarding emergency medical response after Friday’s movie theater shooting. The times in parenthesis represent the amount of time passed after the shooting was first reported.
Abbreviations: PO(police officer); FDD (fire department dispatch); Command (fire department command).
PO: I have a party shot here. I need rescue hot. (3:07)
FDD: Medic … They need you in front of the theater.
FDD: Engine 8, we may have a second victim.
FDD: Starting third ambulance. (3:50)
Command: We’re going to have staging away from the scene.
PD: People who are shot running out of the theaters.
FDD: Multiple victims probably three plus.
PO: I need rescue … at least three to four ambulances, everyone can stage in the west parking lot. (5:43)
Command: Let’s set up ambulance staging at Expo and Sable. Is that where they want us to stage in the first place?
FDD: Now they’re saying west parking lot. Let me clarify with PD somewhere where we won’t necessarily be coming into their scene.
Command: They need to set us up a staging area.
FDD: They want the staging area in the west part of the theater.
MEDIC: We are on scene with APD. (6:56)
Engine 8: We’re on the scene. We’re getting reports of multiple victims and an active shooter. (7:14)
PO: I have two victims. … I need an ambulance here quick.
PO: We need to start putting them into cars and start shuttling them out to the west end.
PO: (inaudible) shot twice in the back.
PO: I need one ambulance.
PO: We need rescue inside the auditorium. Multiple victims. (8:13)
FDD: They’re saying they have a party on the east side of the theater they can’t get to. They need an ambulance. He’s shot in the back. And multiple parties inside the theater.
PO: I need as many ambulances as we can to the Dillard’s lot.
FDD: Looks like you have four ambulances started. PD requesting as many ambulances as possible to Dillard’s. How many ambulances do you want?
PO:I’m taking one male to the hospital in my car.
PO: Seven down in theater 9.
PO: I got a child victim. I need rescue at the back door of theater 9 now. (9:52)
MEDIC: I’m down here north of the Century theater. I have a GSW … to the leg.
PO: Dispatch, give me some ambulances on Sable. I want ambulances on Dillard’s lot.
FDD to Command: Sir, (inaudible) metro sent all available ambulances.
PO: We’re bringing out bodies now. (11:44)
PO: I’ve got one ambulance here. Where my ambulances at?
Tower 8 to Command: We need an ambulance for GSW to abdomen, arms and legs if you have anyone to spare.
PO: I need a medical crew. … I’ve got one victim eviscerated.
FDD: PD wants as many medical personnel as possible. Two additional engines in route.
Engine 8: I need … two ambulances over here right away.
PO: Get me some ambulances in the back of the theater or Sports Authority parking lot. (13:21)
FDD: PD is requesting as many medical personnel as possible to the Dillards. … We also have a child down.
PO: Do I have permission to take some of these victims via car? I have a whole bunch of people shot out here and no rescue. (14:00)
PD command: Yes. Load them up and get them in cars and get them out of here.
PO: We have one we cannot move in theater 9. Get us an ambulance here as soon as they’re available. (14:51)
FDD: PD is requesting medical personnel in theater 9. Have a child down and cannot evacuate. (16:19)
Command: We’re going to set up Fire Department that aren’t on scene to stage at Exhibition and Sable.
PO: We need rescue or we need more patrol cars. … We’re just gonna take these people.
FDD: DP advising there are 10 people down behind theater 9.
PO: Cruiser 6 is taking two more victims.
PO: (Inaudible) … shot in the neck.
Command: I need all ambulances that they’re sending to stage at Exposition.
FDD: PD is again requesting emergent medical to the back of the theater. (18:36)
Command: I copy that. I’m just trying to get things under control here.
FDD: I copy, and again they are still asking for additional medical in theater 9.
PO: Moving (inaudible) by police cars. I still need some ambulances over here.
Truck 2: We can take the theater.
PO: Let Aurora South know cruiser 6 is in route. One critical, one semi-critical.
Command: I need you …to come up here.
Dispatch Police: Truck 2 in route to theater 9. (19:10)
PO: We need rescue to move up to the rear of the theater. We have officers there requesting they come immediately for multiple victims. (19:27)
PO: Advise rescue that officers will be there for security. That’s the best thing we can do at this point.
FDD: Sir, I apologize again, but PD is asking for emergent medical to the back of the theater. They are on scene to provide security.
Command:Copy. I have truck 2 … to help engine 8.
FDD: I believe they have another party inside theater 9 that they can’t evacuate, which is the child, but they have 10 parties down behind the theater.
PO: We’re evacuating victims. (20:45)
Command: Go ahead and activate the EM system. We’re going to need to know exactly how many beds these … hospitals can take.
FDD: Do we have an approximate patient count?
PO: Come back for more. I have two here that need treatment right away.
PO: All right. I’m getting there.
Command: I’m just trying to sort it out right. I hear 10 here, four here. I’m going to go with 20 right now. Let’s just go with 20 people until we get this verified. (21:06)
FIRE Dillard Division: I have Medic 102 over here. Can I have them to transport my two red patients?
Command: Copy. All divisions set up a extrication, triage, treatment, transport within your division. (21:28)
Engine 5: Command, we’re right by the theater. We just had a police officer run up to us that has nine patients behind the theater here. This would be on the east side of the theater. Do you want us to stay here or go with the police officer? (21:49)
FDD: Command, did you copy engine 5? (22:56)
Command: Copy.
FDD: I need to know if you want them to stay there or continue onto Dillard’s.
Police dispatch: I still have a lot of people shot on the east side. I need cars there.
Engine 5: We’re on the east side of the theater on Sable. Do you want us to attend to the patients on the east side?
Command: You only have one patient there, correct?
Engine 5: Police officer told us said there are nine patients.
Truck 2:We are in the rear of the theater. We have nine shot. If we can get any ambulances in stage on Sable, we can get them over to the ambos. (24:02)
Command: OK, just stand by. Let me get this sorted out. I will be with you in a minute.
Command:Do we know if the chief is responding?
FDD: That’s negative, sir. Do you want me to start (inaudible) chief?
Command: Yeah, I need chief (inaudible) here.
Command: Truck 2, I want you to join up with Engine 5. I’m just going to make you Sable division. … We’re going to start there until we get more resources. (25:06)
Police dispatch: We need another car for transport behind theater 9.
FDD: The lieutenant with the police department is requesting to meet you face to face in front of the theater.
Dillards Division: We’re sending two … patients off.
Command: We’re waiting to hear from the EM system what beds are available.
Truck 2 to command: FYI, right now we’re loading patients into back of PD cars to get them transported. Any ambos we could get would be nice. (26:47)
Command to FDD: How many ambulances … do I have? I need to have them all go to staging cause we have people jumping in and out. I’m not sure anybody even is.
FDD:To be honest, sir, I don’t know an exact count of ambulances. They did just advise me that they’re sending two more from (inaudible ) and we have every unit that’s available in the city of Aurora.
Command: I need them to go to Sable. Can they send a supervisor, … to be in charge of the transport area over there at Expo and Sable so we can get a handle on ambulances, have them stage and then I can send them into each division.
Command:Make sure that all these ambulances know to return to staging area over at Expo and Sable.
East division to command:We have transported seven patients. We’re on our eighth patient. Also talked to police officer who said we may have a number of people dead inside the theater. (29:46)
Command: OK, if they’re dead, leave them. We’re in a mass casualty situation at this time.
FDD: They do have ambulances returning to the staging area.
Command: Anybody else that’s in the area that we can contact? Somebody we can get a hold of … anybody?
FDD: We’re working on finding additional transport rigs
Treacherous wording upholds “States” gun rights but not individuals
The text of the anticipated and hotly-contested United Nations Arms Trade Treaty has been leaked, with the treaty itself set to be adopted and signed by member States as early as tomorrow, July 27. President Obama, today joining the chorus for gun control inside the United States in the wake of the Batman massacre, has previously indicated that he would sign the treaty, which would then have to be ratified by the Senate.
Masked behind the language of promoting peace in an international world by preventing genocide, the UN has unleashed a great Trojan Horse that calls upon States to enact national legislation sufficient to meet the minimum goals outlined in this treaty– including gun registries, background checks, import/export controls and more for arms of all types, including small & conventional weapons. “Each State Party shall adopt national legislation or other appropriate national measures regulations and policies as may be necessary to implement the obligations of this Treaty,” the treaty text states in part.
It makes specific note that the treaty places no limit upon greater gun control efforts within individual nations, and additionally places no expiration on the agreement. The scope of this language proves the analysis by Infowars (1, 2, 3, 4), writers at Forbes and many other publications that have been warning about this deceptive encroachment to be correct– there is an effort to disarm America underway.
The devil, as usual, is in the details.
Repeatedly, the treaty obligates States to establish “national control systems” to meet the particulars of the treaty. While the phrase “within national laws and regulations” appears to suggest that the 2nd Amendment would limit the implementation, properly read in the context of the wording and history itself, it really only invites new “regulations” where no “law” can be established.
The first “principle” outlined in the preamble reads: “1. The inherent rights of all States to individual or collective self-defense.” While the language of the treaty appears to recognize the legal right to keep such arms, the text actually recognizes the “inherent right of States” to “individual and collective” self-defense.
This is NOT the same as individual persons’ inherent right to keep and bear arms as recognized and enumerated in the United States’ Bill of Rights. Instead, it puts the collectivist unit known as the State above the individual, in complete defiance of the system set-up in the United States. Individual defense for a State, for instance, refers to what is known on the international scene as “unilateral war,” while collective defense is recognize in such actions as that of NATO or other allied bodies. The States’ right to maintain internal order has also been recognized by the UN, but all other purposes for arms ownership are seen as illegitimate.
It specifically recognizes [only] the “lawful private ownership and use of conventional arms exclusively for, inter alia, recreational, cultural, historical and sporting activities for States where such ownership and use are permitted or protected by law.” There’s been a great deal of rhetoric from gun grabbers over the years attempting to emphasize gun ownership for legitimate sporting uses, but the real purpose of arms ownership is a balance of power at the individual level in order to discourage tyranny at the State level. THAT is what the founding fathers intended, and that is the historical legacy Americans cherish.
NO SPECIFIC PROTECTION for individual persons is contained in this dangerous treaty, though the same media who’ve been demonizing critics of the UN’s effort as delusional and paranoid will attempt to argue otherwise, clinging to deliberately inserted clauses herein that look like stop-guards and protections for gun rights, but properly read, do no such thing.
While the UN advises States to keep within the scope of their own laws, the end-run assault against American’s 2nd Amendment is unmistakeable.
The United Nations has a sordid history of pursuing “general and complete disarmament,” and individual arms including legally owned arms have always been part of that focus. The United Nations treaty from 2001, known as the “SADC Protocol: Southern African Development Community” is, according to the UN’s own disarmament website, a “regional instrument that aims to curtail small arms ownership and illicit trafficking in Southern Africa along with the destruction of surplus state weapons. It is a far-reaching instrument, which goes beyond that of a politically binding declaration, providing the region with a legal basis upon which to deal with both the legal and the illicit trade in firearms.”
As we have previously noted, U.S. troops have been trained to confiscate American guns, while the confiscation in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina has already set the precedent. The deception over aiming for legal guns while pretending to target “illicit” weapons is continued here in this 2012 monster treaty.
Below is the text in full, as it has been proposed and released. Any changes in the signed version will be noted when that time comes:
————————
UNITED NATIONS ARMS TRADE TREATY TEXT
PREAMBLE
The States Parties to this Treaty.
Guided by the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
Recalling that the charter of the UN promotes the establishment and maintenance of international peace and security with the least diversion for armaments of the world’s human and economic resources;
Reaffirming the obligation of all State Parties to settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered, in accordance with the Charter of the UN;
Underlining the need to prevent, combat and eradicate the illicit trade of conventional arms and to prevent their diversion to illegal and unauthorized end use, such as terrorism and organized crime;
Recognizing the legitimate political, security, economic and commercial rights and interests of States in the international trade of conventional arms;
Reaffirming the sovereign right and responsibility of any State to regulate and control transfers of conventional arms that take place exclusively within its territory pursuant to its own legal or constitutional systems;
Recognizing that development, human rights and peace and security, which are three pillars of the United Nations, are interlinked and mutually reinforcing.
Recalling the United Nations Disarmament Commission guidelines on international arms transfers adopted by the General Assembly;
Noting the contribution made by the 2001 UN Programme of Action to preventing combating and eradicating the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons in all its aspects, as well as the 2001 Protocol against the illicit manufacturing of and trafficking in Firearms, their parts and components and ammunition, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime;
Recognizing the security, social, economic and humanitarian consequences of the illicit trade in and unregulated trade of conventional arms;
Recognizing the challenges faced by victims of armed conflict and their need for adequate care, rehabilitation and social and economic inclusion;
Bearing in mind that the women and children are particularly affected in situations of conflict and armed violence;
Emphasizing that nothing in this treaty prevents States from exercising their right to adopt additional more rigorous measures consistent with the purpose of this Treaty;
Recognizing the legitimate international trade and lawful private ownership and use of conventional arms exclusively for, inter alia, recreational, cultural, historical and sporting activities for States where such ownership and use are permitted or protected by law;
Recognizing the active role that non-governmental organizations and civil society can play in furthering the goals and objectives of this Treaty; and
16. Emphasizing that regulation of the international trade in conventional arms should not hamper international cooperation and legitimate trade in material, equipment and technology for peaceful purposes;
Have agreed as follows:
Principles
Guided by the Purposes and Principles of the Charter of the United Nations, States Parties, In promoting the goals and objectives of this Treaty and implementing its provisions, shall act in accordance with the following principles:
The inherent rights of all States to individual or collective self-defense;
2. Settlement of individual disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered;
3. The rights and obligations of States under applicable international law, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law;
4. The responsibility of all States, in accordance with their respective international obligations, to effectively regulate and control international transfer of conventional arms as well as the primary responsibility of all States to in establishing and implementing their respective national export control systems; and
5. The necessity to implement this Treaty consistently and effectively and in a universal, objective and non-discriminatory manner.
Article 1
Goals and Objectives
Cognizant of the need to prevent and combat the diversion of conventional arms into the illicit market or to unauthorized end users through the improvement of regulation on the international trade in conventional arms,
The goals and objectives of this Treaty are:
– For States Parties to establish the highest possible common standards for regulating or improving regulation of the international trade in conventional arms;
– To prevent, combat and eradicate the illicit trade in conventional arms and their diversion to illegal and unauthorized end use;
In order to:
– Contribute to international and regional peace, security and stability;
– Avoid that the international trade in conventional arms contributes to human suffering;
– Promote cooperation, transparency and responsibility of States Parties in the trade in conventional arms, thus building confidence among States Parties,
Article 2
– A. Covered Items
– 1. This Treaty shall apply to all conventional arms within the following categories:
– a. Battle Tanks
– b. Armored combat vehicles
– c. Large-caliber Artillery systems
– d. Combat aircraft
– e. Attack helicopters
– f. Warships
– g. Missiles and missile launchers
– h. Small Arms and Light Weapons
– 2. Each State Party Shall establish and Maintain a national control system to regulate the export of munitions to the extent necessary to ensure that national controls on the export of the conventional arms covered by Paragraph a1 (a)-(h) are not circumvented by the export of munitions for those conventional arms.
– 3. Each State Party shall establish and maintain a national control system to regulate the export of parts and components to the extent necessary to ensure that national controls on the export of the conventional arms covered by Paragraph A1 are not circumvented by the export of parts and components of those items.
– 4. Each State Party shall establish or update, as appropriate, and maintain a national control list that shall include the items that fall within Paragraph 1 above, as defined on a national basis, based on relevant UN instruments at a minimum. Each State Party shall publish its control list to the extent permitted by national law.
– B. Covered Activities
– 1. This Treaty shall apply to those activities of the international trade in conventional arms covered in paragraph a1 above, and set out in Articles 6-10, hereafter referred to as “transfer.”
– 2. This Treaty shall not apply to the international movement of conventional arms by a State Party or its agents for its armed forces or law enforcement authorities operating outside its national territories, provided they remain under the State Party’s ownership.
Article 3
Prohibited Transfers
A State Party shall not authorize any transfer of conventional arms within the scope of this Treaty if the transfer would violate any obligation under any measure adopted by the United Nations Security Council acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, in particular arms embargoes.
A State Party shall not authorize any transfer of conventional arms within the scope of this Treaty if the transfer would violate its relevant international obligations, under international agreements, to which it is a Party, in particular those relating to the international transfer of, or illicit trafficking in, conventional arms.
A State Party shall not authorize a transfer of conventional arms within the scope of this Treaty for the purpose of facilitating the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes constituting grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, or serious violations of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention of 1949.
Article 4
National Assessment
Each State Party, in considering whether to authorize an export of conventional arms within the scope of this Treaty, shall, prior to authorization and through national control systems, make an assessment specific to the circumstances of the transfer based on the following criteria:
Whether the proposed export of conventional arms would:
Be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian law;
Be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international human rights law;
Contribute to peace and security;
Be used to commit or facilitate an act constituting an offense under international conventions and protocols relating to terrorism or transnational organized crime, to which the transferring State is a Party;
In making the assessment, the transferring State Party shall apply the criteria set out in Paragraph 2 consistently and in an objective and non-discriminatory manner and in accordance with the principles set out in this Treaty, taking into account relevant factors, including information provided by the importing State.
4. In assessing the risk pursuant to Paragraph 2, the transferring State Party may also take into consideration the establishment of risk mitigation measures including confidence-building measures and jointly developed programs by the exporting and importing State.
5. If in the view of the authorizing State Party, this assessment, which would include any actions that may be taken in accordance with Paragraph 4, constitutes a substantial risk, the State Party shall not authorize the transfer.
Article 5
Additional Obligations
Each State Party, when authorizing an export, shall consider taking feasible measures, including joint actions with other States involved in the transfer, to avoid the transferred arms:
being diverted to the illicit market;
be used to commit or facilitate gender-based violence or violence against children;
become subject to corrupt practices; or
adversely impact the development of the recipient State.
Article 6
General Implementation
Each State Party shall implement this Treaty in a consistent, objective and non-discriminatory manner in accordance with the goals and objectives of this Treaty;
The implementation of this Treaty shall not prejudice previous or future obligations undertaken with regards to international instruments, provided that those obligations are consistent with the goals and objectives of this Treaty. This Treaty shall not be cited as grounds for voiding contractual obligations under defense cooperation agreements concluded by States Parties to this Treaty.
Each State Party shall take all appropriate legislative and administrative measures necessary to implement the provisions of this Treaty and designate competent national authorities in order to have an effective, transparent and predictable national control system regulating the transfer of conventional arms;
Each State Party shall establish one or more national contact points to exchange information on matters related to the implementation of this Treaty. A State Party shall notify the Implementation Support Unit (See Article 13) of its national contact point(s) and keep the information updated.
State Parties involved in a transfer of conventional arms shall, in a manner consistent with the principles of this Treaty, take appropriate measures to prevent diversion to the illicit market or to unauthorized end-users. All State Parties shall cooperate, as appropriate, with the exporting State to that end.
If a diversion is detected the State or States Parties that made the decision shall verify the State or States Parties that could be affected by such diversion, in particulate those State Parties that are involved in the transfer, without delay.
Each State Party shall take the appropriate measures, within national laws and regulations, to regulate transfers of conventional arms within the scope of the Treaty.
Article 7
Export
Each State Party shall conduct risk assessments, as detailed in Articles 4 and 5, whether to grant authorizations for the transfer of conventional arms under the scope of this Treaty. State Parties shall apply Articles 3-5 consistently, taking into account all relevant information, including the nature and potential use of the items to be transferred and the verified end-user in the country of final destination.
Each State Party shall take measures to ensure all authorizations for the export of conventional arms under the scope of the Treaty are detailed and issued prior to the export. Appropriate and relevant details of the authorization shall be made available to the importing, transit and transshipment State Parties, upon request.
Article 8
Import
Importing State Parties shall take measures to ensure that appropriate and relevant information is provided, upon request, to the exporting State Party to assist the exporting State in its criteria assessment and to assist in verifying end users.
State Parties shall put in place adequate measures that will allow them, where necessary, to monitor and control imports of items covered by the scope of the Treaty. State Parties shall also adopt appropriate measures to prevent the diversion of imported items to unauthorized end users or to the illicit market.
Importing State Parties may request, where necessary, information from the exporting State Party concerning potential authorizations.
Article 9
Brokering
Each State Party shall take the appropriate measures, within national laws and regulations, to control brokering taking place under its jurisdiction for conventional arms within the scope of this Treaty.
Article 10
Transit and Transshipment
Each State Party shall adopt appropriate legislative, administrative or other measures to monitor and control, where necessary and feasible, conventional arms covered by this Treaty that transit or transship through territory under its jurisdiction, consistent with international law with due regard for innocent passage and transit passage;
Importing and exporting States Parties shall cooperate and exchange information, where feasible and upon request, to transit and transshipment States Parties, in order to mitigate the risk of discretion;
Article 11
Reporting, Record Keeping and Transparency
Each State Party shall maintain records in accordance with its national laws and regardless of the items referred to in Article 2, Paragraph A, with regards to conventional arms authorization or exports, and where feasible of those items transferred to their territory as the final destination, or that are authorized to transit or transship their territory, respectively.
Such records may contain: quantity, value, model/type, authorized arms transfers, arms actually transferred, details of exporting State(s), recipient State(s), and end users as appropriate. Records shall be kept for a minimum of ten years, or consistent with other international commitments applicable to the State Party.
States Parties may report to the Implementation Support Unit on an annual basis any actions taken to address the diversion of conventional arms to the illicit market.
Each State Party shall, within the first year after entry into force of this Treaty for that State Party, provide an initial report to States Parties of relevant activities undertaken in order to implement this Treaty; including inter alia, domestic laws, regulations and administrative measures. States Parties shall report any new activities undertaken in order to implement this Treaty, when appropriate. Reports shall be distributed and made public by the Implementation Support Unit.
Each State Party shall submit annually to the Implementation Support Unit by 31 May a report for the preceding calendar year concerning the authorization or actual transfer of items included in Article 2, Paragraph A1. Reports shall be distributed and made public by the Implementation Support Unit. The report submitted to the Implementation Support Unit may contain the same type of information submitted by the State Party to other relevant UN bodies, including the UN Register of Conventional Arms. Reports will be consistent with national security sensitivities or be commercially sensitive.
ARTICLE 12
ENFORCEMENT
Each State Party shall adopt national legislation or other appropriate national measures regulations and policies as may be necessary to implement the obligations of this Treaty.
ARTICLE 13
IMPLEMENTATION SUPPORT UNIT
This Treaty hereby establishes an Implementation Support Unit to assist States Parties in its implementation.
The ISU shall consist of adequate staff, with necessary expertise to ensure the mandate entrusted to it can be effectively undertaken, with the core costs funded by States Parties.
The implementation Support Unit, within a minimized structure and responsible to States Parties, shall undertake the responsibilities assigned to it in this Treaty, inter alia:
Receive distribute reports, on behalf of the Depository, and make them publicly available;
Maintain and Distribute regularly to States Parties the up-to-date list of national contact points;
Facilitate the matching of offers and requests of assistance for Treaty implementation and promote international cooperation as requested;
Facilitate the work of the Conference of States Parties, including making arrangements and providing the necessary service es for meetings under this Treaty; and
Perform other duties as mandated by the Conference of States Parties.
ARTICLE 14
INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION
States Parties shall designate national points of contact to act as a liaison on matters relating to the implementation of this Treaty.
States Parties shall cooperate closely with one another, as appropriate, to enhance the implementation of this Treaty consistent with their respective security interests and legal and administrative systems.
States Parties are encouraged to facilitate international cooperation, including the exchange of information on matters of mutual interest regarding the implementation and application of this Treaty in accordance with their national legal system. Such voluntary exchange of information may include, inter alia, information on national implementation measures as well as information on specific exporters, importers and brokers and on any prosecutions brought domestically, consistent with commercial and proprietary protections and domestic laws, regulations and respective legal and administrative systems.
4. Each State Party is encouraged to maintain consultations and to share information, as appropriate, to support the implementation of this Treaty, including through their national contact points.
5. States Parties shall cooperate to enforce the provisions of this Treaty and combat breaches of this Treaty, including sharing information regarding illicit activities and actors to assist national enforcement and to counter and prevent diversion. States Parties may also exchange information on lessons learned in relation to any aspect of this Treaty, to develop best practices to assist national implementation.
Article 15
International Assistance
In fulfilling the obligation of this Treaty, States Parties may seek, inter alia, legal assistance, legislative assistance, technical assistance, institutional capacity building, material assistance or financial assistance. States, in a position to do so, shall provide such assistance. States Parties may contribute resources to a voluntary trust fund to assist requesting States Parties requiring such assistance to implement the Treaty.
States Parties shall afford one another the widest measure of assistance, consistent with their respective legal and administrative systems, in investigations, prosecutions and judicial proceedings in relation to the violations of the national measures implemented to comply with obligations under of the provisions of this Treaty.
Each State Party may offer or receive assistance, inter alia, through the United Nations international, regional, subregional or national organizations, non-governmental organizations or on a bi-lateral basis. Such assistance may include technical, financial, material and other forms of assistance as needed, upon request.
Article 16
Signature, Ratification, Acceptance, Approval or Accession
This Treaty shall be open for signature on [date] at the United Nations Headquarters in New York by all States and regional integration organizations.
This Treaty is subject to ratification, acceptance or approval of the Signatories.
This Treaty shall be open for accession by any state and regional integration organization that has not signed the Treaty.
4. The instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession shall be deposited with the Depositary.
5. The Depositary shall promptly inform all signatory and acceding States and regional integration organizations of the date of each signature, the date of deposit of each instrument of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession and the date of the entry into force of this Treaty, and of the receipt of notices.
6. “Regional integration organization” shall mean an organization constituted by sovereign States of a given region, to which its Member States have transferred competence in respect of matters governed by this Treaty and which has been duly authorized, in accordance with its internal procedures, to sign, ratify, accept, approve or accede to it.
7. At the time of its ratification, acceptance, approval or accession, a regional integration organization shall declare the extent of its competence with respect to matters governed by this Treaty. Such organizations shall also inform the Depositary of any relevant modifications in the extent of it competence.
8. References to “State Parties” in the present Treaty shall apply to such organizations within the limits of their competence.
Article 17
Entry into Force
This Treaty shall enter into force thirty days following the date of the deposit of the sixty-fifth instrument of ratification, acceptance or approval with the Depositary.
For any State or regional integration organization that deposits its instruments of accession subsequent to the entry into force of the Treaty, the Treaty shall enter into force thirty days following the date of deposit of its instruments of accession.
For the purpose of Paragraph 1 and 2 above, any instrument deposited by a regional integration organization shall not be counted as additional to those deposited by Member States of that organization.
Article 18
Withdrawal and Duration
This Treaty shall be of unlimited duration.
Each State Party shall, in exercising its national sovereignty, have the right to withdraw from this Convention. It shall give notice of such withdrawal to all other States Parties from this Convention. It shall give notice of such withdrawal to all other States Parties and to the Depositary. The instrument of withdrawal shall include a full explanation of the reasons motivating this withdrawal.
A state shall not be discharged, by reason of its withdrawal, from the obligations arising from this treaty while it was a party to the Treaty, including any financial obligations, which may have accrued.
Article 19
Reservations
Each State party, in exercising its national sovereignty, may formulate reservations unless the reservation is incompatible with the object and purpose of this Treaty.
Article 20
Amendments
At any time after the Treaty’s entry into force, a State Party may propose an amendment to this Treaty.
Any proposed amendment shall be submitted in writing to the Depository, which will then circulate the proposal to all States Parties, not less than 180 days before next meeting of the Conference of States Parties. The amendment shall be considered at the next Conference of States Parties if a majority of States Parties notify the Implementation Support Unit that they support further consideration of the proposal no later than 180 days after its circulation by the Depositary.
Any amendment to this Treaty shall be adopted by consensus, or if consensus is not achieved, by two-thirds of the States Parties present and voting at the Conference of States Parties. The Depositary shall communicate any amendment to all States Parties.
A proposed amendment adopted in accordance with Paragraph 3 of this Article shall enter into force for all States Parties to the Treaty that have accepted it, upon deposit with the Depositary. Thereafter, it shall enter into force for any remaining State Party on the date of deposit of its instrument of accession.
Article 21
Conference of States Parties
The Conference of States Parties shall be convened not later than once a year following the entry into force of this Treaty. The Conference of States Parties shall adopt rules of procedure and rules governing its activities, including the frequency of meetings and rules concerning payment of expenses incurred in carrying out those activities.
The Conference of States Parties shall:
a. Consider and adopt recommendations regarding the implementation of this Treaty, in particular the promotion of its universality; TR
b. Consider amendments to this Treaty;
c. Consider and decide the work and budget of the Implementation Support Unit;
d. Consider the establishment of any subsidiary bodies as may be necessary to improve the functioning of the Treaty;
e. Perform any other function consistent with this Treaty.
3. If circumstances merit, an exceptional meeting of the State Parties may be convened if required and resources allow.
Article 22
Dispute Settlement
States Parties shall consult and cooperate with each other to settle any dispute that may arise with regard to the interpretation or application of this Treaty.
States Parties shall settle any dispute between them concerning the interpretation or application of this Treat though negotiations or other peaceful means of the Parties mutual choice.
States Parties may pursue, by mutual consent, third party arbitration to settle any dispute between them, regarding issues concerning the implementation of this Treaty.
Article 23
Relations with States not party to this Treaty
States Parties shall apply Articles 3-5 to all transfers of conventional arms within the scope of this Treaty to those not party to this Treaty.
Article 24
Relationship with other instruments
States Parties shall have the right to enter into agreements on the trade in conventional arms with regards to the international trade in conventional arms, provided that those agreements are compatible with their obligations under this Treaty and do not undermine the objects and purposes of this Treaty.
Article 25
Depositary and Authentic Texts
The Secretary-General of the United Nations is the Depositary of this Treaty.
The original text of this Treaty, of which the Arabic, Chinese, English, Russian and Spanish texts are equally authentic.
(Emphasis in bold added by this author for help in analysis)
Highlights: Foreign troops drafted in; drug deals in training classroom; ineffective screening processes and detection technology; photographs of sensitive mock-up screening areas taken by un-screened trainees; 200k ‘casket linings’ delivered; uniforms being stolen; plan for an evacuation of London; drones on-line (incl. armed); poor standard of security recruits — cant speak English.
Exclusive interview with investigative journalist Lee Hazledean who is training undercover as a security guard for the London olympics with private security firm G4S. Lee is a filmmaker and investigative TV journalist. He has also been involved in major stories on the IRA and how British Army infiltrated the organisation and carried out false flag operations. He has managed to get undercover as part of the security team at the 2012 Olympics with G4S. He has found there is a media black out on all major news outlets to do with the Olympics unless the story is broken in a news paper or foreign news agency it’s unlikely to see the light of day. Security training and officers are so appaling that the safety and security of the London 2012 Olympics are in jeopardy.
A few example’s: During an exercise he was asked to pose as a would-be terrorist and managed to get knives, guns and IED’s through security screening on every occasion and every exercise. The X-Ray operators have only two days of training, they aren’t trained properly and miss the most obvious prohibited items gun’s, knives, IED’s, ammunition etc. Bag and physical searchers again are missing dangerous weapons, trainees can’t use vital security equipment like the HHMD (Hand Held Metal detectors) they can’t even communicate properly with the public on a basic level. Worryingly the ‘Rapiscan’ walk through metal detectors don’t work properly and aren’t sensitive enough to pick up large knives, ammunition and other metallic threats. He was told that they would be set to go off only after 50 people have walked through to limit queuing time and to get spectators into the venue. So a Terrorist if they basically queued up would probably get through wearing a suicide vest. In classes there are drug deals going down, people can’t speak any English. People who haven’t even completed their SIA licenses yet are being picked to be Team Leaders over highly trained security officers, ex soldiers and ex police. Lee is concerned that weapons or worse will be getting into the games. However, what’s more disturbing is that uniforms are already going missing or being stolen. The training facility is an accurate mock-up of the actual security measures at the Olympic venues. Lee has witnessed several people taking photos on their mobile phones in the training facility and whilst they have been a few people caught by trainers most aren’t noticed. We know that terrorists take surveillance photos to gain intelligence. Contemporary International claim that they have mobile phone ‘jammers’ in the facility, however trainers admitted to Lee that there were no ‘jammers’ at all, it was a verbal deterrent.
Also there are plans for the evacuation of London, G4S are going to be at the forefront, as well as 100,000 troops coming in via Woolwich barracks made up of regular British Forces, American regular army and European troops. Lee was not told why there would be any need for an evacuation of the whole of London, they just said it was to be a “defining moment in the history of London”. This could just be a precaution but the public should be made aware of the foreign invasion which is taking place right now. The troops are being held across London in various barracks once they’ve been through Woolwich. Lee also had this information confirmed by an army doctor who was shocked at all the foreign troops coming into London. There is also a shipment of what are being described as casket linings, each casket can hold four or five people and 200,000 casket linings have been delivered we believe from America. Also we were shown videos of drones attacking targets in Afghanistan and were told that drones will be patrolling the sky’s over London during the Olympics carrying out surveillance and search and destroy missions if necessary.
Amazingly, Accenture, which sold its crap-on-a-stick high-school sophomoric completely insecure malfunctioning voter registration software to a bunch of states, so unsuccessfully that Colorado refused to pay and others, like Wisconsin and Shelby County, bought out the source code in order to try to bandaid it into a functional system, has decided to issue a cease and desist against Black Box Voting for exposing its flawed software to the public.
Last time a voting system company did a DMCA takedown notice (Diebold, in 2004) it got socked with punitive charges for abusing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, trying to use it to block distribution of material clearly published in the public interest.
If you want a copy of the voter registration software I posted Thursday, might as well get it right now — and mirror it, torrent it, dropbox it, or whatever. I’ll probably pull it down by June 27, not because their claim is valid, but because there are higher priorities for spending my time during this election season and thanks to Slashdot and some pals in Europe, this software has now been widely mirrored elsewhere.
Here is the DMCA issued to Black Box Voting:
Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2012 17:17:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: Rackspace AUP Team
Subject: Please Review Immediately – DMCAHello,
We have received a notice pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) from Accenture Global Services Ltd regarding certain content appearing at the above-referenced website (the “Website”). A copy of this notice has been sent to you via email at [redacted]. This company alleges that material posted on your company’s website infringes on their copyright. Please remove the content claimed to be infringing from the Website and confirm to me in writing that you have done so by 8:00 A.M. Central Time, 6/27/2012. If the allegedly infringing content is not removed and/or I have not received your written confirmation by that time, Rackspace will suspend network access to the server(s) hosting the Website.
Please note that you may provide a counter notification, stating that the posted material is not infringing the alleged copyright, in accordance with the provisions of 17 U.S.C. §512(g)(3) to Rackspace’s designated agent:
Director of Compliance
Rackspace Hosting
(Note that Rackspace is only doing what it’s required to do. They are a superb web hosting company, and have helped keep the Black Box Voting sites up and secure for many years now.)
After releasing it into the wild, we can all see that the system is hardly worth the $20 MILLION Accenture tried to charge the state of Colorado, with equally exhorbitant fees hitting taxpayers in other states and counties.
There are multiple possible explanations for how this system doubles and triples reported votes for some voters (oddly, in White Republican suburbs), and for why it likes to alter people’s political party and erase their voter history.
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS ON ACCENTURE’S VOTER REGISTRATION SYSTEM
Accenture’s “ESM” voter registration / voter history system is really just a bunch of Microsoft Access tables riddled with faulty joins, lacking referential integrity, and also open to malicious play using easily written hidden Visual Basic or Java scripts residing on any computer linked into it. It cannot be made secure without completely redesigning the architecture.
Watch “Hacking Democracy” (search it on YouTube) for a real-life example of how simple it is to bypass all passwords using a VBA script, to implement anything you want with hidden code commands in systems built on this platform, which is also used for the Diebold GEMS system.
Yah, so where is “Accenture Global Services” based out of anyway? It was the Cayman Islands. Or is it now another tax-evading corporate secrecy haven, used not only to avoid paying taxes but to prevent the American public from knowing anything about the creepy white men who control corporate ownership?
PERMISSION TO REPRINT GRANTED WITH LINK TO BLACKBOXVOTING.ORG
* * * * *
TWO WAYS TO SUPPORT BLACK BOX VOTING:
(1) With your mouth and your keyboard – talk about and reprint our important bulletins!
(2) With crucially important tax deductible donations (Monthly sponsorhips are the best way to keep us going!): http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html or mail to:
Black Box Voting
330 SW 43rd St Suite K
PMB 547
Renton WA 98057
Hacking Democracy is a 2006documentary film by producer Robert Carrillo Cohen and producer / directors Russell Michaels and Simon Ardizzone, shown on HBO. Filmed over three years it documents American citizens investigating anomalies and irregularities with ‘e-voting‘ (electronic voting) systems that occurred during the 2000 and 2004 elections in the U.S.A., especially in Volusia County, Florida. The film investigates the flawed integrity of electronic voting machines, particularly those made by Diebold Election Systems, and the film culminates dramatically in the on-camera hacking of the in-use / working Diebold election system in Leon County, Florida.
In 2007 Hacking Democracy was nominated for an Emmy award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism.[1]
The documentary follows Bev Harris and Kathleen Wynne, director and associate director for nonprofit election watchdog group Black Box Voting, as they attempt to discover the extent to which it would be possible to alter results on the electronic voting machines of Diebold Election Systems (now Premier Election Solutions). Andy Stephenson, an employee of Black Box Voting from July-December 2004, assisted with comparisons of audit documents in Volusia County and obtained a secret videotape of Harris interviewing a voting machine testing lab. Kathleen Wynne captured live video of Harris finding voting machine records in a Volusia County trash bag, and captured video of Cuyahoga County elections workers admitting that the initial 3% recount ballots had not been randomly selected during the 2004 presidential election. Harris and Wynne then embarked on a series of five voting machine hack tests with Dr. Herbert Hugh Thompson and Harri Hursti in 2005 and 2006. During the course of the documentary, multiple methods of tampering with the votes are shown.
The first is through editing the database file that contains the voting totals. This file is a standard Microsoft Access database, and can be opened by normal means outside of the encompassing voting program without a password. Some jurisdictions have disabled Microsoft Access, making it more difficult to alter the database, but this protection was shown to be bypassed by Dr. Herbert Hugh Thompson through a Visual Basic program which searched for a string of text and edited the file through external means. However, alterations of the results in either of these fashions would be caught if a vigilant elections official compared the results with voting machine tapes.[2]
Another hacking technique was demonstrated through hacking the actual computer code used in the Diebold Accu-Vote memory cards. This method was discovered by Finnish computer security expert Harri Hursti and is known as “the Hursti Hack“. In this hack, Harri Hursti rigged the Diebold optical scan voting system to make the wrong candidate win by adding negative (minus) votes to one race. This resulted in that race having votes literally subtracted from its vote total. These methods were tested by the Leon County Supervisor of Elections, Ion Sancho, on the actual Diebold optical scan voting system used by Tallahassee, Florida in all their prior elections. This method demonstrated, contrary to a previous Diebold statement, that a person attempting to rig the votes of a precinct would need access to only the memory card, not the optical scan voting system or tabulation software. This method, when cross-checked between the optical scan voting system and tabulation software, appears legitimate, and further produces a false zero-vote print-out to verify that the memory card has no votes inside it before voting begins. Following this historic hack Ion Sancho stated: “If I had not known what was behind this I would have certified this election as a true count of a vote.”[2]
Reaction
Even though no one from Diebold Election Systems admitted to having seen the film,[3] Diebold President David Byrd suggested that Hacking Democracy was “replete with material examples of inaccurate reporting”, and demanded that it not be aired.[4][5] His criticism was based on an earlier film made by the same three filmmakers. However, HBO refused to remove it from their schedules. In addition Diebold wrote a letter to HBO referring to the famous vote changing ‘Hursti Hack’ featured in the film, stating that “Harri Hursti is shown attacking a Diebold machine in Florida. But his attack proved later to be a complete sham.”
California’s Secretary of State commissioned a Special Report by scientists at UC Berkeley to investigate the Hursti Hack. Page 2 of their report states:
Harri Hursti’s attack does work: Mr. Hursti’s attack on the AV-OS is definitely real. He was indeed able to change the election results by doing nothing more than modifying the contents of a memory card. He needed no passwords, no cryptographic keys, and no access to any other part of the voting system, including the GEMS election management server.
One of Diebold’s objections to the film was that it failed to mention that Avi Rubin, a Johns Hopkins computer science professor and vocal Diebold critic, may have a conflict of interest. Rubin at one point owned stock options in VoteHere, which sells auditing software and systems for voting machines. However, Rubin disposed of his stock options and withdrew from the VoteHere advisory board in August 2003, and says he had not had any meaningful contact since joining over two years before, except occasionally receiving press clippings.[6]
DVD release
The film was released on DVD on March 20, 2007. It includes deleted scenes, a trailer and director biographies.
