The only remedy for the abuse of Bradley Manning and the government’s violation of the law is dismissal of all charges.
Every time I attend a Bradley Manning hearing the prosecutors show their outrageous disrespect for the law, demonstrate they cannot be trusted and that this prosecution should not proceed.
Beginning on November 27, the defense will argue a long-delayed motion to dismiss for unlawful pretrial punishment. In a moment of high drama, Bradley is likely to testify about his nine months in solitary confinement during the argument of this motion.
Prosecutors Are Caught Hiding More than One Thousand Emails about Manning’s Confinement
The most recent reason for the delay in the hearing was the government was caught hiding 1,374 emails relevant to the confinement of Bradley Manning. Attorney David Coombs had requested all documents relevant to Manning’s confinement at Quantico but did not receive any of the emails. Hours before the deadline for filing the motion to dismiss the Government sent him 84 emails from Quantico that it said were “obviously material to the defense.” They did not mention the existence of 1,290 other emails relating to Manning’s confinement.
Coombs, based on prior experience with the prosecution team, was suspicious. The language “obviously material to the defense” was tortured. Were there other documents that were material to the defense? The law requires the government to provide all material information. Two government prosecutors responded that the 84 emails were all there was. Coombs was still suspicious and decided to file a motion with the court on the matter. At that point the prosecution admitted there were a total of 1,374 emails, but claimed only 84 were discoverable.
Coombs kept pushing and on the first day of the hearing last week the government provided him with a disc containing approximately 600 emails. The prosecutors gave no explanation as to how they jumped from 84 to 600 discoverable emails, even though Coombs asked how that occurred. Now there are 700 emails in dispute, and Judge Denise Lind granted Coombs’ motion to have her review those to determine if they’re discoverable.
What did the emails contain? Well, we don’t know yet what surprises are in the 600 given to Coombs during the hearing, but the 84 contained a blockbuster. They revealed that the decision to hold Manning in tortuous solitary confinement conditions was not made because of Manning’s behavior at Quantico, not made because of the recommendations of the prison psychologists or psychiatrists, not made by the brig commander, not even made by the Commander at Quantico – but made by a three-star general in the Pentagon.
Who was the general in charge of Manning’s confinement?
Lieutenant General George Flynn, who was serving as the Commanding General of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command at the time, ordered Manning’s solitary confinement.
Flynn is a career officer who has been climbing the ladder in the military since 1975. There are only 60 three-star generals in the entire U.S. Marine Corps. Flynn is in the top echelon of Marine officers. Flynn was nominated for appointment by the President under the advice of the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as confirmed via majority vote by the Senate. Thus, this position, in addition to being an important military position, is one that requires political skill as well.
Among the positions he has recently held are Chief of Staff and Director, Command Support Center, United States Special Operations Command (2004-2006). Commanding General, Training and Education Command (2006-2007). Deputy Commanding General Multi-National Corps-Iraq (2008), Director for Joint Force Development, The Joint Staff J-7 (2011-). This includes positions he served in during the time documented by Manning’s alleged release.
During Flynn’s time at the U.S. Special Ops command, growing pains were reported as they were developing plans to have an expanded and more complex role against terrorism, working more closely with the CIA. In 2005’s Operation Red Wing, under his command, four Navy SEALs were pinned down in a firefight and radioed for help. A Chinook helicopter, carrying 16 service members, responded but was shot down. All members of the rescue team and three of four SEALs on the ground died. It was the worst loss of life in Afghanistan since the invasion in 2001.
The fact that an officer who was working so closely with the CIA was making the decisions about Manning’s incarceration raises questions about the purpose of Manning’s abusive confinement. Even before knowing Lt. Gen. Flynn was in charge, many commentators believed Manning was tortured in an effort to break him so he would plead guilty and testify against Julian Assange. Now that we know a three-star general at the Pentagon was making the decisions, these suspicions have much greater credibility.
Who knows what will be uncovered in the 600 emails that have been provided and the remaining 700 in dispute? It already sounds like Manning’s defense needs to broaden its request to all communications involving Lt. Gen. Flynn about Manning, including with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of Defense and the White House. We know that the White House in the Bush Administration was approving every step of the torture-interrogation of high profile suspects, so it seems likely that aggressive punishment of a U.S. soldier would need White House approval. The Manning case is high profile, and it is hard to believe Lt. Gen. Flynn would risk his career by torturing a soldier without approval from political leaders at the Pentagon and White House.
And Manning was kept in torturous conditions. Not only was he held in solitary for nine months, but he was also mistreated throughout that time. Manning’s confinement is detailed in the 109 page motion to dismiss filed by David Coombs. Manning was held in a windowless 6-by-8 cell in which he was not allowed to have any personal items. He was awakened at 5:00 AM and required to stay awake until 10 PM. Among the conditions of his confinement were as follows:
– He was not allowed to exercise in the cell.
– He was not permitted to lie down on his rack during the duty day.
– He was not permitted to lean his back against the cell wall; he had to sit upright on his rack without any back support.
– Manning was subjected to constant monitoring; the Brig guards were required to check on him every five minutes by asking him some variation of, “are you okay?” Manning was required to verbally respond in some affirmative manner. Guards were required to make notations every five minutes in a logbook.
– Some lights would remain on all night. At night, if the guards could not see him clearly, because he had a blanket over his head or he was curled up towards the wall, they would wake Manning in order to ensure that he was okay.
– Manning was only given a mattress and when he tried to fold the mattress to make a pillow Brig officials took it away and gave him a suicide mattress with a built-in pillow, only a couple of inches high, not really any better than sleeping on a flat mattress. Manning was not permitted regular sheets or blankets. Instead he was provided with a tear-proof security blanket. This blanket was extremely coarse and irritated Manning’s skin causing rashes and carpet burns. The blanket did not keep Manning warm due to its stiffness, did not contour to his body or retain heat.
– Manning was required to receive each of his meals alone in his cell. He was only permitted to eat with a spoon.
– Whenever Manning was moved outside his cell, he was shackled with metal hand and leg restraints and accompanied by at least two guards; the entire facility was locked down.
– He was not allowed to speak to other inmates and if he attempted to do so was stopped.
– Manning was permitted only 20 minutes of “sunshine call.” Aside from a 3-5 minute shower, this would be the only time he would regularly spend outside his cell. During this sunshine call, he would be brought to a small concrete yard and permitted to walk around the yard in hand and leg shackles, while being accompanied by a Brig guard at his immediate side (the guard would have his hand on Manning’s back). Two to three other guards would also be present observing Manning while he walked in figure-eights. He was not permitted to sit down or stay stationary.
After a protest in support of Manning outside of Quantico his conditons got worse. Guards harassed him to the point of bringing on a panic attack. He was placed on suicide watch and had his clothes taken away from him at night, from March 3, 2011, through March 7, 2011, he was forced to stand outside his cell naked during morning inspection.
How involved was Lt. Gen. Flynn in determining these unjustifiable conditions of confinement? During the last hearing, Coombs disclosed that Flynn was given detailed reports of minor details – he was even notified when Coombs visited his client. Further, the commander at Quantico said in one email that all decisions to relax confinement needed to be approved by Flynn. This was known up and down the chain of command at Quantico.
The Quantico command had been told what they needed to do, as the Coombs motion states: “keep PFC Manning subjected to the most rigorous conditions possible. So no matter what the psychiatrists recommended, week-after-week, month-after-month, nothing ever changed because everyone at the Brig had their marching orders from [redacted] who in turn had his marching orders from someone higher up in the chain of command.”
The psychiatrist, who was originally a Brig psychiatrist and later appointed to the Defense team, expressed extreme frustration about the “bizarre” circumstances at Quantico saying: “treating this is so … it’s just bizarre all the way around. I’m just surprised that they would become so intrusive because I’d be concerned about what that looks like later on. And they’ve not seemed to have any qualms at all about reaching down so heavy handed. And when I’ve asked … and again, there’s no documentation . . . It’s not an interrogation, I don’t think. He’s not been adjudicated, so there’s a lot of risk to putting too many services out there when somebody is in this pretrial situation. . . . They’re supposed to be assumed innocent. What you’re supposed to be doing is protecting where they’re not incriminating themselves. So, I don’t know. It’s been a bizarre thing … I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Are these conditions acceptable under military law?
In United States v. Fricke, 53 M.J. 149, 155 (C.A.A.F. 2000) the accused alleged that he was placed in solitary confinement for an extended period of time because prison officials were attempting to “break him.” The court indicated that “coercing a confession is not a legitimate governmental objective.”
Indeed the only legitimate purposes are to ensure the accused’s presence at trial and the security of the facility. In 2006’s United States v. Crawford, the Court of Appeals for the Armed Services found a constitutional violation is established where “conditions [are] unreasonable or arbitrary in relation to both purposes” of “ensuring … presence for trial and the security needs of the confinement facility.” Manning was an exemplary inmate who never gave Brig officials reason to believe he was a flight risk, making these harsh conditions, controlled from the Pentagon, impossible to defend.
As the Court of Appeal for the Armed Forces wrote in United States v. Combs, “the courts will not tolerate egregious, intentional misconduct by command where there is no evidence of a legitimate, non-punitive objective for the conduct complained of . . ..” What was the “legitimate, non-punitive objective” of Manning not being able to lean against the wall while seated in his cell, lying down in his cell between 5 AM and 10 PM, exercising in his cell, being forced to stand naked to get his clothes back or being verbally checked every five minutes and waking him from his sleep to see if he was alright? The only purpose of these limitations was to punish, humiliate or break Manning. No doubt Lt. Gen. Flynn is well aware of how these stress techniques can break a person.
Any claim that these abusive conditions were to protect Manning is undermined by the well-known negative impact of solitary confinement. Numerous federal courts having taken note of the serious negative consequences of such confinement. The fact is the confinement facility officials were actually causing Manning psychological harm, not protecting him from harm. Finally, the fact that as soon as he was sent to Ft. Leavenworth his conditions changed virtually overnight, demonstrate the conditons at Quantico were unnecessary.
In multiple cases, military courts have found that dismissal of all charges is an appropriate remedy for pre-trial punishment. Not only was Manning’s pre-trial confinement punishment in violation of military law, in addition after a 14-month investigation, the U. N. Special Rapporteur on torture Juan Méndez formally accused the U.S. government of “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The motion to dismiss, and the hidden emails, highlights the prosecution’s continuous withholding of material information from the defense in violation of law. The prosecutors’ obfuscation is resulting in a delay of the court martial so that Manning’s trial will occur nearly 1,000 days after his confinement in violation of speedy trial requirements. It is getting harder and harder to see how any remedy other than dismissal of the charges for outrageous government conduct would serve justice.
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.
Activists threaten legal action over failure to investigate
Corporations in the UK who used a secret “blacklisting” database to screen out ‘left wing trouble-makers’ and union sympathizers as potential job recruits are facing renewed scrutiny after the UK-activist group Liberty called for a fresh investigation Monday night.
A demonstration outside the Olympic site on March 1, 2011 was called in solidarity with the whistleblower who was fired for standing up for an illegally blacklisted workmate. The blacklist scandal first broke in 2008, when the UK media revealed that more than 40 leading employers had subscribed to the vetting service provided by The Consulting Association, which had surveillance files on more than 3,200 workers, including political activists, shop stewards and health and safety representatives.
Police seized the database three years ago and Ian Kerr, the founder of The Consulting Association, was fined only about $7,500. Invoices were discovered showing that 44 companies had paid to access the names on the list.
But full details of the material it contained only emerged as workers began to pursue legal action over their inclusion.
Liberty is now threatening to go to court to force the UK government to investigate the case, which it has compared in severity to the national press phone hacking scandal.
Corinna Ferguson, legal officer for Liberty, told the Independent: “We can’t believe the inaction of the Information Commissioner on a human-rights violation of such wide public interest.
“Contracting out the blacklisting of innocent workers, politicians and journalists is no better than farming out phone hacking to private detectives and the consequences for our democracy are just as grave. If we cannot persuade the Commissioner to discharge his public duty, we will consider seeking assistance from the courts.”
Mick Abbott, a 74-year-old ex-scaffolder, commented: “This nearly ruined my marriage and it meant that my children were on free meals at school. My file goes back to 1964 and the last entry says that I rekindled the campaign for justice for the Shrewsbury picketers in 2006. They have been watching me all these years and passing this information around, blighting my life over four decades.”
Steve Kelly, an electrician and spokesperson for the Blacklist Support Group said: “I was blacklisted because I was a union member and because I raised issues about safety. In 2007, [Sir Robert] McAlpine sacked me from the Colchester Barracks project after 2 days for refusing to work on a moving platform without proper training (exactly as we had been instructed in the site induction) – the dismissal is recorded on my blacklist file.
“Over the year I suffered severe financial strain, my wages were cut in half which caused immense stress paying bills and putting food on table. I was out of work for a year apart from few weeks here and there in 2001. Being sacked from Colchester Barracks after only two days piled up the stress and caused a nervous breakdown for me eventually.
“The blacklisting firms should be made to pay compensation for years lost and years in future. They should be made to employ blacklisted workers or not be awarded any public government backed contracts. An apology in national press and to individuals whose lives they ruined would be a start.”
The Police, FBI and Secret Service swarmed in and took Brandon Raub to John Randolph Metal Hospital. This patriotic Marine had posted 5 posts on the Dont-Tread-On.Me blog linked below. Just glancing over them they seem to be of the religious and patriotic fight for truth and justice. He used the blog to have people join his FaceBook group and even did and promoted a Richmond Liberty March.
I looked through my email to see if there was any emails between the two of us and I did not find any, although I am sure there was as I would not have given him access to post on the blog if I did not.
There are a couple of lessons I want everyone to know form what little information we have from this incident.
1. Delete Facebook.I did a video for The Greatest Truth Never Told series called Delete Facebook giving a non conspiracy reason why people should quit FaceBook as it is destroying our lives. Now you should all see the conspiracy reason why you should Delete Facebook. This incident proves that it is just a huge monitoring tool for the Elite to track and build a profile of you. You give willingly the details of your political leaning, friends, interests. The hidden influence of the CIA through In-Q-Tel is becoming more and more visible.
2. This is designed to create a chilling effect to people speaking out and more importantly to keep sheeple from look at us for the Truth. I stated in the 3 Coming False Flags that the Elite would eventually criminalize or restrict our freedom of speech of the Freedom Movement. The Elite know the economic collapse is going to bring about the Anger Phase of the Awakening. They are actively preparing for riots and civil war. The thing that I find amazing is that these .gov people don’t ask why they are preparing for Civil War? What could make people so mad to want to go to war? Well since the Elite know the collapse of the dollar is coming they are conditioning their minions for that collapse. What these people should realize is that their paychecks are going to bounce and their entire life’ savings are going to be robbed.
3. Non violent, non compliance is a smart and effective strategy. Walking away from the paradigm is the best way of resisting the paradigm. Anyone physically pushing back will be taken down as it is of the same consciousness of those that are spreading debt and death throughout the world. Go peacefully if you are arrested, but question them on why and for what reason. You ask the questions and you should give no answers. You still have the right to keep quiet and ask for a lawyer. Unless you are really good under pressure I would suggest you just say nothing accept for asking for your lawyer. Also family members need to shut their mouths too as they immediately go after their friends and family in phone interviews.
4. Video tape everything you can. If you are confronted record every aspect not only to protect yourself, your rights and keep the story straight but also for a future law suit. You have every right to record every confrontation, I would be discreet about it because you don’t want an officer break the law and take your evidence. This is also very important to help keep your narrative straight as you will be told a lot of lies along the way.
5. Apparently questioning the government is a mental condition. Brandon was immediately brought to John Randolph Mental Hospital. The use of psychology was very common to political tool the Soviets and the Nazis to silence political opposition. Look at what Vladimir Putin is doing in Russia.
6. You get more flak the closer you get to the target. We must be coming very close to the collapse date with all of the things that are going on. I recommend that people stock up on food and gear and get ready to ride out the storm.
I hope to get more details as they develop and eventually I hope to thoroughly de-brief Brandon as soon as he can.
Join the Insider mailing list at the top right hand side of the blog for email updates.
Here are the 5 articles from Brandon Raub on the Dont-Tread-On.Me site.
The FinFisher spyware made by U.K.- based Gamma Group likely has previously undisclosed global reach, with computers on at least five continents showing signs of being command centers that run the intrusion tool, according to cybersecurity experts.
FinFisher can secretly monitor computers — intercepting Skype calls, turning on Web cameras and recording every keystroke. It is marketed by Gamma for law enforcement and government use.
Bloomberg News reported July 25 that researchers believe they identified copies of FinFisher, following an examination of malware e-mailed to Bahraini activists. Their work, led by security researcher Morgan Marquis-Boire, was published the same day by the University of Toronto Munk School of Global Affairs’ Citizen Lab. Photographer: Jacob Kepler/Bloomberg
Research published last month based on e-mails obtained by Bloomberg News showed activists from the Persian Gulf kingdom of Bahrain were targeted by what looked like the software, sparking a hunt for further clues to the product’s deployment.
In new findings, a team, led by Claudio Guarnieri of Boston-based security risk-assessment company Rapid7, analyzed how the presumed FinFisher samples from Bahrain communicated with their command computer. They then compared those attributes with a global scan of computers on the Internet.
The survey has so far come up with what it reports as matches in Australia, the Czech Republic, Dubai, Ethiopia, Estonia, Indonesia, Latvia, Mongolia, Qatar and the U.S.
Guarnieri, a security researcher based in Amsterdam, said that the locations aren’t proof that the governments of any of these countries use Gamma’s FinFisher. It’s possible that Gamma clients use computers based in other nations to run their FinFisher systems, he said in an interview.
‘Active Fingerprinting’
“They are simply the results of an active fingerprinting of a unique behavior associated with what is believed to be the FinFisher infrastructure,” he wrote in his report, which Rapid7 is publishing today on its blog at https://community.rapid7.com/community/infosec/blog.
The emerging picture of the commercially available spyware’s reach shines a light on the growing, global marketplace for cyber weapons with potential consequences.
“Once any malware is used in the wild, it’s typically only a matter of time before it gets used for nefarious purposes,” Guarnieri wrote in his report. “It’s impossible to keep this kind of thing under control in the long term.”
In response to questions about Guarnieri’s findings, Gamma International GmbH managing director Martin J. Muench said a global scan by third parties would not reveal servers running the FinFisher product in question, which is called FinSpy.
“The core FinSpy servers are protected with firewalls,” he said in an Aug. 4 e-mail.
Gamma International
Muench, who is based in Munich, has said his company didn’t sell FinFisher spyware to Bahrain. He said he’s investigating whether the samples used against Bahraini activists were stolen demonstration copies or were sold via a third party.
Gamma International GmbH in Germany is part of U.K.-based Gamma Group. The group also markets FinFisher through Andover, England-based Gamma International UK Ltd. Muench leads the FinFisher product portfolio.
Muench says that Gamma complies with the export regulations of the U.K., U.S. and Germany.
It was unclear which, if any, government agencies in the countries Guarnieri identified are Gamma clients.
Officials in Ethiopia’s Communications Minister, Qatar’s foreign ministry and Mongolia’s president’s office didn’t immediately return phone calls seeking comment or respond to questions. Dubai’s deputy commander of police said he has no knowledge of such programs when reached on his mobile phone.
Australia’s department of foreign affairs and trade said in an e-mailed statement it does not use FinFisher software. A spokesman at the Czech Republic’s interior ministry said he has no information of Gamma being used there, nor any knowledge of its use at other state institutions.
Violating Human Rights?
At Indonesia’s Ministry of Communications, head of public relations Gatot S. Dewa Broto said that to his knowledge the government doesn’t use that program, or ones that do similar things, because it would violate privacy and human rights in that country. The ministry got an offer to purchase a similar program about six months ago but declined, he said, unable to recall the name of the company pitching it.
The Estonian Information Systems Authority RIA has not detected any exposure to FinSpy, a spokeswoman said. Neither has Latvia’s information technologies security incident response institution, according to a technical expert there.
Bloomberg News reported July 25 that researchers believe they identified copies of FinFisher, following an examination of malware e-mailed to Bahraini activists. Their work, led by security researcher Morgan Marquis-Boire, was published the same day by the University of Toronto Munk School of Global Affairs’ Citizen Lab.
‘Hallo Steffi’
The new study builds on those findings, using the same samples of malicious software.
Guarnieri’s study found, among other things, that the Bahrain server answered anyone connecting to it with the message, “Hallo Steffi.”
The investigators then found this pattern in other computers by searching data from an Internet survey research project, Critical.IO, which has been cataloging publicly accessible computers around the world.
The researchers then developed a map that shows the location of the servers, along with their unique IP addresses on the Internet.
Gamma’s Muench said none of its server components sends out strings such as “Hallo Steffi.”
The earlier Citizen Lab research linked the malware sent to the activists to FinSpy, part of the FinFisher spyware tool kit.
The Citizen Lab research showed the malware took screen shots, intercepted voice-over-Internet calls and transmitted a record of every keystroke to a computer in Manama, the capital of Bahrain, which has been gripped by tension since a government crackdown on protests last year.
Muench said the computer found in Manama isn’t a FinFisher product. Instead, the server very likely runs custom-built software used to forward traffic between two or more other systems, he said.
Big Brother is watching. No kidding. And the warning is coming from none other than Google, which says government spies may be spying on you. Some believe the Google announcement may be related to the recent discovery of the data-mining virus named “Flame.” In a June 3 New York Times article, Andrew Kramer and Nicole Perlroth write1:
“When Eugene Kaspersky, the founder of Europe’s largest antivirus company, discovered the Flame virus that is afflicting computers in Iran and the Middle East, he recognized it as a technologically sophisticated virus that only a government could create.
He also recognized that the virus, which he compares to the Stuxnet virus built by programmers employed by the United States and Israel, adds weight to his warnings of the grave dangers posed by governments that manufacture and release viruses on the internet.
“Cyberweapons are the most dangerous innovation of this century,” he told a gathering of technology company executives… While the United States and Israel are using the weapons to slow the nuclear bomb-making abilities of Iran, they could also be used to disrupt power grids and financial systems or even wreak havoc with military defenses.”
Mr. Kaspersky claims he was called in to investigate the new virus on behalf of the International Telecommunication Union, an agency of the United Nations. The virus was allegedly erasing files on computers belonging to the Iranian oil ministry.
What makes the Flame virus a major potential concern for common citizens of the world is the fact that it’s the first virus found with the ability to spread wirelessly by attaching itself to Bluetooth-enabled devices.
Once there, it can not only trace and steal information stored on those devices; according to Kramer and Perlroth the program also contains a “microbe” command that can activate any microphone within the device, record whatever is going on at the time—presumably whether you’re actually using the device or not—and transmit audio files back to the attacker. This, clearly, has huge privacy implications were it to be deployed against civilian populations.
New Revelations about the Links Between Flame and Stuxnet
While cybersecurity experts initially claimed there were no links between the earlier Stuxnet worm and the Flame virus, a recent article on The Verge now reports that the two are undoubtedly related2. Joshua Kopstein writes:
“[I]n examining an earlier version of Stuxnet, the lab’s researchers now find that they were wrong: a previously overlooked module within the virus is now providing the “missing link” between the two pieces of malware. The module in question… matches very closely with a module used by an early version Flame. “It was actually so similar, that it made our automatic system classify it as Stuxnet,” wrote Alexander Gostev… indicating that the module was likely the seed of both viruses. “We think it’s actually possible to talk about a ‘Flame’ platform, and that this particular module was created based on its source code.”
The new evidence suggests that Stuxnet and Flame are two sides of the same coin, with the former built for sabotage and the latter for surveillance. But researchers also say that the Flame platform pre-dated Stuxnet and its sister, Duqu, and was likely built in the Summer of 2008.”
InformationWeek Security recently offered the following advice3:“… Microsoft has been working quickly to patch the certificate bug exploited by Flame. Notably, Microsoft released an update Friday [June 8] for Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) 3.0 Service Pack 2 (SP2), which according to the release notes “strengthens the WSUS communication channels … [by] trusting only files that are issued by the Microsoft Update certification authority.”
Microsoft is also set to issue an update Tuesday–as part of its monthly Patch Tuesday–that will further update all supported versions of Windows to block Flame. Security experts are recommending that all users install the update as soon as possible, since attackers will likely attempt to use the certificate vulnerability before it becomes widely patched. “Apply the certificate patch released a week ago today if you haven’t done so already,” said SANS Institute chief research officer Johannes B. Ullrich in a blog post. “This way, no patch signed by the bad certificate should be accepted tomorrow. Patch Tuesday is one of the best dates to launch such an attack, as you do expect patches anyway.”
When installing the update, however, do so preferably only if using a trusted environment. “Avoid patches while ‘on the road.’ Apply them in your home [or] work network whenever possible,” said Ullrich. “This doesn’t eliminate the chance of a ‘man in the middle’ (MitM) attack, but it reduces the likelihood.”
For users who must update while on the road, perhaps because they travel frequently, always use a VPN connection back to the corporate network, said Ullrich, since hotel networks can be malware and attack hotbeds. “Hotel networks and public hotspots frequently use badly configured HTTP proxies that can be compromised and many users expect bad SSL certificates–because of ongoing MitM attacks,” he said.”
Spy Central: Utah
In related news, Wired Magazine recently reported that the US government is building a massive spy center, right in the heart of Mormon country, in Bluffdale, Utah4–so massive, in fact, that once finished, the facility will be five times larger than the US Capitol.
According to Wired Magazine:
“Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013.
Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.
But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes.
And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US.
The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”[Emphasis mine]
That about says it all. And for those of you still under the mistaken belief that the US government does not have the authority to spy on its citizens, consider the following:
“… [The NSA] has undergone the largest building boom in its history, including installing secret electronic monitoring rooms in major US telecom facilities. Controlled by the NSA, these highly secured spaces are where the agency taps into the US communications networks, a practice that came to light during the Bush years but was never acknowledged by the agency. The broad outlines of the so-called warrantless-wiretapping program have long been exposed…
In the wake of the program’s exposure, Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which largely made the practices legal. Telecoms that had agreed to participate in the illegal activity were granted immunity from prosecution and lawsuits. What wasn’t revealed until now, however, was the enormity of this ongoing domestic spying program.
For the first time, a former NSA official has gone on the record to describe the program, codenamed Stellar Wind, in detail…
As chief and one of the two cofounders of the agency’s Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center, [William] Binney and his team designed much of the infrastructure that’s still likely used to intercept international and foreign communications. He explains that the agency could have installed its tapping gear at the nation’s cable landing stations—the more than two dozen sites on the periphery of the US where fiber-optic cables come ashore.
If it had taken that route, the NSA would have been able to limit its eavesdropping to just international communications, which at the time was all that was allowed under US law.
Instead it chose to put the wiretapping rooms at key junction points throughout the country… thus gaining access to not just international communications but also to most of the domestic traffic flowing through the US. The network of intercept stations goes far beyond the single room in an AT&T building in San Francisco exposed by a whistle-blower in 2006. “I think there’s 10 to 20 of them,” Binney says… The eavesdropping on Americans doesn’t stop at the telecom switches. To capture satellite communications in and out of the US, the agency also monitors AT&T’s powerful earth stations…
… Binney suggested a system for monitoring people’s communications according to how closely they are connected to an initial target. The further away from the target—say you’re just an acquaintance of a friend of the target—the less the surveillance. But the agency rejected the idea, and, given the massive new storage facility in Utah, Binney suspects that it now simply collects everything…”
To learn more, I highly recommend reading the featured Wired article5 in its entirety. It’s a fascinating read, but it will not likely make you sleep better at night. The full article is available on their website and is free to view.
Google Also in the Privacy News
Beginning the first week of June, Google will warn you every time it picks up activity on your computer account that looks suspiciously like someone trying to monitor your computer activities. Google won’t say how it figured out that state-sponsored attackers may be attempting to compromise your account or computer. But it’s promised to let you know if it thinks Big Brother is tuned in to what you’re doing.
As recently reported on the New York Times’ blog6, the warning will pop up at the top of your Gmail inbox, Google home page, or Chrome browser, stating:
“Warning: We believe state-sponsored attackers may be attempting to compromise your account or computer.”
According to a Google blog post by Eric Grosse, VP of Security Engineering at Google7:
“If you see this warning it does not necessarily mean that your account has been hijacked. It just means that we believe you may be a target, of phishing or malware for example, and that you should take immediate steps to secure your account.
Here are some things you should do immediately: create a unique password that has a good mix of capital and lowercase letters, as well punctuation marks and numbers; enable 2-step verification as additional security; and update your browser, operating system, plugins, and document editors.
Attackers often send links to fake sign-in pages to try to steal your password, so be careful about where you sign in to Google and look for https://accounts.google.com/ in your browser bar. These warnings are not being shown because Google’s internal systems have been compromised or because of a particular attack.”
The Next Big War Zone = the Internet
Unless you’ve been living under a rock this past year, you’ve surely heard about the repeated attempts to restrict your online freedom and grant government near limitless control over the internet and its content.
It began in January with the introduction of two proposed laws in US Congress: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). While “sold” as laws to address online copyright infringement, most of which allegedly arise from outside the US, both laws contained measures capable of severely restricting online freedom of speech and harm web sites and online communities of all kinds, including this one. After tens of millions of people rose up in various protests, both online and by hitting the pavement, both bills were “indefinitely postponed.”
Many have warned, however, that the bills are not “dead” and are likely to return.
It didn’t take long for the next round. In April, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) was brought forth, and quickly became described by opponents as an even greater threat to internet freedom than SOPA and PIPA. I won’t go into any detailed discussion on these bills here, but simply want to bring your attention to the fact that bills such as these three, while dressed up as laws that will protect you and save you money, are poorly guised attempts to gut privacy laws and open the door for a totalitarian takeover of the internet and its content.
Campaign for Liberty8 is continuing its fight to stop another government intrusion, warning that this coming December, the United Nations will also be meeting to compile even more recommendations for international internet regulations.
While it may seem hopeless at times, I urge you to take an active role anytime the opportunity presents itself to take a stand. I personally believe internet freedom and health freedom go hand in hand these days, as a majority of people get a majority of their health information from freely available web sites such as mine.
If Squelching In formation Freedom Doesn ‘t Work, What’s Next?
The draconian advancements in surveillance do not end with the erection of a massive spy central and ever-increasing attacks on internet freedom. We also have some 63 drone launch sites within the US9, and the US military has admitted it now has drone technology in the form of tiny mechanical insects, equipped with cameras, microphones, and DNA sampling capabilities10.
Besides that, there’s an ever-expanding arsenal of so-called “active denial weapons”—directed energy weapons that can scatter or incapacitate those in its path, by a variety of means11. Such weapons are already being used domestically by various law enforcement agencies for crowd control. Then there are more sinister signs of readiness for domestic combat. In April, news reports began circulating questioning the Department of Homeland Security’s rationale for purchasing 450 million rounds of hollow point bullets12
A report by RT News reads:
“The department has yet to discuss why they are ordering such a massive bevy of bullets for an agency that has limited need domestically for doing harm, but they say they expect to continue receiving shipments from the manufacturer for the next five years, during which they plan to blow through enough ammunition to execute more people than there are in the entire United States.
… the choice — and quantity — of its hollow point order raises a lot of questions about future plans for the DHS… On their website, the contractor claims that the ammunition is specifically designed so that it can pass through a variety of obstructions and offers “optimum penetration for terminal performance.” Or, in other words, this is the kind of bullet designed to stop any object dead in its tracks and, if emptied into the hands of the DHS a few hundred million times, just might do as much.
… As the DHS gains more and more ground in fighting terrorism domestically, the US at the same time has turned the tables to make its definition of terrorist way less narrow. With any American blogger or free thinking on the fringe of what the government can go after under H.R. 347, or the National Defense Authorization Act that allows for the indefinite detention of US citizens without charge, the DHS could just be blasting through what’s left of its budget to make sure that its roster of agents across the country can get in their target practice over the next few years.”
Without Online Freedom, You Cannot Exercise Health Freedom
Some of you may at this point wonder why I report on an issue such as this, so let me make this point clear. Access to health information could easily be deemed a “threat” to national welfare—especially when web sites such as this one publish information that contradicts the official government stance. Examples such as advising women against national mammography screening standards, or raising concerns about vaccine safety, or questioning conventional cancer treatments could all be considered a threat to an extremely profitable status quo.
In such a scenario, they could simply shut Mercola.com, and others like us, down; leaving you with no truth-telling, corruption-exposing, alternative voices other than the officially sponsored viewpoint. And it should be quite clear by now that the government-sanctioned stance on most issues relating to health and diet are primarily dictated by powerful lobbying groups furthering financially-driven industry agendas that have absolutely nothing to do with optimizing health and longevity.
Don’t Be Fooled—Internet Security Bills are Likely Nothing of the Sort
Interestingly enough, CISPA is promoted primarily as a cyber security bill, which brings us full circle back to where this article started. Recall, the Flame virus has surveillance capabilities that far surpass previous viruses and worms that may collect or destroy data. In fact, its capability to transfer to Bluetooth-enabled gadgets and secretly activate microphones renders it perfect for spying on anyone and everyone, anywhere, at any time… which is exactly the plan, if you believe the information detailed in the featured Wired Magazine article above.
It’s interesting to note the rationale used when trying sell us this bill. According to an April 26 report in the International Business Times13:
“Co-sponsor Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., says CISPA provides essential tools for repelling online security threats: “Without important, immediate changes to American cyber security policy, I believe our country will continue to be at risk for a catastrophic attack on our nation’s vital networks, networks that power our homes, provide our clean water or maintain the other critical services we use every day.”
Sounds like he was talking about an eventuality just like the Flame virus, or the older Stuxnet worm, for that matter—both of which, incidentally, appear to have targeted Iranian oil- and nuclear facilities, and neither of which has been officially traced back to any country or agency, despite our already overwhelming security apparatus—just over a month before Flame was discovered by a Russian antivirus company which, by the way, currently employs the virus hunter who discovered Stuxnet in 2010.
I’ll leave the meaning of such coincidences for you to ponder. But suffice it to say, it does not bode well if a law like CISPA is enacted that allows companies and governments to share information collected online, especially when combined with a massive data-mining virus that can skip around from one wireless piece of technology to another, from computers to cell phones to iPads, gathering data on every single social network contact every single person has, and audio files on every single conversation any one might have at any point in time. Especially now that we will shortly have the facility to store and “process” all that data.
In closing, I will simply urge you to take efforts at curbing online freedom and extending the government’s reach seriously, and whenever such efforts are launched, take action to help preserve your right to health freedom, which is closely tied to the right to online freedom of speech.
We’ve certainly talked quite a bit about the institutional-level corruption of the way Congress and lobbying works, but a recent This American Life episode, done in partnership with thePlanet Money team takes a much deeper dive into how lobbying works. You absolutely should listen to it. It’s really fascinating, even for folks who follow a lot of this stuff. There is also a full transcript, but hearing the whole thing is quite fascinating. Among the elements that are most interesting are the details of just how much time and effort goes into politicians raising money, and how the various fundraisers work.
But one thing that struck me in listening to it, was a comment made towards the end by (former) Senator Russ Feingold, who points out that while most people think of lobbying as bribery, they often have the picture backwards. It’s extortion:
I’ve had conversations with Democratic givers out here in the Bay Area and I’ll tell you, you wouldn’t believe the requests they’re getting. The opening ante is a million dollars. It’s not, gee, it’d be nice if you give a million. That’s sort of the baseline. This is unprecedented. And, in fact, one thing that John and I experienced was that sometimes the corporations that didn’t like the system would come to us and say, you know, you guys, it’s not legalized bribery, it’s legalized extortion. Because it’s not like the company CEO calls up to say, gee, I’d love to give you some money. It’s usually the other way around. The politician or their agent who’s got the Super PAC, they’re the ones that are calling up and asking for the money.
This is actually confirmed much earlier in the show, when former lobbyist Jimmy Williams explains that part of the job of the lobbyist is to avoid calls from politicians who are always asking for money:
Jimmy Williams: A lot of them would call and say, “Hey, can you host an event for me?” And you never want to say no. Actually, no. You always want to say no. In fact, you always want to say no. But, you could look on your phone with these caller IDs and you would be like, really? I’m not taking that call.
Alex Blumberg: Oh, so you would dodge calls for fundraising?
Jimmy Williams: Oh yeah. Every lobbyist does. Are you kidding? You spend most of your time dodging phone calls. Oh yeah.
What’s equally stunning as you listen to it, is how much everyone seems to dislike the system. The politicians hate having to spend many hours each day fundraising (which they do from phone banks across the street from the Capitol, because they’re not allowed to do it from their offices). The lobbyists hate having to focus on raising money for the politicians. The donors hate getting the calls asking for more money. One politicians talks about how he burned out all his friends:
Walt Minnick: You essentially wear out your friends and you wear out the people who are your natural supporters, because if someone writes you one check or comes to a fundraiser, they get on a list. And three or four months later you call them back again. And the best thing about being an ex-congressman is my friends now return my phone calls.
The show concludes with a fascinating discussion between Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold, who famously passed campaign finance reform a decade or so ago, only to see most of what they worked for get tossed aside by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United case. McCain explains that the Supreme Court ruled the way it did because it simply has no idea how corrupt the political system is today:
John McCain: At first, I was outraged. The day that Russ and I went over and observed the arguments, the questions that were asked, the naivety of the questions that were asked and the arrogance of some of the questioners, it was just stunning. Particularly Scalia with his sarcasm. Why shouldn’t these people be able to engage in this process? Why do you want to restrict them from their rights of free speech? And the questions they asked showed they had not the slightest clue as to what a political campaign is all about and the role of money that it plays in political campaigns. And I remember when Russ and I walked out of there, I said, Russ, we’re going to lose and it’s because they are clueless. Remember that day we were over there, Russ?
Russ Feingold: Absolutely, John. I couldn’t agree with you more. It clearly was one of the worst decisions ever of the Supreme Court. The trouble with this issue– and I think John would agree with this– is people have gotten so down about it, they think it’s always been this way. Well, it’s never been this way, since 1907. It’s never been the case that when you buy toothpaste or detergent or a gallon of gas, that the next day that money can be used on a candidate that you don’t believe in. That’s brand new. That’s never happened since the Tillman act and the Taft Hartley Act. And so, people have to realize this is a whole new deal. It’s not business as usual.
So why doesn’t it get fixed? Well, because the people in power now know how to use the system to win, so they’re afraid to mess with it, and potentially lose their ability to use the system as it stands now to succeed.
Russ Feingold: We managed to get– against all odds, we did get people. It took a lot of hard work. Now the problem is, of course, is people are reticent to do that because they got elected under the system.
Alex Blumberg: So it’s just fear of change?
Russ Feingold: Sure. When you win a certain way, your people say to you, hey, this is how we do it and this is how we won. We better not mess with success. I think that’s one of the problems in this presidential race, where not only the Republicans, but even my candidate, President Obama, has opened the door to this unlimited money through some of his people. It’s hard to get people to change something after they win that way. And that’s one of my worries about it.
It really is worth listening to the whole thing if you want to understand the institutional, unavoidable level of corruption in DC — even if it’s not the way you may have suspected it worked. The folks at Planet Money have also done some follow up stories that are interesting, including a detailing of the most and least lucrative committee assignments. In the full episode, they explain that committee assignments are all a part of the corrupt process. If you get on a “good” committee (define by its ability to raise more money from lobbyists), it also means that your party demands that you pay more money back to the party, or you may lose that lucrative committee seat. Still, it may surprise some folks that the least lucrative position is on the Judiciary Committee. That’s the committee that handled SOPA and PIPA… which involved no shortage of lobbyists. The cynical voice in the back of my head wonders if part of the SOPA/PIPA fight was really about turning the Judiciary Committee into a cash-flow positive committee, rather than a cash-flow negative committee.
If you’ve got the money, it looks like you could eat all your meals (and have some drinks) at fundraisers.
And if you’re wondering where these fundraisers happen? Planet Money has mapped those out as well. The most common locations happen to (conveniently) form a ring around the Capitol:
No reason to travel very far to collect your money, I guess…
James Stewart, the 65-year-old raw “milk man” and founder of Rawesome Foods, was assaulted near his home today by three armed men driving unmarked luxury vehicles with no license plates. Carrying firearms on their hips and dressed in gangster-style street clothes, Satanic T-shirt imagery and tattoos, they claimed to be making an “arrest” and verbally assaulted James, sprayed pepper spray in his face, then forced his head against a car and screamed, according to witnesses, “You better listen to me or you’re gonna have a bad f*ckin’ day!”
James Stewart’s cell phone was on the entire time, and a phone witness told NaturalNews the arrest was conducted “Nazi style.” Meanwhile, James was screaming to anyone who would listen, “HELP ME! HELP ME! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?”
A partial video of the incident was captured by a witness. The redness in the face of James Stewart is due to the pepper spray assault. That video link is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYTP9C7jtrI
James was wanted on $130,000 in bail by Ventura County, which had originally put him on $1 million bail — an amount usually reserved for murderers, rapists or serial killers. James, accused of selling “unpasteurized milk” through Rawesome Foods, was made the target of an FDA-funded and politically motivated attempt to destroy the raw milk industry in California. He has been charged with financial crimes by Ventura County even though there is literally no legitimate evidence whatsoever linking James to any such crimes, and the entire case is already in the process of being unraveled.
In the Ventura case, there is no crime, no evidence, and not even any justifiable reason to arrest James and put him on bail in the first place! The entire thing was utterly fabricated as a publicity stunt to attempt to intimidate would-be raw milk producers.
Bounty hunters drive cars with no plates, carry weapons, intimidate witnesses
In the arrest video, James clearly says, “Sir I was trying to give you the information that I thought Mr. McAfee was giving to me.” James is referring to Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures, California’s largest organic milk producer. NaturalNews has confirmed that Mark McAfee, among several other people, had helped fund James Stewart’s bail bond. According to James Stewart, who phoned from Ventura county jail, Mark McAfee was present at the “arrest” and watched the bounty hunters take James away.
UPDATE: Readers of this story were asking for more details and comments on Mark McAfee. As this story is moving quickly, some of the relevant details haven’t yet been reported. Mark had really gone out on a limb to help bail out James Stewart, even putting up his own house as collateral. When James failed to make a recent court appearance in Ventura — because he had decided to fight the malicious charges against him from outside the system — this put McAfee and other people at financial risk. McAfee, in particular, had mortgaged his house to raise some of this bail money, which I believe came to $100,000 on McAfee’s part. This money would have been forfeited had James not been taken into custody by the bounty hunters.
It’s not yet clear whether McAfee had anything to do with leading the bounty hunters to James. Many people suspect so, and opinion is currently divided over whether this was a reluctant but important act of financial preservation or a betrayal of a key figure in the raw food community. I intend to reach out to McAfee to ask for his accounting of events, if he is willing to go on the record with comments. My history with McAfee has so far been a positive one, and I have known him to be a strong advocate of raw food freedom and someone who clearly went out of his way to help James Stewart make his bail.
Bounty hunters verbally intimidate witnesses
During the so-called “arrest,” one of the bounty hunters attempts to verbally intimidate the person filming the video, threatening them by saying, “You’re interfering with an arrest, you’re blocking traffic.” In reality, the bounty hunter never identified himself, never read James any rights and was not involved in any legal arrest whatsoever. The whole thing was a charade carried out by what might appear to a rational person to be armed thugs driving stolen vehicles while impersonating undercover police officers.
In the video, what appears to be a firearm can be seen on the hip of one of the men wearing a pink shirt. At no point during the assault did these men show any badges or identification of any kind. According to California law, “All bounty hunters must carry with them a certification of completion of required courses and training programs.”
According to witnesses, these armed men did not produce any certificates at all. Instead, they verbally intimidated the people filming the incident. One of the bounty hunters called the camera person a “retard” for daring to film him.
We can hear on the video another bounty hunter saying, “You’re in a lot of trouble, you better get an attorney!” During all this, they are rifling through James’ pockets and apparently stealing all his personal belongings. “You are in a lot more trouble than anybody up here,” one of them says to James. “You are in a lot of trouble.”
Over raw milk? Really? Is this what California has come to now? If you sell unpasteurized milk, you get accosted by three armed men driving unlicensed (stolen?) vehicles, working for the state?
“We are not the police…”
When the witnesses filming the incident asked for the badge numbers of the individuals who claimed to be making an “arrest,” they were told, “We’re not the police so we’re not gonna give you badge numbers.”
Later in the video, a close-up image appears for one of the license plates of the luxury vehicles used by the armed assailants. It is clearly an Infinity car dealership plate number KMA-367. The vehicle is a white Infinity luxury sedan.
The other vehicle, which also has no California license plate, is a black sports car. While James is being stuffed into one of the vehicles, one of the bounty hunters calls him a “scumbag.”
James has privately told me, the editor of NaturalNews, that he fears if he is taken back to jail, he will be tortured, subjected to starvation or even murdered by the authorities there. This may be more likely than you think, because the outright criminality of California officials who persecuted James Stewart is now being exposed.
For example, NaturalNews has already exposed Michelle LeCavalier and L.A. district attorney prosecutors for illegally signing search warrants and conducting armed raids on Rawesome Foods even though they had never taken an oath of office as required by California law (http://www.naturalnews.com/036523_Rawesome_District_Attorney_imperson…).
This means the armed raid against Rawesome Foods, the arrest of James Stewart and all the actions taken against him were illegal. Furthermore, James now has a potential multi-million-dollar civil case against Los Angeles County — and possibly individuals in Ventura County — for false arrest, kidnapping and violating his civil rights while they were “impersonating” officials.
Given these circumstances, James has legitimate reason to fear that county authorities there — who almost certainly staged the armed bounty hunter interception of James last night — may quite literally be trying to kill him.
James told me on the phone many times, “I love live, I will not give up. If they say I committed suicide, it means they killed me, Mike. They’re gonna try to kill me.”
That James was stuffed into unmarked, unlicensed cars driven by intimidating-looking men carrying weapons and verbally threatening witnesses at the scene only further supports the legitimacy of James’ fear.
Let Ventura County know we are watching and that we demand the charges against James be dropped
Here, I ask for your support to let the Ventura County DA’s office know we are watching them, and we hold them responsible for the treatment of James.
Call the main DA’s office at 805-654-2500 and let them know that you are joining tens of thousands of other people who are watching this and carefully scrutinizing their behavior. The Ventura County case against James Stewart is, I can assure you, utterly fabricated and completely without merit. It should be immediately dropped and James set free.
Ventura County has been waging a “war of personal vengeance” against Stewart (http://www.naturalnews.com/035197_James_Stewart_Sharon_Palmer_Ventura…). Both Ventura and L.A. counties have spent millions of dollars in taxpayer money in an attempt to incarcerate a raw milk man! A senior citizen! The man is 65 years old, utterly non-violent in every way, and yet has been targeted in the most vicious manner by district attorneys who apparently don’t have any real criminals to go after.
Questions remain about the “arrest” of James Stewart
Some serious questions emerge tonight from the “hunting down” of James Stewart by Ventura county:
• What crime has James allegedly committed that is so serious it justifies $130,000 in bail bonds?
• Where is the evidence of such crimes? (It doesn’t exist!)
• Why are armed individuals who claim to be working for the county running around Ventura with unlicensed vehicles that appear to be stolen off the new car lot of an Infinity dealership?
• Why were these “bounty hunters” dressed in Satanic imagery and sporting gang-style facial hair and tattoos while driving high-dollar luxury cars?
• Why were they so verbally abusive to James Stewart, calling him a “scumbag” if they were just bounty hunters looking to earn a paycheck?
• How were these bounty hunters able to locate James Stewart in the first place? Were they tipped off by someone?
• What will happen to James Stewart in Ventura county jail? Will they torture him? Will they silence him? Will they drop the charges and apologize?
This story is developing here on NaturalNews.com. We will continue to bring you details as we speak with witnesses and investigate more deeply. Share this story. Spread the word: No one who sells real food in California is safe from the “authorities” there. You can and will be targeted, kidnapped, robbed at gunpoint by the police, then tortured in the jail system.
Information technology, among all that it does, brings together two things which are wonderful when apart, and frightening when combined: children, and sex. For the past couple decades, this has, understandably, freaked us all out. We need to calm down and have a talk about it.
In his defense of freedom of “icky speech”, Neil Gaiman observed, “The Law is a blunt instrument. It’s not a scalpel. It’s a club.” This exemplifies how much of the world has reacted to the intersection of technology, sex, and children: by wildly flailing around with a gigantic legal club, more often smashing itself in the head than solving any problems. Let’s explore how:
Kids Looking At Pornography
The Internet is really, really great for porn. Porn is so easy to find online that even a child could do it. The problem, so it would seem, is that this is exactly what children end up doing. And as they approach and go through puberty, boy oh boy do they find porn.
Such porn-finding is unstoppable. Nobody ever clicks “No, I am not 18 years of age or older” when visiting a porn site. No web filtering software can stand up to the resourcefulness of a curious and hormonal teenager. No law will convince a maturing human being not to seek out sexually explicit material. The underage psyche interprets barriers to pornography as damage, and routes around it.
For some reason, this is seen as a bad thing. Exposure to graphic depictions of sex are considered somehow harmful to children, teenagers, and anyone below the arbitrary age of 18, 21, or whatever. But as generations of kids raised on surreptitiously-accessed Internet porn grow older, little evidence of harm shows itself. Rampant porn-viewing hasn’t been shown to increase rates of sexual assault or sexual violence; in fact increasing availability of porn has correlated with a decline in rape. On that note, what pornography may also do is aid in young people’s exploration and discovery of their own sexualities as they mature — a hypothesis which, if true, isn’t particularly malignant.
Yet, we insist on criminalizing this perfectly normal behavior by sexually developing human beings. In many cases, this illegality concerns the willful distribution of pornography to a minor — giving the pornographer, not the minor, the blame. But here’s the thing: nobody has to distribute or market pornography to a minor. They’ll find it all by themselves.
Kids Willfully Creating “Pornography”
It starts to get a bit more problematic when that exploration goes beyond passive viewing; apparently, kids these days are into something called “sexting”. At its most innocuous, a child or teenager snaps a nude or sexually explicit photo of themselves, and sends it (often via MMS) to a friend, crush, or significant other. All of a sudden, through their own free will, the kid’s become a child pornographer.
Of course, this behavior is far from unique to minors. Information technology has enabled consenting adults from all walks of life to share sexually explicit imagery of themselves with one another. MMSes and emails between friends aren’t even the half of it. Webcams and video chat software weren’t on the scene for five minutes before somebody realized that they could be used to transmit their genitalia. There are sexually explicit social networks and YouTube-clones where people can expose themselves to millions of anonymous viewers. There’s even a fusion of these two in live video broadcasting websites which permit people to stream real-time images of themselves doing scandalous things without very much clothing on. As with all sexually-charged things that consenting adults do, sometimes minors decide to give it a try themselves.
Child pornography laws are meant to prevent the abuse of minors. When minors decide, by their own volition, to take nude or sexually explicit images of themselves and share them with loved ones, friends, or even anonymous acquaintances, it’s hard to describe how that could possibly constitute abuse. Sadly, because of the law, all parties involved end up liable for the heinous crime of child pornography: both the recipient, regardless of age, and the exhibiting minor.
Laws intended to protect children from sexual abuse now have the effect of criminalizing behavior that — in the context of our contemporary world — is perfectly reasonable for a pubescent minor to engage in. It’s not really that weird, strange, or appalling that sexually-developing young people might want to show off their bodies to their fellow sexually-developing young people; the only weird part is this new medium of exhibition they’re using. Before the Internet and cellphones, kids just took off their clothes for each other in person.
Much like with physical, flesh-and-blood sexual intimacy, educating children about why they shouldn’t make themselves into porn stars isn’t going to work; they’ll still desire to, and they’ll still do it. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. The sanest course of action is to educate them about responsibility: “use a condom” is to real sex as “don’t send pictures of your boyfriend’s dick to all of your other friends” is to explicit image sharing. But the reason for that advice should be basic common sense and human decency, not because doing so will force you to register as a sex offender at age 14.
Actual Child Pornography and Pedophilia
What about the actual abuse from which children need to be protected? The sexual abuse of children — or anyone, for that matter — is rightfully illegal, and absolutely reprehensible. But in our zeal to destroy reprehensible things, most societies have gone further, and made it illegal to access or possess images of this abhorrent abuse. Unfortunately, the uncomfortable truth is that banning the possession of child pornography doesn’t do any good.
First of all, child pornography is a wonderful scapegoat. Copyright lobbyists regularly use child porn to incite moral panic, and make their proposals to censor the Internet more palatable. And much like these “piracy-stopping” censorship schemes, child pornography bans don’t stop the sexual abuse of children involved.
Before the Internet, child pornography was distributed secretly among close-knit networks of pedophiles. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that the recipient of child porn might be no more than two or three degrees of separation from its creator — the actual person who had committed the sexual abuse. Today, a single child rapist can anonymously distribute their “work” to thousands of people with a single click of a mouse. The downloaders often have absolutely no idea who the perpetrator was; their arrests solve nothing.
Furthermore, there is no conclusive evidence that viewers of child pornography are more likely to act on their fetishes and commit sexual abuse of a child. In fact, based on the aforementioned “porn lowers rape rates” study, one could reasonably hypothesize that the exact opposite is true.
The criminalization of viewing or possessing child pornography only serves to get “revenge” on people who are interested in it. It does not lead to the imprisonment of child rapists, it does not give justice to the victims, and it does not stop potential pedophiles from acting on their urges.
What would, in fact, stop potential pedophiles from acting on their urges is mental health treatment. If at all possible, societies should not view sexual diversity or fetishism as a mental illness; it’s not a particularly harmful thing if somebody is sexually aroused by, oh, let’s say, being hit in the face with a pie. Sexual attraction to children, on the other hand, isn’t something that can be reasonably accommodated — hence, a mental health problem.
But much as the criminalization (and resulting stigmatization) of drug use makes addicts afraid to seek treatment, people suffering with pedophilia fear the consequences of getting help. In researching this article, I got an anonymous source to put it in his own words for me:
When I was 17 I looked at a lot of porn, just like anyone my age. I was curious about it all. I didn’t even know I was gay until I got curious about gay porn. So I looked at all the varieties, twinks, jocks, black guys, Asian guys, groups, all of it. Weirder stuff too like bondage, BDSM, some of it I liked for a while, some of it I never went back to. Then I started looking at kids. I was curious, and a horny teenager, so it wasn’t like it was that creepy. But every time after, I felt horrible. I could see how scared those kids were in the pics but I didn’t stop. I told myself, it’s just because I’m young, I’ll grow out of it, but I’m 20 now and still can’t stop myself sometimes. I wouldn’t ever go and do it for real, I know that. I like guys my own age and older, so it’s not like I can only get off to kids. But I still hate myself for it. But if I go out and tell someone I need help, the feds might come and knock down my door. So I don’t know what to do.
This is the sort of person who needs a therapist’s couch, not a prison cell. But our irrational rage at all things pedophilic deny this man his health, his sanity, and his right to be a productive member of society. He’s not alone, he’s just the one brave enough to break the silence.
Conclusion
The intersection of sexuality and children is understandably frightening. It’s a very primal instinct to want to protect children, and sex — as something that many full-grown adults still haven’t fully come to terms with — seems threatening with its emotional complexity, and its potential for abuse. The Internet and other information technology make it easier for everyone to encounter all types of information, and consequently, for children to encounter sex. But there are two things we must remember:
Sex is perfectly fine, and something that children need education of, not protection from.
Sexual abuse is not perfectly fine, and is its own distinct concern.
If we truly care about protecting children from sexual abuse, then it behooves us to do it effectively. Knee-jerk reactions, moral panics, and emotion-based policymaking do not protect our children. Ineffective laws only serve to make politicians and civil servants look like they’re doing something, in a ploy to win public support. And that is almost as disgusting as abusing a child.
It’s the FBI’s special “anti-piracy” warning. For the past few years, under a special “pilot” program, the FBI has allowed the RIAA, MPAA, BSA, ESA and SIIA (basically, the big record labels, movie studios, video game makers and software companies) to make use of the logo to warn all of their customers that they just might be felons and the FBI might show up at any moment. It’s pure FUD. It also makes no difference. Is there seriously anyone anywhere in the world who sees this logo and suddenly changes their behavior?
However, this program is about to expand in a big, big way. The FBI is about to release new rules (pdf and embedded below) that expand the program so that any copyright holder will be allowed to slap this logo on their product. Expect to start seeing it everywhere… and to feel that much more like the content creator you’re legitimately buying from thinks you’re a crook subject to federal law enforcement action. Way to “connect” with fans, huh?
The document from the FBI discussing this repeats a few times that the FBI really feels like this program is effective and important. Could they be any more out of touch?
First, the FBI believes that the APW Seal and accompanying warnings convey important messages to the public and are a significant component of its efforts to deter and to investigate federal crimes involving the piracy of intellectual property. Allowing use by copyright holders who are not members of industry associations will enhance those efforts. Second, although broader access may make unauthorized use more likely, this concern is overshadowed by the value of increasing public awareness of these prohibitions and the FBI’s role in investigating related criminal activity.
There are all sorts of issues with this. The first is that this whole campaign is ignoring a key point: nearly all copyright infringement is a civil infraction, not a criminal one. Most ordinary users don’t understand the difference between civil and criminal infringement — and the FBI and its silly seal do nothing to explain that difference. It’s pretty clear that the purpose is to falsely imply that sharing with a friend music you legally purchased might somehow lead you to being targeted in an FBI sting operation. It’s FUD, plain and simple. Second, the idea that spreading this logo further will deter actual criminal infringement? Are they serious? Remember, one of the requirements for criminal copyright infringement is that the action is willful. That means that the person knows they’re breaking the law. So educating them on the fact that they’re breaking the law… er… shouldn’t make much of a difference.
Finally, notice that nowhere does the FBI provide any data on how effective this program has been. Because there isn’t any. The MPAA shows this logo before movies, and it’s not like there has been any less infringement. In fact, the FBI and ICE recently decided to double up and extend the warnings on DVDs , and it’s not like that made a difference either. No, instead, all it’s done is piss off tons of legitimate customers, who paid good money for the content, only to be interrupted by a giant FBI logo warning them that they may be criminals facing federal charges. The FBI even admits: “it is difficult to measure the effectiveness of the APW Seal program at preventing piracy,” but apparently that won’t stop it from expanding it. Who in their right mind thinks this is a sensible strategy?
Either way, it’s interesting to read through the comments and feedback on this program — including someone who suggested that the FBI should make sure the warning is skippable at the beginning of movies (the FBI notes that’s up to the film producers) or another one that says this seal should be mandatory on copyright-protected works (the FBI rightly points out it has no such authority). Repeatedly, when people raise issues of more widespread use of the seal (dilution, confusion, belief that works without the seal aren’t protected, etc.) the FBI insists that the supposed benefits of blanketing the universe with this logo far outweigh any downsides.
There were also concerns raised that the logo will have serious chilling effects on fair use — which is definitely a major possibility. And the FBI’s response is ridiculous.
Five comments also expressed a concern that the broader accessibility of the APW Seal may have a “chilling effect” on fair use, as some copyright holders may attempt to use the APW Seal to discourage uses of their copyrighted work that would otherwise be permissible under the fair use doctrine. The FBI fully recognizes that fair use, which is authorized under Title 17, United States Code, Section 107, does not constitute infringement, much less a federal crime. The warning language does not suggest otherwise. The FBI intends to address this matter on its public website.
Because we all know that everyone who sees the logo will go to the FBI’s website and read the fine print at the bottom of the page.
Of course, what’s really crazy in all of this is that the FBI is famous for having an itchy trigger finger when anyone uses its normal logo. Remember, this is the same FBI that, just two years ago, sent a threat letter to Wikipedia, because the Wikipedia page on the FBI shows the FBI logo (leading to an awesome reply from Wikimedia General Counsel, Mike Godwin).
Honestly, the whole thing is silly, but because of this kind of cluelessness, expect to see those pointless FBI warning logos on all sorts of content in the future, so that every time you legitimately purchase content, you’ll be reminded that the copyright holder thinks you’re a lousy stinking thief who deserves a federal investigation. I’m still trying to figure out how that could possibly be good for business, but I guess I just don’t understand copyright…
There was some surprise in the comments of yesterday’s post over the fact that the United Kingdom has effectively outlawed encryption: the UK will send its citizens to jail for up to five years if they cannot produce the key to an encrypted data set.
First of all, references – the law is here. You will be sent to jail for refusing to give up encryption keys, regardless of whether you have them or not. Five years of jail if it’s a terrorism investigation (or child porn, apparently), two years otherwise. It’s fascinating – there are four excuses that keep coming back for every single dismantling of democracy. It’s terrorism, child porn, file sharing, and organized crime. You cannot fight these by dismantling civil liberties – they’re just used as convenient excuses.
We knew that this was the next step in the cat-and-mouse game over privacy, right? It starts with the government believing they have a right to interfere into any one of your seven privacies if they want to and find it practical. The next step, of course, is that the citizens protect themselves from snooping – at which point some bureaucrat will confuse the government’s ability to snoop on citizen’s lives for a right to snoop on citizen’s lives at any time, and create harsh punishments for any citizens who try to keep a shred of their privacy. This is not a remotely dystopic scenario; as we see, it has already happened in the UK.
But it’s worse than that. Much worse. You’re not going to be sent to jail for refusal to give up encryption keys. You’re going to be sent to jail for an inability to unlock something that the police think is encrypted. Yes, this is where the hairs rise on our arms: if you have a recorded file with radio noise from the local telescope that you use for generation of random numbers, and the police asks you to produce the decryption key to show them the three documents inside the encrypted container that your radio noise looks like, you will be sent to jail for up to five years for your inability to produce the imagined documents.
But wait – it gets worse still.
The next step in the cat-and-mouse game over privacy is to use steganographic methods to hide the fact that something is encrypted at all. You can easily hide long messages in high-resolution photos today, just to take one example: they will not appear to contain an encrypted message in the first place, but will just look like a regular photo until decoded and decrypted with the proper key. But of course, the government and police are aware of steganographic methods, and know that pretty much any innocent-looking dataset can be used as a container for encrypted data.
So imagine your reaction when the police confiscate your entire collection of vacation photos, claim that your vacation photos contain hidden encrypted messages (which they don’t), and sends you off to jail for five years for being unable to supply the decryption key?
This is not some dystopic pipe dream: this law already exists in the United Kingdom.
Totalitarian governments, like persistent forms of cancer, have latched onto the long history of man, falling and then reemerging from the deep recesses of our cultural biology to wreak havoc upon one unlucky generation to the next. The assumption by most is that these unfortunate empires are the product of bureaucracies gone awry; overtaken by the chaotic maddening hunger for wealth and power, and usually manipulated by the singular ambitions of a mesmerizing dictator. For those of us in the Liberty Movement who are actually educated on the less acknowledged details of history, oligarchy and globalized centralism is much less random than this, and a far more deliberate and devious process than the general unaware public is willing consider.
Unfortunately, the final truth is very complex, even for us…
One cannot place the blame of despotism entirely on the shoulders of globalists. Sadly, the crimes of elites are only possible with a certain amount of complicity from subsections of the populace. Without our penchant for apathy and fear, there can be no control. That is to say, there is no power over us but that which we give away. We pave the road to our own catastrophes.
In the end, a tyrant’s primary job is not to crush the masses and rule out of malevolence, but to obtain the voluntary consent of the citizenry, usually through trickery and deceit. Without the permission of the people, subconscious or otherwise, no tyranny can survive.
As with the oppressive regimes of the past, America has undergone a dramatic transformation, heavy with fear and ignorance. Our tradition of elections has been corrupted and negated by the false left/right paradigm, and the leaderships of both defunct parties now seek only to elevate a select minority of men bent on globalization. Our Constitutional liberties have been dismantled by legal chicanery. Our principles have been diluted by intellectual games of rationalism and moral relativism. Our country is ripe for conquest.
Americans battle over whose side is most to blame; Democrat or Republican, while ironically being disenchanted with both entities. For some people, the thought of holding each party equally accountable, or accepting that they are essentially the same animal, never crosses their minds.
While this irrelevant farce of a debate rages on, the true culprits plotting the demise of our Republic gain momentum, and implement policy initiatives that the public should and must take note of. In the past year alone, many blatant steps towards the Orwellian gulag have been openly administered. A carnival of peddlers and freaks and greasy popcorn overwhelms our senses, but the stench of this cheap circus still tickles our noses, and if we use our eyes for even a moment, certain dangerous trends reveal themselves. Here are just a few recent events that bear a dire warning; the ultimate assault on freedom in this nation grows near…
Acclimation To Subservience
Every totalitarian state worth its salt has its own goon squad. The Nazi’s had the “Brownshirts”, the Soviets had the “Militsiya” and the “Voluntary People’s Brigade”, the Communist Chinese have the “Chengguan”, etc. In America, however, all tyrannical measures are given innocuous bureaucratic labels to mislead and distract the masses. In this country, we have the Transportation Security Administration…
The TSA has become the most hated alphabet agency in the U.S. in perhaps the fastest time on record. It has violated the personal rights of more people on a daily basis in my view than the IRS, DEA, and the ATF combined. Clearly, this slobbering demon child of the Department of Homeland Security is being molded for something quite terrible and grand.
When confronted by the public on the use of irradiating and intrusive naked body scanner technology, the agency responded by allowing their blue handed ghoul army with to molest our nether-regions. When confronted by state and local governments on their absurd tactics, the TSA threatened economic blockades and airport shutdowns. The organization then began expanding its jurisdiction to bus and train stations and even our highways when it introduced the VIPR program and implemented random roadside checkpoints in Tennessee last year. But, this behavior is nothing compared to what is next on the horizon: a compromise…
Beware of government agencies bearing gifts. The TSA along with the International Air Transport Association has announced a new methodology of “less intrusive” passenger screening measures, in order to address the concerns of the public over pat downs and irradiating naked body scanners. This SOUNDS like a step in the right direction, and a proper response to the grievances of the citizenry. Instead, it turns out to be a refined example of totalitarianism in motion, and a perfect lesson in how the masses can be duped into handing over their inherent freedoms.
Revamped security protocols call for biometric data collection, including fingerprint and retina scans, and a tunnel which combines multiple detection systems into one area (who knows how radioactive this will end up being):
The mainstream article above makes this development sound like a win/win scenario for everyone, painting biometric data collection as a matter of convenience, but it also reveals the true design of the system; to illicit voluntary subservience:
“The key to speeding up checkpoints and making security less intrusive will be to identify and assess travelers according to the risks they pose to safety in the skies. The so-called riskiest or unknown passengers would face the toughest scrutiny, including questioning and more sensitive electronic screening. Those who voluntarily provide more information about themselves to the government would be rewarded with faster passage…”
They enforce destructive anti-personal rights policies then pretend to acquiesce by replacing them with a technocratic nightmare grid which requires the cataloging of our very genetic essence in order to function. The only remaining injustice left would be to apply this grid to the rest of the country outside of the airports and train stations, which I assure you, they plan to do.
Militarization
Last week, I covered the disturbing use of armored vehicles (APC’s or urban tanks) in open training regiments on the streets of St. Louis by the U.S Army, despite the fact that all of their exercises could have easily been accomplished on any number of military bases across the country. The action is an obvious attempt to condition the American populace to the sight of military units operating in a policing capacity:
I received multiple letters from current serving military who stated that in all their years in the armed forces they had never seen such a brash mishandling of public relations or an overstepping of bounds when it came to the restrictions of Posse Comitatus. It was encouraging to hear from military men and women who did not agree with or condone this kind of psyop activity on the part of our government.
Though the St. Louis event is not isolated, I believe it does represent an escalation.
Remember the controversy over the Mayor of Toledo and his refusal to allow 200 Marines to conduct urban combat drills on the public streets of his city in 2008? The media clamored to crucify this public official; one of the few who had any sense whatsoever in his head:
During each one of these events, city officials and local media attempted to inoculate the public with claims that they were “simply exercises”. This argument misses the point entirely. Whether or not these are “exercises” is not the issue. The issue is that this training could be done ON BASE. Using public streets and running drills within cities is absolutely unnecessary given the vast resources already available to the military, unless, of course, the goal is to BE SEEN by the public and to influence them to view the sight of armed troops around them as “normal”.
Add to this the fact that many of these military training exercises are being conducted in tandem with local police department, and you have a recipe for the utter militarization of our society, turning peace officers into combat soldiers, and combat soldiers into law enforcement mechanisms; a juxtaposition that will soon lead to unmitigated disaster.
Arms Race Against the People?
When a country is quietly preparing for war, the first signs are usually revealed by a disclosure of armaments. If stockpiling is taking place without a warranted threat present from a legitimate enemy, there is a considerable likelihood of aggression on the part of that nation. America has gone well beyond the psychological process of militarization and has begun the extensive arming of particular agencies whose primary purpose revolves around the domestic.
The DHS, for instance, placed an order for over 450 million rounds of hollowpoint .40 cal ammunition in April of this year:
While local police through federal programs (like the 1033 Program) are being given millions of dollars in free military equipment, including body armor, night vision equipment, APC’s, aircraft, first aid supplies, weapons, surveillance equipment, Kevlar helmets, gas masks and filters, vehicles, etc.:
All of this equipment, though issued to state agencies, is still heavily tracked and regulated by the federal government, making it clear that these “gifts” come with strings attached:
And finally, new FAA regulations will soon allow the dispersion of tens of thousands of predator drones with armament capability in the skies of the U.S. over the course of the next few years:
Now, anyone with any logic would ask who it is that the government is arming itself and local police to fight against? Al Qaeda? Let’s not be naïve…
The passage of the NDAA and its provisions for the indefinite detainment of ANY person, even an American citizen, under the laws of war has ended the debate over government intent in terms of domestic action. FBI Director Robert Mueller’s admission that he “did not know” if assassination programs would be used against American citizens also heaped evidence on the matter. The bottom line? Our government wishes to label and treat citizens as enemy combatants. Of course they would then organize armaments to follow through on their policy.
Pulling The Trigger
All despotic systems have another distinct similarity; they each began with a series of trigger events which opened the door to tighter controls over the population. The most immediate trigger event for the U.S. is the looming peril of a collapsing economy followed by inevitable civil unrest. With the EU currently in debt shambles, global markets are on the verge of a considerable breakdown. The Federal Reserve response will be predictable; QE3 and massive stimulus all around to mitigate the crisis. This time, though, the go-to Keynesian quick fix will not work in the slightest. In fact, it will make matters more untenable by placing the world reserve status of the dollar at risk.
Everything that has happened so far in the markets this year has been easy to foresee. Alt-Market predicted the economic slowdown around the world and the collapse of overall demand using the Baltic Dry Index as a gauge back in January:
If alternative economic analysts can predict these developments despite the manipulated statistics spewed out by the government every month, then I think the government and our central bank has a tremendously transparent view of what is coming down the road in terms of financial distress. I believe the establishment is very well aware of a potential crisis event, economic or otherwise, that is barreling down upon the U.S. I believe the evidence shows that they are preparing for this eventuality in a command and control fashion, without alerting the public to the coming implosion. I believe they will use the despair that flows forth from the fiscal wreckage as an excuse to institute martial law.
Call it “crazy”. Call it “conspiracy theory”. Call it “coincidence”. Call it “fear mongering”. Whatever you like. I find it far more insane to shrug off the strange and twisted behavior of our power structure, and simply hope that it’s all irrelevant to the future. Whenever I run into starry eyed historical romanticists who look back in astonishment at the tyrannies of the past and wonder out loud, “How could those people have not known where their country was headed?!!”, I think of where we are today…
Brandon Smith is the founder of Alt-Market is an organization designed to help you find like-minded activists and preppers in your local area so that you can network and construct communities for mutual aid and defense. Join Alt-Market.com today and learn what it means to step away from the system and build something better or contribute to their Safe Haven Project. You can contact Brandon Smith at: [email protected]
The High Court of New Zealand has ruled that the police raid on Kim Dotcom’s mansion was unlawful along with seizure of the hard drives that were later cloned and illegally taken from New Zealand to the US by the FBI.
The warrants issued to search Dotcom’s mansion were general and did not clearly describe the offences they stipulated, ruled Justice Helen Winkelmann.
“They were general warrants, and as such, are invalid,” she explained.
The New Zealand police force is currently holding talks with the Crown Law on the next course of action and has refrained from commenting on the judgment.
The ruling released on Thursday by Justice Helen Winkelmann insists the warrants were too vague concerning the scope of the search and the items authorized to be seized by police.
When an athlete-turned-humanitarian and an energy executive tried to buy gold in Kenya, they found themselves mired in Congo’s dangerous world of conflict minerals — and totally outmatched.
Former NBA player Dikembe Mutombo, left, on a humanitarian trip to Kenya. Right, warlord Bosco Ntaganda speaking to reporters in eastern Congo. / Reuters
In 18 seasons in the National Basketball Association, Congo-born Dikembe Mutombo was a relentless defender, an 8-time all-star who accumulated the second-most blocked shots in the league’s history and averaged a double-double in rebounds and points in each of his first 11 seasons. Mutombo became a star — even during the NBA’s Michael Jordan-Patrick Ewing-Karl Malone golden age — because of his ability to intimidate. The 7-foot center owned the most feared and arguably most dangerous elbows in the league, and after every blocked shot, Mutombo would wave a taunting index figure at whatever hapless small forward or shooting guard had attempted to drive the lane against him.
But off the court, Mutombo was the kind of genuine role model that the decadent, late-90s NBA mostly lacked. In a time when players routinely skipped college for the pros, Mutombo finished a linguistics and diplomacy double major at Georgetown. An ugly labor dispute in 1998 convinced even many dedicated basketball fans that their favorite players were selfish and overpaid. But Mutombo, whose playing career overlapped with a horrific war that devastated his home country, dedicated himself to humanitarian pursuits. The Dikembe Mutomobo Foundation built a hospital in a poor area of Kinshasa, and Mutombo has worked with philanthropic heavyweights like the Clinton Global Initiative and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“Dkembe’s heart is enormous, and his bond to the people of his beloved DRC defines him, and clearly motivates his humanitarian work,” says Caryl Stern, CEO of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, in an email. Mutombo’s charitable work wasn’t aimed at drawing attention to himself, writes Stern. “Dikembe has proven himself to be someone who will put in the hours behind-the-scenes, away from the cameras.”
“They said ‘the general wants to see you.'”
Mutombo may be a renowned basketball player and humanitarian. But as a UN Group of Experts reportpublished last December makes clear, he’s not much of a businessman. Mutombo had linked up with Houston-based oil executive Kase Lawal, a respected businessman whom President Barack Obama had appointed to the Federal Trade Commission’s Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiation. According to the UN document (and as first reported by The Houston Chronicle), the two attempted to purchase what they thought was $30 million worth of gold from dealers in Kenya — only to find out that the gold (most of which was probably counterfeit) was in the possession of a notorious Congolese warlord, who ended up profiting handsomely off of Mutombo and Lawal’s blind enthusiasm and almost total lack of due diligence.
The incident provides a glimpse into the complex situation in the eastern Congo, where gold traders attempt to make quick money off of the area’s conflict-tainted mineral resources — and end up exacerbating the region’s long-standing misery. It’s a reminder that the Congo gold trade is so dirty — and so pervasive — that even these prominent Americans ended up handing millions of dollars to a warlord who is widely considered to be one of the most brutal and dangerous men in Central Africa.
• • • • •
On December 2, 2010, Mutombo gathered a small group of men in a New York City hotel. He told them of an opportunity that could earn up to $20 million in a matter of weeks. His main audience was Kase Lawal, the CEO of Houston-based energy company CAMAC, and Carlos St. Mary, a former West Point football player and a trader in West African diamonds. Mutombo asked them to put together $10 million to buy, from dealers in Kenya, an unusually large amount of gold: 4.5 tons. That haul could be worth three times as much if Mutombo, Lawal, and St. Mary could arrange for it to be transported out of Africa and re-sold on the international market.
Mutumbo, though a humanitarian, presented this purely as an investment. The retired basketball star is also the titular CEO of the Mutombo International Group, a small outfit that mostly invested in retail around Atlanta. The gold must have seemed like an irresistible opportunity.
It should also have seemed too good to be true. “Immediately when you say you’ve got 4.5 tons, you pull back from the table,” recalls St. Mary, who frequently buys diamonds in countries such as Liberia and Sierra Leone. “I work in places where if people have 10 grams of gold they run down to my office front so that they can sell that. I couldn’t fathom 100 kilos, 10 kilos, let alone 4,000 kilos.”
Still, with so much money to be made, St. Mary kept listening. The story was compelling. According to the Powerpoint Mutombo presented, which St. Mary has shared with The Atlantic and can be viewed here, the retired basketball player claimed that the gold was held in a village in Kenya. He said he knew exactly where the cache was, and he implied it would be easy to buy and move.
“Mr. David [Kapuadi] and Mr. Stephane Kapuadi brought to us a time sensitive yet lucrative deal,” reads one slide of the Powerpoint. David and Stephane, who are from the family of Mutombo’s wife, were in the room for the New York meeting. The Powerpoint simply stated that the “gold is safely stored in Nairobi where Mr. David and partners are seeking a buyer.” According to the presentation, David and Stephane had personally verified that the gold was real and would be able to hand it over to any buyers immediately.
Mutombo’s presentation must have sounded promising at the time. But, reading it now, knowing how badly the deal would go, his omissions can seem glaring. He suggested that his in-laws had access to the gold, but didn’t say who actually owned it. He referred to “partners” who had some unspecified control over the gold, but didn’t say who they were or what they wanted.
When The Atlantic tried to reach Mutombo through his foundation, a representative said that neither the former basketball star nor his charitable foundation would be commenting. Kawal’s company, CAMAC, responded to similar requests with this statement: “CAMAC is a law-abiding company and we disagree with the representations made in the UN report. We have already answered questions on this and see no reason to address it further.”
St. Mary admits that he didn’t press for details during the meeting. As a family friend of Lawal’s and a longtime acquaintance of Mutombo’s, he says, he didn’t want to get pushy with either. “I probably should have looked at things a little closer,” he says, “but when you put the pedigrees of those people together there’s stuff you overlook.”
Lawal agreed to fully finance the $10 million deal and to give Mutombo and St. Mary, who would supervise the transaction, a cut of the eventual profits. Lawal immediately sent St. Mary to Nairobi on a private jet, where David Kapuadi introduced him to the mysterious “partners” from Motumbo’s PowerPoint presentation: Eddy Michel Malonga, who was named as the gold’s owner on a Kenyan export form, and a man who introduced himself only as “Benoit.” According to the UN report, Malonga is part of a Kenya-based counterfeit gold ring active throughout central Africa. “Benoit,” according to both St. Mary and the UN panel, was most likely Yusuf Omar, a counterfeit gold smuggler.
For the moment, the gold appeared to be legitimate — Malonga took St. Mary to a refinery to show him purified samples. But the sellers insisted the deal couldn’t be completed in Nairobi, according to St. Mary. The majority of the gold, they admitted, wasn’t even in Kenya. The sellers demanded a $5 million dollar deposit, then gave Lawal the choice of picking up the gold sometime later in Kampala, Uganda, or getting it immediately at Goma, the capital of long-troubled North Kivu province in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
If Lawal had had any idea just how costly and ethically murky this transaction was going to become, he might have backed out. But it’s understandable why he wanted to keep going. St. Mary had just handed $5 million of his money to a pair of shady gold dealers about whom they knew very little, and they still had nothing to show for it. But, with $5 million sunk already, Lawal’s enthusiasm for the deal still hadn’t dimmed.
Looking at his company’s performance that year, it’s easy to see why he would be so eager to believe things would work out. CAMAC’s stock hovered at a little over $2 a share by mid-December, down from $5.07 that April. And while CAMAC controlled over $400 million in assets, it had just $22 million on hand in November of 2010, according to public filings, only a little more than the projected $20 million Lawal thought he could make off of the gold. The company reported nearly $188 million in losses for 2010, leaving Lawal in need of an easy payday. He had an office in Kinshasa and expected that a deal in the DRC would be seamless.
According to St. Mary, Lawal didn’t think the exchange — the remaining $5 million for more than four tons of gold, which everyone still assumed was real — would take longer than a single afternoon.
Fred Robarts, an author of the UN experts report, told me that the sudden change in venue, along with the exchange of large amounts of money in Nairobi, should have been a tipoff that Lawal and Mutombo were likely being scammed. “These guys have an international network,” Robarts says of the Kenyan-based smuggling and counterfeiting ring that Omar and Malonga were a part of. “And they use quite elaborate means to convince their buyers. They have a network of people within the region who play various roles — customs officers, and so on. They can probably get a hold of fairly convincing documentation as well.”
Which they did. Before St. Mary left New York for Kenya, Reagan Mutombo, Dikembe Mutombo’s nephew, and David Kapuadi provided him with Congolese export forms authorizing the transfer of 73 grams of gold to Kenya. These forms confirmed that the gold had legally crossed an international border, and could therefore be bought and sold, in the opinion of both the Kenyan and Congolese governments.
According to the forms, the gold came from the conflict-torn Goma region of eastern Congo. In September of 2010, DRC President Joseph Kabila had imposed a domestic ban on mineral exports from the Congo’s eastern provinces, the point of origin for so-called “conflict minerals,” natural resources extracted from squalid mines whose mineral yields fund militia activity in the region. Kapuadi’s “partners” might have gotten around the ban by claiming they were re-importing gold that originated in Kenya. It is also possible that Mutombo and Lawal either didn’t know about the ban, or knew about the ban and simply didn’t care. And it’s possible that all the documentation, which also included a Kenyan “certificate of ownership” establishing Malonga as the gold’s true owner, was simply forged. “Every damn thing they had was fake,” St. Mary claims. “But it looked official.”
St. Mary: “Give me just one reason to trust any of you in this room.”
Ntaganda: “We didn’t kill you this morning.”
That the gold (or what Lawal, Mutombo, and St. Mary believed to be gold) might have originated in Goma, and was apparently still in the Eastern Congo, should have been a glaring red flag, a sign that either the gold or its owners were somehow involved in the illicit mineral trade. Twenty million dollars in potential profit was enough to convince Lawal and Mutombo to overlook the possibility that they were getting themselves into something risky and possibly unethical. Instead, Reagan Mutombo went to Goma to oversee his uncle’s side of the deal. A few days later, on February 4, 2011, Lawal sent St. Mary to Goma on a leased Gulfstream jet, along with several CAMAC employees and nearly $5 million in cash.
It wasn’t until the plane landed in Goma that St. Mary realized just how deeply involved the Congolese army was in the transaction. “When we got there they came on the plane and took our passports,” says St. Mary. “They said ‘the general wants to see you.’ We said, ‘general who?’ At that point nobody had even told us. They said ‘Bosco wants to speak to you now.'”
WASHINGTON – The co-owner of a major Pentagon propaganda contractor publicly admitted Thursday that he was behind a series of websites used to discredit two USA TODAY journalists who had reported on the contractor.
Screengrab from home page of leoniegroup.comCamille Chidiac, a minority owner of Leonie Industries, says he acted independently of the company when he created web sites and social media accounts in an effort to discredit two USA TODAY journalists.
Camille Chidiac, a minority owner of Leonie Industries, says he acted independently of the company when he created web sites and social media accounts in an effort to discredit two USA TODAY journalists.
The online “misinformation campaign,” first reported last month, has raised questions about whether the Pentagon or its contractors had turned its propaganda operations against U.S. citizens. But Camille Chidiac, the minority owner of Leonie Industries and its former president, said he was responsible for the online activity and was operating independent of the company or the Pentagon.
“I take full responsibility for having some of the discussion forums opened and reproducing their previously published USA TODAY articles on them,” he said a statement released by his attorney, Lin Wood, of Atlanta.
“I recognize and deeply regret that my actions have caused concerns for Leonie and the U.S. military. This was never my intention. As an immediate corrective action, I am in the process of completely divesting my remaining minority ownership from Leonie,” Chidiac said.
Chidiac, who stepped down as president of Leonie in 2008, said he used only personal funds to create the websites using proxy services to hide his involvement. Although Chidiac has continued to represent Leonie at various conferences, the company said any involvement was “informal and unofficial.”
The Pentagon said Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was aware of the statement and “has directed the department to review this matter and to take appropriate action.”
“We were deeply disappointed to read this disclosure from Leonie Industries. Smear campaigns — online or anywhere else — are intolerable, and we reject this kind of behavior,” said Pentagon press secretary George Little.
In February, USA TODAY reported on the Pentagon’s “information operations” program, which was coming under criticism even within the Pentagon for spending hundreds of millions for poorly monitored marketing campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Leonie, which was founded by Chidiac and his sister, Rema DuPont, has received at least $120 million in Pentagon contracts since 2009. DuPont owns 51% of the company; Chidiac 49%. The pair had $4 million in liens for unpaid federal income taxes, although federal records show those tax liens have since been paid off.
Even before the stories ran, USA TODAY Pentagon reporter Tom Vanden Brook noticed that someone registered the site tomvandenbrook.com. Twitter and Facebook accounts were also registered in his name, and a Wikipedia entry and discussion group postings misrepresented his reporting on the West Virginia Sago Mine disaster.
Chidiac said he clearly labeled the websites as “fan sites” of Vanden Brook and his editor, Ray Locker, but said comments on the websites “quickly degenerated from legitimate criticism to immature and irrelevant rhetoric by unknown users.”
Chidiac’s attorney said the Twitter and Wikipedia entries were created by someone else with “absolutely no relationship or connection with Leonie Industries,” whom he did not name.
One online reputation expert, Andy Beal, said the effort appeared to be coordinated and called it a “sophisticated reputation attack.”
The distribution of federally funded propaganda for domestic targets could be a violation of a federal law prohibiting the Defense Department from spending money for “propaganda purposes within the United States.” The company said no federal funds were used.
“Mr. Chidiac does not have access to Leonie’s bank accounts and other financial resources, derived from government contracts or otherwise, and he used non-Leonie funds to participate in the online activity,” said a statement from Gar Smith, Leonie’s director of marketing and communications. “This was the act of an individual, not the company.”
Smith said Chidiac was in the process of divesting himself of his 49% stake, but that the terms of that deal were a matter between DuPont and Chidiac.
Leonie said it’s “in the process of informing government officials of the situation,” though it’s unclear whether the episode will affect Leonie’s Pentagon contracts.
In March, the Pentagon’s inspector general told members of Congress that the Defense Criminal Investigative Service had launched an investigation into issues raised by the USA TODAY report. Last week, a House committee voted to cut the Pentagon’s “information operations” budget by one-third.
Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., a critic of the information operations program, called for congressional hearings on the matter.
“Now we know the truth about these online smear campaigns,” he said. “There must be zero tolerance for attacks on the press.”
Chidiac’s attorney said Chidiac was “personally offended” by USA TODAY’s reporting on his tax troubles, which he felt were unfairly characterized. “I do not believe the previous reporting has properly recognized the excellent work that has been performed by the employees of Leonie in support of U.S. military efforts over the past several years,” Wood said.
Susan Weiss, executive editor of USA TODAY, said the newspaper would continue reporting on the information operations industry. “I am glad to see that we now know who was responsible for these false attacks on Tom Vanden Brook, Ray Locker and USA TODAY. We stand behind our reporters and our stories,” she said.
It has emerged that Michigan State Police have been using a high-tech mobile forensics device that can extract information from over 3,000 models of mobile phone, potentially grabbing all media content from your iPhone in under two minutes.
The CelleBrite UFED is a handheld device that Michigan officers have been using since August 2008 to copy information from mobile phones belonging to motorists stopped for minor traffic violations. The device can circumvent password restrictions and extract existing, hidden, and deleted phone data, including call history, text messages, contacts, images, and geotags.
In short, it can copy everything on your smartphone in a matter of minutes.
Learning that the police had been using mobile forensic devices, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has issued freedom of information requests which demand that state officials open up the data collected, to better assess if penalised motorists warrant having their data copied.
Michigan State Police were more than happy to provide the information – as long as the ACLU paid $544,680. Obviously not pocket change.
“Law enforcement officers are known, on occasion, to encourage citizens to cooperate if they have nothing to hide,” ACLU staff attorney Mark P. Fancher wrote. “No less should be expected of law enforcement, and the Michigan State Police should be willing to assuage concerns that these powerful extraction devices are being used illegally by honoring our requests for cooperation and disclosure.”
Once the data is obtained, the device’s “Physical Analyzer” can map both existing and deleted locations on Google Earth, porting location data and image geotags on Google Maps.
The ACLU’s main worry is that the handheld is quietly being used to bypass Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches:
“With certain exceptions that do not apply here, a search cannot occur without a warrant in which a judicial officer determines that there is probable cause to believe that the search will yield evidence of criminal activity.
A device that allows immediate, surreptitious intrusion into private data creates enormous risks that troopers will ignore these requirements to the detriment of the constitutional rights of persons whose cell phones are searched.”
The next time you are Michigan, be sure drive carefully!
In a five-four ruling this week, the supreme court decided that anyone can be strip-searched upon arrest for any offense, however minor, at any time. This horror show ruling joins two recent horror show laws: the NDAA, which lets anyone be arrested forever at any time, and HR 347, the “trespass bill”, which gives you a 10-year sentence for protesting anywhere near someone with secret service protection. These criminalizations of being human follow, of course, the mini-uprising of the Occupy movement.Bagram airbase was used by the US to detain its ‘high-value’ targets during the ‘war on terror’ and is still Afghanistan’s main military prison. Photograph: Dar Yasin/AP
Is American strip-searching benign? The man who had brought the initial suit, Albert Florence, described having been told to “turn around. Squat and cough. Spread your cheeks.” He said he felt humiliated: “It made me feel like less of a man.”
In surreal reasoning, justice Anthony Kennedy explained that this ruling is necessary because the 9/11 bomber could have been stopped for speeding. How would strip searching him have prevented the attack? Did justice Kennedy imagine that plans to blow up the twin towers had been concealed in a body cavity? In still more bizarre non-logic, his and the other justices’ decision rests on concerns about weapons and contraband in prison systems. But people under arrest – that is, who are not yet convicted – haven’t been introduced into a prison population.
Our surveillance state shown considerable determination to intrude on citizens sexually. There’s the sexual abuse of prisoners at Bagram – der Spiegel reports that “former inmates report incidents of … various forms of sexual humiliation. In some cases, an interrogator would place his penis along the face of the detainee while he was being questioned. Other inmates were raped with sticks or threatened with anal sex”. There was the stripping of Bradley Manning is solitary confinement. And there’s the policy set up after the story of the “underwear bomber” to grope US travelers genitally or else force them to go through a machine – made by a company, Rapiscan, owned by terror profiteer and former DHA czar Michael Chertoff – with images so vivid that it has been called the “pornoscanner”.
Believe me: you don’t want the state having the power to strip your clothes off. History shows that the use of forced nudity by a state that is descending into fascism is powerfully effective in controlling and subduing populations.
The political use of forced nudity by anti-democratic regimes is long established. Forcing people to undress is the first step in breaking down their sense of individuality and dignity and reinforcing their powerlessness. Enslaved women were sold naked on the blocks in the American south, and adolescent male slaves served young white ladies at table in the south, while they themselves were naked: their invisible humiliation was a trope for their emasculation. Jewish prisoners herded into concentration camps were stripped of clothing and photographed naked, as iconic images of that Holocaust reiterated.
One of the most terrifying moments for me when I visited Guantanamo prison in 2009 was seeing the way the architecture of the building positioned glass-fronted shower cubicles facing intentionally right into the central atrium – where young female guards stood watch over the forced nakedness of Muslim prisoners, who had no way to conceal themselves. Laws and rulings such as this are clearly designed to bring the conditions of Guantanamo, and abusive detention, home.
I have watched male police and TSA members standing by side by side salaciously observing women as they have been “patted down” in airports. I have experienced the weirdly phrased, sexually perverse intrusiveness of the state during an airport “pat-down”, which is always phrased in the words of a steamy paperback (“do you have any sensitive areas? … I will use the back of my hands under your breasts …”). One of my Facebook commentators suggested, I think plausibly, that more women are about to be found liable for arrest for petty reasons (scarily enough, the TSA is advertising for more female officers).
I interviewed the equivalent of TSA workers in Britain and found that the genital groping that is obligatory in the US is illegal in Britain. I believe that the genital groping policy in America, too, is designed to psychologically habituate US citizens to a condition in which they are demeaned and sexually intruded upon by the state – at any moment.
The most terrifying phrase of all in the decision is justice Kennedy’s striking use of the term “detainees” for “United States citizens under arrest”. Some members of Occupy who were arrested in Los Angeles also reported having been referred to by police as such. Justice Kennedy’s new use of what looks like a deliberate activation of that phrase is illuminating.
Ten years of association have given “detainee” the synonymous meaning in America as those to whom no rights apply – especially in prison. It has been long in use in America, habituating us to link it with a condition in which random Muslims far away may be stripped by the American state of any rights. Now the term – with its associations of “those to whom anything may be done” – is being deployed systematically in the direction of … any old American citizen.
Where are we headed? Why? These recent laws criminalizing protest, and giving local police – who, recall, are now infused with DHS money, military hardware and personnel – powers to terrify and traumatise people who have not gone through due process or trial, are being set up to work in concert with a see-all-all-the-time surveillance state. A facility is being set up in Utah by the NSA to monitor everything all the time: James Bamford wrote in Wired magazine that the new facility in Bluffdale, Utah, is being built, where the NSA will look at billions of emails, texts and phone calls. Similar legislation is being pushed forward in the UK.
With that Big Brother eye in place, working alongside these strip-search laws, – between the all-seeing data-mining technology and the terrifying police powers to sexually abuse and humiliate you at will – no one will need a formal coup to have a cowed and compliant citizenry. If you say anything controversial online or on the phone, will you face arrest and sexual humiliation?
Remember, you don’t need to have done anything wrong to be arrested in America any longer. You can be arrested for walking your dog without a leash. The man who was forced to spread his buttocks was stopped for a driving infraction. I was told by an NYPD sergeant that “safety” issues allow the NYPD to make arrests at will. So nothing prevents thousands of Occupy protesters – if there will be any left after these laws start to bite – from being rounded up and stripped naked under intimidating conditions.
Why is this happening? I used to think the push was just led by those who profited from endless war and surveillance – but now I see the struggle as larger. As one internet advocate said to me: “There is a race against time: they realise the internet is a tool of empowerment that will work against their interests, and they need to race to turn it into a tool of control.”
As Chris Hedges wrote in his riveting account of the NDAA: “There are now 1,271 government agencies and 1,931 private companies that work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States, the Washington Post reported in a 2010 series by Dana Priest and William M Arken. There are 854,000 people with top-secret security clearances, the reporters wrote, and in Washington, DC, and the surrounding area 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2011.”
This enormous new sector of the economy has a multi-billion-dollar vested interest in setting up a system to surveil, physically intimidate and prey upon the rest of American society.
Now they can do so by threatening to demean you sexually – a potent tool in the hands of any bully.
ACLU affiliates across America requested information on local law enforcement’s use of cell-phone tracking, and received a wealth of disturbing information about the extent of wireless tracking. They produced a map showing which police departments were discovered to be tracking people’s phones without a warrant, either by getting gutless phone companies to fink out their own customers for warrantless fishing expeditions, or by buying some kind of “cell phone tracking equipment.”
Many law enforcement agencies track cell phones quite frequently. For example, based on invoices from cell phone companies, it appears that Raleigh, N.C. tracks hundreds of cell phones a year. The practice is so common that cell phone companies have manuals for police explaining what data the companies store, how much they charge police to access that data, and what officers need to do to get it.
Most law enforcement agencies do not obtain a warrant to track cell phones, but some do, and the legal standards used vary widely. Some police departments protect privacy by obtaining a warrant based upon probable cause when tracking cell phones. For example, police in the County of Hawaii, Wichita, and Lexington, Ky. demonstrate probable cause and obtain a warrant when tracking cell phones. If these police departments can protect both public safety and privacy by meeting the warrant and probable cause requirements, then surely other agencies can as well.
Unfortunately, other departments do not always demonstrate probable cause and obtain a warrant when tracking cell phones. For example, police in Lincoln, Neb. obtain even GPS location data, which is more precise than cell tower location information, on telephones without demonstrating probable cause. Police in Wilson County, N.C. obtain historical cell tracking data where it is “relevant and material” to an ongoing investigation, a standard lower than probable cause.
Police use various methods to track cell phones. Most commonly, law enforcement agencies obtain cell phone records about one person from a cell phone carrier. However, some police departments, like in Gilbert, Ariz., have purchased their own cell tracking technology.
What is Coltan? Coltan is short for Columbite-tantalite – a black tar-like mineral found in major quantities in the Congo.. The Congo possesses 80 percent of the world’s coltan. When coltan is refined it becomes a heat resistant powder that can hold a high electric charge. The properties of refined coltan is a vital element in creating devices that store energy or capacitors, which are used in a vast array of small electronic devices, especially in mobile phones, laptop computers, pagers, and other electronic devices.
Who are the primary exploiters of Coltan in the Congo?
Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and their proxy militias are the primary exploiters of coltan in the Congo. In an 18 month period Rwanda made $250 million as a result of exploitation of coltan in the Congo. Although Rwanda and Uganda possess little or no coltan, during the period of the war in the Congo, their exports escalated exponentially. For example, Rwanda’s coltan export went from less than 50 tons in 1995 to almost 250 tons in 1998. Zero cassiterite was transported from the Congo to Uganda in 1998, however by 2000 151 drums were transported.
The United Nations notes in its 2001 report on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources in the congo that “The consequences of illegal exploitation has been twofold: (a)massive availability of financial resources for the Rwandan Patriotic Army, and the individual enrichment of top Ugandan military commanders and civilians; (b) the emergence of of illegal networks headed by either top military officers or businessmen.”
Foreign Corporate exploitation Although the countries mentioned above directly exploit coltan, foreign multi-national corporations have been deeply involved in the exploitation of coltan in the Congo. The coltan mined by rebels and foreign forces is sold to foreign corporations. Although, the United Nations in its reports on the Congo do not directly blame the multi-national corporations for the conflict in the Congo, the United Nations does say that these companies serve as “the engine of the conflict in the DRC.”
Major United States players include: Cabot Corporation, Boston, MA OM Group, Cleveland, Ohio AVX, Myrtle Beach, SC Eagle Wings Resources International, Ohio
Trinitech International, Ohio Kemet Electronics Corporation, Greenville, SC Vishay Sprague. Malvern, PA
Corporations from other countries have been a part of the coltan exploitation chain. These companies include but are not limited to Germany’s HC Starc and EPCOS, China’s Nigncxia, and Belgium’s George Forrest International.
Once the coltan is processed and converted to capacitors, it is then sold to companies such as Nokia, Motorola, Compaq, Alcatel, Dell, Hewlett-Packard , IBM, Lucent, Ericsson and Sony for use in a wide assortment of everyday products ranging from cell phones to computer chips and game consoles.
What are some of the uses of coltan in modern society?
• Laptop computers
• Cellular phones
• Jet engines
• Rockets
• Cutting tools
• Camera lenses
• X-ray film
• Ink jet printers
• Hearing aids
• Pacemakers
• Airbag protection systems
• Ignition and motor control modules, GPS, ABS systems in automobiles
• Game consoles such as playstation, xbox and nintendo
• Video cameras
• Digital still cameras
• Sputtering targets
• Chemical process equipment
• Cathodic protection systems for steel structures such as bridges, water tanks
• Prosthetic devices for humans – hips, plates in the skull, also mesh to repair bone removed after damage by cancer
• Suture clips
• Corrosion resistant fasteners, screws, nuts, bolts
• High temperature furnace parts.
• High temperature alloys for air and land based turbines
The components controlling the flow of electricity in mobile phones are composed of the refined mineral known as Coltan. With more and more people using mobile phones the demand for Coltan has increased significantly.
Mobile phones fuel Congo conflict
The largest reserves of Coltan are to be found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and much of the finance sustaining the civil wars in Africa, especially in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is directly connected to Coltan profits. Coltan is extracted under terrible working conditions in mines in Eastern Congo.
The United Nations reports child labour in Africa has significantly increased in Coltan mines. In some regions of the Congo, about 30 percent of schoolchildren are now forced to work in the mines.
It can be dangerous to ask questions
“The control over these resources works through maintaining local militia and exploiting cheap labour to excavate the mines”, says Antony Grange, Country Coordinator with experience from the DanChurchAid work in DRC Congo. “Attempting to oppose these practices locally is very risky business, as DanChurchaid’s former partner “Héritiers de la Justice” knows all too well since they have experienced several assassination of their staff members in the recent years. Only international pressure may stop this development,” says Antony Grange.
International pressure is important
When Denmark become a member of the UN Security Council, the Danish Government put the actions to promote peace and stability in Africa on top of the agenda, and they promised to put a focus on the role natural recourses play as a cause to many conflicts. Income from oil, diamonds and export of woods, continues to fuel armed conflicts.
A call to action
However, Denmark has not managed to convince the Security Council to strengthen the present activities. Therefore the Danish development NGOs now call on the Minister for Foreign Affairs to bring the issue to the table and to work for more efficient tools for the UN to punish those who make profit out of the conflict resources. The organisation also calls for a permanent position within the UN, with a mandate to work for prevention of conflicts financed by natural resources such as oil, woods, and minerals.
The tiny town of Lakota, N.D., is quickly becoming a key testing ground for the legality of the use of unmanned drones by law enforcement after one of its residents became the first American citizen to be arrested with the help of a Predator surveillance drone.
The bizarre case started when six cows wandered onto Rodney Brossart’s 3,000 acre farm. Brossart, an alleged anti-government “sovereignist,” believed he should have been able to keep the cows, so he and two family members chased police off his land with high powered rifles.
After a 16-hour standoff, the Grand Forks police department SWAT team, armed with a search warrant, used an agreement they’ve had with Homeland Security for about three years, and called in an unmanned aerial vehicle to pinpoint Brossart’s location on the ranch. The SWAT team stormed in and arrested Brossart on charges of terrorizing a sheriff, theft, criminal mischief, and other charges, according to documents.
Brossart says he “had no clue” they used a drone during the standoff until months after his arrest.
“We’re not laying over here playing dead on it,” says Brossart, who is scheduled to appear in court on April 30. He believes what the SWAT team did was “definitely” illegal.
“We’re dealing with it, we’ve got a couple different motions happening in court fighting [the drone use].”
Repeated calls to Brossart’s attorney were not returned. Douglas Manbeck, who is representing the state of North Dakota in the case, says the drone was used after warrants were already issued.
“The alleged crimes were already committed long before a drone was even thought of being used,” he says. “It was only used to help assure there weren’t weapons and to make [the arrest] safer for both the Brossarts and law enforcement.”
“I know it’s a touchy subject for anyone to feel that drones are in the air watching them, but I don’t think there was any misuse in this case,” he added.
While there’s no precedent for the use of unmanned drones by law enforcement, John Villasenor, an expert on information gathering and drone use with the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution, says he’d be “floored” if the court throws the case out. Using a drone is no different than using a helicopter, he says.
“It may have been the first time a drone was used to make an arrest, but it’s certainly not going to be the last,” Villasenor says. “I would be very surprised if someone were able to successfully launch a legal challenge [in Brossart’s case].”
Villasenor points to two Supreme Court cases—California v. Ciraolo in 1986 and Florida v. Riley in 1989— that allow law enforcement to use “public navigable airspace, in a physically nonintrusive manner” to gather evidence to make an arrest.
By summertime, there may be many more cases like Brossart’s—on May 14, the government must begin issuing permits for drone use by law enforcement.
Currently, about 300 law enforcement agencies and research institutions—including the Grand Forks SWAT team—have “temporary licenses” from the FAA to use drones. Currently, drones are most commonly used by Homeland Security along America’s borders.
Bill Macki, head of the Grand Forks SWAT team, says Brossart’s case was the first and only time they’ve used a drone to help make an arrest—they tried one other time (to search for an armed, suicidal individual), but gusty weather conditions made navigation impossible.
With a population of less than 70,000, it doesn’t make sense for the Grand Forks police department to own a helicopter, but the ability to call in a drone when necessary can provide a similar purpose.
If police officers were to file a subpoena for your Facebook information, they would receive a printout of the data from the social network. This printout would be so detailed, complete and creepy that you should strive to be a good law-abiding citizen, just to prevent it from ever existing.
We have just learned about the true nature of Facebook’s responses to subpoenas thanks to documents uncovered by the Boston Phoenix, an alternative weekly.
The data — which really did come in the form of an old-fashioned paper printout rather than as a digital file of some sort — included all of the suspect’s wall posts, photos he’d uploaded, photos he’d been tagged in, a list of his Facebook friends, and “a long table of login and IP data.” Based on a look at the actual documents, it appears the login and IP data actually lists which parts of Facebook the individual accessed — down to the photos, groups and profiles he viewed.
We work with law enforcement where appropriate and to the extent required by law to ensure the safety of the people who use Facebook. We may disclose information pursuant to subpoenas, court orders, or other requests (including criminal and civil matters) if we have a good faith belief that the response is required by law. This may include respecting requests from jurisdictions outside of the United States where we have a good faith belief that the response is required by law under the local laws in that jurisdiction, apply to users from that jurisdiction, and are consistent with generally accepted international standards.
We may also share information when we have a good faith belief it is necessary to prevent fraud or other illegal activity, to prevent imminent bodily harm, or to protect ourselves and you from people violating our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, courts or other government entities.
If you’d like to see how the information looks, the printout of the “Craigslist Killer” suspect, who committed suicide before the trial could reach a resolution, has been posted online by the Boston Phoenix. Both the Boston Police as well as the Boston Phoenix have redacted parts of the documents. From what we can tell, Facebook doesn’t censor any data before responding to a subpoena, but we have asked the social network for confirmation.
Want more tech news, silly puns, or amusing links? You’ll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.
In the future, if you tweet out a photo of a hilarious, meme-tastic kitten, it might be best not to include terms like “white powder,” “dirty bomb,” or “Death to America.”
Since late January, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been asking the IT industry to help it develop an open-source social-media application that would provide a panoramic real-time picture of any “breaking event, crisis, activity, or natural disaster…in progress in the U.S. or globally,” according tostatements released by the agency. Essentially, the bureau wants to crowd-source software that would data-mine Twitter and other websites to scan for—and perhaps predict—mass uprisings, criminal activity, and terror plots.
To make something like what the FBI is looking for, a programmer would have to write a scriptto yank content from, say, open Facebook profiles and Twitter feeds. Once the data is obtained, it can be quickly searched for key terms. The next step is “geotagging“—tying individual posts to specific geographical locations. But the app would have to deal with more than just keywords. Ideally, the FBI wants a “threat index” that combines multiple metrics such as locations, links, and networks into one waterfall search engine. Think Klout, but souped-up for the NatSec establishment.
At first glance, the concept seems sensible enough. It’s no surprise the US government would want to use every resource possible to stay ahead of the news and intelligence curve in case a new crisis hits at home or abroad. And because the program would be aimed at monitoring open sources, it might not sound like a major civil-liberties tripwire, since tweets and online forums are usually available for anybody to view.
Still, the idea of Big Brother checking up on whom you’ve friended on Facebook or watching the embarrassing videos you’ve posted on YouTube might be off-putting, even if you’re not a die-hard civil libertarian. Such initiatives are probably legal, says Rebecca Jeschke, a digital-rights analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but they’re also “creepy.”
The FBI isn’t completely oblivious to such concerns. In statement sent to Mother Jones, a bureau spokeswoman insisted that the FBI is not looking for a program that would access private data or “focus on specific persons or protected groups.” Instead, she claims, the program would hone in on “activities constituting violations of federal criminal law or threats to national security.” The FBI also provided examples of words the application would be built to single out, including “bomb,” “suspicious package,” “white powder,” “active shoot,” and “lockdown.” “Although the FBI has always adapted to meet changes in technology,” the statement reads, “the rule of law civil liberties, and civil rights, will remain our guiding principles.” (They don’talways live up to those.)
Privacy concerns aside, the efficacy of open-source data-mining applications is, at best, questionable. “It reads almost like science fiction,” Mike German, a senior policy counsel for the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office and former FBI agent, says. “The FBI has this unquenchable thirst for more data…Here they are in this day and age, thinking there is some easy solution to identifying threats against the country. But it’s often foolish for agents to take what they see online and treat it as intelligence. For instance, if you run a search for some of their key terms like ‘lockdown,’ ‘white powder,’ and ‘active shoot,’ you get over 345 million hits. That’s 345 million potential false tips.”
The government has tried this sort of thing before, without much success. The Department of Homeland Security already has several controversial data-mining programs. In 2007, a DHS program known as ADVISE was suspended following an internal audit by the department’s inspector general for dodging a required privacy review. And last September, the Government Accountability Office issued a report (PDF) that urged stronger executive oversight of DHS data-mining to ensure necessary privacy protections. The Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, and Central Intelligence Agency also have well-documented histories of flirting with large-scale data-mining, with mixed, secret, and often controversial results.
In 2008, a privacy and terrorism commission backed by DHS published a 376-page report titled “Protecting Individual Privacy in the Struggle Against Terrorists” that panned the logic behind post-9/11 data-mining. “Automated identification of terrorists through data mining (or any other known methodology) is neither feasible as an objective nor desirable as a goal of technology development effort,” the commissioners wrote. “Even in well-managed programs, such tools are likely to return significant rates of false positives, especially if the tools are highly automated.”
The FBI, however, is undaunted. As of Wednesday, it’s still looking for programmers.
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (H.R. 3523) is a bill introduced in the United States House of Representatives by Reps. Mike Rogers (D-MI) and C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger (D-MD) in late 2011. It amends the National Security Act of 1947 to allow private companies and US government intelligence agencies to share information regarding perceived cyber threats.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH CISPA?
1. CISPA’s language, particularly in reference to how it defines “cyber threat,” is far too broad.
The bill’s definition of a “cyber threat” is so vague that it may potentially allow CISPA to encompass a far broader range of targets and data than initially contemplated by its authors. “Cyber threat” is a critical term in the bill, and is defined therein as:
…information directly pertaining to a vulnerability of, or threat to a system of network of a government or private entity, including information pertaining to the protection of a system or network from —
(A) efforts to degrade, disrupt, or destroy such system or network; or
(B) theft or misappropriation of private or government information, intellectual property, or personally identifiable information.
Under this overly broad, vague definition, whistleblowers and leakers such as Wikileaks, tech blogs carrying the latest rumours and gossip from companies, news and media sites publishing investigations, security researchers and whitehat pen testers, torrent sites (including our beloved Pirate Bay), and of course, yours truly, Anonymous, would all be ripe targets.
Additionally, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) notes, CISPA’s broad definition of “cybersecurity” is so vague that it leaves open the door “to censor any speech that a company believes would ‘degrade the network.’” Going one step further, the bill’s inclusion of “intellectual property” provides for the strong possibility that both private companies and the federal government will likely be granted “new powers to monitor and censor communications for copyright infringement.” (Full EFF letter here)
2. CISPA demonstrates a complete disregard for reasonable expectations of privacy protection and essential liberties by providing for unaccountable sharing of user data.
As laid out, CISPA allows a large, nearly unchecked quantity of any and all information on a target to be obtained and shared between private companies and government agencies. The bill’s text states, “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a self-protected entity may, for cybersecurity purposes…share such cyber threat information with any other entity, including the Federal Government.”
Why is this problematic? As it stands, CISPA’s text allows for a slippery slope of information and data that could be shared amongst private companies and the federal government without any regard for a target’s personal privacy protections. Such information could very well include account names and passwords, histories, message content, and other information not currently available to agencies under federal wiretap laws.
In a position letter addressed to Congress on 17 April 2012, CISPA critics point out:
CISPA creates an exception to all privacy laws to permit companies to share our information with each other and with the government in the name of cybersecurity. Although a carefully-‐crafted information sharing program that strictly limits the information to be shared and includes robust privacy safeguards could be an effective approach to cybersecurity, CISPA lacks such protections for individual rights. CISPA’s ‘information sharing’ regime allows the transfer of vast amounts of data, including sensitive information like internet use history or the content of emails, to any agency in the government including military and intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency or the Department of Defense Cyber Command.
3. The broad language in CISPA provides for the uncertain future expansion of federal government powers and a slippery slope of cybersecurity warrantless wiretapping.
Of particular concern is the word “notwithstanding,” which is a dangerously broad word when included in legislation. The use of “notwithstanding” will allow CISPA to apply far beyond the stated intentions of its authors. It is clear that the word was purposefully included (and kept throughout rewrites) by the bill’s authors to allow CISPA to supersede and trump all existing federal and state civil and criminal laws, including laws that safeguard privacy and personal rights.
The fact that the sponsors and authors of CISPA claim that they have no intentions to use the overly broad language of the bill to obtain unprecedented amounts of information on citizens should be of little comfort to a concerned onlooker. As it stands, if CISPA passes in Congress and is signed into law by the President, its broad language WILL be law of the land and WILL be available for use by agencies and companies as desired. Why should our only protection against rampant cyber-spying be us trusting the government or companies NOT to take CISPA over the line of acceptable (if any) data collection?
WOW, CISPA SUCKS! HOW CAN I HELP STOP IT?
Below are some various ways that YOU can get involved in the online and real world struggles against CISPA. It will take all of us to stop this bill, but we did it before with SOPA, PIPA, and [hopefully] ACTA, and we’re confident that it can be done once more with CISPA. The voice of the People WILL be heard loud and clear, and you can help because your voice matters. It’s time to stand up for your rights because, in the end, who else will? Internet, unite!
Educate a Congressman about the Internet and pitfalls of CISPA – here
Email a Congressman directly about the bill – here
Sign and pass around online petitions – here || here || here
Spread awareness. Tweet, blog and post about CISPA. Use the hashtags #StopCISPA and #CISPA so everyone can follow. Change your profile picture to an anti-CISPA image or add a STOP CISPA banner.
Tweet to CISPA’s proponents, @HouseIntelComm and @RepMikeRogers and let them know about the pitfalls of CISPA.
Let CISPA’s sponsor, Rep. MikeRogers, know how much his bill fails – here
Check out Fight For The Future’s #CongressTMI movement in regard to CISPA – here
Join the Twitter Campaign and Contact a Representative about CISPA – here
Protest. Organise in front of Congress and let them know what happens when they try to govern the Internet and strip our liberties in the name of national security. If you organise an IRL protest, please contact us@YourAnonNews so we can facilitate spreading the word on it and helping boost attendance.
I WANT TO LEARN EVEN MORE ABOUT CISPA! TELL ME MORE!
Ok…clearly you like reading and knowing the issues thoroughly. We’re proud of your dedication and passion to better educating yourself and others about this concerning bill. Below are additional helpful resources that you can check out to get an even better understanding of CISPA and how it will affect the world of tomorrow should it pass and become law.
Full text of CISPA, including recent rewrites and Amendments – here
A brilliant series of TechDirt articles on CISPA shed some light on the bill and point out exactly where its flaws are found — CISPA is a Really Bad Bill, and Here’s Why – read
– Did Congress Really Not Pay Attention to What Happened with SOPA? CISPA Ignorance is Astounding –read
– Forget SOPA, You Should Be Worried About This Cybersecurity Bill – read
NOTE: Even Obama seems to dislike CISPA — On 17 April 2012, the White House issued a statement criticising CISPA for lacking strong privacy protections and failing to set forth basic security standards.
The only remedy for the abuse of Bradley Manning and the government’s violation of the law is dismissal of all charges.
