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US Cell Phone Companies See Surveillance Requests Soar

Jason Ditz
Anti War
Sun, 08 Jul 2012 07:13 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Ubiquitous in the modern world, the cell phone is a very personal item and, perhaps predictably, at has become one of the favorite targets for US law enforcement fishing expeditions, according to new data released by cell phone companies.

The data, a response to a Congressional inquiry into cell phone surveillance, shows requests from federal state and local governments have soared over the past few years, with the companies fielding 1.3 million demands for private subscriber information in 2011 alone.

Government surveillance into cell phone use is a long-standing issue for privacy advocates, but even Congressmen are expressing shock at exactly how many such requests the companies are receiving.

At present there are very few legal restrictions on what the government can seek, with many agencies shifting away from wiretaps to more vague requests for data to avoid seeking a warrant. Many of the companies are keeping a team of lawyers on-hand to screen such requests, rejecting those they are worried might cause trouble for them later.
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Pistol

U.N. Agreement Should Have All Gun Owners Up In Arms

Larry Bell
Forbes
Mon, 09 Jul 2012 22:15 UTC
gun
© Getty Images via @daylife
It may not come as surprising news to many of you that the United Nations doesn't approve of our Second Amendment. Not one bit. And they very much hope to do something about it with help from some powerful American friends. Under the guise of a proposed global "Small Arms Treaty" premised to fight "terrorism", "insurgency" and "international crime syndicates" you can be quite certain that an even more insidious threat is being targeted - our Constitutional right for law-abiding citizens to own and bear arms.

What, exactly, does the intended agreement entail?
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Cell Phone

Twitter-Based Mass Subversion

Callout Joe
Niqnaq
Mon, 09 Jul 2012 00:00 UTC
Image
© multifamilymayhem.wordpress.com
"Whatever happens today, you can't put this genie back in the bottle - oxfordgirl." I remember watching these words real-time on Jun 12 2009, and knowing just how undeniably true they were. Something was about to happen that was going to change the nature of reality and perception on this planet in ways that only a handful of us on Earth could even conceive. The next generation of mind control was about to manifest itself in a faraway land, and I knew as well as the creators themselves did, that the era of Virtual Reality 2.0 was about to begin.

For ages they prepared for this event. Months and months of planning, preparation, and testing went into the grand illusion that was about to 'spring' to life. On Jun 12 2009 it wasn't even a blip in US consciousness yet, but Iran was about to hold a Presidential Election and this small band of rebel technologists planned on turning in their favor. The methods and means they intended to use in this endeavor were nothing short of astonishing. Through perception management, disinformation, video manipulation, manufactured false reality, cyber warfare, and remote managed civil disobedience, this band was fully prepared to and intent on taking over a country.
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Propaganda

Propaganda Alert! Toulouse gunman Mohamed Merah listed Canada among proposed al-Qaeda targets

Andy Radia
Political Points
Mon, 09 Jul 2012 00:00 UTC
Mohamed Merah
© Agence France-Presse
It appears Canada is still under threat from a potential al-Qaeda attack.

The Globe and Mail is reporting that Mohamed Merah -- the French gunman who killed French soldiers and attacked a Jewish school last spring in Toulouse -- was told at a terrorist training camp that he should launch strikes against Canada.

Merah made the claim to a French counter-terrorism officer during the 32-hour standoff which ultimately ended in a shootout and his death. His comments were revealed in an audio recording leaked to the public on Sunday.

"I was sent by al-Qaeda. I was trained by the Pakistani Talibans. There's a whole organization behind this," Merah is heard saying.

Describing how he spent two months in a camp in Pakistan, Merah said he met French, Chinese, Tajik, Afghan, Pakistani, American, German and Spanish jihadists.

"There are brothers who deal with sending brothers to other countries. They proposed to me to launch strikes in America, in Canada, et cetera," Merah said.

He told the police officer that they wanted him to target diplomats, including the Indian ambassador or a female ambassador whose name he couldn't remember, along with media bosses.

But Merah, a French national of Algerian descent, said he felt it would be easier for him to operate in Toulouse, in southern France, where he grew up.

Comment: Merah was not a murderer but one of the several people that was used by psychopaths in power for political purposes. For the real story of what happened surrounding the Merah case, read:
Sott Focus: Toulouse Attacks: The Official Story of the Death of Mohamed Merah is a Lie
Sott Focus: Sarkozy The American's 9/11: Mohamed Merah: 'Liquidated' French Intelligence Asset
Sarkozy's Coup d'État: Mohamed Merah was French Intelligence Asset

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Laptop

U.S. Spy Agencies Say Won't Read Americans' Email for Cybersecurity

Tabassum Zakaria and David Alexander
Reuters
Tue, 10 Jul 2012 00:00 UTC
Keith Alexander
© Reuters/Hyungwon Kang
General Keith Alexander, Director of the NSA and Commander of U.S. Cyber Command
The head of the U.S. spy agency that eavesdrops on electronic communications overseas sought on Monday to reassure Americans that the National Security Agency would not read their personal email if a new cybersecurity law was enacted to allow private companies to share information with the government.

The House of Representatives in April approved a bill that would allow the government and companies to share information about hacking. But the White House and key Senate Democrats back a broader approach.

Critics have raised privacy concerns about the sharing of such information, concerned it would allow the National Security Agency, which also protects government computer networks, to collect data on American communications, which is generally prohibited by law.

"The reality is we can do protection of civil liberties and privacy and cybersecurity as a nation," General Keith Alexander said in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute.

But to help protect the private sector, he said it was important that the intelligence agency be able to inform them about the type of malicious software and other cyber intrusions it is seeing and hear from companies about what they see breaching the protective measures on their computer networks.

"It doesn't require the government to read their mail or your mail to do that. It requires them, the Internet service provider or that company, to tell us that that type of event is going on at this time. And it has to be at network speed if you're going to stop it," Alexander said.

He said the information the government was seeking was the Internet address where an email containing malicious software originated and where it traveled to, not the content of the email.
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Mr. Potato

Beyond Misery in America: A Modest Proposal for Willard

Charles P. Pierce
Esquire
Fri, 06 Jul 2012 18:16 UTC
mitt romney
Willard Romney, onetime dauphin prince of the Mexican outback and current presumptive nominee of the only Republican party we have, has been having a rough week there up at his lakeside retreat in the small town of Silly Rich Bastard, New Hampshire. He's gotten himself tangled up (again) with his previous incarnations, particularly the Self that once deigned to govern Massachusetts for about 11 minutes back in the early Aughts. That one put in place a mandate requiring that all citizens of the Commonwealth (God Save It!) buy health insurance, or else pay a penalty that would be collected by the state revenoo'ers. The current Willard, of course, is opposed to mandates because he is the nominee of a party full of crazy people. He and his campaign have spent a week trying to decide if the crazy people are less likely to disembowel them if they call such a mandate a "penalty" or a "tax" in relation to the Obama administration's success at bringing Romney's original Massachusetts plan to the masses. He's also being sniped at by various allegedly non-crazy leaders of his party for not being the candidate of their dreams. All of which seems to be harshing the general mellow up in the piney woods.

Once again, I put upon my head my speechwriter's hat - it is a lovely green fedora with a red feather in the band - and offer the Romney campaign my services in this strange, floundering hour of its discontent. I believe it doesn't have to be this way. I believe in addressing the problems head-on, as you will see.
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Mr. Potato

Texas Republican Party officially rejects 'critical thinking' skills. No, Really

Valerie Strauss
Washington Post Local
Mon, 09 Jul 2012 17:49 UTC
GOP Texas platform
© AP/LM Otero
In the you-can't-make-up-this-stuff department, here's what the Republican Party of Texas wrote into its 2012 platform as part of the section on education:

Knowledge-Based Education - We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

Yes, you read that right. The party opposes the teaching of "higher order thinking skills" because it believes the purpose is to challenge a student's "fixed beliefs" and undermine "parental authority."

It opposes, among other things, early childhood education, sex education, and multicultural education, but supports "school subjects with emphasis on the Judeo-Christian principles upon which America was founded."
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Question

Poisoned: Who Killed Yasser Arafat?

Justin Raimondo
AntiWar
Wed, 04 Jul 2012 17:23 UTC
Yasser Arafat
© unknown
Yasser Arafat
Now we know he was poisoned - but by whom?

Yasser Arafat died on November 11, 2004, of a mysterious ailment. His enemies spread the rumor he had AIDS: David Frum, with typical classiness, claimed he had contracted AIDS as a consequence of having sex with his bodyguards. Now, however, it has been revealed Arafat was poisoned: the cause of his death was exposure to very high levels of polonium-210 [pdf], a rare radioactive substance. An investigation conducted by Al Jazeera showed Arafat's personal items, released to the media organization by his widow, contained several times the normal level of polonium that would normally be detected on such items. The Palestinian leader's terminal symptoms were similar to those experienced by victims of polonium poisoning: the substance targets the gastrointestinal tract and the subject wastes away.

Arafat's Ramallah compound had been bombed several times by the Israelis, and they had the place surrounded - yet still he persisted. They couldn't get him out. Worse, his plight was becoming a metaphor for the condition of his people, who were - and still are - prisoners in their own land. A former adviser claimed he was poisoned by the Israelis, who detained the Palestinian ambulance used to deliver Arafat's medications to the Ramallah compound. At the time, one tended to write this off as a purely polemical exercise: in light of the new evidence, however, the question has to be asked.
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Bad Guys

'Israel sent me to poison Arafat's food,' Palestinian prisoner says

Daniel Siryoti and Reuters
Israel Hayom
Mon, 09 Jul 2012 17:08 UTC
Yasser Arafat
© Moshe Shai
A Palestinian prisoner says Israel sent him to poison the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in his Ramallah compound in 2004.
Video released by Lebanese media apparently shows Palestinian prisoner in Ketziot prison saying he was recruited by Israeli security forces to infiltrate Yasser Arafat's compound in 2004 and put poison in his food - Israeli expert denies allegations that Arafat died from polonium poisoning.

Recent speculation that the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was poisoned to death continued over the weekend when Lebanese television released a video apparently showing a Palestinian prisoner in Israel confessing that he was recruited by Israeli security forces to poison Arafat.

In the video released Friday, which appears to have been filmed in 2006, a Palestinian prisoner in the Ketziot prison is seen "interrogating" another Palestinian inmate who confesses that he was sent by Israel to kill the late Palestinian leader.

The prisoner claims in the video that, together with a group of Palestinian collaborators, he poisoned Arafat by putting toxic substances in his food while the Palestinian leader was barricaded in his Ramallah compound in 2004.
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Heart - Black

Torture Team: President Bush Should be Criminally Investigated for War Crimes


RT
Fri, 06 Jul 2012 16:43 UTC
After the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the US has come under intense scrutiny for its use of 'enhanced interrogation techniques' that many experts have called torture. Now there are calls to bring those responsible in the US government to justice.


Philippe Sands is a Professor of Law at University College, London. In his new book Torture Team, Sands explores the legality and ramifications of the US program of state-sponsored torture behind closed doors at Guantanamo Bay. In an RT interview, Sands discusses the possibility of one day bringing those responsible to justice.
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