Category Archives: Tyranny

Health/Environment, Tyranny

Government shows no intention of disclosing Fukushima disaster interviews

Shinichi Sekine
The Asahi Shimbun : May 24, 2014

Successive Cabinets have refused to release details of firsthand accounts of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, despite an understanding by a government investigation committee that the information from 772 interviewees could be made public.

The media and other third parties have been denied access to the testimonies about Japan’s worst-ever nuclear accident. The government is still showing reluctance even after The Asahi Shimbun started reporting excerpts from interviews involving Masao Yoshida, who was the manager of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant when it was hit by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

When pressed on the issue, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said May 23 the government could only release the records if it receives permission from the interviewees.

“There will be no problem if (they) make requests (to disclose their testimonies),” the government’s top spokesman said at a news conference.

But The Asahi Shimbun learned that the government’s Investigation Committee on the Accident at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Stations had agreed on July 8, 2011, before it started the investigation, that those interviewed could disclose the content of their interviews, such videotaped testimonies to the media.

The panel agreed that the interviews would be closed sessions.

It also said it would disclose testimonies “to the extent necessary” and withhold contents that might reveal identities and information that the interviewees do not want released.

Questions remain over the exact cause of the triple meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant, and conflicting reports have been released on what occurred in the early stages of the disaster.

A copy of Yoshida’s testimony to the committee obtained by The Asahi Shimbun revealed that 90 percent of the approximately 720 workers defied Yoshida’s orders and fled the plant at a critical juncture.

The records of the investigation have been transferred to the Cabinet Secretariat’s office for the preparation of nuclear safety regulatory organization reform.

The office says the records should not be made public in principle, and it has not confirmed the interviewees’ intentions on whether to disclose their hearings.

One interviewee related to the Democratic Party of Japan said he told the government committee that he did not care if the records were made public. He added that the committee has never approached him to confirm his intention on the matter.

(read the full article and Yoshida’s testimony to the committee at The Asahi Shimbun)

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Geopolitics/War, Tyranny

White House hosts senators for ‘bizarre’ secret foreign policy meeting

Olivier Knox
Yahoo News: May 21, 2014

White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and National Security Adviser Susan Rice met with a bipartisan delegation of senators late Tuesday for secret talks focused on foreign policy, several sources with knowledge of the discussion told Yahoo News.

Sen. Bob Corker, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, alluded to the meeting on Wednesday, as the panel held a hearing on whether and how to overhaul the signature law of the global war on terrorism.

“I know we both attended sort of a discussion last night that I found to be one of the most bizarre I’ve attended on Foreign Relations on foreign policy in our country,” Corker said at one point, referring to himself and Sen. Bob Menendez (D.-New Jersey), the committee’s chairman.

“I know several of us were involved in a very bizarre discussion last night. This continues a very bizarre discussion,” Corker said at another point.

The Tennessee Republican did not say where or with whom the meeting took place (or why it was bizarre).

The White House later confirmed the meeting. National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said McDonough hosted “an informal discussion on national security issues,” and that Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken attended.

“This session was part of our ongoing efforts to consult with the Congress on issues important to the president,” she said.

In addition to Corker and Menendez, Senators Susan Collins (R.-Maine), Carl Levin (D-Michigan), Jon Tester (D.-Montana) and John Walsh (D.-Montana) also attended the meeting, according to the sources, who requested anonymity.

Aides to most of those senators declined to discuss the meeting on the record. The lone exception was Tester. His communications director, Marnee Banks, confirmed the meeting and directed Yahoo News to the senator’s public schedule, which lists the meeting.

The White House had not announced the gathering before it happened.

The secret meeting came at a time of increasing bipartisan frustration with the White House over the 2001 law that authorized the war in Afghanistan and underpins policies like indefinite detention without charge and drone strikes.

In a speech almost exactly one year ago, President Obama declared that it was time to overhaul the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), and “determine how we can continue to fight terrorism without keeping America on a perpetual wartime footing.”
[…]

But one year later, the administration has yet to provide Congress with suggested specific changes to the law, much less with legislative language for rewriting it.

Senators including Corker let their frustration bubble over at Wednesday’s hearing.

“Has the administration proposed any refinement or any redefinition of the AUMF? I mean, have they provided us language in terms of what they think they need to handle the current situation?” Senator Ron Johnson (R.-Wisconsin) asked the State Department’s principal deputy legal adviser, Mary McLeod.

“No, senator, we have not, “ she replied.

(read the full article at Yahoo)

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Privacy, Tyranny

‘We Kill People Based on Metadata’

Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA admits, “We kill people based on metadata.”

By David Cole
New York Review Of Books: May 10, 2014

Supporters of the National Security Agency inevitably defend its sweeping collection of phone and Internet records on the ground that it is only collecting so-called “metadata”—who you call, when you call, how long you talk. Since this does not include the actual content of the communications, the threat to privacy is said to be negligible. That argument is profoundly misleading.

Of course knowing the content of a call can be crucial to establishing a particular threat. But metadata alone can provide an extremely detailed picture of a person’s most intimate associations and interests, and it’s actually much easier as a technological matter to search huge amounts of metadata than to listen to millions of phone calls. As NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker has said, “metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life. If you have enough metadata, you don’t really need content.” When I quoted Baker at a recent debate at Johns Hopkins University, my opponent, General Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA, called Baker’s comment “absolutely correct,” and raised him one, asserting, “We kill people based on metadata.”

It is precisely this power to collect our metadata that has prompted one of Congress’s most bipartisan initiatives in recent years. On May 7, the House Judiciary Committee voted 32-0 to adopt an amended form of the USA Freedom Act, a bill to rein in NSA spying on Americans, initially proposed by Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy and Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner. On May 8, the House Intelligence Committee, which has until now opposed any real reform of the NSA, also unanimously approved the same bill. And the Obama administration has welcomed the development.

For some, no doubt, the very fact that this bill has attracted such broad bipartisan approval will be grounds for suspicion. After all, this is the same Congress that repeatedly reauthorized the 2001 USA Patriot Act, a law that was also proposed by Sensenbrenner and on which the bulk collection of metadata was said to rest—even if many members of Congress were not aware of how the NSA was using (or abusing) it. And this is the same administration that retained the NSA’s data collection program, inherited from its predecessor, as long as it was a secret, and only called for reform when the American people learned from the disclosures of NSA contractor Edward Snowden that the government was routinely collecting phone and Internet records on all of us. So, one might well ask, if Congress and the White House, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, all now agree on reform, how meaningful can the reform be?

This is a reasonable question. This compromise bill addresses only one part of the NSA’s surveillance activities, and does not do nearly enough to address the many other privacy-invasive practices that we now know the NSA has undertaken. But it’s nonetheless an important first step, and would introduce several crucial reforms affecting all Americans.

First, and most importantly, it would significantly limit the collection of phone metadata and other “business records.” Until now, the NSA and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court have aggressively interpreted a USA Patriot Act provision that authorized collection of business records “relevant” to a counterterrorism investigation. The NSA convinced the court that because it might be useful in the future to search through anyone’s calling history to see if that person had been in contact with a suspected terrorist, the agency should be able to collect everyone’s records and store them for five years.

The NSA has said it only searched its vast database of our calling records when it had reasonable suspicion that a phone number was connected to terrorism. But it did not have to demonstrate the basis for this suspicion to a judge. Moreover, it was authorized to collect data on all callers one, two, or three steps removed from the suspect number—an authority that can quickly generate more than one million phone numbers of innocent Americans from a single suspect source number. The fact that you may have called someone (say, your aunt) who in turn called someone (say, the Pizza Hut delivery guy) who was in turn once called by a suspected terrorist says nothing about whether you’ve engaged in wrongdoing. But it will land you in the NSA’s database of suspected terrorist contacts.

Under the USA Freedom Act, the NSA would be prohibited from collecting phone and Internet data en masse. Instead, such records would remain with the telephone and Internet companies, and the NSA would only be authorized to approach those companies on an individual, case-by-case basis, and only when it could first satisfy the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that there is reasonable suspicion that a particular person, entity, or account is linked to an international terrorist or a representative of a foreign government or political organization. This is much closer to the specific kind of suspicion that the Fourth Amendment generally requires for intrusions on privacy. At that point, the court could order phone companies to produce phone calling records of all numbers that communicated with the suspect number (the first “hop”), as well as all numbers with which those numbers in turn communicated (the second “hop”).

Further restrictions are necessary. Through these authorized searches the NSA would still be able to collect large amounts of metadata on persons whose only “sin” was that they called or were called by someone who called or was called by a suspected terrorist or foreign agent. At a minimum, “back-end” limits on how the NSA searches its storehouse of phone numbers are still needed. But the bill would at least end the practice of collecting everyone’s calling records.

Second, the new House bill imposes similar limits on other USA Patriot Act provisions that were susceptible to being used, or had been used, to authorize collection of data in bulk. These include a provision empowering the government to obtain information by “national security letters,” a kind of administrative subpoena issued without judicial oversight, and “pen registers,” which intercept Internet and phone trafficking data. All of these powers would now be limited by the same requirement that the government seek case-by-case warrants based on suspicion about a particular person or group. The point is to end bulk collection of data across the board, and return the agency to the more targeted searches and inquiries that US laws have historically deemed reasonable.

Third, the bill would establish a panel of legal experts, appointed by the presiding judges of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, who would participate in proceedings before the court when it addresses “a novel or significant interpretation of law,” and in any other proceedings at the court’s discretion. They would appear as amicus curiae, or “friends of the court,” but their purpose would be to add an independent assessment of the legal issues involved, ensuring that the court is not hearing only from the government. Such a panel would increase the likelihood that difficult legal issues get a full and fair consideration, and would likely shore up the public legitimacy of the secret court, which as of now is dismissed by many, rightly or wrongly, as a “rubber stamp.”

Finally, the bill contains a number of measures designed to increase transparency and oversight. It would require the attorney general to request the declassification of opinions of the FISA court, permit private Internet and telephone companies to report semiannually on the volume of records they were required to produce, and require the Inspectors General of the Justice Department and the Intelligence Community to report on the numbers of records requested and the effectiveness of the program. Had Verizon been permitted to report, for example, that it was being compelled to turn over hundreds of millions of phone records on its customers to the NSA, and had the Inspector General informed us that the program had stopped not a single terrorist act, it is likely that bulk collection would have been cut short long ago.

Even with all these reforms, however, the USA Freedom Act only skims the surface. It does not address, for example, the NSA’s guerilla-like tactics of inserting vulnerabilities into computer software and drivers, to be exploited later to surreptitiously intercept private communications. It also focuses exclusively on reining in the NSA’s direct spying on Americans. As Snowden’s disclosures have shown, the NSA collects far more private information on foreigners—including the content as well as the metadata of e-mails, online chats, social media, and phone calls—than on US citizens.

The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 permits the NSA to intercept the content of communications when it can demonstrate nothing more than reason to believe that its targets are foreign nationals living abroad, and that the information might relate to “foreign intelligence.” “Foreign intelligence” is in turn defined to include any information that might inform our foreign affairs, which is no restriction at all. Under this authority, the NSA established the PRISM program, which collects both content and metadata from e-mail, Internet, and phone communications by millions of users worldwide. It is probably under this authority that, according to The Washington Post, the NSA is recording “every single” phone call from a particular, unnamed country. Documents leaked by Snowden demonstrate that the NSA also collects, again by the millions and billions, foreign nationals’ e-mail contact lists, cell phone location data, and texts. This is the very definition of dragnet surveillance.

Congress is far less motivated to do anything about the NSA’s abuse of the rights of foreign nationals. They are “them,” not “us.” They don’t vote. But they have human rights, too; the right to privacy, recognized in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the US has signed and ratified, does not limit protections to Americans. Snowden’s revelations have justifiably led to protests from many of our closest allies; they don’t want their privacy invaded by the NSA any more than we do, and they have more to complain about than we do, as they have suffered far greater intrusions.

In the Internet era, it is increasingly common that everyone’s communications cross national boundaries. That makes all of us vulnerable, for when the government collects data in bulk from people it believes are foreign nationals, it is almost certain to sweep up lots of communications in which Americans are involved. The initial version of the USA Freedom Act accordingly sought to limit the NSA’s ability to conduct so-called “back door” searches of content collected from foreigners for communications with Americans citizens. But that provision was stripped in committee, leaving the back door wide open.

(Read the full article at New York Review Of Books)

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Tyranny

Robocall probe didn’t contact Winnipeg riding

Stephen Maher
Canada.com: May 12, 2014

Investigators did not speak to the company that placed Conservative get-out-the-vote calls in Winnipeg South Centre, the riding with the second largest number of complaints of deceptive calls in the last election.

Elections Canada issued a report last month after a two-year, $650,000 investigation into reports of dirty political calls across Canada, finding no evidence of “a conspiracy or conspiracies to interfere with the voting process.”

Investigators sorted through complaints from 1,726 voters in 261 ridings. The largest number, 379, were from Guelph, site of the “Pierre Poutine” robocall.

The riding with the second highest number of complaints, 34, was Winnipeg South Centre, where Conservative Joyce Bateman beat Liberal incumbent Anita Neville by 722 votes.

But investigators have never contacted Fabio Esposito, the owner of Dimark Research Inc., the non-partisan Winnipeg company that did the calling for Bateman.

“We have the list of people that we called so if they had the phone numbers of the complaints we could run the numbers,” he said.

Dimark did not tell people their polling stations had moved, Esposito said.

Neville says many voters told her they received misdirection calls, but investigators did not contact her. “I think there was some effort to divert voters in this riding,” she said. “Whether what they did made any difference in the result, I doubt.”

The report provides no details about Winnipeg South Centre, and Elections Canada has declined to provide more information.

Conservatives have hailed the report as proof they did nothing wrong in the last election, but critics are raising questions about the thoroughness of the investigation:

– The agency found no evidence of law-breaking because there was “no discernible pattern of misdirection,” such as a “constellation of predominant calling numbers.”

Simon Rowland, an expert on telephone systems, and a former NDP candidate, who helped Elections Canada investigate the Guelph robocall, says investigators should have realized dialling companies can punch in different numbers.

“For some reason they … didn’t think it was possible to have a central fraud without this,” he said. “This does not follow logically.”

– The report finds that the number most often reported with suspect calls — with 13 complaints — was a number linked to credit-card “phishing” scams, probably a North Dakota number linked to fake Liberal calls.

Rowland says that “would suggest that the company that sent out the call is the exact kind of criminal who would send out a fraud call.”

– Of the 1,726 complainants, 273 didn’t know their phone service provider, so Elections Canada didn’t seek their phone records although there are websites that allow that information to be looked up.

– Investigators did not look into the partisan affiliation of those who received misdirection calls.

They listened to recordings of 126 calls cited by complainants, of which only 61 included a poll location. Of those, more than half — 34 — directed voters to the wrong place.

Investigators also listened to 1,000 randomly selected recordings of Conservative calls. One per cent — 10 calls — were found to misdirect voters.

Sources say the party made millions of calls during the campaign. If one per cent of those calls sent voters to the wrong polling station, tens of thousands of voters were misdirected.

Pollster Frank Graves, who did a random sample of voters in a related federal court case, says investigators should have checked the Conservatives’ CIMS database to see how the recipients were identified. His survey results, which were attacked by the Conservatives, showed opposition supporters received more misdirection calls.

Without knowing who got the calls, the report is meaningless, he said.

If the Conservatives mistakenly called a small number of incorrectly identified opposition supporters, then the calls could be a mistake. If a significant number of opposition supporters received them, then it would not be a mistake, Graves said.

(read the full article at Canada.com)

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Geopolitics/War, Tyranny

Show Us the Drone Memos

Rand Paul
New York Times: May 11, 2014

WASHINGTON — I BELIEVE that killing an American citizen without a trial is an extraordinary concept and deserves serious debate. I can’t imagine appointing someone to the federal bench, one level below the Supreme Court, without fully understanding that person’s views concerning the extrajudicial killing of American citizens.

But President Obama is seeking to do just that. He has nominated David J. Barron, a Harvard law professor and a former acting assistant attorney general, to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

While he was an official in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, Mr. Barron wrote at least two legal memos justifying the execution without a trial of an American citizen abroad. Now Mr. Obama is refusing to share that legal argument with the American people.

On April 30, I wrote to the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, urging him to delay this nomination, pending a court-ordered disclosure of the first memo I knew about. Since that letter, I have learned more. The American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to all senators on May 6, noting that in the view of the Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman, Dianne Feinstein, “there are at least eleven OLC opinions on the targeted killing or drone program.” It has not been established whether Mr. Barron wrote all those memos, but we do know that his controversial classified opinions provided the president with a legal argument and justification to target an American citizen for execution without a trial by jury or due process.

I believe that all senators should have access to all of these opinions. Furthermore, the American people deserve to see redacted versions of these memos so that they can understand the Obama administration’s legal justification for this extraordinary exercise of executive power. The White House may invoke national security against disclosure, but legal arguments that affect the rights of every American should not have the privilege of secrecy.

I agree with the A.C.L.U. that “no senator can meaningfully carry out his or her constitutional obligation to provide ‘advice and consent’ on this nomination to a lifetime position as a federal appellate judge without being able to read Mr. Barron’s most important and consequential legal writing.” The A.C.L.U. cites the fact that in modern history, a presidential order to kill an American citizen away from a battlefield is unprecedented.

The Bill of Rights is clear. The Fifth Amendment provides that no one can be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The Sixth Amendment provides that “the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury,” as well as the right to be informed of all charges and have access to legal counsel. These are fundamental rights that cannot be waived with a presidential pen.

In battle, combatants engaged in war against America get no due process and may lawfully be killed. But citizens not in a battlefield, however despicable, are guaranteed a trial by our Constitution.

No one argues that Americans who commit treason shouldn’t be punished. The maximum penalty for treason is death. But the Constitution specifies the process necessary to convict.

Anwar al-Awlaki was an American citizen who was subject to a kill order from Mr. Obama, and was killed in 2011 in Yemen by a missile fired from a drone. I don’t doubt that Mr. Awlaki committed treason and deserved the most severe punishment. Under our Constitution, he should have been tried — in absentia, if necessary — and allowed a legal defense. If he had been convicted and sentenced to death, then the execution of that sentence, whether by drone or by injection, would not have been an issue.

But this new legal standard does not apply merely to a despicable human being who wanted to harm the United States. The Obama administration has established a legal justification that applies to every American citizen, whether in Yemen, Germany or Canada.

Defending the rights of all American citizens to a trial by jury is a core value of our Constitution. Those who would make exceptions for killing accused American citizens without trial should give thought to the times in our history when either prejudice or fear allowed us to forget due process. During World War I, our nation convicted and imprisoned Americans who voiced opposition to the war. During World War II, the government interned Japanese-Americans.

(read the full article at New York Times

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Geopolitics/War, Health/Environment, Original, Tyranny

US Government’s 9/11 Lies Have Now Officially Killed More Police Officers Than The 9/11 Attacks

AlternativeFreePress.com

The number of police officers who died from ground zero-related illnesses now outnumber the 60 killed in the 9/11 attacks.

In August 2003 it was revealed that the government ordered the EPA to give the public misleading information, telling the public on September 12 that it was safe to breathe when reliable information on air quality was not available and Asbestos levels were known to be three times higher than national standards.

On September 16, 2001, the then head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Christie Todd Whitman, told reporters: “The good news continues to be that air samples we have taken have all been at levels that cause no concern.”

“Whitman’s deliberate and misleading statements to the press, where she reassured the public that the air was safe to breathe around lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, and that there would be no health risk presented to those returning to those areas, shocks the conscience,” Manhattan Federal Judge Deborah Batts wrote in February 2006.

In 2007 documents revealed that Lower Manhattan was reopened just weeks following the attack despite the fact that the air was not safe.

Thousands of police officers, firefighters and construction workers filed lawsuits the City of New York, claiming they had been sent to ground zero without proper protective equipment and a $650 settlement was awarded.

The number of police officers killed by the US government’s lies about the air quality after the 9/11 attacks is now at least 71.

Written by Alternative Free Press
Creative Commons License
US Government’s 9/11 Lies Have Now Officially Killed More Police Officers Than The 9/11 Attacks by AlternativeFreePress.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Sources:

Cops dead from 9/11 illnesses outnumber officers who died in attacks (CBS News)

Judge hot over 9-11 air. Rips EPA’s all-clear, OKs suit (New York Daily News)

9/11 tentative deal for rescue workers reached (CBC News)

$650 Million Payout Proves Government Conspired To Lie About 9/11 (Prison Planet)

EPA Misled Public on 9/11 Pollution (Common Dreams)

Tyranny

“I kicked him the wrong way” : Mom Stomps Child to Death After Police Ignore Abuse

Albuquerque Boy Called 911 for Help, 6 Months Later Mom Stomps Him to Death in Meth-Induced Rage

By Tamar Auber
Latest: April 30, 2014

38-year old woman is now in jail after stomping her young son to death in a drug-induced rage, just months after the little boy tried to call 911 for help.

Synthia Varela-Casaus, a mother of 4, has a checkered past, including numerous arrests for drug possession and prostitution. She also had a habit of leaving her kids with friends and relatives while off on a binge, often for months at a time.

The troubled mom was also prone to violence and abuse. 6 months before little Omaree was kicked to death, the little boy called 911 to report the abuse in the home, leaving the home dangling to record the horrifying events occurring in his home.

“Yeah, (expletive) beat the (expletive) out of you Omaree,” a male voice says in the recorded 911 message, followed by Omaree screaming out, “stop, please!”

“Shut the (expletive up) up before I really pop you hard man,” the man, believed to be Omaree’s step-dad Steve Casaus, threatens.

A voice thought to be Omaree’s mom then chimes in, “”You caused this on yourself Omaree. Cause you don’t want to (expletive) change do you?”

The vicious tirade continues for over 20 minutes, with the adults hitting and swearing at the little boy.

Amazingly, the Albuquerque police did not label the 911 call a priority and after a brief visit caught on lapel-cam to follow-up on the abuse, the police decided to leave the kids in the home and never bothered to file a report with child welfare services.

That decision, turned out to be a tragic mistake.

The next 911 called received from the home was a call reporting the 9-year-old dead.

“I didn’t do it. It wasn’t intentional,” Casaus told the local news after her arrest for her son’s brutal death. “It was an accident. I was disciplining him. I kicked him the wrong way. It was an accident.”

(read the full article at Latest)

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Drugs, Privacy, Tyranny

Pennsylvania Supreme Court: No Warrant Needed to Search Citizens’ Vehicles

By Jay Syrmopoulos
Ben Swann: May 2, 2014

The Pennsylvania Supreme court, in a 4-2 decision, has issued a ruling that police officers are not required to obtain a search warrant before searching a vehicle. This decision overturns the protections offered by the Pennsylvania state constitution as well as those enumerated in the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The court opinion, issued by Justice Seamus McCaffery concluded that, “the prerequisite for a warrantless search of a motor vehicle is probable cause to search.”

The case stemmed from a 2010 traffic stop by the Philadelphia police department, for a vehicle having dark tinted windows. The police subsequently found two pounds of marijuana under the hood of the car.

Prior to this decision police were not allowed to search a vehicle without driver consent, illegal substances in plain view or a search warrant. Drivers had the ability to refuse a search request, which would then require the officer to produce a warrant signed by a judge for the search to take place. Based on this ruling the standard to search has now been lowered to an officers belief of reasonable probable cause.

The police applauded the decision. According to Lancaster Online, New Holland Police Lt. Jonathan Heisse said, “It is a ruling that helps law enforcement as they continue to find people in possession of illegal drugs,” as reported by Brett Hambright.

However not all parties felt this was a wise decision.

In the dissent, Justice Debra McCloskey concluded that the ruling, “heedlessly contravenes over 225 years of unyielding protection against unreasonable search and seizure which our people have enjoyed as their birthright,” and went on to state that the decision was “diametrically contrary to the deep historical and legal traditions.”

A number of defense attorneys viewed the decision as extreme governmental overreach. Jeffrey Conrad, of Clymer Musser & Conrad, in a statement to Hambright, said, “It’s an expanding encroachment of government power,” and followed up by saying, “It’s a protection we had two days ago, that we don’t have today. It’s disappointing from a citizens’ rights perspective.”

(read the full article at Ben Swann)

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Tyranny

Man Arrested In FBI Sting Found Dead In Federal Custody

By Mikael Thalen
Story Leak: May 2nd, 2014

A Washington state man charged with plotting to blow up several buildings was found dead in federal custody Thursday, only days after being arrested during an elaborate FBI sting.

According to federal agents, 53-year-old Larry Gillette, who was serving a sentence for identity theft, told several inmates that he planned to blow up a Walmart and two gas stations as a diversion for three bank robberies once he left prison. An anonymous federal law enforcement source speaking to reporters from Kiro Radio also stated that Gillette had plans to blow up Seattle’s iconic Space Needle, although the FBI has yet to comment on the claims.

Upon his release, Gillette unknowingly met with an undercover officer and received four inoperable pistols as well as a defective car bomb. Reports state that Gillette met with the officer a second time on April 28 and attempted to detonate the bomb before being arrested by the FBI.

“This certainly had the potential to be very devastating and dangerous and he was certainly the driving force,” Asst. U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Backhus told Komo 4 News last Thursday. “The FBI was in charge of the situation the entire time. There was no threat to the public that we believe of because they were in charge of the situation but certainly, potentially, there was a great chance for loss of life.”

Less than a week later, Gillette would be found dead in his cell at the Seatac Federal Detention Center. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons announced the death the following day, saying hospital workers were unsuccessful in their attempts to revive Gillette from a suspected suicide.

While no evidence currently points to foul play, the FBI’s history of executing people in their custody, most recently seen with Ibragim Todashev, who was shot 7 times execution style in his home, begs the question. Aside from Gillette’s death, the circumstances surrounding his initial arrest are nearly identical to every other FBI terror sting in one specific way.

In almost every plot foiled by the FBI, the agency itself was found to have supplied all the firearms and explosives after secretly coercing subjects into carrying out attacks. While those who attempt to engage in violent activities should be held accountable, the federal government has continually used their own plots to push civil-liberty eroding policies in the name of protection.

A 2012 report from the New York Times detailed some of the agency’s more well-know plots since 9/11, noting that such events were unlikely to occur without the FBI’s involvement.

“The United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years — or so it has seemed,” the article states. “…all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training.”

(read the full article at Story Leak

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