Privacy, Tyranny

USA FREEDOM Act: Just Another Word for Lost Liberty

Ron Paul: May 3, 2015

Apologists for the National Security Agency (NSA) point to the arrest of David Coleman Headley as an example of how warrantless mass surveillance is necessary to catch terrorists. Headley played a major role in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack that killed 166 people.

While few would argue that bringing someone like Headley to justice is not a good thing, Headley’s case in no way justifies mass surveillance. For one thing, there is no “terrorist” exception in the Fourth Amendment. Saying a good end (capturing terrorists) justifies a bad means (mass surveillance) gives the government a blank check to violate our liberties.

Even if the Headley case somehow justified overturning the Fourth Amendment, it still would not justify mass surveillance and bulk data collection. This is because, according to an investigation by ProPublica, NSA surveillance played an insignificant role in catching Headley. One former counter-terrorism official said when he heard that NSA surveillance was responsible for Headley’s capture he “was trying to figure out how NSA played a role.”

The Headley case is not the only evidence that the PATRIOT Act and other post-9/11 sacrifices of our liberty have not increased our security. For example, the NSA’s claim that its surveillance programs thwarted 54 terrorist attacks has been widely discredited. Even the president’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies found that mass surveillance and bulk data collection was “not essential to preventing attacks.”

According to the congressional Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 and the 9/11 Commission, the powers granted the NSA by the PATRIOT Act would not have prevented the 9/11 attacks. Many intelligence experts have pointed out that, by increasing the size of the haystack government agencies must look through, mass surveillance makes it harder to find the needle of legitimate threats.

Even though mass surveillance threatens our liberty, violates the Constitution, and does nothing to protect us from terrorism, many in Congress still cling to the fiction that the only way to ensure security is to give the government virtually unlimited spying powers. These supporters of the surveillance state are desperate to extend the provisions of the PATRIOT Act that are set to expire at the end of the month. They are particularly eager to preserve Section 215, which authorizes many of the most egregious violations of our liberties, including the NSA’s “metadata” program.

However, Edward Snowden’s revelations have galvanized opposition to the NSA’s ongoing violations of our liberties. This is why Congress will soon vote on the USA FREEDOM Act. This bill extends the expiring surveillance laws. It also contains some “reforms” that supposedly address all the legitimate concerns regarding mass surveillance.

However, a look at the USA FREEDOM Act’s details, as opposed to the press releases of its supporters, shows that the act leaves the government’s mass surveillance powers virtually untouched.

The USA FREEDOM Act has about as much to do with freedom as the PATRIOT Act had to do with patriotism. If Congress truly wanted to protect our liberties it would pass the Surveillance State Repeal Act, which repeals the PATRIOT Act. Congress should also reverse the interventionist foreign policy that increases the risk of terrorism by fostering resentment and hatred of Americans.

Fourteen years after the PATRIOT Act was rushed into law, it is clear that sacrificing liberty does little or nothing to preserve security. Instead of trying to fool the American people with phony reforms, Congress should repeal all laws that violate the Fourth Amendment, starting with the PATRIOT Act.

source: Ron Paul institute

Banksters, Corporate Welfare, Geopolitics/War, Privacy, Tyranny

Frankly My Dear, I Don’t Give a Damn

First Rebuttal : May 4, 2015

I find it shocking how often I have people tell me the Constitution is out of date and is no longer relevant or necessary.  Then there are the vast majority of people that think about the Constitution the same way they think about religion; it makes us feel good to believe in it and we’ll even worship it on a holiday or two   The reality is that those who seem to get very worked up to the point that they are willing to act in defense of the Constitution even against the highest levels of government make up a very small minority of Americans.  This is a real problem.

You see if people gave a damn the government couldn’t get away with negating the Constitution.  But the vast majority of people just don’t give a damn and so the government very easily provides ridiculous and false legal sounding arguments to explain away why they have become a higher law than the Constitution. Now I’ve tried to understand why it is that we Americans are so damn apathetic about everything the government and government officials do.

Let me give a couple examples for which our apathy just boggles my mind.   We know they took us into wars on false pretenses resulting in the wrongful deaths of thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and yet we’ve prosecuted no one.  Hell they’ve admitted to hacking into millions of our home webcams and downloading videos and pictures of us in our most private moments and maintaining those downloads on government servers and then sharing these files with foreign governments.

But because today’s American is simply a shell of a citizen none of the criminal atrocities creates even a stir from us.  Sure we all read about these atrocities and we are angered in the moment but it passes rather quickly and we fall back into our self induced ignorant bliss.  Only two things can get Americans to formidably rise up.  The first is a very direct and immediate impediment to our comfort.  For example try cutting back on the monthly social welfare checks.  You’ll have riots.   The second way is if the mainstream media relentlessly instructs us to be upset about a particular issue.  Outside of that there is absolutely nothing the new American won’t move past like water off a duck’s back.

What we’re finding out is that, and it sounds slightly over-dramatic but isn’t at all, unless we are willing to fight and die to win back the freedom our forefather’s fought and died to secure for us and all future generations we will continue to feel our chains grow heavier and shorter.  The simple reason is because our government is very much willing to kill to keep its ever encroaching control.  A free population is the antithesis to a political class.  And make no mistake the American federal government is the largest and most powerful group of aristocrats the world has known.

This group of traitors (and I mean that in the very technical sense of the word) not only behave according to a separate set of laws they have actually gone so far as to legislate a separate set of laws.  This in itself is a direct breach of the very Constitution they swear to defend.  Their intent is clear and that my friends is treason.  They are directly negating the very basis of the American concept for their own personal self interest and they are doing so by defrauding American citizens into believing their intent is to represent the will of their constituents.  Treason, Treason, Treason!  What else would you call it?

Now are you ready to fight and die to win the freedoms back for your children and grandchildren?  Hell No!  No, not at all!  And that’s kinda the problem because again the government is willing to kill to ensure your kids and grandkids don’t have the freedoms Americans were guaranteed.  The fuck of it is Americans have become so damn brainwashed that despite the founding fathers telling us explicitly our government would end up enslaving the rest of us to solidify their own power and wealth we ignore it. These were the guys that figured out the British were effectively enslaving us and decided to rise against it and create the greatest damn nation the world has ever known.  They literally created fucking America!!!  I mean holy shit, imagine having that on your CV.  And we pay them no mind, like they’re bat shit crazy and not relevant in our intellectual new world.

Today’s legislators rarely discuss the founding fathers or the Constitution beyond the very thin idea that they know we expect them to defend it.  That is, like freedom and apple pie, they love it during the campaign cycle.  However, ask them why then they continue to legislate against the Constitution and well they don’t want to talk about the Constitution anymore.  And we the people ,like apathetic morons , buy into the bullshit they feed us because we simply don’t care.  It’s to the point they can pretty much do anything knowing they can bullshit us with any damn nonsense that pops into their swollen heads.  And so they do things like hack into our webcams, take nude pictures of us and send them to foreign governments and tell us it’s for our own good.  We don’t give a shit because 1. it doesn’t impede our immediate comfort and 2. the press isn’t telling us it’s something to be concerned about.

The danger of being apathetic until it impacts our immediate day to day is that we allow the government to take away all the freedoms we are not currently using.  What I mean by that is we so far have not had to face what it means to be powerless and in chains.  But only because we haven’t yet ventured out far enough so as to reach the end of our chains.  Like a sleeping dog that isn’t aware he’s been shackled until he wakes and tries to chase a bird, we are asleep and unaware of the shackles placed around our ankles.

Some will say “wait, it isn’t apathy it is a trade off between safety and freedom”.  But the truth is freedom and safety are not conflictual we’ve only been led to believe so.  Fear has replaced freedom here in America and that is not by chance but by strategy of a government that has its own agenda, separate from its oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.  So while we should have prosecuted these recent governments for treason we’ve instead rewarded them the rights of dictatorship.

The Constitution is our freedom keeper but once the Constitution is made subordinate the precedent is set and in our legal system precedence is king.  The strength in the Constitution is just that, it’s strength.  Once we allow an exception to the Constitution’s superseding authority it no longer has any authority.  Unfortunately that exception has already been made.  With it, the destruction of the Constitution and the end to a guaranty of freedom.  Our corrupt government has created ‘legislation’ providing them a legal basis to imprison us without due process.  This is a fact.

This desecrates one of the most important axioms of America, in fact, due process is the very idea we are sold to spend $1 trillion per year fighting multiple simultaneous major theatre wars.  Yet here at home it no longer exists.  But remember our loss of due process is for our own good.  Giving a federal legislator or policy maker absolute discretion over our fate is in our best interest.  You and I have agreed with these propositions.  And you and I will have to adhere to being placed in prison for life if that is the will of our president or any delegate who will benefit by accusing us of being a national security threat.

Just by the fact the threat exists fulfills its objective.  People will not want to bring attention to themselves and thus will avoid protesting the wants of those who now have the authority to impede their freedom.  That in itself impede’s their freedom.  This is the one thing I really wish people could see.  What seem like issues too narrow or small to get worked up over are just marks of the snake bite.  Two very small holes in the skin but those holes are the gateway for the real killing agent to spread and overtake the whole system.

In March alone our beefed up and militarized public service workers killed more than 180 citizens they were meant to serve and protect on American soil.  That makes them an infinitely higher risk to our safety than the foreign terrorists to whom we’ve handed our Constitution.  That’s exactly what we’ve done.  If you listen to the terrorists’ videos that was their goal.  They wanted to end the freedom and free will that America seems to be jamming down the throats of societies around the world.  And so they won the moment Americans accepted to trade away its freedoms for safety.  That was their goal and they have achieved it.

Let’s look at Edward Snowden’s situation to see how one loses one’s freedom.  Snowden is a man that knowingly sacrificed his own freedom to expose the corruption and criminality of our policy makers and their respective agencies.  He is also a citizen that has been deemed a threat to national security.  Why would a man who exposed the criminal enslavement of Americans and citizens around the world be deemed a terrorist rather than a hero??  Because he is a threat to the power and control and really the entire system of those who can now legally classify him as a threat, removing his right to due process.

In effect, these political criminals can now legally lock away any prosecutor at will.   This is a gross conflict of interest and the hero that exposed this conflict of interest is now a victim of it.  Edward Snowden not only informed America, he recognized that he would be the first example so that Americans would see, first hand, the sort of corruption that has infected our system.  I can only infer he made himself known because he believed seeing it actually happen would get Americans to rise up and correct the moral transgression.  And what did we the people do in response to Snowden’s incredibly brave and patriotic action?  Absolutely nothing!!!  We force this hero to live in exile.  We don’t even demand the corruption to stop.  We do nothing.  How very American of us.  And why do we do nothing?  Because it doesn’t impede our immediate comfort and the media hasn’t told us we need to be concerned about the issue.

The lives of Americans have become so easy and so secure that we no longer recognize living in a utopia of freedom comes not with costs but with obligations.  We seem to believe that paying taxes indemnifies us of our real obligations as citizens who have been handed a beautiful gift and who are responsible for passing on that precious gift to future generations of Americans.   And that is a mistake that will have historians writing of us as we write of Eve in the garden of Eden.  Our lack of principles resulting in the suffering of all future generations having destroyed a gift we obviously didn’t deserve.

source: first rebuttal
emphasis: zero hedge

Geopolitics/War, Tyranny

Armed U.S. Guards Will Soon Be Stationed In Canada

Eva Shield
Press For Truth: April 22, 2015

Armed U.S. border guards will soon be posted in Toronto’s Union Station and other places in the country. They also might not be held accountable in a Canadian court for their actions, if they ever were to cross the line. A pre-clearance agreement was signed last month by the Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney and the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security. Armed U.S. guards will now be posted to any port, ferry terminal, rail station, or land crossing, in an effort to clear goods and passengers through immigration and customs before they cross the border. The agreement hasn’t yet been made public and the details are scarce. It is alleged that U.S. guards will not be able to make arrests, but they will have powers to detain people and call local police to the scene. The U.S. guards will be able to carry a sidearm in land, rail, and marine preclearance operations, but again they will not be able to do so with air travel passengers. 

 

Currently, U.S. customs and Border Protection (CBP) preclear passengers already at eight different Canadian airports. Police are the only ones allowed to have guns within the airport areas, so the U.S. guards in the airport will supposedly not be armed as such in those places. “If U.S. government agents who are on duty on Canadian soil are only going to be liable to be prosecuted in the United States for potential criminal acts in Canada, what does that mean for access to justice for people affected by those actions? Asks executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, Josh Paterson. 

 

This deal is assumed to be part of a much larger plan, to more thoroughly integrate the services between Canada, United States, and Mexico. Dubbed the “North American Union,” we can see that the authorities are certainly moving slowly in this direction. The move allows for officers to cross-over the invisible border line in order to conduct their investigations and perform their occupational duties, but it also raises concerns regarding accountability for the officers.  Why should American officers operating on Canadian soil be exempt from our laws? How are we supposed to feel safe if this be the case? Why are we not being afforded jurisdiction under our laws for an incident that might occur on our own sovereign territory? 

(read the full article at Press For Truth)

Privacy, Tyranny

Security-bill snooping goes too far, federal watchdogs warn

Ian MacLeod
Ottawa Citizen: April 23, 2015

The federal government’s proposed security bill contains serious and contradictory flaws that will allow more than 100 government entities to exchange Canadians’ confidential information – yet no provision for similar information-sharing between the agencies that track the lawfulness of federal spies and police, parliamentarians were told Thursday.

Four of Canada’s top government watchdogs – who monitor privacy, the country’s two spy agencies and the RCMP – testified on Bill C-51 before the Senate national security committee.

Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien levelled the harshest blows. Canadians risk being caught in a web of unbridled government snooping into their personal lives if the draft security legislation becomes law, he warned.

“The bill would potentially lead to disproportionately large amounts of personal information of ordinary, law-abiding citizens being collected and shared. This sets up the prospect of profiling and Big Data analytics on all Canadians. In short, the means chosen are excessive to achieve the end,” Therrien said.

A crucial concern is C-51’s proposed Security of Canada Information Sharing Act. It would allow more than 100 federal departments, agencies and other entities to share information about Canadians with 17 departments and agencies that have national security responsibilities. The information would only have to be “relevant” to a potential or suspected national security threat. The 17 agencies also could share and collate information among themselves.

Therrien fears this could lead the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), RCMP, Department of Finance and others to share potentially all information they may hold on Canadians and businesses.

“The minister of public safety has indicated there are several privacy protections envisaged by Bill C-51. While I agree there are some, I believe they fall quite short of what a balanced approach would require,” he said.

(read the full article at Ottawa Citizen)

Privacy, Tyranny

‘Patriot Act’ not an effective counterterrorism tool; is being used for mass domestic surveillance

US unveils 6-year-old report on NSA surveillance

Nedra Pickler
AP: April 25, 2015

With debate gearing up over the coming expiration of the Patriot Act surveillance law, the Obama administration on Saturday unveiled a 6-year-old report examining the once-secret program to collect information on Americans’ calls and emails.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence publicly released the redacted report following a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the New York Times. The basics of the National Security Agency program had already been declassified, but the lengthy report includes some new details about the secrecy surrounding it.

President George W. Bush authorized the “President’s Surveillance Program” in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The review was completed in July 2009 by inspectors general from the Justice Department, Pentagon, CIA, NSA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

They found that while many senior intelligence officials believe the program filled a gap by increasing access to international communications, others including FBI agents, CIA analysts and managers “had difficulty evaluating the precise contribution of the PSP to counterterrorism efforts because it was most often viewed as one source among many available analytic and intelligence-gathering tools in these efforts.”

Critics of the phone records program, which allows the NSA to hunt for communications between terrorists abroad and U.S. residents, argue it has not proven to be an effective counterterrorism tool. They also say an intelligence agency has no business possessing the deeply personal records of Americans. Many favor a system under which the NSA can obtain court orders to query records held by the phone companies.

The Patriot Act expires on June 1, and Senate Republicans have introduced a bill that would allow continued collection of call records of nearly every American. The legislation would reauthorize sections of the Patriot Act, including the provision under which the NSA requires phone companies to turn over the “to and from” records of most domestic landline calls.

(read the full article at AP)

Privacy

CBS Denver Report: TSA Screeners Exploited Scanners To Grope “Attractive” Male Passengers

Annabelle Bamforth
Ben Swann: April 14, 2015

An investigation conducted by Denver’s CBS4 station revealed that two TSA employees at Denver International Airport have been fired after one employee acknowledged manipulating the airport’s scanning machines to allow the intentional groping of male passengers.

According to an anonymous tip from a TSA employee from last November, a male TSA screener allegedly told a female colleague that he was able to fondle “attractive male passengers” that arrive at the screening area by having another employee deliberately input incorrect data into the scanning machines:

“He related that when a male he finds attractive comes to be screened by the scanning machine he will alert another TSA screener to indicate to the scanning computer that the party being screened is a female. When the screener does this, the scanning machine will indicate an anomaly in the genital area and this allows (the male TSA screener) to conduct a pat-down search of that area.”

In February, three months after the initial claim, TSA security supervisor Chris Higgins observed the screening area to check the accuracy of the anonymous tip. A law enforcement report obtained by CBS4 stated that Higgins “observed (the male TSA screener) appear to give a signal to another screener … (the second female screener) was responsible for the touchscreen system that controls whether or not the scanning machine alerts to gender- specific anomalies.”

The report went on to state that after a male passenger was seen entering the scanner, the investigator “observed (the female TSA agent) press the screening button for a female. The scanner alerted to an anomaly, and Higgins observed (the male TSA screener) conduct a pat down of the passenger’s front groin and buttocks area with the palm of his hands, which is contradictory to TSA searching policy.”

The female employee who took part in the groping scheme was later interviewed by Higgins and admitted that “she has done this for (the male TSA officer) at least 10 other times. She knew that doing so would allow (the male TSA officer) to perform a pat down on a male passenger that (the male TSA screener) found attractive.”

The two TSA employees involved in the incidents have since been fired. The TSA declined to name the employees who were fired.

The TSA reportedly has video of the incident observed by Higgins, but it was not yet been released to CBS4. The TSA claims that there have been no further complaints of “serial” groping, and the male passenger observed by Higgins has not been identified. A prosecutor declined to press charges in the case because no victim had been identified and there was no “reasonable likelihood of conviction.”

(read the full article at Ben Swann)

Corporate Welfare, Tyranny

The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Death of the Republic

Ellen Brown
Huffington Post: April 24, 2015

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” — Article IV, Section 4, US Constitution

A republican form of government is one in which power resides in elected officials representing the citizens, and government leaders exercise power according to the rule of law. In The Federalist Papers, James Madison defined a republic as “a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people . . . .”

On April 22, 2015, the Senate Finance Committee approved a bill to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive trade agreement that would override our republican form of government and hand judicial and legislative authority to a foreign three-person panel of corporate lawyers. Continue reading The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Death of the Republic →

Privacy, Tyranny

‘SCANDALOUS’: Baltimore Police Spying On Cellphones And Hiding It

Casey Harper
Daily Caller: April 20, 2015

A detective’s court testimony Monday revealed that Baltimore law enforcement is spying on residents at an incredible rate without a warrant — and doing their best to hide it.

Detective Michael Dressel testified that Baltimore law enforcement have used “sting rays”–devices that track personal cell phone data and location–more than 4,300 times with court orders and an undocumented number of times without them, The Baltimore Sun reports.

“This is scandalous,” Tim Lynch, the Cato Institute’s Director for the Project on Criminal Justice, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Police agencies have misled the public about how the stingray devices have been used and how often. We need to find out what has been happening in other cities around the country. FBI officials and police chiefs need to come clean about this.”

The testimony came in a murder case where law enforcement used sting rays to find a phone involved in the alleged murder. Sting rays are devices used by authorities that act like cell phone towers, intercepting cell phone signals that would normally go to cellular towers. This allows authorities to track where you are, usually without a warrant and often even without a court order. Some sting rays can even detect information about your texts, calls and emails.

Local police departments obtain these devices from federal agencies but only on the condition that they keep the entire project entirely hidden from the public. In fact, police often drop charges or offer plea bargains in cases related to sting rays when pressured by defense lawyers or judges to reveal how they work.

In one Florida case, prosecutors who had what seemed an open and shut robbery case offered the defendant a plea bargain when pressured on police’s use of sting rays.

They would rather drop the charge than expose the practice. Because of this, how the devices work and how often they are used is one of law enforcement’s best kept secrets.

(read the full article at Daily Caller)

Alternative Free Press -fair use-

Geopolitics/War

Drone Strikes Reveal Uncomfortable Truth: U.S. Is Often Unsure About Who Will Die

Scott Shane
New York Times: April 23, 2015

Barack Obama inherited two ugly, intractable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan when he became president and set to work to end them. But a third, more covert war he made his own, escalating drone strikes in Pakistan and expanding them to Yemen and Somalia.

The drone’s vaunted capability for pinpoint killing appealed to a president intrigued by a new technology and determined to try to keep the United States out of new quagmires. Aides said Mr. Obama liked the idea of picking off dangerous terrorists a few at a time, without endangering American lives or risking the yearslong bloodshed of conventional war.

“Let’s kill the people who are trying to kill us,” he often told aides.

By most accounts, hundreds of dangerous militants have, indeed, been killed by drones, including some high-ranking Qaeda figures. But for six years, when the heavy cloak of secrecy has occasionally been breached, the results of some strikes have often turned out to be deeply troubling.

Every independent investigation of the strikes has found far more civilian casualties than administration officials admit. Gradually, it has become clear that when operators in Nevada fire missiles into remote tribal territories on the other side of the world, they often do not know who they are killing, but are making an imperfect best guess.

The president’s announcement on Thursday that a January strike on Al Qaeda in Pakistan had killed two Western hostages, and that it took many weeks to confirm their deaths, bolstered the assessments of the program’s harshest outside critics. The dark picture was compounded by the additional disclosure that two American members of Al Qaeda were killed in strikes that same month, but neither had been identified in advance and deliberately targeted.

In all, it was a devastating acknowledgment for Mr. Obama, who had hoped to pioneer a new, more discriminating kind of warfare. Whether the episode might bring a long-delayed public reckoning about targeted killings, long hidden by classification rules, remained uncertain.

Geopolitics/War, WTF

Ukrainian Neo-Nazis Nail Rebel Fighter to Cross, Burn Him Alive (VIDEO)

The brutal execution was reportedly committed by members of the Azov Battalion, a regiment of the the Ukrainian Army. It is apparently “the backbone of the forces fighting against the local self-defense militia advocating independence from Ukraine.”

The clip shows a man kneeling in a field with 5 Ukrainian militants surrounding him. The Ukrainian militants then grab the victim, place him on a wooden cross and burn him alive. Azov fighters have stated that “All the separatists, traitors of Ukraine and militia fighters will be treated the same”.

“Azov fighters do more than wave a Swastika-like flag,” writes Robert Parry, “they favor the Wolfsangel flag of Hitler’s SS divisions, much as some of Ukraine’s neo-Nazis still honor Hitler’s Ukrainian SS auxiliary, the Galician SS. A Ukrainian hero hailed during the Maidan protests was Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera whose paramilitary forces helped exterminate Jews and Poles.”

modern-day Nazis

RELATED: US, Canada & Ukraine vote against anti-Nazism resolution at UN

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