Privacy Versus Security Is a FALSE Choice

Washington's Blog

May 17, 2014

NSA Dumped Automatic Privacy-Protecting System … Instead Adopting Program of Mass Surveillance On All Americans

The entire “privacy versus security” argument for spying by the NSA is hogwash.

Top security experts – including the highest-level government officials and the top university experts – say that mass surveillance increases terrorism and hurts security.

They say that our government failed to stop the Boston bombing because they were too busy spying onmillions of innocent Americans instead of focusing on actual bad guys.

We have also thoroughly documented – including interviewing the top NSA expert – that last December that it would be easy for the NSA to catch bad guys without spying on innocent Americans … all while strengthening America against security breaches.

The following must-watch 5-minute clip from PBS’ show United States of Secrets shows how the “Thinthread” program would solve these problems, and why the “privacy versus security” debate is bogus (watch starting at the 25:12 mark and ending at 30:32):

Or clicking here will take you right to the start of the important part.

Postscript: In case you are unable to watch any videos, you can read the  transcript here (search for “he stumbles into sort of a skunkworks“, and read until you see “Bill Binney, Kirk Wiebe and Ed Loomis all quietly retired.”)

SGT REPORT NEWS BRIEF: BANK ACCOUNTS TARGETED, INFLATION SOARING, SILVER FIXED

SGT Report
May 16, 2014

This is a SGT REPORT NEWS BRIEF: Documenting the Collapse for the week ending Friday, May 16th.

In this episode:

- UK Prime Minister David Cameron Targets Bank Accounts
- Fascist US Oligarchy Installs Offspring & Family Friends on Board of Ukraine’s largest Gas Co.
- Food Price Inflation in the U.S. SOARS
- California Burns
- London Silver Fix Folds as Deutsche Bank Flees
- CPM’s Jeffrey Christian Spins the News, Proposes COMPUTER Silver Price Fix

Why Is The Department of Agriculture Buying Submachine Guns, ‘Night Sights’ and High-Capacity Magazines?

Countercurrent News

May 16, 2014

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the last federal agency that we might expect to be stocking up on machine guns, ammunition and high capacity magazines. But that is exactly what they have been doing. In a solicitation which was posted on the website for the United States Federal Business Opportunities website back on May 7.

The Agriculture Department had requested an undisclosed number of submachine guns, without explanation for their use. The same request explained a call for tritium-fueled, incandescent “night sights” for aiming weapons in low light settings, as well as magazines with a 30-round capacity.

What exactly do they want all of this for? The solicitation reads as follows:

“The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Inspector General, located in Washington, DC, pursuant to the authority of FAR Part 13, has a requirement for the commerical [sic] acquisition of submachine guns, .40 Cal. S&W, ambidextrous safety, semi-automatic or 2 shot burts [sic] trigger group, Tritium night sights for front and rear, rails for attachment of flashlight (front under fore grip) and scope (top rear), stock-collapsilbe [sic] or folding, magazine – 30 rd. capacity, sling, light weight, and oversized trigger guard for gloved operation.”

What exactly does the USDA think they need multiple submachine guns, night sights, and high capacity magazines for? The solicitation does not go into much detail at all regarding the purpose for the request.

Over the past two year there has been concern recently over government agencies like the Department for Homeland Security, which purchase orders have indicated have bought extreme “bulk” purchases of ammunition. Now the USDA too? What’s going on? 

If You Are Doing Nothing Wrong You Have PLENTY to Fear – 30 Examples

Doug Newman 
foodforthethinkers.com
May 17, 2014

Sometimes I just want to pimp slap people.

Last summer, I was at dinner during a sales convention. The conversation didn’t get political until someone mentioned the NSA.

There is one in every crowd. Someone piped up and said, “They can spy on me all they want. I am not doing anything wrong.”

They sang this song in Germany in 1933. And they sang it with unprecedented gusto in the months following 9/11, all in the name of  “security” and “keeping us safe”.

We were at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, the world’s second largest hotel. Nothing in the post-9/11 “national security” apparatus would prevent a terrorist from walking in, setting off a bomb, and killing hundreds or even thousands of people.

The more important questions are: How do you know you are doing nothing that could be construed as wrong by some state functionary? How do you know you are not breaking some law somewhere? And why are you so implicitly trusting that your government would never do anything evil with the information it has collected on you?

This is not purely an academic matter. The practical implications are profound.

I give you several examples.

1. Niakea Williams went to her son’s St. Louis-area elementary school one day to pick up her son, who has Asperger’s. The school was put on lockdown and Mrs. Williams was escorted out in handcuffs.

2. Adrionna Harris was almost expelled from her middle school in Virginia Beach after taking a razor blade away from a fellow student who was trying to harm himself.

3. Read what Houston police did to this man who gave 75 cents to a homeless person.

4. A little known Denver parking ordinance can get you a $25 fine even if you haven’t exceeded the two-hour limit.

5. Police in Iowa City, Iowa, seized $50,000 from this couple without charging them with a crime.

6. Alberto Willmore lost his teaching job in Manhattan over a totally bogus marijuana arrest. Even though he was never convicted of anything, he was unable to get his job back.

7. Norman Gurley was arrested in Lorain County, Ohio, because a compartment in his car could have been used to transport drugs.

8. Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies shot and killed 80-year-old Eugene Mallory in his own bed during a meth raid. No meth, or any other illegal drugs, was discovered.

9. Paul Valin contacted police to report that he found a backpack full of what he believed to be meth-making equipment 15 miles from his home near Des Moines. As a result, the DEA placed his house on its list of meth labs.

10. Ryan Holle of Pensacola, Florida, lent his roommate his car on night in 2004. As a result, Holle is currently serving a life sentence without possibility of parole for pre-meditated murder.

11. New York police seized Gerald Bryan’s cash in a nighttime raid in 2012. Even though Bryan was cleared of any wrongdoing, the stolen cash was deposited in the NYPD pension fund.

12. Robert Duncan is currently serving two years in a California prison, even though the business in which he worked was legal in California.

13. Jordan Wiser spent 13 days in jail after Jefferson, Ohio, police found a pocketknife during a warrantless search of his car.

14. During a school lockdown in Clarksville, Tennessee, David Duren-Sanner gave police permission to search his car as he had “nothing to hide”. Police found a fishing knife. Duren-Sanner, who previously had never been to the principal’s office, was suspended for 10 days and then sent to an alternative school for 90 days.

15. Look what happened to these parents in Napa, California, even though the medical marijuana prescriptions they had were completely legal.

16. Eileen Ann Bower of suburban Pittsburgh had her newborn child taken from her for 75 daysbecause of a false positive drug test.

17. Jerry Hartfield of Bay City, Texas, has spent the majority of his life in prison, even though hisconviction was overturned in 1980.

18. Jason Dewing of update New York was found guilty of violating a law that did not exist.

19. Don Miller of Waldron, Indiana, had his home raided by FBI agents who seized hundreds of cultural artifacts from around the world. Miller was neither arrested nor charged with anything.

20. This San Diego couple was pepper-sprayed and tasered by police who had erroneously identified their vehicle after being stolen.

21. The good news is that Brian Aitken of Mount Laurel, New Jersey, had his prison sentence commuted. The bad news is that he was originally sentenced to seven years behind bars for possessing two legally purchased guns.

22. This special needs student in McDonald, Pennsylvania, was charged with felony wiretapping for recording other students who were bullying him mercilessly.

23. Abner Schoenwetter of Miami served over six years in prison for – you can’t make this stuff up – violating Honduran fisheries law.

24. Read what happened to John Filippidis of Hudson, Florida, when he was pulled over by state police while driving unarmed through Maryland.

25. In a case of mistaken identity, Lewis James of Durham, North Carolina, “was handcuffed and later jailed under a $1.425 million bond” after he had contacted the police to notify them of a dead body in the middle of the road. As someone put it on Facebook, “Don’t call the cops. Ever. Even if you find a dead body. Just don’t ever call the cops.”

26. Read what happened to Diane Avera of Meridian, Mississippi, when she went to Alabama to buy Sudafed, even though she did not know that this was illegal.

27. Andy Johnson of Uinta County, Wyoming, faces EPA fines of $75,000 per day for building a pond on land that he owns.

28. Douglas Zerby of Long Beach was shot and killed by police while watering his lawn because some idiot neighbor thought the hose nozzle was a gun.

29. Darien Roseen was arrested and had his vehicle searched by sheriff’s deputies in Payette County, Idaho, simply because his Colorado license plates led them to believe that he could have been carrying marijuana.

30. Brian Banks of Long Beach spent five years in prison and five more years as a registered sex offender as a result of a rape conviction. And then his accuser changed her story.

These are not “isolated incidents.” There are no doubt countless other examples of people who were doing nothing wrong, yet were harshly punished.

Also, consider the following:

• The Internal Revenue Code is 73,955 pages and millions of words long. No one has read it cover-to-cover and no one knows every aspect of it. Yet if anyone violates any of its provisions it can mean fines, prison or even death.
• We are often told that “ignorance of the law is no defense.” To the right is a picture of the Yale Law Library. Do you know every law contained within these tomes?

• Read what various emissaries of the Amerikan police state have done to these veterans who went all over the world to “fight for our freedom.”

• Seventy-two types of Americans are classified as terrorists in various government documents. Senator Harry Reid has now added a seventy-third category.
• Read how police have used asset forfeiture laws to seize millions of dollars from people without charging them with any crimes.

• Read this list of eight ways people commit felonies without even knowing it.

• Read this article and pay special attention to these words from former NSA official William Binney: “The problem is, if they think they’re not doing anything that’s wrong, they don’t get to define that. The central government does.”
• Read how the Innocence Project has helped exonerate over 300 wrongfully imprisoned people, many of whom were on death row.
• Attorney Harvey Silverglate argues that the average American commits three felonies a daywithout even knowing it.
• This Ford executive claims that, thanks to GPS, “we know everyone who breaks the law.”
• Although it has been estimated that there are over 3000 types of federal criminal offenses, no one knows the exact number for sure.

So, do you still feel you have nothing to fear?

Rosy Jobs Report Fails to Mask Economy's Continuing Weakness

The New American
May 13, 2014

The headlines from Friday’s jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) were rosy: Employment rose by 288,000 (exceeding expectations), while the unemployment rate fell by 0.4 percent, ending at 6.3 percent, just above the figure dating back to September 2008.

The talking heads from the administration looked at only those headlines and took credit for the gains. Jason Furman, chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, claimed that Congress is standing in the way of even better performance:

The President continues to emphasize that more can and should be done to support the recovery, including acting on his own executive authority to expand economic opportunity, as well as pushing Congress for additional investments in infrastructure, education and research, an increase in the minimum wage, and a reinstatement of extended unemployment insurance benefits.

Parsing the numbers, however, reveals that the labor force participation rate actually dropped by 0.4 percent, down to 62.8 percent. In a healthy economy, people would be actively looking for work while those working would be getting paid more. Neither is happening.

Read the entire article

Indiana Gets New Military Helicopters for “Homeland Security Missions”

Choppers capable of spotting guns without being detected

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
May 12, 2014

The Indiana National Guard has purchased two military UH-72 Lakota helicopters which will also be used by local law enforcement and the DHS for “homeland security missions”.

“The Lakotas, manufactured by the Airbus Group, will also aid local, state and federal law enforcement agencies in case of an emergency,” reports the Indiana Daily Student, adding that the helicopters “will also aid in homeland security missions”.

The chopper is renowned for its “maneuverability and power” and also features sophisticated sensor technology used for “automatic target tracking” that can “spot a weapon or read a license plate from a distance where the Lakota remains undetected,” according to a promotional video for the helicopter.

The on board system can also transmit live video feed to a ground station up to 30 miles away while an individual can easily be followed via high power search lights linked up with the sensor system.

The chopper is normally used to pursue drug traffickers on the Mexican border as well as for search and rescue missions, but will now be utilized to keep tabs on residents of Indiana, which some will see as another sign of America’s increasing lurch towards a militarized police state.

Given that the Department of Homeland Security is now targeting groups named “Free Americans Against Socialist Tyranny” as part of its exercises, it’s unsurprising that many conservatives fear the federal government is paying an unhealthy amount of attention to people with certain political beliefs while some 68,000 convicted illegal immigrants are released each year.

As we have exhaustively documented on numerous occasions, federal authorities and particularly the Department of Homeland Security have been involved in producing a deluge of literature which portrays liberty lovers and small government advocates as extremist radicals, a chilling trend given the Lakota helicopter’s specialty at detecting guns from a distance.

The increasing use of military hardware in the field of domestic law enforcement has caused consternation amongst some who see the police’s role as changing from ‘protect and serve’ to treating the American people as some kind of enemy. Since the winding down of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Department of Defense has been donating armored vehicles to the Department of Homeland Security which in turn has been selling them to police departments across the country.

Former Marine Corps Colonel Peter Martino, who was stationed in Fallujah and trained Iraqi soldiers, warned last year that the Department of Homeland Security is working with law enforcement to build a “domestic army,” because the federal government is afraid of its own citizens.

Martino was speaking at a council meeting concerning a decision to purchase a BearCat armored vehicle. The purchase of the vehicle has surrounded by controversy after the city’s Police Chief wrote in an application filing to the DHS that the vehicle was needed to deal with the “threat” posed by libertarians, sovereign citizen adherents, and Occupy activists in the region.

Another resident at the meeting who grew up in Czechoslovakia also warned of parallels between Communists using tanks in her former country as a means of intimidation to suppress free speech.

Indiana’s purchase of the two military choppers, partly for “homeland security missions,” is another disturbing benchmark of the increasingly blurred line between military operations and domestic law enforcement.

Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/paul.j.watson.71
FOLLOW Paul Joseph Watson @ https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet

*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.

Harvard Club Holds Black Mass

cnn.com
May 12, 2014

A Harvard club’s plan to stage a satanic “black Mass” on Monday has drawn fire and brimstone from the Archdiocese of Boston and the president of the Ivy League school called the idea ”abhorrent.”

The Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club will host the two-hour ceremony at the Queens Head pub in Memorial Hall in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

A narrator will explain the history of the rituals to the expected crowd of 100 or so, according to the Satanic Temple, a New York-based group that announced the ceremony last week.

“Our purpose is not to denigrate any religion or faith, which would be repugnant to our educational purposes,” the student group said in a statement, “but instead to learn and experience the history of different cultural practices.”

Read the entire article