Orwellian Smart Grid Exposé to air Sept. 5

By Rady Ananda
Activist Post

A single smart meter measuring a home’s electricity usage, by appliance, emits radiation 100 times higher than the level internationally recognized as “extreme concern” and 450 times higher than a cell phone.

These are but two of the facts presented in Josh del Sol’s long-awaited documentary, Take Back Your Power, which will air online September 5.

Foster Gamble, creator of Thrive, calls it an “astoundingly great job.” Take Back Your Power is a beautiful, tasteful, authoritative and touching account of the dire situation we face, and solutions available here and now.”

Your Government on War

By Robert C. Koehler
COTO Report

“Our primary long range interest in Geneva, however, is general and complete disarmament, designed to take place by stages, permitting parallel political developments to build the new institutions of peace which would take the place of arms. . . . While we proceed to safeguard our national interests, let us also safeguard human interests. And the elimination of war and arms is clearly in the interest of both.”

That was President John F. Kennedy speaking to the 1963 graduating class of American University —announcing that the human race was ready to move beyond war. This was the speech in which he revealed that talks on a Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union had begun, and that the U.S. was unilaterally suspending atmospheric nuclear testing.

Former DoJ prosecutor sues Obama, Verizon, DoJ for $3B over PRISM

This is an action for violations of the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments to the U.S.Constitution.  This is also an action for violations of privacy, including intrusion upon seclusion, freedom of expression and association, due process, and other illegal acts.

Calif removing Smart Meters; Virginia buys 100,000

While California is pushing back the not so smart wireless technology, places like northern Virginia are going full steam ahead with the installation. Dominion Power has completed placing 100,000 smart meters in a pilot phase in three counties. Meanwhile, fires, explosions and burned out appliances follow smart meter deployment across the globe.

Wikileaks: Canada shares 10 million health records with US Homeland Security

Canadians with mental illnesses denied U.S. entry

WikiLeaks: Data entered into national police database accessible to American authorities

By Sarah Bridge
CBC News

More than a dozen Canadians have told the Psychiatric Patient Advocate Office in Toronto within the past year that they were blocked from entering the United States after their records of mental illness were shared with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Lois Kamenitz, 65, of Toronto contacted the office last fall, after U.S. customs officials at Pearson International Airport prevented her from boarding a flight to Los Angeles on the basis of her suicide attempt four years earlier.

New Homeland Security Report Sees “Evolutionary Shift” in Terror Threat

Image

By Activist Post

A new report issued by Homeland Security Policy Institute, a “think and do tank”, entitled “Counterterrorism Intelligence Law Enforcement Perspectives” calls for further centralization of the anti-terror apparatus inside the United States.

The changing, converging nature of threats faced today — especially those from terrorism, transnational crime and the use of technology to carry out criminal behavior — make it imperative that intelligence-led policing be integrated into the decentralized police structures and community policing principles of the United States.

The report lists a hierarchy of threats that include an overall “evolutionary shift” toward “a blended terror threat that unites foreign directed or inspired attacks with homegrown elements and operators.”

This policy paper forms the new narrative that could justify the continuing infiltration and crackdown upon peaceful protest, civil disobedience, and even the questioning of American foreign policy and Homeland Security directives, whether on the street or in cyberspace.

Prime Aim of Obama’s Surveillance State Is to Quash Dissent

By Glenn Greenwald
Salon

Last year, Obama unveiled a plan to require all services that enable communications to enable back-door government access. This year, he demanded greater power to obtain Internet records without a court order.  DNC Chair, Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has sponsored a truly pernicious bill that would force Internet providers to keep logs of their customers’ activities for one year, writes Glenn Greenwald.

Amy Jade

By Volaar

Mitch Winehouse Posing With Wax Figurine of Daughter

“The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.” — Bob Marley

As a child who grew up in one of the many flavors of household, “dysfunction,” I can report emphatically that children always believe their parents are worth suffering for, over, about and instead of. And, sadly, Amy Jade Winehouse was, probably unbeknownst to her, a victim of this particular scourge of western civilization, the cliché of the “dysfunctional family.”

ECHELON: Global Eavesdropping Scheme Dwarfs Murdoch’s ‘News of the World’

By Sherwood Ross
Global Research

As eavesdroppers go, next to Uncle Sam and John Bull, Rupert Murdoch, the moral force behind Fox News, is an amateur.

That’s because a global eavesdropping scheme being run today by the United States and Great Britain dwarfs anything that Rupert Murdoch’s editors at The News of The World (TNTW) ever dared attempt.

British Prime Minister David Cameron may well deny he knew TNTW was tapping the phones of members of UK’s Royal household or those of American 9/11 victims. But he can’t claim he doesn’t know his country is a partner in ECHELON, which, according to Washington journalist Bill Blum, is a “network of massive, highly automated interception stations” that is eavesdropping on the entire world.

TSA Agent Caught With Passenger’s iPad in His Pants; Allegedly Took $50,000 in Other Goods, Cops Say

By Matthew Hendley
New Times

Update: TSA agent Nelson Santiago is not the first agency employee to be arrested on theft charges.
​
(Broward County, Florida)  While most Transportation Security Administration employees are busy groping people or taking naked pictures of them, the cops say one of those employees was putting fliers’ electronics down his pants.

The Broward Sheriff’s Office says 30-year-old Nelson Santiago stole around $50,000 worth of electronics over the past six months from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport’s Terminal 1.

TSA demands 95-yr-old woman dying of leukemia to remove adult diaper

Lauren Sage Reinlie
Daily News

A woman has filed a complaint with federal authorities over how her elderly mother was treated at Northwest Florida Regional Airport last weekend.

Jean Weber of Destin filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security after her 95-year-old mother was detained and extensively searched last Saturday while trying to board a plane to fly to Michigan to be with family members during the final stages of her battle with leukemia.

Her mother, who was in a wheelchair, was asked to remove an adult diaper in order to complete a pat-down search.

Granny cruise meets US Gestapo; Ship of 2,000 endures delay, abuse

Setting off from Southampton on April 12, the cruise has taken in stops in Europe, the Caribbean, Central America, crossing the Panama Canal to travel up the west coast of the United States to Alaska. Photo: ALAMY

Cruise passengers tell of seven-hour security ‘revenge’ nightmare

Elderly passengers on board a luxury cruise have criticised US immigration officials after they endured a seven-hour security check.

By Andy Bloxham and John Bingham
Telegraph UK

It was billed as a chance to taste the “glitz and glamour” of Hollywood or enjoy VIP treatment in some of the most exclusive shopping areas in the world.

But when a group of 2,000 elderly British cruise ship passengers docked at Los Angeles for a short stop-off during a five-star cruise around America it was, in the words of one of them, more like arriving at Guantanamo Bay.

Tree of Liberty thirsts as Patriot Act moves toward another renewal

By Rady Ananda

Senator Harry Reid blocked efforts to reform the Patriot Act today by leading the effort to table any amendments. Even Colorado Senator Mark Udall who “joined with a small bipartisan band of colleagues to slow the move on Capitol Hill to quickly reauthorize the Patriot Act and extend its most controversial provisions for another four years,” said the Unconstitutional Act “has kept us safe for ten years,” reports the Colorado Independent.

What hogwash. The Patriot Act makes us less safe by exposing citizens to government abuse without recourse. Here’s how the alternative media has responded.

Susan Lindauer recently highlighted just how repressive the Patriot Act can be. In When Truth Becomes Treason, she calls it “a law that equates free speech with sedition.” She ought to know. She spent a year in prison under the Act.

Florida pushes for Real ID chip

By Beat the Chip

FL SB 2040 takes up Real ID regs for E-Verify use. “Here’s  what SB 2040 does – Requires companies to use the E-Verify employment  verification system for new hires, but gives them the option to instead  scan an ID card that has passed muster under the  federal Real ID  program.” The Independent wrote a glowing report on it, providing more details.

SB 1150.  On March 30th, Florida Sen. Anitre Flores submitted an amendment with high ambitions for Floridian driver identity. The amendment was passed out of the local Transporation Committee in SB 1150 and is now headed for Florida State’s Budget Committee. The Committee Substitute now contains language, reasonably defined and considered may allow for RFID tags to be added to Florida drivers licenses. However, that’s not worst of what’s ahead. Online authentication of drivers license information is being added as an alternative to another Big Database DHS program, E-Verify.

Appeals Court to hear oral arguments in EPIC vs TSA over ‘unlawful, invasive, and ineffective’ searches

From info at Electronic Privacy Information Center

On March 10, the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in a case against the Transportation Security Administration filed last year by privacy group, EPIC, to suspend the deployment of body scanners at US airports, pending an independent review.  On January 6, 2011, EPIC filed its reply brief, stressing its core assertion that “the TSA has acted outside of its regulatory authority and with profound disregard for the statutory and constitutional rights of air travelers.”

Body scanners produce detailed, three-dimensional images of individuals. Security experts have described whole body scanners as the equivalent of “a physically invasive strip-search.” The Transportation Security Administration operates the body scanner devices at airports throughout the United States. EPIC said that the program is “unlawful, invasive, and ineffective.” EPIC argued that the federal agency has violated the Administrative Procedures Act, the Privacy Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the Video Voyeurism Prevention Act, and the Fourth Amendment.

Texas Legislation Proposes Felony Charges for TSA Agents

By Tenth Amendment Center

Rep. David Simpson (R-Longview) introduced a package of bills into the Texas House of Representatives on Tuesday that would challenge the TSA’s authority in a number of ways. The first bill, HB 1938, prohibits full body scanning equipment in any Texas airport and provides for criminal and civil penalties on any airport operator who installs the equipment. The second bill, HB 1937, criminalizes touching without consent and searches without probable cause.

Genetic Patdown: Homeland Security plan for DNA screening could quickly lead to other uses, abuses

Ed. Note: The original article that was reposted here asserted factual errors, which contradict info in the author’s cited source. It is more appropriate, therefore, to repost the story broken by Katie Drummond on Feb. 26.  Despite a later DHS denial, DHS officially confirmed to The Daily that it is testing a device that collects DNA. [Image]

By Katie Drummond
The Daily
February 26, 2011

Airport scanners already get under your clothes, but federal officials aren’t stopping there: They want to get inside your genes, too.

This summer, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security plans to begin testing a portable DNA scanner, The Daily has learned.

Airport cafe refuses to serve TSA agents

By Christopher Elliott

KC McLawson works for a cafe near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, and since the body-scan and patdown controversy last November, her boss has taken extraordinary measures to ensure the TSA knows of his displeasure.

“We have posted signs on our doors basically saying that they aren’t allowed to come into our business,” she says. “We have the right to refuse service to anyone.”

AK State Rep. Sharon Cissna refuses TSA’s total sexual assault; barred from flying

By Alaska TravelGram

Alaska State Rep. Sharon Cissna of Anchorage was returning from Seattle when the TSA insisted on an intrusive hand exam at SEA-TAC Airport. Below is her statement:

PRINCE RUPERT, BC (February 21, 2011).  The following is Rep. Sharon Cissna’s account of the events of February 20th, 2011 at  SEA-TAC International Airport:

“The evening of the 20th of February 2011 started with relief, as I was anxious to get back to the important work of the Alaskan Legislature.  Heading into security after time with the line of passengers, I felt upbeat.  I’d blocked out the horror of three months earlier, but after the pleasant TSA agent checked the ticket and ID, I suddenly found myself directed into scanning by the Seattle Airport’s full-body imaging scan.  The horror began again.  A female agent placed herself blocking my passage.  Scan results would again display that my breast cancer and the resulting scars pointed a TSA finger of irregularity at my chest.  I would require invasive, probing hands of a stranger over my body. Memories of violation would consume my thoughts again.”

How Close Are We to a Nano-based Surveillance State?

By Michael Edwards
Activist Post

In the span of just three years, we have seen drone surveillance become openly operational on American soil. In 2007, Texas reporters first filmed a predator drone test being conducted by the local police department in tandem with Homeland Security.  And in 2009, it was revealed that an operation was underway to use predator drones inland over major cities, far from “border control” functions.  This year it has been announced that not only will drone operations fly over the Mexican border, but the United States and Canada are partnering to cover 900 miles of the northern border as well. [Image]

Now that the precedent has been set to employ drones over non-combat areas, the military is further revealing the technology of miniaturization that they currently have at their disposal.  As drone expert, P.W. Singer said, “At this point, it doesn’t really matter if you are against the technology, because it’s coming.”  According to Singer, “The miniaturization of drones is where it really gets interesting.  You can use these things anywhere, put them anyplace, and the target will never even know they’re being watched.”

So what exactly is on the horizon?