We are told, “and how” we are told, aided by every discredited media hack on the planet, that poor Snowden is flying to Russia where he will either be given “safe passage” or “considered” for asylum.
The New World Order is holding a “morality play,” and we all have tickets.
Snowden’s baggage includes, we are told, a “Wikileaks legal team” and four computers, carrying details of intelligence intercepts against Russia and China. Please note, Russia and China are among the top four nations when it comes to international “cyber bullying,” with multi-billion dollar budgets.
The real violator, behind NSA monitoring, in control of social media, of Wikipedia, of YouTube and Google, monitoring all world mobile communications and, more importantly, in control, not just of a majority of the world’s media and entertainment but the governments of Britain, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Turkey, the United States and dozens of others as well, is Israel.
Speaking with Infowars’ Alex Jones, former Assistant Deputy Secretary of State Dr. Steve Pieczenik says Israel plans to attack Iran before the U.S. elections of Nov. 6., and, that an attack on Iran will assuredly kickoff WWIII, according to him.
Moreover, Pieczenik, a man whose career inspired the character Jack Ryan of the Tom Clancy book series, says the ‘October Surprise’ will not take place in October. Instead, the big surprise will come earlier, in late September.
Dr. Pieczenik says the specific date of the strike on Iran is Sept. 25th or 26th, Yom Kippur—the Jewish holiday, which commences in the year 2012 at sundown on the 25th, and ends at nightfall, the following day.
“It [an Israeli attack on Iran] could be earlier than October, because we have Yom Kippur. And I predicted on your radio show, and I predicted to our national security people, privately, that Benjamin Bibi Netanyahu would start something on Rosh Hashanah,” says Pieczenick.
“This [prediction] was over a year ago, and I said it on your radio show. He was as predictable as a clock, and the Israelis will be very predictable, on Yom Kippur,” he adds.
Pieczenik says it’s clear to him that Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu has already planned to attack Iran and has been desperately trying to enlist the U.S. to back him up. But, with or without U.S. direct help, Pieczenik is certain that Israel will attack Iran.
Moreover, he says Netanyahu is an extremest, who will “lie” for his personal and selfish cause, a conclusion also drawn by many Israelis who protest his regime.
“Everything Bibi is saying to the Americans and the American Jews is an absolute, unmitigated lie,” Pieczenik, a Jew, himself, says forcefully,
“What we have here is a collusion between Saudi Arabia, neocon Jews of America and Israel, against a president, who, whether I like or dislike, and may have lied about Osama Bin Laden,” he adds, “he [President Obama] is the son . . . a son of a CIA operative, the grandson of a CIA operative, who understands very well what the issues of intelligence are.”
With help from his neocon friends, Netanyahu threatens the entire world with the suicidal notion that Iran must be attacked, and the Israeli prime minister must be stopped, even if it means assassination, according to Pieczenik
Several months ago, when some still questioned the destiny of Mitt Romney as the Republican Presidential Nominee, the Romney campaigned demonstrated its own lack of doubt on the issue by announcing a stable of foreign policy advisers and various working groups specific to issues and regions. The list of Romney’s foreign policy team consisted of 22 advisers as well as 13 working groups.
A sign at a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint instructs passengers about the use of the full-body scanner at O’Hare International Airport. (Getty Images)
Update (11/01): This story has been updated with a comment from The Chertoff Group, from which ProPublica had sought comment before publication.
Look for a PBS NewsHour story on X-ray body scanners, reported in conjunction with ProPublica, to air later this month.
On Sept. 23, 1998, a panel of radiation safety experts gathered at a Hilton hotel in Maryland to evaluate a new device that could detect hidden weapons and contraband. The machine, known as the Secure 1000, beamed X-rays at people to see underneath their clothing.
One after another, the experts convened by the Food and Drug Administration raised questions about the machine because it violated a longstanding principle in radiation safety — that humans shouldn’t be X-rayed unless there is a medical benefit.
“I think this is really a slippery slope,” said Jill Lipoti, who was the director of New Jersey’s radiation protection program. The device was already deployed in prisons; what was next, she and others asked — courthouses, schools, airports? “I am concerned … with expanding this type of product for the traveling public,” said another panelist, Stanley Savic, the vice president for safety at a large electronics company. “I think that would take this thing to an entirely different level of public health risk.”
The machine’s inventor, Steven W. Smith, assured the panelists that it was highly unlikely that the device would see widespread use in the near future. At the time, only 20 machines were in operation in the entire country.
“The places I think you are not going to see these in the next five years is lower-security facilities, particularly power plants, embassies, courthouses, airports and governments,” Smith said. “I would be extremely surprised in the next five to 10 years if the Secure 1000 is sold to any of these.”
Today, the United States has begun marching millions of airline passengers through the X-ray body scanners, parting ways with countries in Europe and elsewhere that have concluded that such widespread use of even low-level radiation poses an unacceptable health risk. The government is rolling out the X-ray scanners despite having a safer alternative that the Transportation Security Administration says is also highly effective.
He has done more damage to the US than any person I can think of, living or dead.
His record speaks for itself.
Somehow, he was working on the PATRIOT Act before 9/11, he had a hand in “normalizing” torture, he sat on his hands and let New Orleaneans die, and now he’s engineered a mass irradiation and humiliation program that effects millions of Americans.
The new growth industry in the US is criminalizing, harassing, robbing and imprisoning American citizens.
Be sure and read Tim Carney’s Examiner column today on the politically-connected lobby for the controversial new TSA scanners that are upsetting airline employees and travelers everywhere. Carney notes that a company called Rapiscan got a $165 million contract for the new body image scanners four days after the underwear-bomber incident this past Christmas. Not surprisingly, Rapiscan is politically connected, observes Carney:
Rapiscan got the other naked-scanner contract from the TSA, worth $173 million. Rapiscan’s lobbyists include Susan Carr, a former senior legislative aide to Rep. David Price, D-N.C., chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee. When Defense Daily reported on Price’s appropriations bill last winter, the publication noted “Price likes the budget for its emphasis on filling gaps in aviation security, in particular the whole body imaging systems.”
Then this morning Carney also noted that former Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff was flacking for Rapiscan.
As for the company’s other political connections, it also appears that none other than George Soros, the billionaire funder of the country’s liberal political infrastructure, owns 11,300 shares of OSI Systems Inc., the company that owns Rapiscan. Not surprisingly, OSI’s stock has appreciated considerably over the course of the year. Soros certainly is a savvy investor.
“Cyber war!” flashes on the screen at an Internet security conference
(AFP) WASHINGTON — Former top US officials staged a digital doomsday simulation on Tuesday in which a huge cyberattack crashes cellphone networks, slows Web traffic to a crawl and plunges major cities into darkness.
Dubbed “Cyber ShockWave,” the elaborate exercise was held in a Washington hotel room transformed for the day into the White House Situation Room, where the president and his advisers typically meet to address national emergencies.
Former president George W. Bush’s Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff played the role of National Security Advisor as the “cabinet” sought to respond to a nightmare scenario drawn up by former CIA director Michael Hayden.
As the “crisis” escalated, the officials discussed various actions including calling out the National Guard, nationalizing the utility companies and staging a retaliatory strike if the authors of the cyberattack become known.
What he has made little mention of is that the Chertoff Group, his security consulting agency, includes a client that manufactures the machines. The relationship drew attention after Chertoff disclosed it on a CNN program Wednesday, in response to a question.
An airport passengers’ rights group on Thursday criticized Chertoff, who left office less than a year ago, for using his former government credentials to advocate for a product that benefits his clients.
“Mr. Chertoff should not be allowed to abuse the trust the public has placed in him as a former public servant to privately gain from the sale of full-body scanners under the pretense that the scanners would have detected this particular type of explosive,” said Kate Hanni, founder of FlyersRights.org, which opposes the use of the scanners.
I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but David Brooks actually had an excellent column in yesterday’s New York Times that makes several insightful and important points. Brooks documents how “childish, contemptuous and hysterical” the national reaction has been to this latest terrorist episode, egged on — as usual — by the always-hysterical American media. The citizenry has been trained to expect that our Powerful Daddies and Mommies in government will — in that most cringe-inducing, child-like formulation — Keep Us Safe. Whenever the Government fails to do so, the reaction — just as we saw this week — is an ugly combination of petulant, adolescent rage and increasingly unhinged cries that More Be Done to ensure that nothing bad in the world ever happens. Demands that genuinely inept government officials be held accountable are necessary and wise, but demands that political leaders ensure that we can live in womb-like Absolute Safety are delusional and destructive. Yet this is what the citizenry screams out every time something threatening happens: please, take more of our privacy away; monitor more of our communications; ban more of us from flying; engage in rituals to create the illusion of Strength; imprison more people without charges; take more and more control and power so you can Keep Us Safe.
This is what inevitably happens to a citizenry that is fed a steady diet of fear and terror for years. It regresses into pure childhood. The 5-year-old laying awake in bed, frightened by monsters in the closet, who then crawls into his parents’ bed to feel Protected and Safe, is the same as a citizenry planted in front of the television, petrified by endless imagery of scary Muslim monsters, who then collectively crawl to Government and demand that they take more power and control in order to keep them Protected and Safe. A citizenry drowning in fear and fixated on Safety to the exclusion of other competing values can only be degraded and depraved. John Adams, in his 1776 Thoughts on Government, put it this way:
Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.
As Adams noted, political leaders possess an inherent interest in maximizing fear levels, as that is what maximizes their power. For a variety of reasons, nobody aids this process more than our establishment media, motivated by their own interests in ratcheting up fear and Terrorism melodrama as high as possible. The result is a citizenry far more terrorized by our own institutions than foreign Terrorists could ever dream of achieving on their own. For that reason, a risk that is completely dwarfed by numerous others — the risk of death from Islamic Terrorism — dominates our discourse, paralyzes us with fear, leads us to destroy our economic security and eradicate countless lives in more and more foreign wars, and causes us to beg and plead and demand that our political leaders invade more of our privacy, seize more of our freedom, and radically alter the system of government we were supposed to have. The one thing we don’t do is ask whether we ourselves are doing anything to fuel this problem and whether we should stop doing it. As Adams said: fear “renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable.”
What makes all of this most ironic is that the American Founding was predicated on exactly the opposite mindset. The Constitution is grounded in the premise that there are other values and priorities more important than mere Safety. Even though they knew that doing so would help murderers and other dangerous and vile criminals evade capture, the Framers banned the Government from searching homes without probable cause, prohibited compelled self-incrimination, double jeopardy and convictions based on hearsay, and outlawed cruel and unusual punishment. That’s because certain values — privacy, due process, limiting the potential for abuse of government power — were more important than mere survival and safety. A central calculation of the Constitution was that we insist upon privacy, liberty and restraints on government power even when doing so means we live with less safety and a heightened risk of danger and death. And, of course, the Revolutionary War against the then-greatest empire on earth was waged by people who risked their lives and their fortunes in pursuit of liberty, precisely because there are other values that outweigh mere survival and safety.
These are the calculations that are now virtually impossible to find in our political discourse. It is fear, and only fear, that predominates. No other competing values are recognized. We have Chris Matthews running around shrieking that he’s scared of kung-fu-wielding Terrorists. Michael Chertoff is demanding that we stop listening to “privacy ideologues” — i.e., that there should be no limits on Government’s power to invade and monitor and scrutinize. Republican leaders have spent the decade preaching that only Government-provided Safety, not the Constitution, matters. All in response to this week’s single failed terrorist attack, there are — as always — hysterical calls that we start more wars, initiate racial profiling, imprison innocent people indefinitely, and torture even more indiscriminately. These are the by-products of the weakness and panic and paralyzing fear that Americans have been fed in the name of Terrorism, continuously for a full decade now.
*Kakistocracy is government by the very worst, least principled, and most incompetent people. You will be forgiven for thinking that the word, kakistocracy, perhaps derives from the word, “caca”, itself derived from the Latin, “cacare”. In fact, kakistocracy derives from the Greek, kakos, meaning “bad”.)
AP changed the title to“New Orleans residents get out of Gustav’s way”
__________________________________________________________________________
(AFP/Matthew Hinton)
NEW ORLEANS – As dawn broke Sunday over a city under siege, bumper-to-bumper traffic was reported in nearly every direction as residents heeded orders to flee an only partially rebuilt New Orleans. Police and National Guard troops were on the streets, preparing to patrol evacuated neighborhoods. And officials nervously watched the track of Hurricane Gustav, a Category 3 monster that threatens a city still recovering nearly three years after Hurricane Katrina.
Chertoff reiterated his concern that terrorists could sneak radiological material into the country on small boats or private aircraft.This material could be used to create an explosive device known as a “dirty bomb.”
(After I have seen this photo, I would send Mr. Chertoff to a cancer checkup straightaway.) Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff
WASHINGTON (AP) – European terrorists are trying to enter the United States with European Union passports, and there is no guarantee officials will catch them every time, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Thursday.
Kucinich said Congress has tried to find out whether COG plans implemented on 9/11 are still in effect, and what those plans are, but the White House has stonewalled.He suggests that Americans demand that congress issue subpoenas to determine whether COG plans are currently in effect, and to find out what’s in the documents. This is the only way we’ll find out.
John Conyers has been issuing subpoenas on other issues, which may be important. However, what could be more important for Congress than determining whether or not the Constitution is still the controlling document for our country? What could be more important for Congress than determining whether COG planning documents strip Congress of its power, and give sole power to the executive branch?
Demand that congress issue subpoenas and — more importantly — hold everyone subpoenaed person — including Bush, Cheney, Mukasey, Chertoff, etc. — in contempt (and throw them in jail!) if they don’t respond.
From January 2009, short-term visitors will only be granted entry to the US once they have registered on the website of the Electronic System Travel Authorization. This replaces the current procedure of filling out a green form handed out during the flight.
The move is meant to place greater emphasis on defending the country’s borders against the threat of terrorism. The new system is also seen as a response to the perceived growth of religious extremism in European countries, whose citizens are able to enter the US more easily.
It is hoped the new requirements will highlight people with questionable backgrounds before they leave their home country. Currently, they are able to fly to America, only to be sent back straight away by customs officials if deemed not suitable for entry.
The revamped system will affect the 27 nations covered by the visa waiver program, which includes Great Britain, and gives citizens the right to remain in the US for short periods of time without a visa. All the information filled in on the website will be held by US authorities for 15 years.
Those who fly regularly across the Atlantic stand to benefit as an approved application remains valid for up to two years, or until the traveller’s passport has run out. It also entitles the holder to multiple entries to the US during this period.
Today the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to Homeland Security czar Michael Chertoff’s all encompassing powers to waive federal laws to build a border fence, effectively ending the case.
The Defenders of Wildlife and Sierra Club had petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court. Their argument was a simple one: Chertoff, a political appointee who is not directly accountable to American voters, should not have the authority to bypass almost any federal law that he chooses.
On April 1, Chertoff waived 37 federal laws ranging from the Antiquities Act to the Native American Grave Repatriation Act.
Apparently, the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t have a problem with Chertoff’s all encompassing powers. It was a sad day for the rule of law.
Matt Clark, the southwest representative for Defenders of Wildlife, has been working on the lawsuit for more than a year. He was especially crushed that the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t even deem it necessary to explain why it declined to hear the case.
“I’ve worked for many years on some very hard environmental battles,” says Clark. “But I can say this is the first time I’ve ever been really really depressed about how our government is handling things.”
Congress gave Chertoff the power to steamroll the legal system through an obscure provision in the Real ID act, the gift that keeps on giving. Not only does it grant Chertoff unprecedented power, his waivers cannot be challenged in court. The only ray of light in a very dark judicial tunnel is a constitutional challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is under no obligation to hear the case.
Both Defenders and Sierra Club say their focus is now Congress (don’t hold your breath). “Our hope is that Congress will pass something to rectify its mistake,” Clark says. “We need accountability, transparency and a government who listens to its people.”
There is also a similar challenge in a federal court in El Paso. “We still insist that this is a violation of the separation of powers and that it’s unconstitutional,” says Oliver Bernstein of the Sierra Club. The club is not involved in the El Paso case but is watching with interest. “We don’t see any reason the outcome [of the El Paso case] would be redetermined,” says Bernstein.
Clark says Defenders of Wildlife will continue to push Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva’s legislation to repeal Chertoff’s waiver authority. To date, 49 congressional members have signed on to Grijalva’s bill doing so, including every single border legislator with the exception of two. No Republicans have signed on as of yet, however.
Clark says he watches the progress of the border fence daily in Arizona. Just the other day he visited the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument where Chertoff is erecting an 18-foot steel wall and destroying the natural environment in the process. Building in the desert will still be easier than the logistical challenges that await them in Texas. “They have no idea what they are up against, particularly in South Texas,” says Bernstein.
At $4 million a mile, taxpayers can be rest assured the only thing our government is securing is our tax dollars.
“Indiana residents affected by Saturday’s flooding shouldn’t expect assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency any time soon, and perhaps not at all,” Michael Hampton writes for the Homeland Stupidity blog. If and when Gov. Mitch Daniels declares disaster, FEMA will “come to the rescue” by “setting up a phone number and web site for individuals to ask for assistance in the form of loans.” Short of a declaration and miles of red tape, Department of Homeland Security spokesman John Erickson told the Indy Star residents are basically on their own. Erickson said Hoosiers should “start the cleanup process and don’t wait for federal assistance at this point.”
Hampton adds: “You heard it straight from the FEMA spokesman’s mouth. Don’t wait for them. They might not even show up at all. Pray they don’t, or southern Indiana could wind up like New Orleans. Travel trailers, anyone?”
“In the current series of disasters,” writes Jim Kirwan, “there are no troops here to help with evacuations, and the only help that FEMA is currently offering to victims of the Iowa flooding is: ’save all your receipts, because you’ll need to prove what it cost you if you want any help after this is over.’”
“Indiana residents affected by Saturday’s flooding shouldn’t expect assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency any time soon, and perhaps not at all,” Michael Hampton writes for the Homeland Stupidity blog. If and when Gov. Mitch Daniels declares disaster, FEMA will “come to the rescue” by “setting up a phone number and web site for individuals to ask for assistance in the form of loans.” Short of a declaration and miles of red tape, Department of Homeland Security spokesman John Erickson told the Indy Star residents are basically on their own. Erickson said Hoosiers should “start the cleanup process and don’t wait for federal assistance at this point.”
Hampton adds: “You heard it straight from the FEMA spokesman’s mouth. Don’t wait for them. They might not even show up at all. Pray they don’t, or southern Indiana could wind up like New Orleans. Travel trailers, anyone?”
“In the current series of disasters,” writes Jim Kirwan, “there are no [National Guard] troops here to help with evacuations, and the only help that FEMA is currently offering to victims of the Iowa flooding is: ’save all your receipts, because you’ll need to prove what it cost you if you want any help after this is over.’”
As Allen Roland writes for Salon blogs, reposted on the Global Research website, “the real purpose of FEMA is to not only protect the government but to be its principal vehicle for martial law” and this is why “FEMA could not respond immediately to the Hurricane Katrina disaster — humanitarian efforts were no longer part of its job description under the Department of Homeland Security.”
It appears Hurricane Katrina also provided FEMA with an excuse to “dry run” its unconstitutional powers in New Orleans, rounding up “refugees” (now called “evacuees”) and “relocating” them in various camps. “Some evacuees are being treated as ‘internees’ by FEMA,” writes former NSA employee Wayne Madsen.
In fact, as Steve Watson noted in the wake of Katrina, FEMA deliberately sabotaged relief efforts in New Orleans. “Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Paul Craig Roberts has agreed that FEMA has deliberately withheld aid, and cut emergency communication lines, and automatically made the crisis look worse in order to empower the image of a police state emerging to ’save the day’. He even insinuated that the shoot to kill policy was part of the overall operation in order get an awful precedence set to aid the military industrial complex takeover of America.” FEMA, Watson adds, is nothing short of a “federalized front group for the corrupt money hoarding Department of Homeland Security, the Orwellian titled agency that has nothing to do with security and everything to do with limiting the freedoms of people all over the country.”
In other words, as cruel as it may sound, the flood ravaged people of Indiana and other states in the Midwest are better off without a declaration of disaster and FEMA “assistance.”
As DHS spokesman John Erickson hinted and Allen Roland underscored, assisting people during natural disasters ranks low on FEMA’s list of responsibilities. As Harry V. Martin wrote in 1995, after FEMA “dropped the ball” in the wake of Hurricane Andrew, Congress commenced a study of the agency and discovered “FEMA was spending 12 times more for ‘black operations’ than for disaster relief.”
It spent $1.3 billion building secret bunkers throughout the United States in anticipation of government disruption by foreign or domestic upheaval. Yet fewer than 20 members of Congress , only members with top security clearance, know of the $1.3 billion expenditure by FEMA for non-natural disaster situations. These few Congressional leaders state that FEMA has a “black curtain” around its operations. FEMA has worked on National Security programs since 1979, and its predecessor, the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency, has secretly spent millions of dollars before being merged into FEMA by President Carter in 1979.
Operation Cable Splicer, Garden Plot, and REX 84 (short for Readiness Exercise 1984) are programs long on the shelf, awaiting the appropriate “disaster” to be taken down and implemented. Garden Plot is a program designed to control the population, while Cable Splicer is a program engineered for an orderly takeover of state and local governments by the federal government. FEMA is the executive arm of the coming police state and will head up operations. The Presidential Executive Orders already listed on the Federal Register also are part of the legal framework for this operation, and include the following:
10990 (allows the government to take over all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports), 10995 (allows the government to seize and control the communication media), 10997 (allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and minerals), 10998 (allows the government to take over all food resources and farms), 11000 (allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision), 11001 (allows the government to take over all health, education and welfare functions), 11002 (designates the Postmaster General to operate a national registration of all persons), 11003 (allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft), 11004 (allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations) and 11005 (allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways and public storage facilities).
More recently, the National Defense Authorization Act, under Sect. 1042, allows the use of “the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies” and explicitly gives the executive the power to invoke martial law – in other words, kiss Posse Comitatus good-bye. For the first time in more than a century, the president is now authorized to use the military in response to “a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, a terrorist attack or any other condition in which the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to the extent that state officials cannot maintain public order,” Lewis Seiler and Dan Hamburg wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle in February. Add to this the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and National Security Presidential Directive 51, allowing for “continuity of government” in the event of what NSPD-5 vaguely calls a “catastrophic emergency,” and the framework is in place for the imposition of martial law.
As a recent example of the sort of activity FEMA is engaged in, as they tell flood victims in the Midwest to fend for themselves, consider the $22 million per year the agency has spent “on a terror training program within a real town in New Mexico where helicopters buzz overhead in the middle of the night, mock nuclear explosions are drilled and ’suicide bombers’ are taken down by SWAT teams who pull citizens out of their homes,” writes Steve Watson. The Associated Press (see video) deems such events “unthinkable,” and indeed they are, while floods and hurricanes are a reality.
FEMA has very little to do with the sort of natural disasters the people of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Indiana are currently experiencing and everything to do with martial law, thus DHS boss Chertoff’s satisfaction “with the federal response to the massive Midwest flooding” is little more than a dog and pony show, a public relations gimmick slapped over the real face of FEMA.
Chertoff has recently cleared the way for the completion of nearly 500 miles of a planned barrier fence in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. ________________________________________________________________________________________
JERUSALEM, May 29 (Reuters) – U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on Thursday he will seek to adopt novel Israeli methods, like behaviour-detection technologies, to better secure America’s airports.
“That’s a scenario where Israel has a lot of experience,” Chertoff said in an interview with Reuters. “I think that it is of interest to us to see if there is any adaptation there.”
Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport, known for its strict security measures, relies heavily on techniques that detect suspicious behaviour among travellers.
Chertoff said such methods, as well as Israeli technologies that detect explosives, are some of the things that may help protect U.S. airports and other public places against attacks.
Chertoff, at a conference in Jerusalem for public and homeland security ministers from around the world, signed an agreement with Israel to share technology and information on methods to improve homeland security.
One of the new systems presented at the conference, developed by the Israeli technology company WeCU, uses behavioural science, together with biometric sensors, to detect sinister intentions among travellers.
The U.S. homeland security chief said that not all methods developed and used in Israel, such as questioning every passenger, are practical in larger U.S. airports.
Israel’s Ben Gurion handles about 9 million travellers a year while major U.S. hubs, like Chicago O’Hare, see some 76 million passengers.
“Not every technological approach here (in Israel) is necessarily applicable, but we are always open to look for technology from whatever source,” Chertoff said.
Chertoff also said that the U.S. could not adopt border security methods used in Israel, which prevent Palestinian militants from entering its territory, for U.S. efforts to stop illegal immigrants from crossing its frontier with Mexico.
“(It’s) a vastly longer border. It’s not an area where there is much useful experience,” he said.
Chertoff has recently cleared the way for the completion of nearly 500 miles of a planned barrier fence in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.
“The challenge will be to keep moving forward. We need to continue to implement the measures we have in place and continue to look for additional things to match what the enemies are doing because they are constantly retooling themselves,” he said.
Chertoff is expected to leave his post when President George W. Bush finishes his term in January 2009. (Editing by Jon Boyle)
New DHS Office Would Share Detailed Surveillance Capabilities of Military Intel Satellites With Local Law Enforcement
The Department of Homeland Security wants to set up a new program to illegally spy on Americans, two senior Democratic lawmakers charged Thursday in a letter urging colleagues to deny funds for the program.
In a letter to three colleagues obtained by ABC News, House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson, Miss., and Rep. Jane Harman, Calif., voiced objections to a new office DHS wants to create that would share the detailed surveillance capabilities of military intelligence satellites and other monitoring technology with state and local law enforcement.
The size of the National Applications Office, as DHS has named it, and its proposed budget, remain classified. The department has said the office would not traffic in eavesdropped conversations. It would primarily be used to share data from military assets for disaster response, monitoring climate change and other purposes, according to DHS.
Noting that the Pentagon is already cleared and capable of sharing satellite imagery on a legal and limited basis to aid authorities protecting major events or responding to natural disasters, Thompson and Harman said the purpose of expanding the program and placing it in a classified office could only be to surveil U.S. residents illegally.
“We are left to conclude that the only reason to stand up a new office would be to gather domestic intelligence outside the rigorous protections of the law — and, ultimately, to share this intelligence with local law enforcement outside of constitutional parameters,” Thompson and Harman wrote.
At a speech before the Heritage Foundation this week, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the U.S. needs to have a “nonpoliticized, serious discussion” while writing new laws to define the best way to combat terrorism.
Chertoff said that once laws are written, the public should not second-guess government actions and claim that federal officials are overstepping their authority. He decried critics who make such accusations, despite the widespread pubic calls after the September 11, 2001 attacks for the U.S. government to do more to protect the country. Chertoff further said U.S. society needs to come to a determination as to what are acceptable authorities for the U.S. government versus what violates people’s rights.
If the public limits what the government can do, it must accept that the risk of terrorist attacks may increase, he said. If the public gives the government greater authorities, it should not criticize the government for using those authorities at a later date.
Chertoff called U.S. laws “woefully inadequate” in the context of current technology. He said the most significant step American society needs to take is adapting laws to the 21st Century challenge of fighting terrorism. Changes in technology have created unique challenges for the government when it comes to intercepting communications, as well as collecting and analyzing information found in the public domain according to Chertoff.
I waited a week to comment on the Texas case, separating 437 children from their FLDS parents, to see if any substantive evidence of abuse would emerge. It hasn’t. Even if it had, those could have been handled individually. But no, Texas plans instead to make every member of the group pay the supreme price: to strip away their beloved children. This case is about group punishment. In spite of a search warrant tainted by a false witness (the “Sarah” who doesn’t exist), no actual specific evidence of abuse, or any unwilling participants in this polygamous compound, a self-righteous Texas judge had decreed that all 400 + children will not be returned to the custody of their parents. Texas has gone too far to rid itself of this awkward religious sect that built the “Yearning for Zion” (YFZ) ranch in order to evade persecution in Utah and Arizona.
As this tyrannical order clearly meant separating even nursing children from their mothers, a wave of outrage began to sweep the nation. The media-savvy judge immediately changed her order (allowing children under 1 year if age to be nursed) in order to keep the tide of public relations on the side of the authorities. But this should not deter the nation from realizing the danger of the tenuous legal proposition that mere membership in a group (that may have isolated examples of marrying underage girls) makes all unworthy of possessing any children at all–ever. That is wrong, especially when legal remedies exist to prosecute specific wrongdoers.
The local sheriff admitted on television that he had an “informant” on the inside for over 4 years. That was probably a disgruntled member of the group who decided to stay on to build up a case against his fellow church members. If a case can’t be built after four years of informing, and authorities have to rely on a false abuse phone call to justify this invasion, what does that say about the State’s case?
Federal law enforcement agencies co-opted sheriffs offices as well state and local police forces in three states last weekend for a vast round up operation that one sheriff’s deputy has described as “martial law training”.
Law-enforcement agencies in Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas took part in what was described by local media as “an anti-crime and anti-terrorism initiative” involving officers from more than 50 federal, state and local agencies.
Given the military style name “Operation Sudden Impact“, the initiative saw officers from six counties rounding up fugitives, conducting traffic checkpoints, climbing on boats on the Mississippi River and doing other “crime-abatement” programs all under the label of “anti-terrorism”.
WREG Memphis news channel 3 reported that the Sheriff’s Department arrested 332 people, 142 of whom were fugitives, or “terrorists” as they now seem to be known.
Hundreds of dollars were seized and drugs recovered, and 1,292 traffic violations were handed out to speeding terrorists and illegally parked terrorists.
The authorities even raided businesses and store owners, confiscating computers and paperwork in an effort to “track down possible terrorists before something big happens”.
The Sheriff’s Department is determining if and when they plan another round-up.
The operation, which involved police, deputies, the FBI, drug agents, gang units and even the coast guard, is just one example of how law enforcement at the state and local levels is being co-opted and centralized by the Department of Homeland Security via massive federal grants.
It also highlights how the distinction between crime and terrorism is becoming irrelevant.
Our guest blogger, Peter Swire, is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and served as the Clinton Administration’s Chief Counselor for Privacy.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has badly stumbled in discussing the Bush administration’s push to create stricter identity systems. Chertoff was recently in Canada discussing, among other topics, the so-called “Server in the Sky” program to share fingerprint databases among the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia.
In a recent briefing with Canadian press (which has yet to be picked up in the U.S.), Chertoff made the startling statement that fingerprints are “not particularly private”:
QUESTION: Some are raising that the privacy aspects of this thing, you know, sharing of that kind of data, very personal data, among four countries is quite a scary thing.
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: Well, first of all, a fingerprint is hardly personal data because you leave it on glasses and silverware and articles all over the world, they’re like footprints. They’re not particularly private.
Many of us should rightfully be surprised that our fingerprints aren’t considered “personal data” by the head of DHS. Even more importantly, DHS itself disagrees. In its definition of “personally identifiable information” — the information that triggers a Privacy Impact Assessment when used by government — the Department specifically lists: “biometric identifiers (e.g., fingerprints).”
Chertoff’s comments have drawn sharp criticism from Jennifer Stoddart, the Canadian official in charge of privacy issues. “Fingerprints constitute extremely personal information for which there is clearly a high expectation of privacy,” Stoddart said.
There are compelling reasons to treat fingerprints as “extremely personal information.” The strongest reason is that fingerprints, if not used carefully, will become the biggest source of identity theft. Fingerprints shared in databases all over the world won’t stay secret for long, and identity thieves will take advantage.
A quick web search on “fake fingerprints” turns up cheap and easy methods for do-it-at-home fake fingerprints. As discussed by noted security expert Bruce Schneier, one technique is available for under $10. It was tried “against eleven commercially available fingerprint biometric systems, and was able to reliably fool all of them.” Secretary Chertoff either doesn’t know about these clear results or chooses to ignore them. He said in Canada: “It’s very difficult to fake a fingerprint.”
Chertoff’s argument about leaving fingerprints lying around on “glasses and silverware” is also beside the point. Today, we leave our Social Security numbers lying around with every employer and numerous others. Yet the fact that SSNs (or fingerprints) are widely known exposes us to risk.
There have been numerous questions raised about how this Administration is treating our personal information. Secretary Chertoff’s comments show a new reason to worry — they don’t think it’s “personal” at all.
The Bush administration said yesterday that it plans to start using the nation’s most advanced spy technology for domestic purposes soon, rebuffing challenges by House Democrats over the idea’s legal authority.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said his department will activate his department’s new domestic satellite surveillance office in stages, starting as soon as possible with traditional scientific and homeland security activities — such as tracking hurricane damage, monitoring climate change and creating terrain maps.
Sophisticated overhead sensor data will be used for law enforcement once privacy and civil rights concerns are resolved, he said. The department has previously said the program will not intercept communications.
Department of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff has dropped the bomb.
At a speech to hundreds of security professionals Wednesday, Chertoff declared that the federal government has created a cyber security “Manhattan Project,” referencing the 1941-1946 project led by the Army Corps of Engineers to develop American’s first atomic bomb.
According to Wired’s Ryan Singel, Chertoff gave few details of what the government actually plans to do.
He cites a little-noticed presidential order: “In January, President Bush signed a presidential order expanding the role of DHS and the NSA in government computer security,” Singel writes. “Its contents are classified, but the U.S. Director of National Intelligence has said he wants the NSA to monitor America’s internet traffic and Google searches for signs of cyber attack.”
The National Security Agency was the key player in President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was revealed by the New York Times in 2005.
Sound familiar? Yesterday, documents acquired by the Electronic Frontier Foundation under the Freedom of Information act showed the FBI has engaged in a massive cyber surveillance projectthat targets terror suspects emails, telephone calls and instant messages — and is able to get some information without a court order.
Last week, the ACLU revealed documentsshowing that the Pentagon was using the FBI to spy on Americans. The military is using the FBI to skirt legal restrictions on domestic surveillance to obtain private records of Americans’ Internet service providers, financial institutions and telephone companies, according to Pentagon documents.
US Homeland Security overlord Michael Chertoff has told reporters that he believes plans for increased use of satellite surveillance by American law-enforcement agencies are ready to move forward. However, Democratic politicians remain unconvinced that adequate privacy and civil liberties safeguards are in place.
“I think the way is now clear to stand NAO up and go warm,” said Chertoff, briefing journalists about the proposed National Applications Office.
NAO would allow US police, immigration, drug-enforcement and other officials to have access to data from various US satellites passing above America. It is understood that the information would be supplied mostly by spacecraft which at the moment are used for meteorological and geological surveying, or other scientific tasks. Satellites of this type can often deliver high-resolution images which would also be useful to law enforcement.
Former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton are urging Americans to take steps to better prepare themselves, their families and businesses for emergencies.
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