fbi

Shock Report: Secret Law Will Give #FBI Full Access To Your #Email Without A Warrant: “Massive Expansion of Government Surveillance Authority”

May 31, 2016 by mac slavo

You probably haven’t heard too much about a new law making its way through the U.S. Senate. The reason, of course, is because all discussions on this new provision are being debated in secrecy.

Once passed, however, it will open a massive doorway for the FBI and other domestic law enforcement organizations to read every single email sent across internet lines in the continental United States without a warrant or probable cause.

The new “law” is a gross violation of the fourth Amendment which provides for Americans the right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizure.

Apparently, since the Founding Fathers made no mention of email, Congress believes they can have free reign on your personal conversations.

A provision snuck into the still-secret text of the Senate’s annual intelligence authorization would give the FBI the ability to demand individuals’ email data and possibly web-surfing history from their service providers without a warrant and in complete secrecy.

If passed, the change would expand the reach of the FBI’s already highly controversial national security letters. The FBI is currently allowed to get certain types of information with NSLs — most commonly, information about the name, address, and call data associated with a phone number or details about a bank account.

Since a 2008 Justice Department legal opinion, the FBI has not been allowed to use NSLs to demand “electronic communication transactional records,” such as email subject lines and other metadata, or URLs visited.

The spy bill passed the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, with the provision in it. The lone no vote came from Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who wrote in a statement that one of the bill’s provisions “would allow any FBI field office to demand email records without a court order, a major expansion of federal surveillance powers.”

Wyden did not disclose exactly what the provision would allow, but his spokesperson suggested it might go beyond email records to things like web-surfing histories and other information about online behavior.

Full report at The Intercept

When we wrote five years ago, to the disagreement of many a government sheeple, that everything Americans do is being monitored this is exactly what we meant.

They’ve been watching us for a long time – recording every call, cataloging every email, aggregating every purchase.

Now they’re making it legal.

And if the provisions extend, as Senator Ron Wyden warns, outside of just standard emails and encompasses all electronic communication or activity, then you can be assured that the government is now legalizing a full surveillance society, meaning that not just your text messages and emails will be monitored, but even the conversations you have in the privacy of your own home.

If your phone, computer or smart TV has a microphone and/or camera, they will give themselves the legal authority to capture this information, too.

Perhaps, as Jeremiah Johnson noted in a prior post, it is time to mourn the death of the United States of America as we once knew her.

www.SHTFplan.com.

SHTFplan and Mac Slavo www.shtfplan.com

The #FBI Has 80,000 Documents on #Saudi Ties to 9/11 It Tried to Suppress

May 17, 2016 by carey wedler

(ANTIMEDIA) The classified 28-pages of the 9/11 report have made global headlines lately as a handful of lawmakers battle to release them to the public. Those pages are believed by activists and members of Congress — who have seen them — to expose the role of Saudi Arabia, including government officials, in the terrorist attacks.

But according to a new report based on years of investigative journalism, it turns out there are far more than 28 classified pages on Saudi Arabia and 9/11 — there are 80,000 kept secret by the FBI. And though not all 80,000 are expected to concern the Saudi family — and the FBI insists their investigation of the documents came up empty-handed — journalists, at least one lawmaker, and heavily-redacted documents suggest otherwise.

As the Daily Beast reported, the discovery of the 80,000 pages came when Irish investigative journalists Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan were contacted by an unnamed counterterrorism official in 2011. The reporters were preparing to publish a book on the 10th anniversary of the terror attacks and were told by the source that a Saudi family who had been living in Sarasota, Florida, prior to the attacks had connections to the attackers. Specifically, they were linked to Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian terrorist widely recognized as the ringleader of the attacks.

The unnamed official’s tip conflicted squarely with the FBI’s prior conclusions on that family. Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii, his wife Anoud, and their three small children lived in an upscale Sarasota community, along with Anoud’s father, Esam Ghazzawi, a financier and interior designer, who owned the home, and Ghazzawai’s American-born wife. The FBI had received multiple calls from the family’s neighbors expressing concerns over erratic behavior. Two weeks before 9/11, they left the house in a huge hurry, leaving dirty diapers and toys strewn about, a fully stocked refrigerator, and three cars in the driveway.

Though the FBI opened an investigation in April 2002, it still insists it never found any significant connection between the family and Atta. The agency acknowledged they had suspected a connection, but “not until after the Tampa field office opened an investigation that claimed to find ‘numerous connections’ between the family and the 9/11 hijackers,” the Daily Beast explained. The 80,000 classified pages in question stemmed from that investigation.

The FBI says “the bureau’s own agents did initially suspect the family was linked to some of the hijackers.” But “on further scrutiny, those connections proved unfounded, officials now say.”

But Summers and Swan contacted Dan Christensen, a veteran Florida reporter, and together they published an exposé on these connections in Sarasota in September 2011. As they reported, following the 9/11 attacks:

“[L]aw enforcement agents not only discovered the home was visited by vehicles used by the hijackers, but phone calls were linked between the home and those who carried out the death flights — including leader Mohamed Atta — in discoveries never before revealed to the public.”

They were also never revealed to lawmakers. The 2011 story caught the attention of Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat who has since led the campaign to release the 28 pages on the Saudi connection, which are said to contain information showing Saudi government officials were involved in orchestrating the attack.

At the time, he said the journalists had “open[ed] the door to a new chapter of investigation as to the depth of the Saudi role in 9/11.” Graham attempted to view some of the documents, and told the Daily Beast (for a forthcoming article) they did show a connection between the family and three hijackers. He was soon after confronted by then-deputy director of the FBI, Sean Joyce. According to Graham, he said, “Basically everything about 9/11 was known and I was wasting my time and I should get a life.”

Christensen filed a Freedom of Information Act request in the hopes of either confirming or refuting their original reporting. Thomas Julin, his lawyer, said the FBI initially denied having any records. When Graham said he was willing to testify he had seen some, the Department of Justice conveniently admitted to having 35 relevant pages. They released them, but they were heavily redacted. In spite of the overt censorship guarding that information, they reportedly still made clear the FBI had suspicions about the family — and that they had found several connections between them and the hijackers. The pages also include the FBI’s dismissals of those suspicions.

U.S. District Court Judge William Zloch, who presided over the Freedom of Information case, was unconvinced and demanded the FBI conduct another search of its records. This time,“the FBI found some additional responsive documents which it produced,” Juline told the Daily Beast. “But it also found 80,266 pages of material in the Tampa Field Office of the FBI which had been marked with the file number for the FBI’s PENTTBOM investigation.”

PENTTBOM was the FBI term for its investigation into the 9/11 attacks. Though the New York Post had previously reported on these 80,000 pages, the DoJ’s small release of documents clarified suspicions. Zloch ordered the FBI to hand over all the documents in May 2014 — and he is still going through them to determine which pages can be released. He has given no indication of when he will be finished.

The Daily Beast explained “Zloch’s task is made all the more painstaking by the strict security rules governing review of classified documents, even for a sitting judge. The files are kept in a secure facility, and he can only remove a portion at a time.”

It remains unclear how many of the 80,000 pages pertain directly to the Tampa FBI field office’s investigation of the family in Sarasota — and their ties to the attackers. Though Christensen says he’s ready to be proven wrong, he believes “those files will reveal the underlying reasons for the FBI’s early suspicions.”

As the Daily Beast laid out:

“The FBI, for instance, says that phone records searches showed no links to the house and the hijackers. Christensen’s confidential source says the opposite is true. If the FBI is right, Christensen asks, then why not just release the information and put the dispute to rest?”

The FBI has attempted to discredit the pages, claiming the agent who filed the first reports on the family and their potential connection to the hijackers was “not a good writer and should not be taken as the last word,” according to Graham. However, that agent was promoted shortly after 9/11, casting doubt on assertions they were incompetent.

In a similar evasion of accountability, President Obama vowed to block a legislative effort to release the 28 pages amid pressure from the Saudi Arabian government, which threatened to remove $750 billion in American assets should the legislation pass. The president cited concerns that allowing families of 9/11 victims to sue a foreign government could, in turn, open the United States government up to prosecution, itself. The White House has since indicated it intends to release part of the 28 pages.

Though Julin says the 28 pages likely aren’t linked to the Sarasota Saudi family, he hopes their eventual release “might help Judge Zloch see the wider significance of the events in Sarasota and persuade him that some or all of the records have not been properly classified.”

Last week, a former member of the 9/11 commission said he believes six Saudi officials supported the 9/11 hijackers. John F. Lehman said Wednesday, “There was an awful lot of participation by Saudi individuals in supporting the hijackers, and some of those people worked in the Saudi government,” he said. “Our report should never have been read as an exoneration of Saudi Arabia.”

The FBI’s trove of documents also requires further examination. Julin dismissed suspicions Judge Zloch is intentionally lagging in his investigation of the 80,000 pages. “I believe this is not a stalling tactic at all,” he said. “The judge is doing what he has to comply” with the stringent rules surrounding the release of the classified documents. “But I would urge him to speed it up,” he said.

This article (The FBI has 80,000 Documents on Saudi Ties to 9/11 It Tried to Suppress) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

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Activist Faces #Extradition and 99-Year Sentence on #Hacking Charges

April 29, 2016 by michaela whitton

Michaela Whitton
April 28th, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) United Kingdom — A British activist is fighting extradition to the U.S. after allegedly taking part in a hacktivist protest against the U.S. government. Accused of hacking into government websites — including those of the U.S Army, FBI, NASA and the privately-run Federal Reserve Bank — computer scientist Lauri Love now has three U.S. extradition requests with his name on them. Lawyers have warned he could face 99 years in jail.

First arrested in 2013 for alleged offences under the U.K.’s Computer Misuse Act, Love’s equipment was also seized. Britain’s National Crime Agency attempted to force him to hand over his encryption keys, but he refused to cooperate and was released on bail.

He was arrested again last year at the request of the U.S. government, which issued a number of indictments and corresponding extradition warrants. The FBI and Department of Justice accused Love of hacking into websites including the U.S. Army, NASA, the Federal Reserve and the Environmental Protection Agency. Operation Last Resort (#OpLastResort) was a series of online protests in 2013, which Anonymous hacktivists claimed responsibility for. The cyber attack followed the persecution and untimely death of Aaron Swartz and prompted the federal websites to demand legal reform.

Data protection expert Kevin Cahill has described Love’s case as unbelievably ironic, pointing out that the very same people seeking to extradite the political activist have been convicted of hacking in the U.K. “The United States government was convicted on October 6th of the criminal offence of interception of emails in the United Kingdom,” he told RT’s Harry Fear.

What’s also ironic is that while Big Brother keeps a beady eye on all of us, the very same governments that classify hackers as criminals are secretly exploiting their expertise, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Just weeks away from his June hearing, Love remains on extradition bail and is required to sign on at a police station twice a week. Claiming he wants the court deciding his fate to be a British one, he says he has been informed the British authorities have no intention of charging him. “The U.S. government has attempted to fight a war against information transparency and hacktivism in general, and I’ve become swept up in that,” said the 31-year-old activist, who has been described as one of the U.K’s most expert cyber-security scientists.

“I believe that if I am extradited to the U.S., my life is effectively over,” he added.

Love has Asperger’s Syndrome, as did British hacker Gary Mckinnon, who escaped U.S. extradition after a ten-year battle. Central to Mckinnon’s eventual win was the risk that his vulnerable health would decline during U.S. incarceration. Naomi Colvin, of the Courage Foundation, said Love’s case will be a vital test of whether the U.K.’s outdated extradition laws have changed since the Mckinnon case.

Tor Ekeland, Love’s lawyer, called the case a draconian and heavy-handed prosecution. Insisting the U.K. authorities are very much acting on behalf of the U.S., he said he fails to see what the major harm is. He added that while the U.S. has a particular “puritanical zeal” in its punishment of hackers compared with other countries, it doesn’t do much to deter the real bad actors, which are usually nation states and criminal gangs.

“I don’t think I’ve committed any crimes,” Love said, before adding, “Whether I have done anything illegal is something that gets determined in court.”

The computer scientist’s extradition hearing is at the end of June, with a decision expected in July. You can read more about the case and show him support here.

This article (Activist Faces Extradition and 99-Year Sentence on Hacking Charges) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Michaela Whitton and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

From theantimedia.org Team

#CIA-Backed Artificial Intelligence #Palantir Firm To Spy on #WallStreet Traders

April 28, 2016 by jake anderson

Jake Anderson
April 27, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) — Swiss multinational bank, Credit Suisse, will collaborate with data analysis firm, Palantir, to launch a trader surveillance program. According to Bloomberg’s Jeffrey Voegeli, the joint venture, called Signac, aims to catch rogue Wall Streeters engaged in illegal trading. It comes in the wake of a number of trading scandals in recent years that have cost banks billions of dollars.

Palantir was co-founded by Peter Thiel and seed-funded by the CIA. The company was funded in part by In-Q-Tel Inc., the venture capital investment arm of the CIA that has a long, symbiotic history with startups, the NSA, the FBI, and DARPA. In fact, In-Q-Tel specifically funds tech start-ups “to advance ‘priority’ technologies of value” in the intelligence community. The group has ties to Donald Rumsfeld’s Total Information Awareness initiative and is believed by some to have worked closely with Google in its earliest years.

Palantir itself has lived in the shadows since its 2004 inception, working primarily to create a proprietary data mining system used by law enforcement agencies, finance firms, and security companies to isolate criminality. For example, Palantir’s software was used to analyze the troves of millions of documents related to the Bernie Madoff scandal.

Palantir has an extensive relationship with the U.S. government, and includes among its clients the CIA, DHS, NSA, FBI, the CDC, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, Special Operations Command, West Point, the Joint IED-defeat organization and Allies, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Another client is the Los Angeles Police Department. A leaked document from 2013 included a quote from Sergeant Peter Jackson, who said Palantir’s technology is allowing the LAPD to become more efficient.

The new trader surveillance co-venture comes at a time when Credit Suisse finds itself in dire straits. After adhering to a so-called Pursuit of Revenue “At All Costs” policy, the company now finds itself facing $90 billion of distressed debt and rampant illiquidity.

Now bank executives view the problem as stemming largely from rogue traders, and believe Signac will help them turn things around. Signac will use algorithmic artificial intelligence to monitor unauthorized trades.

It is perhaps worth noting that Signac will monitor internal transactions that harm Credit Suisse – not any of the myriad transgressions made by the financial industry at large, such as the kinds of predatory lending we saw prior to the Great Recession. We may have to wait for a larger, more aggressive artificial intelligence presence for that kind of oversight.

This article (CIA-Backed Artificial Intelligence Firm To Spy on Wall Street Traders) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Jake Anderson and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

From theantimedia.org Team

Shock: #Denver Schools To Patrol Students With Military-Style #Rifles: “Certainly Ratchets Up A Notch”

April 20, 2016 by mac slavo

Are children safe in public schools?

If the answer seems pretty obvious, it is confirmation that society has definitely gone to extremes that would not have been recognizable in past decades of American history.

Now Denver-area schools are becoming the first to guard their student populations with military-style semiautomatic rifles, and things certainly appear to be escalating.

via NBC News/AP:

A suburban Denver school district is arming its security staff with military-style semiautomatic rifles in case of a school shooting or other violent attack, a move that appears unprecedented even as more schools arm employees in response to mass violence elsewhere.

The guards, who are not law enforcement officers, already carry handguns.

[…]

The move raised new questions about how far school officials should go in arming employees, a practice that has become standard in the aftermath of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings.

One can only hope that these weapons would stop a shooter before they could hurt anyone, but there isn’t any guarantee.

Active shooters, mass killings and militarized police and security now haunt the halls where education and learning is supposed to be taking place. More children than ever before are on pharmaceutical medications, despite the known links to suicide and homicide. Between Common Core and politically-correct policies, these institutions are teaching that up-is-down, and down-is-up like never before.

One school in Florida even punished a 16-year old student for wrestling a gunman threatening other students to the ground and preventing a shooting. Active shooter and martial law drills have become commonplace, and many of them have been unannounced, causing terror and panic in students and teachers.

While most schools remain “gun-free zones” and have been reluctant to allow teachers to be armed in the case of the worst incidents, many have readily invested in armed security, surveillance technology and counter-terrorism approaches to “safety” in schools.

The result has been a heightened atmosphere that is increasingly paranoid, and ready to treat anyone and everyone as potential suspects – including children:

Ken Trump, a school safety consultant in Cleveland, said the Douglas County case may mark the first time a district has equipped its in-house security officers with semiautomatic rifles.

“Taking this step certainly ratchets up a notch the whole idea, the question of what’s reasonable, what’s necessary in terms of arming officers,” Trump said.

But are they being protected from potential violence, or indoctrinated in a police state society where even children are under sharp suspicion, and misbehavior is criminalized? Can we see down the road as to whether this is likely to tend towards more freedom, or less? More armed citizens is positive, but more guns only in the hands of police, but private and public, may prove not be.

Regardless, it is a precedent for the growing police state society that expects individuals to conform to the masses, and obey authorities at all costs. Michael Snyder argued that public schools are purposely preparing students to live in such a society:

Our children are the future of America, and our public schools are systematically training them to become accustomed to living in a “Big Brother” police state. All across the United States today, public schools have essentially become “prison grids” that are run by control freaks that are absolutely obsessed with micromanaging the lives of their students down to the smallest detail. As you will read about below, students all over the country are now being monitored by RFID microchips, their lunches are being inspected on a daily basis by school administrators, and the social media accounts of students are being constantly monitored even when they are at home.

[…] One thing that was unheard of back when I was in high school was “active shooter drills”. They are being held in school districts all over the nation today, and they often involve the firing of blanks and the use of fake blood.

In typical fashion, Snyder goes on to make a long list of bizarre school practices that will make your head spin, and are, frankly, teaching the future members of society how to become helpless slaves.

Everyone can see that there is a problem, but nobody seems to know the way to fix it.

There is a fine line somewhere in there…

Zero Tolerance: High School Student Suspended For Disarming School Bus Gunman

Unannounced Shooter Drill Terrifies Students: “I Thought He Was Going to Shoot Me”

First School Installs $100K Shooting Detection System: “Alerts of Gunfire Within 1 Second, Near Zero False Alerts”

Should Your Kids Know How to Bug Out…from School?

1956: “America Peaked Back Then and We’ve Been In Decline Ever Since”

School Threatens to Take Kids If Parents Are Late for Pickup

SHTFplan and Mac Slavo www.shtfplan.com

Not Even Police Were Told About This “Active Shooter” Drill…

April 6, 2016 by mac slavo

So secret that it’s for your safety…

It isn’t the first time that military, SWAT teams, FBI, police and Homeland Security officials have conducted large scale emergency exercises inside cities and frightened the locals.

Joint task force mock disasters, raids and response teams now routinely takeover local areas in order to prepare for martial law and a thorough police state, and people are often riled by the sounds of explosions, gunshots, helicopters and teams of men in black uniforms.

But this time, even the local police weren’t told about the drill taking place – even though it was happening within their own department.

As NBC reported:

Bystanders didn’t take long to call police last month when they spotted a couple of suspicious men skulking around a New Jersey train station taking photos of security cameras. Port Authority cops turned on lights and sirens and rushed to the scene in hour traffic.

But when they got there, the officers were shocked to find that the emergency they had rushed to was only a test. The suspicious men? Port Authority’s own security analysts.

According to an incident report obtained by the I-Team, the two men said they were “testing the system.” But what made this test different than the regular drills practiced is that none of the officers in the police department — not even the supervisors — knew it was a test. According to president of the Port Authority police union, the consequences could have been deadly.

[…]

The Port Authority spokesman … said it is customary not to tell officers about active shooter drills in the terminals.

Port Authority police in New Jersey were startled to respond to calls that led to an active shooter training scenario that ultimately involved their own security team running a “test.”

This video breaks down the possible implications of this unannounced test – which may seem paranoid to some, but it likely a routine part of managing crises in the public eye.

Port Authority Accused By Law Enforcement For Intentionally Perpetrating A Hoax Terrorist Drill

A “test” in order to keep the public “safe” from these and other threats.

But is it “safe” or is it just police state?

It seems even the police are questioning these eerie training scenarios which seem to foretell a future full of crisis events and greater government controls:

“It’s dangerous,” said Paul Nunziato, president of the Port Authority Police Benevolent Association. “What would this interview be right now if my guys hit somebody? What if some woman or a little child got killed?”

It’s not the only time Port Authority officials have conducted security drills that the police union says posed risks to their officers and the public. On the day of the recent terrorist attacks in Brussels, Port Authority conducted a nine-minute active shooter drill at JFK airport.

[Nunziato asked] “Would you scare the crap out of every person in that terminal with cops running in, lights and sirens, with heavy weapons, thinking something was going on.”

To make matters worse, history shows that many real life terror attacks took place during drills by government agencies, raising serious questions about the real motives and perpetrators behind some of the most well known events in recent history.

If the drill is that secret, what are they really hiding? And where is it that someone is planning to hit next?

Unannounced Shooter Drill Terrifies Students: “I Thought He Was Going to Shoot Me”

Surviving a Terror Attack: Strategies To Save Lives If the Worst Happens: “Run, Hide, Fight”

SHTFplan and Mac Slavo www.shtfplan.com

#Google To Begin Alerting Users if #Gmail Account is Targeted by Government

March 28, 2016 by clarice palmer

Clarice Palmer
March 28, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) As privacy advocates celebrate the FBI’s decision to stop harassing Apple over the San Bernardino shooter’s encrypted iPhone, other tech giants seem to have finally noticed that what consumers want is privacy. But for privacy to prevail, the government must stop snooping.

With that idea in mind, Google decided to change how the game is played.

In an official Google blog update detailing new security measures for Gmail, the tech giant announced it would begin alerting consumers whenever the firm detects an account is being targeted — or rather, hacked — by government agencies or their proxies. While the company believes less than 0.1 percent of Gmail users will receive this type of warning, the idea that a tech giant is going to these lengths to give users peace of mind and privacy should give advocacy groups across the country reason to continue celebrating.

Google opened its official statement by announcing the company has a “variety of new protections” in store “that will help keep Gmail users even safer.” The idea, Google added, is to “promote email security best practices across the Internet as a whole.” As one of these efforts, Google announced improvements to its “state-sponsored attack warnings,” a system that has been in place since 2012, when Google began warning Gmail users when their accounts were being targeted by attackers tied to the government.

While these “warnings are rare,” Google noted, “we’re launching a new, full-page warning with instructions about how these users can stay safe.” The blog pointed out that “the users that receive these warnings are often activists, journalists, and policy-makers taking bold stands around the world.”

Enhancing its warning system is not the only thing Google is doing to keep users safe. According to the tech giant, its “safe browsing” notifications will also be expanded to warn users beforehand that a link they are about to open appears suspicious.

Google will also improve its email encryption securities by partnering with Comcast, Yahoo, and Microsoft.

From BGR:

“Google wants to further improve email encryption, and the company partnered up with Comcast, Microsoft and Yahoo to submit a draft IETF [Internet Engineering Task Force] specification for ‘SMTP Strict Transport Security.’ Essentially, Google and its partners want to make sure that encrypted email stays encrypted along its entire path from sender to recipient.”

This idea was originally explored by Google on Safer Internet Day, the day the California company introduced a new tool giving Gmail users a visual warning whenever they receive a message that hasn’t been delivered using encryption. The warning is also displayed whenever a user is about to send an email to an account whose email service provider doesn’t support TLS encryption.

While this step had a positive effect, as Google reported on its blog announcement, the company decided to go even further by partnering with other companies in order to develop a new IETF specification standard. This is intended to help companies “ensure that mail will only be delivered through encrypted channels, and that any encryption failures should be reported for further analysis, helping shine the spotlight on any malfeasance occurring around the Internet.”

The move was Google’s response to research carried out by its researchers, along with the University of Michigan and University of Illinois. According to researchers’ findings, “misconfigured or malicious parts of the Internet can still tamper with email encryption.” That created the necessity for further action in order to protect Gmail users.

This article (Google To Begin Alerting Users if Gmail Account is Targeted by Government) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Clarice Palmer and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article to edits@theantimedia.org.

From theantimedia.org Team

Law Enforcement Turn to NSA Surveillance Data to Track Crime: “It Was Only A Matter of Time”

March 14, 2016 by contributing author

This article was written by Joshua Krause and originally published at The Daily Sheeple.

Editor’s Comment: Once the system has tilted towards concentrated and unaccountable power, the abuses and tyranny become inevitable. Americans stood down as the NSA on the 4th Amendment and stoked terror threats in order to justify its wholesale cataloging of the American people.

From here, the data collection will only increase. The next wave of technology will do even more to read into our actions and behaviors, and the data on that will become part of the effort to track everything and create a dominion over the nation. Beware, things are going dark.

It’s Official: NSA Data Will Soon be Used by Domestic Law Enforcement

by Joshua Krause

If you’re reading this, then I’m willing to bet that you’ve been called many different names throughout your life. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say they were names like kook, paranoid, conspiracy theorist, alarmist, insane, or gullible. And after this week, you can go by a new name: Vindicated.

I’m of course talking about recent revelations from the NSA. Long before Edward Snowden came along, it was no secret that the NSA was spying on everyone without good cause. Anyone who believed that fact was called a conspiracy theorist, but their fears were eventually validated.

These same people also understood that the NSA’s surveillance powers would never be used exclusively against terrorists and hostile governments. The power they have is just too tempting for any government. If various government agencies weren’t using the NSA’s surveillance apparatus to solve domestic crimes, it was only a matter of time before it was used for just that.

And again, they called us conspiracy theorists for believing that. And again, we were right all long.

A while back, we noted a report showing that the “sneak-and-peek” provision of the Patriot Act that was alleged to be used only in national security and terrorism investigations has overwhelmingly been used in narcotics cases. Now the New York Times reports that National Security Agency data will be shared with other intelligence agencies like the FBI without first applying any screens for privacy. The ACLU of Massachusetts blog Privacy SOS explains why this is important:

What does this rule change mean for you? In short, domestic law enforcement officials now have access to huge troves of American communications, obtained without warrants, that they can use to put people in cages. FBI agents don’t need to have any “national security” related reason to plug your name, email address, phone number, or other “selector” into the NSA’s gargantuan data trove. They can simply poke around in your private information in the course of totally routine investigations. And if they find something that suggests, say, involvement in illegal drug activity, they can send that information to local or state police. That means information the NSA collects for purposes of so-called “national security” will be used by police to lock up ordinary Americans for routine crimes.

Anybody who knows anything about how governments work, should not surprised. You can’t give them any kind of power, and expect them to use it responsibly. You can’t give them any stipulations. Eventually they’ll find a legal loophole to work around any limitations that have been placed on them.

In other news, the Pentagon admitted this week that they’ve been deploying military drones over the United States for domestic surveillance purposes. Much like the NSA’s surveillance apparatus, we were assured that drones were for terrorists in faraway lands. Nothing so Orwellian would ever be used against ordinary American citizens at home. Yet here we are, with more to come.

Perhaps you’re beginning to see a pattern. Everything our government uses against foreign enemies, eventually makes its way back home. Every war is an opportunity to try out new technologies, before turning around and using them against American citizens. It just goes to show, that war really is the health of the state.

SHTFplan and Mac Slavo www.shtfplan.com

The iPhone Is Just the Beginning: FBI Already Accessing Your DNA

March 9, 2016 by jake anderson

Jake Anderson
March 9, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Private genetic databases like 23andMe and Ancestry.com are increasingly used by people for genealogy tracing and medical diagnostic tests. With a million customers each, the two companies receive a great deal of attention from privacy advocates, who for years warned the government would eventually seek access to citizens’ DNA in order to assist with law enforcement.

They were right, and yet another conspiracy theory becomes conspiracy fact…

It turns out both the FBI and local law enforcement departments routinely seek DNA samples from these companies for familial DNA searches. In fact, according to Ancestry.com’s recently released transparency report, the company received 14 law enforcement requests in 2015. They provided customers’ genetic information in 13 of those cases.

A similar, recently released report by 23andMe discloses there were four law enforcement requests to the company in 2015.

The issue has received increased attention in part because of a frightening article by Wired. The story recounted the legal imbroglio filmmaker Michael Usry endured after Idaho Falls police “matched 34 of 35 alleles” from a crime scene to Usry’s father’s DNA.

Years earlier, his father had donated some DNA to a genealogy project funded by his Mormon church. Ancestry.com purchased the project and made the database of samples publicly available. Though Idaho Falls police ultimately concluded Usry was not involved in the murder of Angie Dodge, they had been able to obtain a search warrant for Michael’s cheek cells based on the sample they found online.

Ancestry.com didn’t realize police would be able to use their information to conduct genetic searches, but as they would soon learn, law enforcement authorities around the country are looking to expand their ability to conduct DNA searches beyond the FBI’s current national genetic database.

Anti-Media reached out to Ancestry.com for more information regarding how the company responds to national security requests. They referred to their transparency report, which states:

“As of December 31, 2015, Ancestry has never received a classified request pursuant to the national security laws of the United States or any other country. In other words, Ancestry has not received a National Security Letter or a request under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.”

Could this change in the wake of a terrorist attack? In the midst of the increasingly rancorous debate over civil liberties and national defense — epitomized by the FBI’s court case against Apple — it doesn’t seem like too big of a stretch, given the right political climate, to imagine private DNA databases being turned over to Homeland Security.

In Kuwait, citizens must submit their DNA to a government database to assist with criminal cases. Some actually argue the United States should have a similar mandatory DNA database, though this seems unlikely to gain widespread support given the backlash over electronic privacy violations in the aftermath of controversial NSA surveillance programs.

For now, the debate revolves around whether the United States government and local law enforcement should have the legal authority to access private DNA databases while investigating crimes. There hasn’t been a major Supreme Court ruling on this issue, so for the time being, companies like 23andMe and Ancestry.com will have to deal with police requests on a case-by-case basis.

As 23andMe’s first privacy officer Kate Black has stated:

“In the event we are required by law to make a disclosure, we will notify the affected customer through the contact information provided to us, unless doing so would violate the law or a court order.”

This article (The iPhone Is Just the Beginning: FBI Already Accessing Your DNA) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Jake Anderson and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Image credit: thierry ehrmann. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

From theantimedia.org Team

We Just Found out the Real Reason the FBI Wants a Backdoor into the iPhone

February 24, 2016 by jake anderson

Jake Anderson
February 24, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) The FBI versus Apple Inc. An unstoppable force meets an immovable object — the feverish momentum of American technocracy accelerating into the cavernous Orwellian entrenchment of the surveillance state. You thought the patent wars were intense? The ‘Battle of the Backdoor’ pits one of America’s most monolithic tech conglomerates against the Department of Justice and, ultimately, the interests of the national security state. And this case is likely only the opening salvo in what will be a decades-long ideological war between tech privacy advocates and the federal government.

On its face, the case boils down to a single locked and encrypted iPhone 5S, used by radical jihadist Syed Rizwan Farook before he and his wide Tashfeen Malik killed 14 people in San Bernardino on December 2nd. The DOJ wants Apple to build a backdoor into the device so that it can bypass the company’s state of the art encryption apparatus and access information and evidence related to the case.

[Read more…]

From theantimedia.org Team

Sheriff Blocks Feds From Harassing Raw Milk Farmer: “Stem the Tide of Federal Overreach”

February 19, 2016 by mac slavo

While many are still reeling from the outrageous shooting of LaVoy Finicum, and the aftermath of the Oregon standoff and arrest of patriots linked to it, there are other battles against the feds taking place across the country.

Much less attention was paid to Sheriff Brad Rogers, of Elkhart County in Indiana, who just successfully concluded his own showdown with federal officials from the FDA. The scenario was quite different, but the principals involved strike a similar chord – burdensome overreach and tyranny on the part of the federal government and its swarm of agents.

As activists have seen in many other cases, the FDA has gone after raw milk farmers and raw food proponents with frightening force – carrying out SWAT raids, trumped up arrests and destruction of food – all with no valid reason, and plenty of appearance of outright harassment.

Sheriff Rogers investigated a complaint from a constituent farmer and found that he sided with his case – there was no justified cause for invasive inspections happening repeatedly since 2011 every couple of weeks.

Basically, they were just looking for a reason to shut the farmer down, and Rogers put a stop to it.

Off The Grid News reports on this inspiring development, and its implications for a winning strategy against what is going on in this country:

Federal agents subjected a farmer to harassment and warrantless searches simply for producing raw milk, but a county sheriff took the farmer’s side and blocked federal agents from the property – and the sheriff is now speaking out.

The US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and Department of Justice (DOJ) took the actions four years ago simply because the farmer was providing raw milk to an organic food co-op. The story is receiving renewed coverage because the Indiana sheriff, Elkhart County’s Brad Rogers, wrote a 600-word explanation for a local newspaper as part of his “Ask The Sheriff” series. Off The Grid News previously reported on the dispute.

[…]

“Specifically, the FDA was inspecting his farm without a warrant as much as every two weeks,” Rogers wrote. “Typical inspections occur annually. The Department of Justice (DOJ) had subpoenaed him for a grand jury in Michigan in which he was to bring his production documents. The Feds wanted to make this farmer an example.

“My research,” Rogers added, “concluded that no one was getting sick from this distribution of this raw milk. It appeared to be harassment by the FDA and the DOJ, and making unconstitutional searches, in my opinion. The farmer told me that he no longer wished to cooperate with the inspections of his property.”

Reportedly, Sheriff Rogers than wrote to the Department of Justice and informed them of the actions he would take if federal inspectors did not have a signed warrant based upon probable cause over which to conduct their searches:

“I understand that you have made recent requests to (the farmer) for documents and to appear before a grand jury, and he has had a number of inspections and attempted inspections on his farm within Elkhart County. This is notice that any further attempts to inspect this farm without a warrant signed by a judge, based on probable cause, will result in federal inspectors’ removal or arrest for trespassing by my officers or I. In addition, if any further action is taken by the federal government on (the farmer), while he is in Elkhart County, I will expect that you or federal authorities contact my office prior to such action. I will expect you to forward this information to your federal associates, including the FDA.”

Shortly after the email was sent, the farmer received a certified letter from the DOJ that said his grand jury subpoena had been cancelled. No federal inspectors have visited the farm since 2011.

[…]

“Your local elected officials … can stem the tide of federal overreach if they apply just a little backbone in supporting and defending the Constitution. Expect it! Demand it!,” Rogers wrote. “Some bloggers and natural food writers have hailed me as a hero. I’m no hero. I’m just doing my job.

The public is waking up to the tyranny of countless federal agencies with little or no transparency and enough red tape to take over everything. Many law enforcement officials are waking up, too, and there are many great examples of them standing up for the Constitution and the rights of the people.

The actions taken by Sheriff Rogers are not only legal and right, but they are what the people should expect from their local (and especially elected) officials.

This same sheriff made news a few months ago when he vowed that he would ignore any gun control executive order:

Sheriffs just happen to be the most powerful and independent locally elected official, and can be a bulwark for resistance to federal encroachment.

If they can be stopped here, they can be stopped elsewhere, too, and freedom can return to the lives of Americans.

The feds cannot take over if the people educate themselves and stand up – peacefully, but with a firm defensive posture – and take no guff from a bully.

New Legislation Targets FDA Raids: “We Have Too Many Armed Federal Agencies and We Need to Put an End to This”

Outrage: Government Forces Private Citizens to Pour Bleach on Home-Grown Organic Food *Video*

Feds Preparing “Multi-Agency” Action In Oregon As Patriot Militia Says They Are “Willing To Kill And Be Killed”

Gov SWAT Teams Target “Rugged Individuals” Who Grow Their Own Food, Produce Their Own Electricity

SHTFplan and Mac Slavo www.shtfplan.com