Stand, Hand On Heart, "Land Of The Free".

        Got the article below from comrade Loam, thanks friend. It is from Information Clearing House. However, you would be an idiot if you thought that it was only in America, "The Land Of The Free" that the prying eyes of the state followed you everywhere, listened to your ever word, and built a profile on their sneakily stolen snapshots of your life. Modern technology makes it possible and easily accessible to any state and its minders, and they use it massively.

By John W. Whitehead

       April 26, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - "Ron Paul Institute"- In the American police state, the price to be paid for speaking truth to power (also increasingly viewed as an act of treason) is surveillance, censorship, jail and ultimately death.
        However, where many Americans go wrong is in assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or challenging the government’s authority in order to be flagged as a suspicious character, labeled an enemy of the state and locked up like a dangerous criminal.
         In fact, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, all you really need to do is use certain trigger words, surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, drive a car, stay at a hotel, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, question government authority, or generally live in the United States.
        With the help of automated eyes and ears, a growing arsenal of high-tech software, hardware and techniques, government propaganda urging Americans to turn into spies and snitches, as well as social media and behavior sensing software, government agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports aimed at snaring potential enemies of the state.
         It’s the American police state’s take on the dystopian terrors foreshadowed by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Phillip K. Dick all rolled up into one oppressive pre-crime and pre-thought crime package.
        What’s more, the technocrats who run the surveillance state don’t even have to break a sweat while monitoring what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, how much you spend, whom you support, and with whom you communicate. Computers now do the tedious work of trolling social media, the internet, text messages and phone calls for potentially anti-government remarks—all of which is carefully recorded, documented, and stored to be used against you someday at a time and place of the government’s choosing.
         While this may sound like a riff on a bad joke, it’s a bad joke with “we the people” as the punchline.
        The following activities are guaranteed to get you censored, surveilled, eventually placed on a government watch list, possibly detained and potentially killed.
Laugh at your own peril.
       Use harmless trigger words like cloud, pork and pirates: The Department of Homeland Security has an expansive list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats such as SWAT, lockdown, police, cloud, food poisoning, pork, flu, Subway, smart, delays, cancelled, la familia, pirates, hurricane, forest fire, storm, flood, help, ice, snow, worm, warning or social media.
Use a cellphone: 

     Simply by using a cell phone, you make yourself an easy target for government agents—working closely with corporations—who can listen in on your phone calls, read your text messages and emails, and track your movements based on the data transferred from, received by, and stored in your cell phone. Mention any of the so-called “trigger” words in a conversation or text message, and you’ll get flagged for sure.
Drive a car: 

       Unless you’ve got an old junkyard heap without any of the gadgets and gizmos that are so attractive to today’s car buyers (GPS, satellite radio, electrical everything, smart systems, etc.), driving a car today is like wearing a homing device: you’ll be tracked from the moment you open that car door thanks to black box recorders and vehicle-to-vehicle communications systems that can monitor your speed, direction, location, the number of miles traveled, and even your seatbelt use. Once you add satellites, GPS devices, license plate readers, and real-time traffic cameras to the mix, there’s nowhere you can go on our nation’s highways and byways that you can’t be followed.
Attend a political rally: 

        Enacted in the wake of 9/11, the Patriot Act redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience were considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.
Express yourself on social media: 

        The FBI, CIA, NSA and other government agencies are investing in and relying on corporate surveillance technologies that can mine constitutionally protected speech on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to identify potential extremists and predict who might engage in future acts of anti-government behavior.
Serve in the military: 

          Operation Vigilant Eagle, the brainchild of the Dept. of Homeland Security, calls for surveillance of military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, characterizing them as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be “disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war.”
Disagree with a law enforcement official: 

         A growing number of government programs are aimed at identifying, monitoring and locking up anyone considered potentially “dangerous” or mentally ill (according to government standards, of course). For instance, a homeless man in New York City who reportedly had a history of violence but no signs of mental illness was forcibly detained in a psych ward for a week after arguing with shelter police.
Call in sick to work: 

          In Virginia, a so-called police “welfare check” instigated by a 58-year-old man’s employer after he called in sick resulted in a two-hour, SWAT team-style raid on the man’s truck and a 72-hour mental health hold. All of this was done despite the fact that police acknowledged they had no legal basis nor probable cause for detaining the man, given that he had not threatened to harm anyone and was not mentally ill.
Limp or stutter: 

         As a result of a nationwide push to certify a broad spectrum of government officials in mental health first-aid training (a 12-hour course comprised of PowerPoint presentations, videos, discussions, role playing and other interactive activities), more Americans are going to run the risk of being reported for having mental health issues by non-medical personnel. For instance, one 37-year-old disabled man was arrested, diagnosed by police and an unlicensed mental health screener as having “mental health issues,” apparently because of his slurred speech and unsteady gait.
Appear confused or nervous, fidget, whistle or smell bad: 

           According to the Transportation Security Administration’s 92-point secret behavior watch list for spotting terrorists, these are among some of the telling signs of suspicious behavior: fidgeting, whistling, bad body odor, yawning, clearing your throat, having a pale face from recently shaving your beard, covering your mouth with your hand when speaking and blinking your eyes fast.
Allow yourself to be seen in public waving a toy gun or anything remotely resembling a gun, such as a water nozzle or a remote control or a walking cane, for instance: 

         No longer is it unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later. John Crawford was shot by police in an Ohio Wal-Mart for holding an air rifle sold in the store that he may have intended to buy. Thirteen-year-old Andy Lopez Cruz was shot 7 times in 10 seconds by a California police officer who mistook the boy’s toy gun for an assault rifle. Christopher Roupe, 17, was shot and killed after opening the door to a police officer. The officer, mistaking the Wii remote control in Roupe’s hand for a gun, shot him in the chest. Another police officer repeatedly shot 70-year-old Bobby Canipe during a traffic stop. The cop saw the man reaching for his cane and, believing the cane to be a rifle, opened fire.
Appear to be pro-gun, pro-freedom or anti-government: You might be a domestic terrorist in the eyes of the FBI (and its network of snitches) if you: express libertarian philosophies:

        Exhibit Second Amendment-oriented views; read survivalist literature, including apocalyptic fictional books; show signs of self-sufficiency (stockpiling food, ammo, hand tools, medical supplies); fear an economic collapse; buy gold and barter items; voice fears about Big Brother or big government; or expound about constitutional rights and civil liberties.
Attend a public school: 

         Microcosms of the police state, America’s public schools contain almost every aspect of the militarized, intolerant, senseless, overcriminalized, legalistic, surveillance-riddled, totalitarian landscape that plagues those of us on the “outside.” Additionally, as part of the government’s so-called ongoing war on terror, the FBI—the nation’s de facto secret police force—is now recruiting students and teachers to spy on each other and report anyone who appears to have the potential to be “anti-government” or “extremist” as part of its “Don’t Be a Puppet” campaign.
Speak truth to power: 

          Long before Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden were being castigated for blowing the whistle on the government’s war crimes and the National Security Agency’s abuse of its surveillance powers, it was activists such as Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lennon who were being singled out for daring to speak truth to power. These men and others like them had their phone calls monitored and data files collected on their activities and associations. For a little while, at least, they became enemy number one in the eyes of the US government.

 There’s always a price to pay for standing up to the powers-that-be. Yet as this list shows, you don’t even have to be a dissident to get flagged by the government for surveillance, censorship and detention. All you really need to be is a citizen of the American police state.

Reprinted with permission from the Rutherford Institute.

Click for Spanish, German, Dutch, Danish, French, translation- Note- Translation may take a moment to load.

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Stared At By A Thousand Prying Eyes.

        In our present society, surveillance is now an all very intrusive fact of life. Our cities are festooned with CCTV cameras, in shops, shopping malls, on transport vehicles, and all around our streets. They are capable of face recognition and profiling, but still they want more. So we have “Stingray”, a system, it can be fixed or mobile, that captures all the data on mobile phones of up to 10,000 people in one area, at one fell swoop. It cannot be targeted at one person, so you are all guilty and worthy of surveillance. You don't know your data has been stolen and you have no idea who will use it, or how it will be used, still they call it democracy.
        Now there is another tool soon to be available to the armoury of the state snoopers. A car that can scan faces up to 600 metres away while travelling at 75 mph. A very sophisticated piece of surveillance equipment, it can determine gender, age, and race of each face and compare this to a database alerting the driver when there is a match.
       So you go to meet a friend in town, your every movement is filmed, your mobile phone data is stolen, your face is profiled and compared to some mysterious secret database, You meet your friend, who has been through the same process, then it is repeated on your way home. Who is watching you, who is going through your personal details, who is making assumptions about you based on this stolen data? An open and free society, capitalist style.

Stingray, Wikipedia:

           The StingRay is an IMSI-catcher with both passive (digital analyzer) and active (cell site simulator) capabilities. When operating in active mode, the device mimics a wireless carrier cell tower in order to force all nearby mobile phones and other cellular data devices to connect to it.[4][5][6] The StingRay family of devices can be mounted in vehicles,[5] on airplanes, helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles.[7] Hand-carried versions are referred to under the trade name KingFish

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Surveillance Society, Big Brother, Alive And Well.

           A science fiction story, imagine if law enforcement organisations could with one fell swoop, gather up all the data on 10,000 mobile phones in one area, all at once, without any phone user knowing a thing about it. All your text, photos, emails, notes, contacts, personal details, the lot, while you sit at your desk, sip your coffee, travel to and from your work. Silently, invisibly, pouring all your personal stuff into a law enforcement data centre, to be pried over by faceless bureaucrats.  

 

       Sadly it is not a science fiction story, it is called "Stingray" and it is happening here and now, and no law enforcement organisation will talk about it, why? The ever increasing surveillance society, the prying eyes of the state looking ever deeper into our personal lives, with no hint of discussion, all are guilty in the piercing vision of the state. So, right now, who knows all your personal details, who is scrutinising all your contacts, what unknown shadowy smutty mind, is making inferences on your texts? You have a right to know, you are being denied that right.

This from Open Media:

      Governments around the world are using highly secretive technologies to spy on our cell phones — spying devices that are capable of listening to your calls and sucking up every single piece of sensitive, personal information in your phone.¹

       These invasive devices are called “Stingrays”, and they trick your cell phones into giving away your most sensitive information – without your consent.

       It’s time to put a stop to this. Take a stand today: Demand safeguards to protect us from Stingray surveillance. If enough of us speak up, decision-makers will be forced to listen.

Stingrays can’t be targeted at just one person — instead they sweep up data from entire neighbourhoods.² They’re being used to eavesdrop on innocent individuals, and can capture the sensitive data of up to 10,000 people at a time.³ You don’t have to do anything wrong to be a victim. And if you have been spied on, you won’t even know.

       What’s worse: Law enforcement is keeping the use of this irresponsible tool under a veil of secrecy. Despite evidence that suggests their prevalent use, countries like Australia, the U.K,. and Canada are refusing to even acknowledge their existence — making it impossible to hold an informed debate.⁴

       But the use of Stingrays by police forces around the globe is slowly being revealed. In the U.S., the NYPD recently admitted it has used Stingrays over 1000 times.⁵ We know they’re also being used in other countries including France, Germany, and Australia.^6,7,8

        Experts are challenging this new bulk surveillance and adding your voice will give them the leverage they need to succeed — will you speak up right now, and help us put a stop to Stingray surveillance?

We can’t afford to wait until Stingray use is too widespread to stop. We have to act now.

       Stingrays have been under the radar for too long. It’s time for us to speak out and demand decision-makers put a stop to irresponsible Stingray surveillance.

Thank you for speaking up for our digital privacy,

Laura, on behalf of your OpenMedia team

     P.S. We need your help to ensure that law-makers act quickly, by showing that we have a groundswell of support to make action happen. Will you take action NOW?

Footnotes

[1] What is a Stingray and why should I care? Source: OpenMedia
[2],[3] The Secret Surveillance Catalogue. Source: The Intercept
[4] Phone Hackers: Britain's Secret Surveillance. Source: Vice
[5] NYPD has used Stingrays more than 1,000 times since 2008. Source: NYCLU
[6] France has adopted in July 2015 the possibility for the intelligence services to use IMSI Catchers with a very weak oversight. Source: Re/code
[7] Behind the curve: When will the UK stop pretending IMSI catchers don't exist? Source: Privacy International.
[8] Special investigation: Bugged, tracked, hacked. Source: Channel 9

More on Stingray HERE:

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The Surveillance Society.

       Big business and state apparatus will always be found to be holding hands, it is a festering marriage that destroys any semblance of democracy. Big business buys governments, governments give the stamp of legitimacy to the big business's plundering of the earth. Both agree that the populace must be kept under control, otherwise their partnership of greed and corruption collapses. Whatever foul deed they get involved in should not surprise us, our only answer to this cancerous marriage is the destruction of the present economic system. Though the fight to get that desired end will take many different shapes, we should not lose sight of the fact that if we want freedom, justice, peace, sustainability, and a society that sees to the needs of all our people, then each battle should be with that destruction of the economic system in mind.

 This from Fight For The Future:

     Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Salesforce, Symantec, and a handful of other companies just betrayed billions of people and publicly aligned themselves with spy agencies like the NSA.1

Click here to learn more and take urgent action to stop them from handing even more of our personal data over to the government.

        We tend to be pretty skeptical, so it’s hard for tech companies to shock us. But this latest development is significant because these companies aren’t even trying to hide the fact that they’re lobbying for MORE government spying, and asking for government handouts and protection if they play nice.

      Here are the facts: last week, this group of companies sent a letter to Congress endorsing bills like CISA—the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act. It’s a dangerous bill that security experts say will erode our privacy while actually making our data less secure.2

      So why are these companies pushing for it? Because the government is offering legal immunity to companies that share private user information with dozens of government agencies.

       We need to act now because if we don’t respond swiftly and loudly, more companies will jump on the bandwagon and sell out their users privacy in exchange for government protection. If more major companies endorse CISA, it will be almost impossible to stop it in Congress.

Click here to take action right now to hold these companies accountable for endorsing CISA.

      We have an opportunity right now, but it won’t last long. If we can create a massive public backlash and make these companies regret endorsing CISA, we can make sure that no other companies are willing to betray their users so publicly, and send a message to Congress that this is still a supremely unpopular bill, no matter what Microsoft and Apple’s lobbyists say.

Time is of the essence. Click here to take action TODAY to stop CISA, before it’s too late.

    Thanks for all you do. More on this soon.
~ Evan at Fight for the Future

P.S. We’re a small group of activists who consistently take on and win huge campaigns — chip in $5 to help us make sure we have the resources we need to beat these companies.

1. http://www.bsa.org/~/media/Files/Policy/data/09142015CongLeadershipDataAgendaLetter.pdf
2. http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/files/blogs/technologists_info_sharing_bills_letter_w_exhibit.pdf 

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1984, The Miners Strike And George Orwell.

      Face recognition, car number plate reading, TV's that recognise your face and can remember your favourite programs, it's all there, and don't think it is not being used extensible. 

This from Teacher Dude:

      George Orwell's 1984 is sponsored by LG: "The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it,", a photo by Teacher Dude's BBQ Yahoo webcam images from millions of users intercepted by GCHQ.

     "Britain's surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the US National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa-webcam-images-internet-yahoo

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Corporatised Totalitarianism.

       What a wonderful Grammy award acceptance speech by the New Zealand singer song writer Lorde. It is not often that we hear such truths spoken in the midst of expensive suits, dickie-bow ties, thousand pound dresses, and champagne. Perhaps she can put her speech into song form, and try to blast it to No.1

This from Snoopman News:

     Thank you soo much everyone for making this song explode because this world is mental. (Laughter). Planet Earth is run by psychopaths that hide behind slick marketing, ‘freedom’ propaganda and ‘economic growth’ rhetoric,[1] while they construct a global system of corporatized totalitarianism.
     As American journalist Chris Hedges has identified, a corporate totalitarian core thrives inside a fictitious democratic shell.[2] This core yields an ‘inverted’ totalitarian state that few recognize because it does not look like the Orwellian world of Nineteen Eighty-four.[3]

     This corporate totalitarian core is spreading outward from America. Planet Earth is being rapidly militarized by the world’s major and significant states, including their police forces.[4] Meanwhile, state surveillance is becoming universal[5] and torture is outsourced to gulags.[6]

Read the full speech HERE:

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1984 And The Permanent State War.

     1984, permanent state of war, all fiction of course!!! Well is it, America is "officially" in a permanent state of war.

This from Polizeros:

      America’s state of permanent global endless war approaches 12th anniversary. The militant American Empire doesn’t need any more AUMF (Authorization to Use Military Force.)

       On September 14, 2001, the Congress authorized the President to wage unfettered, permanent war against pretty much anyone the President, in his sole discretion, deemed related to the 9/11 attacks and any future attacks.  On September 18, 2001, President Bush signed this authorization into law.

      The United States has been in a permanent state of war ever since.  And on May 16, 2013, the Obama Administration’s Pentagon officials testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that they expected this permanent state of war to last another 10 to 20 years.

Read the full article HERE:

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The Cost Of An Uncivilised Society.

      As George Gideon Oliver Osborne, the George was added by himself at the age of 13, continues his slashing at social spending and spouting about financial prudence, it seems these prudence factors only apply to us lesser mortals. When it comes to war, it is acceptable just to throw money away. As the British troops prepare to pull out of Afghanistan, it would appear that the MOD has some 11,000 20ft containers jam-packed with equipment, including vehicles, lying around Afghanistan, but intends to bring back just over half of them. The rest will just simple be abandoned, who knows how many millions/billions of your tax money will end up being shuffled between local Afghanistan wheelers and dealers in black market equipment.

     Then again in another sign of financial prudence, a communications system developed for use in Afghanistan has been delayed to such an extent, that it won't be ready until after British troops are set to withdraw from the country in 2014. Let's not forget that other macho toy of the state, the F-35 jet fighter, estimated cost around the £250 billion, estimated running costs over 30 years will be in the region of £625 billion. Assuming they don't crash or get blown out of the sky, that would of course increase the cost considerably as I assume they would be replaced.

     Meanwhile the Gideon gang are closing day centres, cutting disability allowance, slapping a bedroom tax on the ordinary people and forcing people to work without wages, for multinationals. All because, they claim, we can't afford all the decencies of a civilised society. We can certainly afford all the obscenities of an uncivilised society. One super-duper 1,300mph jet fighter, £61.1 million, would translate into how much affordable social housing? One rather noisy destruction emitting tank, £4.1 million, how many existing homes could be properly insulated? Of course we should remember that the UK is now a drone nation, one drone, £2.9 million, how many free school meals? One thing we should always remember, war kills ordinary people but corporations get richer.

     We would do well to remember George Orwell's 1984, in which the government impoverishes the people with its endless military campaigns against those faceless enemies. 

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BIG BROTHER BITES DEEPER.

        It doesn't matter which party is in power, the state always wants more power over your life. The last Labour government tried to introduce this draconian control over our use of phones and Internet. However, for the usual party political motives the Tories and the LibDems opposed it, now they are in power and they plan to introduce the self same plans. This is probably the biggest step the state can take to pocking its nose right into your private and personal affairs. Every text, phone call, e-mail will be scrutinised, every web page you look at will be reported. Not only what pages, but how long you stayed on that page and how often you visit the page. All those silly little personal texts, and e-mails, all those very intimate phone calls, will be read and listened to by a bunch of prying government eyes and ears.

        This is the sort of thing that our so called democracy spouts its mouth off about when it happens in some other repressive regime, calling it an attack on the human right of expression.  It is bad when it is done overseas, but necessary when it is done here, hypocrisy rules as Big Brother bites deeper. George Orwell, why didn't we listen?

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THE SNOOPING SOCIETY.

     

      While the Minister for Identity tries conjuring up possible uses for the ID card - more fantasy than reality, but telling nonetheless [1] – the Home Office has continued to use every trick in the book to manufacture 'demand'.

      Its latest manoeuvre, buried in yet another obscure regulation – The Licensing Act 2003 (Mandatory Licensing Conditions) Order 2010 - is due to come into force this October. This measure, undebated by MPs and passed on the nod, is one of the first cases where showing ID for an ordinary everyday function is being written into statute.

     Less formal age checks creep ever wider, but from this autumn a pub or club MUST have an age verification policy, and MUST ask anyone who looks as if they might be under the age specified in that policy (which could be 18 but could equally be any arbitrarily chosen age which makes the premises safe(?)) to show "identification bearing their photograph, date of birth and a holographic mark".

     Note 'identification' not 'proof of age', and the conveniently limited definition of what constitutes valid ID. Mandating forms of ID is a step closer to compulsion - they can't entice enough young people to apply for an ID card, so they'll coerce them instead.

      Moves like this, as trivial as they may seem, are designed to entrench state identity control - serving Whitehall agendas that will not die easy, no matter which party is in power.

       If you receive our newsletter you may well be better informed than most Parliamentary candidates on the realities of the ID scheme and the database state. In the run-up to the election, please do take the time to express your concerns to candidates and party canvassers in your area. It'll be time well spent. Be specific. Show them you care. Rooting out the database state is going to require continued pressure and MPs who pay attention and take action - and who won't let ministers or officials sneak things like mandatory forms of ID in by the back door.

[1]

http://www.silicon.com/technology/security/2010/03/17/exclusive-next-generation-super-id-card-on-the-cards-for-2012-39745599/ 
From; http://newsletters.mu.no2id.net/

The snooping society!!

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