National Dragnet Is a Click Away-Authorities to Gain Fast and Expansive Access to Records

Several thousand law enforcement agencies are creating the foundation of a domestic intelligence system through computer networks that analyze vast amounts of police information to fight crime and root out terror plots...

On one recent day, Tucson detective Cynthia Butierez demonstrated that power in an office littered with paper and boxes of equipment. Using a regular desktop computer and Web browser, she logged onto Coplink to search for clues about a fraud suspect. She entered a name the suspect used on a bogus check. A second later, a list of real names came up, along with five incident reports.

She told the system to also search data warehouses built by Coplink in San Diego and Orange County, Calif. -- which have agreements to share with Tucson -- and came up with the name of a particular suspect, his age and a possible address. She asked the software to find the suspect's links to other people and incidents, and then to create a visual chart displaying the findings. Up popped a display with the suspect at the center and cartoon-like images of houses, buildings and people arrayed around him. A final click on one of the houses brought up the address of an apartment and several new names, leads she could follow.

"The power behind what we have discovered, what we can do with Coplink, is immense," Tucson police Chief Richard Miranda said. "The kinds of things you saw in the movies then, we're actually doing now."...

Three decades ago, Congress imposed limits on domestic intelligence activity after revelations that the FBI, Army, local police and others had misused their authority for years to build troves of personal dossiers and monitor political activists and other law-abiding Americans.

Miranda, the Tucson police chief, said there's no overstating the utility of Coplink for his force. But he too acknowledges that such power raises new questions about how to keep it in check and ensure that the trust people place in law enforcement is not misplaced.

"I don't want the people in my community to feel we're behind every little tree and surveilling them," he said. "If there's any kind of inkling that we're misusing our power and our technology, that trust will be destroyed."

Is this the future

Scientists have developed a computerised mind-reading technique which lets them accurately predict the images that people are looking at by using scanners to study brain activity.

another quiz

These are not trick questions. They are straight questions with straight
answers

1. Name the one sport in which neither the spectators nor the participants know
the score or the leader until the contest ends.

2. What famous North American landmark is constantly moving backward?

3. Of all vegetables, only two can live to produce on their own for several
growing seasons. All other vegetables must be replanted every year. What are
the only two perennial vegetables?

4. What fruit has its seeds on the outside?

5. In many liquor stores, you can buy pear brandy, with a real pear inside the
bottle. The pear is whole and ripe, and the bottle is genuine; it hasn't been
cut in any way. How did the pear get inside the bottle?

6. Only three words in standard English begin with the letters 'dw' and they
are all common words. Name two of them.
7. There are 14 punctuation marks in English grammar. Can you name at least
half of them?

8. Name the only vegetable or fruit that is never sold frozen, canned,
processed, cooked, or in any other form except fresh.

9. Name six or more things that you can wear on your feet beginning with the
letter 'S..'

The FBI acknowledged Wednesday it improperly accessed Americans' telephone records, credit reports and Internet traffic in 2006, the fourth straight year of privacy abuses resulting from investigations aimed at tracking terrorists and spies.

Testifying at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Mueller raised the issue of the FBI's controversial use of so-called national security letters in reference to an upcoming report on the topic by the Justice Department's inspector general.

An audit by the inspector general last year found the FBI demanded personal records without official authorization or otherwise collected more data than allowed in dozens of cases between 2003 and 2005. Additionally, last year's audit found that the FBI had underreported to Congress how many national security letters were requested by more than 4,600.

In contrast to the strong concerns expressed by Congress and civil liberties groups after last year's inspector general's report was issued, Mueller's disclosure drew no criticism from senators during just over two hours of testimony Wednesday.
Following last year's audit, the Justice Department enacted guidelines that sternly reminded FBI agents to carefully follow the rules governing national security letters.

"The credibility factor shows there needs to be outside oversight," said former FBI agent Michael German, now a national security adviser for the American Civil Liberties Union. "There were guidelines before, and there were laws before, and the FBI violated those laws," German said. "And the idea that new guidelines would make a difference, I think cuts against rationality."

The Weather Channel founder advocates suing Al Gore to expose 'the fraud of global warming.'

The Weather Channel has lost its way, according to John Coleman, who founded the channel in 1982.

The Weather Channel has been an outlet for global warming alarmism. In December 2006, The Weather Channel’s Heidi Cullen argued on her blog that weathercasters who had doubts about human influence on global warming should be punished with decertification by the American Meteorological Society.

“[I] have a feeling this is the opening,” Coleman said. “If the lawyers will take the case – sue the people who sell carbon credits. That includes Al Gore. That lawsuit would get so much publicity, so much media attention. And as the experts went to the witness stand and testified, I feel like that could become the vehicle to finally put some light on the fraud of global warming.

”

I got this in an email a few weeks ago and hadn't read it. Very interesting reading.

The Sibel Edmonds case has been fascinating in the silence that surrounds it.

Letter Describes Senior State Dept. Official Marc Grossman as Tipping off Turkish Embassy to Valerie Plame Wilson's 'Brewster Jennings' Counter-Proliferation Operation...

more from the nut jobs

A Quiz for all you super duper comment posters: What is Posse Comitatus?

North American Army created without OK by Congress
In a ceremony that received virtually no attention in the American media, the United States and Canada signed a military agreement Feb. 14 allowing the armed forces from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a domestic civil emergency, even one that does not involve a cross-border crisis.
Gen. Renuart affirmed USNORTHCOM would deploy U.S. troops on U.S. soil should the president declare a domestic emergency in which the Department of Defense ordered USNORTHCOM involvement.

Study casts doubt on anti-depressants

Almost 50 clinical trials were reviewed by psychologists from the
University of Hull who found that new-generation anti-depressants worked no
better than a placebo – a dummy pill – for mildly depressed patients.
Even
the trials that suggested some clinical benefit for the most severely depressed
patients did not produce convincing evidence. Professor Irving Kirsch from the
university’s pyschology department said: “The difference in improvement between
patients taking placebos and patients taking anti-depressants is not very
great.
“This means that depressed people can improve without chemical
treatments. Given these results, there seems little reason to prescribe
anti-depressant medication to any but the most severely depressed patients.”

This from a former congressman written in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Since 9/11, and seemingly without the notice of most Americans, the federal government has assumed the authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissidents (citizen and noncitizen alike), and detain people without legal or constitutional recourse in the event of "an emergency influx of immigrants in the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs."

Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees.

According to diplomat and author Peter Dale Scott, the KBR contract is part of a Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of "all removable aliens" and "potential terrorists."

YEAAAA!!!!! More Cameras

D.C. police are now watching live images from dozens of surveillance cameras posted in high-crime parts of the city, hoping to respond faster to shootings, robberies and other offenses and catch suspects before they get away.

Since August 2006, the city has installed 73 cameras across the city, mostly on utility poles, at a cost of about $4 million. But until recently, officers were using them mainly as an investigative tool -- checking the recordings after crimes were committed in hopes of turning up leads and evidence.

The District is following cities such as Baltimore, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, where police have actively monitored live camera scenes for years. London is often credited with having the most extensive network -- 500,000 cameras that make up the "Ring of Steel," dating to the early 1990s. "I'd love to have the whole city wired like London," said Lanier, adding that she didn't anticipate that becoming a reality.

Strip search of woman by Sheriff's Deputies called outrageous

I'm sure some of you will be quick to tell me that I'm prejudging the police again. But where is the decency? I suppose I should just close my eyes and say "well, it hasn't happened to me and they'll be there for me when I get robbed."

Here's the Malcolm X clip from the other night

DHS Suggests a REAL ID Could be Necessary for Medicine

A top homeland security policy maker suggests that the recently released mandates for a de-facto national I.D. card could help stop meth labs, if the government required that pharmacy's demand that cold medicine buyers show their REAL ID.

Currently individuals who want to buy over-the-counter decongestants containing pseudo-ephedrine have to show I.D. to a pharmacy clerk, sign a log sheet and are limited in the amount they can purchase. The rules -- pushed heavily by California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, are intended to make it harder for meth labs to get pseudo-ephedrine to cook into full-blown methamphetamines. They were made law in the 2006 re-authorization of the Patriot Act.

The Cato Institutes's Jim Harper interprets Baker's statement to mean a REAL ID would be necessary for any prescription. I don't see that in the report on Baker's remark, but certainly the F in FDA stands for Federal. The feds probably could do this, but from a health standpoint it would be a nightmare. No REAL ID, no birth control, no antibiotics, no insulin. How many dead Americans are these rules going to be worth?

Many states have balked at the expensive REAL ID proposal and have said they won't participate.

Homeland Security is already set to test those state's resolve and is threatening to not let any citizen of those states to use their state-issued I.D.'s to board planes come May.

martial law?!?!!?

Dear Respondents,
Your patriotism and love of this country is admirable and your trust in our government beyond reproach. The sad reality is, however, that if a massive attack, let's say a nuclear weapon, destroys any American city, even on the opposite side of this country, martial law is not a hypothetical scenario. U.S. Northern Command in Colorado was established for just just a situation. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 protects us all from tanks running down our streets, and armed soldiers around your street corner. The erosion of that act through the Insurrection Act of '06 along with recent executive orders make it all too possible that our military could be put into a nightmare scenario of having them police us, round some of us up, take away our firearms, like they did in New Orleans, and even establish camps-- which the govt. just signed a contract for, with halliburton for just such 'temporary' camps-- to construct-- 300 nationally. So before you utterly condemn this mayor, please consider he could be doing something we'll later all applaud.
thank you.

— jeff ferrell, shreveport, la

Boy this has stuck in my mind ALL week...

At the end of the show last week, I took a call concerning race relations. The caller asserted that after 40 plus years of civil rights, the onus is upon Black people to forgive Whites and that as far as the caller was concerned there should be closure. While I agree that we as Black people, and as I often state I am part White also, should be forgiving. We should not go around with a chip on our shoulders always looking to be insulted. A few years ago, I took to task the two ladies that sued the airline when the flight attendant said "eenie meenie miney moe, pick a seat we gotta go."
The ladies were waaaaaay off base. but let's face it: There is still a ways to go for us all:

In the Columbia case, the justices wrote, "Here, plaintiffs have produced evidence that Dillard's has a systemic practice of surveilling and following African-American shoppers, that it prosecutes African-American shoplifters more than white shoplifters, that it specifically instructs employees to follow African-American shoppers - that it discriminates in giving fragrance samples and enforcing its policy on return of merchandise and that it selectively withholds service from black customers."

No one agrees more than me that far too many Black people spend too much time worrying about the slights, real or imagined, that they face. What we need to do is press on and make alliances with the folks that are trying to move forward. But trying to ignore the past is not moving on. I'm not sure how you move on, but I know it's gonna take a while and people are going to have to be committed to moving forward. This will probably mean that both Black and White will have to forgive and apologize.

so much for closure

Formula One star Lewis Hamilton says he has been left saddened after being subjected to racist abuse in Spain.

From the "Give us Free" department:

Great Firewall of China Faces Online Rebels

As an 18-year-old student with an interest in the Internet, Zhu Nan had been itching to say something about the country’s pervasive online censorship system, widely known here as the Great Firewall.
When China’s censors began blocking access to the popular photo-sharing site Flickr, Mr. Zhu felt the moment had come. Writing on his blog last year, the student, who is now a freshman at a university in this city, questioned the rationale for Internet restrictions, and in subsequent posts, began passing along tips on how to evade them.
“Officials in our country claimed that Internet censorship is done according to the law,” Mr. Zhu wrote. “If so, why not let people know about this legal project, and why, instead, ban the Web sites that publicize and examine those legal policies? If you’re determined to do this, you shouldn’t be afraid of criticism.”

For some of the anticensorship activists, creating a broader awareness of censorship is itself a victory. “If you don’t know what’s on top of you, than you won’t fight back against it,” said Li Xieheng, a blogger who wrote a program he named Gladder, meaning Great Ladder, to help users of the Firefox browser overcome Great Firewall restrictions. “It’s just like many people not feeling that China isn’t free. They’re not aware of it and feel things are natural here, but that’s just the power of media control.”

Oh yes they are watching you indeed

Privacy concerns, some RFID supporters say, are overblown. One, Mark Roberti, editor of RFID Journal, says the notion that businesses would conspire to create high-resolution portraits of people is "simply silly."
Corporations know Americans are sensitive about their privacy, he says, and are careful not to alienate consumers by violating it. Besides, "All companies keep their customer data close to the vest ... There's absolutely no value in sharing it. Zero."

but wait...

However, "once a tagged item is associated with a particular individual, personally identifiable information can be obtained and then aggregated to develop a profile," the U.S. Government Accountability Office concluded in a 2005 report on RFID.

Federal agencies and law enforcement already buy information about individuals from commercial data brokers, companies that compile computer dossiers on millions of individuals from public records, credit applications and many other sources, then offer summaries for sale. These brokers, unlike credit bureaus, aren't subject to provisions of the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1970, which gives consumers the right to correct errors and block access to their personal records.

IBM declined to comment for this story.

In 2002, Fleishman-Hillard produced another report for the industry that counseled RFID makers to "convey (the) inevitability of technology," and to develop a plan to "neutralize the opposition," by adopting friendlier names for radio tags such as "Bar Code II" and "Green Tag."

Here's a few interesing items

at least I think so...

Police don't want officers to be too smart
This is the same town that that used imminent domain for a private company.

Cheney wants to expand surveillance act.
You may want to check out the PBS documentary on Cheney's Law

Read before you drink another cup of water
And this, this, and this.