Protesting Internet Censorship

by Stephen Lendman

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TSA Admits Wrongdoing in Cases of Two Elderly Woman Who Claim They Were Strip-Searched

January 19th, 2012

Via: New York Daily News:

In an about-face, the feds have admitted wrongdoing in the cases of two elderly women who say they were strip-searched at Kennedy Airport by overzealous screeners.

Federal officials had initially insisted that all “screening procedures were followed” after Ruth Sherman, 89, and Lenore Zimmerman, 85, went public with separate accounts of humiliating strip searches.

But in a letter obtained by the Daily News, the Homeland Security Department acknowledges that screeners violated standard practice in their treatment of the ailing octogenarians last November.

Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Betsy Markey concedes to state Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Queens) that Sherman was forced to show security agents her colostomy bag — a violation of policy.

“It is not standard operating procedure for colostomy devices to be visually inspected, and [the Transportation Security Administration\] apologizes for this employee’s action,” Markey wrote.

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January 13, 2012

By Arron Klein

Just prior to his appointment as President Obama’s so-called regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein wrote a  lengthy academic paper suggesting the government should “infiltrate” social network websites, chat rooms and message boards.

Such “cognitive infiltration,” Sunstein argued, should be used to enforce a U.S. government ban on “conspiracy theorizing.”

Among the beliefs Sunstein classified as a “conspiracy theory” is advocating that the theory of global warming is a deliberate fraud.

The find comes as a government document reportedly relates the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s command center routinely monitors dozens of popular websites, including Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, WikiLeaks and news sites including the Huffington Post and Drudge Report.

Reuters reported that a “privacy compliance review” issued by DHS last November confirms that since at least June 2010, the department’s national operations center has been operating a “Social Networking/Media Capability” which involves regular monitoring of “publicly available online forums, blogs, public websites and message boards.”

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Homeland Security Watches Twitter, Social Media, Blogs

January 12th, 2012

Cryptogon readers yawn even more deeply than usual…

Via: Reuters:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s command center routinely monitors dozens of popular websites, including Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, WikiLeaks and news and gossip sites including the Huffington Post and Drudge Report, according to a government document.

A “privacy compliance review” issued by DHS last November says that since at least June 2010, its national operations center has been operating a “Social Networking/Media Capability” which involves regular monitoring of “publicly available online forums, blogs, public websites and message boards.”

The purpose of the monitoring, says the government document, is to “collect information used in providing situational awareness and establishing a common operating picture.”

The document adds, using more plain language, that such monitoring is designed to help DHS and its numerous agencies, which include the U.S. Secret Service and Federal Emergency Management Agency, to manage government responses to such events as the 2010 earthquake and aftermath in Haiti and security and border control related to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia.

A DHS official familiar with the monitoring program said that it was intended purely to enable command center officials to keep in touch with various Internet-era media so that they were aware of major, developing events to which the Department or its agencies might have to respond.

The document outlining the monitoring program says that all the websites which the command center will be monitoring were “publicly available and… all use of data published via social media sites was solely to provide more accurate situational awareness, a more complete common operating pictures, and more timely information for decision makers…”

…

Among blogs and aggregators on the list are ABC News’ investigative blog “The Blotter;” blogs that cover bird flu; several blogs related to news and activity along U.S. borders (DHS runs border and immigration agencies); blogs that cover drug trafficking and cybercrime; and websites that follow wildfires in Los Angeles and hurricanes.

News and gossip sites on the monitoring list include popular destinations such as the Drudge Report, Huffington Post and “NY Times Lede Blog”, as well as more focused techie fare such as the Wired blogs “Threat Level” and “Danger Room.” Numerous blogs related to terrorism and security are also on the list.

Some of the sites on the list are potentially controversial. WikiLeaks is listed for monitoring, even though officials in some other government agencies were warned against using their official computers to access WikiLeaks material because much of it is still legally classified under U.S. government rules.

Another blog on the list, Cryptome, also periodically posts leaked documents and was one of the first websites to post information related to the Homeland Security monitoring program.

Also on the list are JihadWatch and Informed Comment, blogs that cover issues related to Islam through sharp political prisms, which have sometimes led critics to accuse the sites of political bias.

Also on the list are various video and photo-sharing sites, including Hulu, Youtube and Flickr.

While a DHS official involved in the monitoring program confirmed the authenticity of the list, officials authorized to speak for the Department did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

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U.S. Court Upholds Telecom Immunity for Surveillance of Americans

December 30th, 2011

Searching for Mark Klein on Cryptogon will bring up several references to the NSA’s mass surveillance operations.

Via: Reuters:

A U.S. appeals panel on Thursday upheld the constitutionality of a federal law that grants immunity to telecommunications companies that assist the U.S. government in conducting surveillance of American citizens.

…

Several lawsuits filed in the wake of revelations about warrantless wiretapping alleged that telecom companies provided authorities with direct access to nearly all communications passing through their domestic facilities.

Besides the government itself, defendants included AT&T, Sprint Nextel and Verizon Communications Inc.

In 2008, Congress granted telecoms immunity for cooperating with the government’s intelligence-gathering activities. A district judge in San Francisco upheld the law as constitutional, and dismissed the claims against the companies.

In a ruling on Thursday, a unanimous three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit agreed. The appeals court covers nine Western U.S. states.

…

In a separate ruling, the 9th Circuit on Thursday allowed a separate case against the government to proceed, in which plaintiffs allege a communications dragnet of ordinary citizens.

That lawsuit claims the National Security Agency diverted Internet traffic into secure rooms in AT&T facilities across the country. The proposed class action alleges “an unprecedented suspicionless general search” throughout the communications network.

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FBI Holding Carrier IQ Data for ‘Law Enforcement Purposes’

December 13th, 2011

There’s a shocker.

Via: The Verge:

When we spoke to Carrier IQ at length about the company’s controversial cellular tracking service, there was one question we didn’t include in the transcript. “Would you say no if the government asked Carrier IQ for a wiretap into user databases?” we asked. At the time, we felt the question was reaching, but today it seems rather apt, because MuckRock just discovered that the FBI does have files on Carrier IQ of some sort.

…

In any case, if you’re curious how Carrier IQ responded to our question, the answer was this: “We will respect the laws of the United States and other territories in which we operate.”

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December 6, 2011

Source: Federal News Radio

Tweets, emails and other electronic communications can be considered “government documents” and must be preserved. The National Archives handles official government materials, while the Library of Congress’ mandate is to deal with anything that may have long-term historical interest.

“We’re basically in the same situation as the National Archives, only on a much larger scale,” said Bill Lefurgy, digital initiatives program manager at the Library of Congress national digital information infrastructure and preservation program. “We tend to have a much larger perspective in terms of what we collect.” He joined the Federal Drive Tuesday morning to talk about the library’s digital mission. with Tom Temin and Amy Morris

But how much digital information are we talking about? How about all of the tweets from Twitter’s archives?

“We have an agreement with Twitter where they have a bunch of servers with their historic archive of tweets, everything that was sent out and declared to be public,” Lefurgy said. The archives don’t contain tweets that users have protected, but everything else — billions and billions of tweets — are there.”

Using new technical processes it has developed, Twitter is moving a large quantity of electronic data from one electronic source to another. “They’ve had to do some pretty nifty experimentation and invention to develop the tools and a process to be able to move all of that data over to us,” Lefurgy said.

The Library of Congress has long been the repository of important, historical documents and the Twitter library, as a whole, is something historic in itself.

Read More…

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Apple is circulating a new statement to media outlets that seems to put to rest any fears about software tracking in the iPhone and iPad. “We stopped supporting Carrier IQ [a piece of software that tracks user activity] with iOS 5 in most of our products, and we’re going to remove it completely in a future software update,” the Apple statement says.

But we were a bit curious about what “most of our products” means in that context. In response to our question, Apple tells us there is only one device running iOS 5 that still runs Carrier IQ, and it’s the iPhone 4. Other devices running iOS 5, such as the iPad, the new iPhone 4S, and older iPhone models updated to iOS 5 have had Carrier IQ stripped out. But Apple says it has never used Carrier IQ to record keystrokes or personal messages.

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85-Year-Old Woman May Sue TSA After Being Strip Searched at JFK Airport

December 4th, 2011

Via: New York Daily News:

An 85-year-old Long Island grandmother says she plans to sue the TSA after a humiliating strip search on Tuesday by agents at JFK Airport.

Lenore Zimmerman, who lives in Long Beach, says she was on her way to a 1 p.m. flight to Fort Lauderdale when security whisked her to a private room and took off her clothes.

“I walk with a walker — I really look like a terrorist,” she said sarcastically. “I’m tiny. I weigh 110 pounds, 107 without clothes, and I was strip-searched.”

TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said a review of closed circuit TV footage from the airport shows “proper procedures were followed.”

But Zimmerman, whose hunched back puts her at 4-foot-11, said her ordeal began after her son, Bruce, drove her to the JetBlue terminal for the Florida flight. She lives in warm Coconut Creek during the winter.

She checked her bags, waited for a wheelchair and parted ways with her doting son — her only immediate relative.

When Zimmerman reached a security checkpoint, she asked if she could forgo the advanced image technology screening equipment, fearing it might interfere with her defibrillator.

She said she normally gets patted down. But this time, she says that two female agents escorted her to a private room and began to remove her clothes.

“I was outraged,” said Zimmerman, a retired receptionist.

As she tried to lift a lightweight walker off her lap, she says, the metal bars banged against her leg and blood trickled from a gash.

“My sock was soaked with blood,” she said. “I was bleeding like a pig.”

She says the TSA agents showed no sympathy, instead pulling down her pants and asking her to raise her arms.

“Why are you doing this?” she said she asked the agents, who did not respond.

The TSA claims the footage does not show any sign of the injury.

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November 27th, 2011

Via: CNN:

After the EU’s announcement that it will ban “backscatter” x-ray body scanners, airports may have to look harder at alternative security measures. From Bluetooth tracking to thermal lie-detector cameras, we take a glimpse into the weird and wonderful future of airport security.

The check-point of the future

Earlier this year, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) demonstrated its vision for the “checkpoint of the future” — a series of neon-lit tunnels, each equipped with an array of eye-scanners, x-ray machines, and metal and liquid detectors.

Heralding an end to “one size fits all screening,” the association says that passengers will be assigned a “travel profile” and ushered into one of three corridors accordingly.

“Known Travelers,” (those who have completed background checks with government authorities) for instance, will cruise through the light blue security corridor with little more than an ID check, while those guided through the yellow “Enhanced” corridor will be subjected to an array of iris scans and sensitive contraband detectors.

Although still at the proof of concept stage, the IATA is hoping to have these colorful checkpoints installed in airports within the next five to seven years.

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November 25th, 2011

Via: Telegraph:

An unpatched security flaw in Apple’s iTunes software allowed intelligence agencies and police to hack into users’ computers for more than three years, it’s claimed.

A British company called Gamma International marketed hacking software to governments that exploited the vulnerability via a bogus update to iTunes, Apple’s media player, which is installed on more than 250 million machines worldwide.

The hacking software, FinFisher, is used to spy on intelligence targets’ computers. It is known to be used by British agencies and earlier this year records were discovered in abandoned offices of that showed it had been offered to Egypt’s feared secret police.

Apple was informed about the relevant flaw in iTunes in 2008, according to Brian Krebs, a security writer, but did not patch the software until earlier this month, a delay of more than three years.

“A prominent security researcher warned Apple about this dangerous vulnerability in mid-2008, yet the company waited more than 1,200 days to fix the flaw,” he said in a blog post.

“The disclosure raises questions about whether and when Apple knew about the Trojan offering, and its timing in choosing to sew up the security hole in this ubiquitous software title.”

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November 17th, 2011

Via: Android Security Test:

Carrier IQ is able to query any metric from a device. A metric can be a dropped call because of lack of service. The scope of the word metric is very broad though, including device type, such as manufacturer and model, available memory and battery life, the type of applications resident on the device, the geographical location of the device, the end user’s pressing of keys on the device, usage history of the device, including those that characterize a user’s interaction with a device.

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November 15, 2011

Source: Wired

The nation’s premier anti-hacking law poses a threat to the civil liberties of millions of Americans who use computers and the internet and could lead to the arrest and prosecution of many users who violate the law on a regular basis, says a former federal prosecutor who wants the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act revised.

“In the Justice Department’s view, the CFAA criminalizes conduct as innocuous as using a fake name on Facebook or lying about your weight in an online dating profile. That situation is intolerable,” says Orin Kerr, George Washington University law professor and a former federal prosecutor in the Justice Department’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section in the Criminal Division.

Currently, the law punishes anyone who “intentionally … exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains information from any protected computer.”

Kerr is testifying on Tuesday before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, and is asking Congress to amend the law to narrow how prosecutors can interpret what it means to exceed authorized access on a computer.

Read More…

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November 11, 2011

By Madison Ruppert

Big Brother is on the march in the United States and as I have previously shown, once one delves into the depths of this system it is nothing short of astounding to the point where Orwell wouldn’t even believe it was possible.

Previously my articles have focused mostly on the Department of Homeland Security’s role in this and how their programs are criminalizing Americans who have done absolutely nothing wrong while eroding our freedoms and liberties to a dangerous degree.

However, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights along with the National Day Labor Organizing Network and the Benjamin Cardozo Immigrant Justice Clinic, it has now emerged that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is an equally large player in the high-tech police state in which we find ourselves.

An article by Sunita Patel and Scott Paltrowitz on CommonDreams points out, “Big Brother is already upon us.” This is a point that I attempt to make at every possible juncture as it is crucial for Americans to realize that an Orwellian high-tech police state is not something on the distant horizon but something in which we already live.

The documents obtained reveal that the FBI “views massive biometric information collection as a goal in itself” as a part of the Next Generation Identification (NGI) system.

The NGI system aims to collect fingerprints, palm prints, iris scans, identifying marks, scars, tattoos, facial characteristics and voice recognition.

These are not necessarily collected from arrested suspects but also from mobile biometric scanning devices and fingerprints left anywhere and everywhere.

This biometric information can then be used in conjunction with facial recognition technology and threat assessment algorithms that can be deployed in an airport or even on an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), better known as a drone.

These drones can then track you, record your movements, who you meet with, and just about anything else. Tie this in with the Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) being tested by the Department of Homeland Security and you have a record of not only incredibly detailed biometric information but also social habits, daily schedules, etc.

All of this can be conducted without the subject’s knowledge or consent which makes this technology even more powerful as intelligence agencies can conduct surveillance on many individuals without any need to worry about being detected.

The most important aspect for anyone to grasp about these issues is that all of this technology can easily be tied together and collected in a centralized database in which astounding amounts of information from a variety of sources can be collated and analyzed.

The highly personal information stored in the NGI system is already accessible by the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice, Department of Defense, U.S. Coast Guard, and through the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services division (CJIS) more than 75 potential foreign nations.

The CJIS has already carried out a test on latent finger and palm prints in which they collected more than one million palm prints from crime scenes or literally any other location in which palm prints could be recovered.

They have also scheduled a pilot program for iris scanning and developed plans for deployment of biometric collection equipment across the nation to collect scars, marks, tattoos and facial measurements for facial recognition.

The NGI program will utilize so-called “FBI Mobile,” a type of technology first deployed by the military in warzones that is used to collect biometric information in the field without even having to arrest the subject.

The precursor to the NGI program was called Secure Communities (S-Comm) which was launched in 2008.

S-Comm links the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) databases with the FBI’s criminal database.

With this system, any time a local, state, or tribal law enforcement officer carries out a routine criminal background check, the subject of the background check’s information is transferred to the DHS database.

S-Comm was implemented in a highly deceptive manner, at first offering an opt out policy which would allow local agencies to opt out of receiving information while still requiring to send all information. Later, the FBI decided that S-Comm participation was mandatory, while waiting to disclose this fact to states and the public.

Furthermore, the FBI and DHS have both prevented states and local agencies from imposing limits on how the FBI uses the data they gather.

In a somewhat disturbing statement, senior ICE official Gary Mead told local advocates at a New York debate that governors did not have the right to restrict information sharing because letting the FBI share the information is the “price of admission” for joining “the FBI club.”

In a fact sheet published on the NGI and S-Comm, the following disturbing fact is highlighted: “Many details about the scope, impact and process of the NGI and the legal basis for the FBI’s policies are still unknown and have not been scrutinized by the media or the public.”

It also reveals that one of the major driving forces, like most of the government’s actions, is profit. Specifically, a billion dollar contract with Lockheed Martin issued in 2008 to work on the NGI with the FBI.

This is the same Lockheed Martin which represents part of the 0.01% of America that are acting in an even more parasitic manner than the 1% – the war profiteers that rake in record profits while killing Americans and innocent people abroad.

It might seem alarmist or sensationalist, but when the authors of the CommonDreams piece say, “This ubiquitous world-wide surveillance of anyone and everyone should serve as a wake up call (sic) for what the future may hold” they are simply reflecting reality.

They point out that we are being brought “closer to an extensive and inescapable surveillance state, where we blindly place our hands on electronic devices that capture our digital prints, stare into iris scanning devices that record the details of our eyes, and have pictures taken of different angles of our faces so that the FBI and other federal agencies can store and use such information.”

Of course these images taken at different angles can be compiled into a 3-Dimensional model of the face which can then be used for faster, more accurate facial recognition, even by drones flying at an altitude at which they are essentially invisible to the unsuspecting individual on the ground.

There is another major consideration ignored by the FBI and DHS: the fact that major mistakes are made by federal agencies.

One apt example is American citizen Mark Lyttle, a man who was deported and transferred to five different countries in four months when an administrator incorrectly typed “Mexico” as Lyttle’s place of birth.

Lyttle, who suffers from mental disabilities which made him unable to understand the criminal proceedings and following deportation, spent months living on the streets, in shelters, and in prisons in Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala, all because an administrator typed the wrong birthplace.

Thankfully, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) took up the case and filed lawsuits in federal courts in Georgia and North Carolina on behalf of Lyttle.

Or there is the case of American born lawyer and former Army lieutenant Brandon Mayfield who was erroneously accused of the 2004 train bombing in Madrid after which he was held by police for two weeks.

All of this was based on a supposed match between Mayfield’s fingerprints and latent prints found at the scene, of course this match was later found to be inaccurate.

The entire fiasco lasted two and a half years and in 2006 the Oregon lawyer was awarded $2 million by the U.S. government along with a formal apology to him and his family.

Then there is the case of a Massachusetts man, John Gass, who had his driver’s license revoked because a facial recognition system found that his authentic license was fraudulent.

These types of egregious and hardly negligible mistakes are only going to become more prevalent as the FBI employs new facial recognition and biometric technology.

This was shown by a study published by the Center for Catastrophe Preparedness and Response at New York University entitled, “Facial Recognition Technology: A Survey of Policy and Implementation Issues” by Lucas D. Introna and Helen Nissenbaum.

The study found that when facial recognition technology is used among large populations, like the massive federal database, incorrect identifications will indeed occur due to the lack of variation among faces.

The Gass case proves that this is already a problem and the database is in a relatively infant stage compared to how massive the NGI collection of data will be once information on every American has been gathered.

This is especially true when one considers that since sharing information is “the price of admission” into the “FBI club” many foreign governments and federal agencies will be handing over sensitive personal information of their citizens.

George Orwell couldn’t have possibly imagined the scope and pervasiveness of the invisible surveillance state we currently find ourselves in, though his infamous 1984 gives a glimpse of what a much more low-tech version of today’s world would look like.

The technology is growing to the point where many people do not even know it exists or how they are being tracked and monitored.

Hopefully by spreading information like this far and wide we can actively combat the Big Brother surveillance state before it grows to the point that there is no possible way to turn back.

If you care about the future of America and the world, I beg of you, spread this information far and wide as bringing massive awareness to this subject is the only way to halt the growth and hopefully reverse the trend.

Only by bringing this real Big Brother technology out into the mainstream can we wake up the majority of the populace to the fact that these are not silly conspiracy theories but indeed heavily documented and irrefutable facts.

To read more about the NGI and S-Comm programs, see these additional FOIA documents.

More at EndtheLie.com – http://EndtheLie.com/2011/11/11/foia-lawsuit-reveals-fbi-collecting-biometric-information-for-massive-interagency-database/#ixzz1dOqtcfHW

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Spying is US: Obama Administration Spends $80 Billion to Continue and Expand Bush Spy Programs

by Kenneth J. Theisen

October 30, 2011 On October 28, 2010 the U.S. government announced that it expended $80.1 billion on national intelligence activities during the fiscal year which ended on September 30, 2011.  Sixteen spy agencies such as the CIA, FBI, NSA, etc., which are part of the National Intelligence Program (NIP) and report to the Director of National Intelligence, spent $53.1 billion in fiscal year 2010.  Meanwhile the Military Intelligence Program spent and additional $27 billion.   These vast billions are only for so-called intelligence activities and do not include the hundreds of billions of dollars spent by these and other agencies to protect U.S. imperialism or the money spent by the military for non-intelligence activities. “Only” about $3.5 billion of this amount was spent on Iraq and Afghanistan according to the Department of War.  So how are they spending the other $76 billion?  A look at the 2010 Washington Post Series called TOP SECRET AMERICA  http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/ gives you an idea of where much of the money goes. I have written numerous other articles on this site that also detail some of these spy programs. Illegal and “legalized” programs begun under the Bush regime and continued under Obama now allow the government to act as “big brother” on a massive scale.  Virtually every phone call, email, financial transaction, border crossing, passenger airline flight data, etc, is now intercepted and stored in some government data base.  While the government would like you to believe the targets of all this spying are “terrorists or terrorist suspects” the reality is that even your emails and phone calls are subject to surveillance. You are part of the massive data mining operation conducted by the government. The government is also keeping its eyes on activities of protesters within the U.S. When Obama was a candidate for the presidency he led people to believe that he would rein in massive “illegal” spying.  In some ways he kept his promise.  While still in congress he voted in the Senate to “legalize” many of the illegal surveillance activities of the Bush regime. He converted illegal spying into legal spying. As president he has continued and expanded the surveillance capabilities of the national “intelligence” community.  He has backed legislation to legalize even more spying.  And he has been a very active user of the intelligence.  Some of the military spying has been utilized to conduct his drone assassination program, which has now been used to kill at least two U.S. citizens without any due process.  The increase in intelligence activities has also allowed Obama to conduct “covert” wars in Pakistan, Somalia, the Sudan and Yemen, among just a few of the nations that are now active targets in the U.S. war of terror. At the same time his administration has refused to hold any of the Bush regime officials accountable for their illegal actions.  But then it may be a bit hypocritical to hold them accountable when he and his minions are now doing the same things. Maybe this is why Obama administration lawyers have made so many appearances in court over the last three years to defend Bush regime officials and programs by asserting “national security privileges” in order to further the government cover-up of these actions. Current intelligence expenditures are more than double the money expended before 9/11. Expenditures for FY 2010 were an increase of 7 percent over the prior year. In February of this year the Obama administration stated it would ask to increase the NIP budget to $55 billion from the then $53.1 billion. Obama, as the political leader of the American Empire, is fully committed to continuing the war of terror begun during the years of the Bush regime, including its spying upon the people of the world, including those in the U.S. Just like Bush, Obama is the leader of imperialist America. He must do what he can to protect imperialist interests.  This includes waging the U.S. war of terror and spying on the people of the world, including those in the U.S. Source

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