Monitoring America: Nine years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, the United States is assembling a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators. The system, by far the largest and most technologically sophisticated in the nation's history, collects, stores and analyzes information about thousands of U.S. citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing.
'US new spying bid endangers citizens' The US government is jeopardizing the lives of private citizens by employing its new espionage infrastructure to collect intelligence on ordinary Americans, a former CIA officer says.
“There are lots of ways for government to use this information and leverage this information to do things to private citizens that should not be done,” said Philip Giraldi in a Press TV interviewon Tuesday.
FBI Agents Train Garbage Collectors To Report Suspicious Activity Former FBI agents are helping local authorities train thousands of garbage collectors across the country as a nationwide internal spy force to report “suspicious activity” to police in yet another example of how America is turning into an East German-style informant society as the country decays from within.
As we have repeatedly warned, history shows that governments training citizens to spy on each other is a sign of a society in terminal decay. Such programs never lead to a more secure society, but instead breed suspicion, distrust, fear and resentment amongst the population. The only “benefit” that such programs have ever achieved is allowing the state to more easily identify and persecute political dissidents while discouraging the wider population from engaging in any criticism against the government.
Walmart, Homeland Security team up for nationwide snitch-and-spy program: This month, Arkansas-based retailer Walmart has announced that they are joining the Department of Homeland Security in their fight against terror taking part in their “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign.
At the DHS blog, Secretary Janet Napolitano states that “Homeland security starts with hometown security and each of us plays a critical role in keeping our country and communities safe.”
According to the site, this program initially started with New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority and it was funded, in part, by a $13 million grant via the DHS Transit Security Grant Program.
Plan to Turn Post Office Trucks Into Stasi Data Collection Nodes: On Monday, the CIA’s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post, told us what we already know – the government has created a massive Stasi-like snoop apparatus in America. “The government is creating a vast domestic spying network to collect information about Americans in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks and subsequent terror plots,” Reuters reported. “The government is using for this purpose the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators,” and may soon use the Post Office if Mr. Ravnitzky’s proposal is adopted.
You are the homegrown terrorist threat: If you’re an American reading this, then under expansive definitions being
used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and several states in their counterterrorism training, you just might be a domestic terrorist.
In addition, “People whose political motivation is usually Marxist/Leninist philosophy,” “‘defenders’ of the US Constitution against federal government and the UN,” computer hackers, and “Lone Individuals” should also be reported.
Why Are the Feds Cultivating Their Own "Homegrown Terrorists"? High profile domestic terrorism plots appear to have increased in recent months, but they’ve been largely concocted.
In numerous cases, documented at length by the DN investigation, there are serious questions as to whether the tactic is creating crimes out of thin air. In one case, an FBI informant befriended a Muslim business owner. When that business started failing, the informant, who was himself facing deportation, offered the other man a loan that was allegedly laundered for weapons buying. The exchange led to terrorism convictions.
Karen Greenberg of the NYU Center for Law and Security explains, “the conviction rate for cases that involve informants is almost 100 percent.” But according to James Wedick, a former FBI agent, “90 percent of the cases that you see that have occurred in the last 10 years are garbage.”
iPhone snitch network launched A new iPhone App with the misleading name ‘PatriotApp’ attempts to draw on the power of the patriot movement, turning smartphone users into a gigantic snitch network.
You might think an app with such a patriotic name might have useful functions like a pocket constitution or quotes from our forefathers. But contrary to the services one might expect, this app allows users to report any ‘suspicious’ behavior directly linking them with top government agencies. (also see the TechDirt article on it)
FBI spies on credit card purchases Most United States consumers are using more and more credit cards these days and as a result it seems the US government has been watching where we spend. Federal Law enforcement agencies routinely track Americans in real-time, using credit cards, loyalty cards, and travel reservations all without a court order. This has been revealed in a ten page PowerPoint, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
10 Ways We Are Being Tracked, Traced, and Databased: The war on terror is a worldwide endeavor that has spurred massive investment into the global surveillance industry - which now seems to be becoming a war on "liberty and privacy." Given all of the new monitoring technology being implemented, the uproar over warrantless wiretaps now seems moot. High-tech, first-world countries are being tracked, traced, and databased, literally around every corner. Governments, aided by private companies, are gathering a mountain of information on average citizens who so far seem willing to trade liberty for supposed security. Here are just some of the ways the matrix of data is being collected:
*Note: Click on the title of each entry to read the article in its entirety.
Comments(5)