Showing posts with label Homeland Security. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Homeland Security. Show all posts

Intrusive And Inept: TSA Failed To Detect 95% Of Weapons

by Jessica Marmor Shaw.  No one enjoys going through screening at the airport, but at least it’s making us all safer, right? And there was that one time you made it through with a Swiss Army knife in your backpack, but surely any real weapons or explosives would be spotted, right? ABC News is reporting that, in an internal investigation conducted  ... MORE

Steve Chapman: Is the Terrorism Panic Finally Passing?

A return to sanity.    One lesson of American history is that in times of war or crisis, American presidents, lawmakers and citizens often lose their minds. Another lesson is that they eventually regain their senses. When it comes to national security in the age of terrorism, it looks as though the national fever has broken. When Congress passed the Patriot Act in October 2001, it gave the federal government greater  ... MORE

Police State Plan To Deploy A Vehicle-Tracking Database

from National Motorists Association.      We predicted it would happen. A year after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) scuttled plans to build its own nationwide database of vehicle license plate data, the agency is seeking bids from private contractors to provide the agency access to the same information. DHS canceled last year’s plan ... MORE

Patriot Act Faces Revisions Backed by Both Parties

by Jonathan Weisman and Jennifer Steinhauser.   Maybe NSA will just ignore the law again. After more than a decade of wrenching national debate over the intrusiveness of government intelligence agencies, a bipartisan wave of support has gathered to sharply limit the federal government’s sweeps of phone and Internet records.  ... MORE

TSA'S Secret Behavior Checklist To Spot Terrorists

by Jana Winter and Cora Currier.        Fidgeting, whistling, sweaty palms. Add one point each. Arrogance, a cold penetrating stare, and rigid posture, two points. These are just a few of the suspicious signs that the Transportation Security Administration directs its officers to look out for — and score — in airport travelers, according to a confidential TSA   ... MORE

John W. Whitehead: The Wolf Is Guarding The Hen House

The government’s war on cyberterrorism. Nothing you write, say, text, tweet or share via phone or computer is private anymore. This is the new normal in America today. A process which started shortly after 9/11 has grown into a full-fledged campaign of warrantless surveillance, electronic tracking and data mining, carried out by federal agents who have been given carte blanche access to the vast majority of electronic communications in America. Their methods completely undermine constitution safeguards, and yet no federal agency, president, court or legislature has stepped up to halt this assault on our rights. 
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Ron Paul: Dept of Homeland Security, What is it Good For?

Get rid of TSA and FEMA.        Late Friday night, Congress passed legislation funding the Department of Homeland Security for one week. This vote followed weeks of debate over efforts to attach a prohibition on funding President Obama’s executive order granting amnesty to certain illegal immigrants to the Homeland Security funding bill.      ... MORE

Fed Court Rubber Stamps Continued NSA Spying For Now

by Dustin Volz.    A federal court has again renewed an order allowing the National Security Agency to continue its bulk collection of Americans' phone records, a decision that comes more than a year after President Obama pledged to end the controversial program. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved this week a government request to  ... MORE

Police State America: TSA To Arrest Any Citizen Charged With Any Crime Trying To Come Or Leave The Country

Including taxes.     The border is closing rapidly. First it was FATCA hunting Americans with any assets overseas whatsoever. Now just two days after taking charge of the committee chairing the House Homeland Security subcommittee hearing, U.S. Rep. John Katko introduced two bills. He is looking to effectively close the borders using terrorism as   ... MORE

The Patriot Act Is Cannibalizing America’s Economic Edge

by Amit Patel.   You would think that when tech companies, the ACLU and the NRA unite for the same cause, the federal government would listen. That was not the case in this year’s USA FREEDOM ACT vote where the Senate voted against reforms that would stop the NSA from collecting phone metadata. The majority opinion prioritized protectionism  ... MORE

How Bush & Obama Turned America Into Police State

Government takes full advantage of 9-11.      Rodney Martin, a former congressional staffer, says that former president George W. Bush and President Barack Obama have transformed the US into a police state following the 9/11 attacks. Martin made the remarks when asked about a report that showed a number of decisions made by American    ... MORE

Matt Welch: Kiss Your Financial Privacy Goodbye

Politicians destroy right to confidential banking.  It started, as so many bad things do, with Richard Nixon. In 1970, in the midst of a national panic over crime and illegal drugs, the man whose presidency would later become synonymous with official criminality signed the Bank Secrecy Act, which compelled all U.S. financial institutions     ... MORE

Homeland Security Loses Track Of 6,000 Foreigners

by Brian Ross and Matthew Mosk.      But they have your e-mails. The Department of Homeland Security has lost track of more than 6,000 foreign nationals who entered the United States on student visas, overstayed their welcome, and essentially vanished -- exploiting a security gap that was supposed to be fixed after the Sept. 11,    ... MORE

'If You Don’t Want To Get Shot...Just Do What I Tell You.'

J.C. Tucille.      To be owned by the man. "If you don't want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground," warns Officer Sunil Dutta of the Los Angeles Police Department, "just do what I tell you." The thing is, Officer Dutta (pictured) is also an Adjunct Professor of Homeland Security and Criminal Justice at       ... MORE