Showing posts with label surveillance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label surveillance. Show all posts

U.S. Will Track Secret Buyers Of Luxury Real Estate

by Louise Story.  Mission creep at Homeland Security. Concerned about illicit money flowing into luxury real estate, the Treasury Department said Wednesday that it would begin identifying and tracking secret buyers of high-end properties. The initiative will start in two of the nation’s major destinations for global wealth: Manhattan and Miami-Dade     ... MORE

Elizabeth Nolan Brown: Homeland Security Asking Hotel Staff To Report Lodgers That Use Too Many Condoms

Frequent minibar-restock is a no-no.      The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) continues to pour time and taxpayer money into convincing the American people that there's an epidemic of sex trafficking here. So bad is this alleged epidemic that ordinary crime-control measures won't work, hence the department is recruiting truck drivers   ... MORE

New Way For Cops To Surveil You: Your Threat ‘Score’

by Justin Jouvenal.    While officers raced to a recent 911 call about a man threatening his ex-girlfriend, a police operator in headquarters consulted software that scored the suspect’s potential for violence the way a bank might run a credit report. The program scoured billions of data points, including arrest reports, property records, commercial    ... MORE

John W. Whitehead: What’s In Store For Freedom In 2016?

You might want to sit down for this.       As I illustrate in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we in the emerging American police state find ourselves reliving the same set of circumstances over and over again: egregious surveillance, strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, government spying,        ... MORE

Reclaiming The Christmas Spirit: Ten Great Christmas Movies To Help You Shake The Police State Blues

by John W. Whitehead.      What a turbulent year it’s been. For those of us who have managed to survive 2015 with our lives intact and our freedoms hanging by a thread, it has been a year of crackdowns, clampdowns, shutdowns, showdowns, shootdowns, standdowns, knockdowns, putdowns, breakdowns, lockdowns, takedowns,   ... MORE

John W. Whitehead: Does Fear Lead To Fascism?

How free people enslave themselves.   America is in the midst of an epidemic of historic proportions. The contagion being spread like wildfire is turning communities into battlegrounds and setting Americans one against the other. Normally mild-mannered individuals caught up in the throes of this disease have been transformed into belligerent ... MORE

NSA Phone-Snooping Program Didn’t Prevent Any Attacks

By David Sherfinski.   Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said Monday that the NSA’s phone-snooping program didn’t catch any terrorists or prevented any attacks, breaking from several of his 2016 GOP presidential rivals, including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who have described the program as an effective tool in the fight against terrorism. “There will   ... MORE

VIDEO: The NSA Hasn't Actually Stopped Spying

Robert Hackett: No, NSA Phone Spying Has Not Ended

Only the framework changed.     Plenty of surveillance going on. At 11:59 P.M. on Saturday night, the U.S. National Security Agency supposedly yanked the cord on its bulk telephone records collection, thereby ending an expansive surveillance program that the nation’s intelligence community put in place in the wake of the September 11,     ... MORE

Andrew Napolitano: The Spies Who Ruin Us

The Fourth Amendment has numerous virtues.   In an effort to draw attention away from the intelligence failures that permitted the attacks of 9/11 and create the impression that it was doing something — anything — to avoid a repeat, the federal government tampered seriously with freedoms expressly guaranteed in the Constitution.   ... MORE

John W. Whitehead: The Surveillance State Is Alive & Well

Life in the electronic concentration camp.      Bottle up the champagne, pack away the noisemakers, and toss out the party hats. There is no cause for celebration. We have secured no major victories against tyranny. We have achieved no great feat in pushing back against government overreach. For all intents and purposes, the National ... MORE

Metadata Surveillance Didn’t Stop The Paris Attacks

by Marcy Wheeler.     And yet intelligence officials and politicians are now saying it could have. They’re wrong. Since terrorists struck Paris last Friday night, the debate over whether encryption prevents intelligence services from stopping attacks has reignited. The New York Times and Yahoo reported on vague claims that the terrorists’ use of     ... MORE

Calls For Boots On The Ground, Curbing Immigration And More Surveillance Powers Coming In Wake Of Paris Attacks

by Peter Suderman.   The politics of panic. CNN’s Jim Acosta captured the prevailing mood in the corridors of political power today when he asked President Obama about America’s willingness to step up attacks on ISIS following the terrorist attacks in Paris last Friday.  “I think a lot of Americans have this frustration that they see that the United    ... MORE

John W. Whitehead: The Real Issues That You Won't Hear From The 2016 Presidential Candidates This Election Year

Government's stealth tyranny.    We now have less than one year until the 2016 presidential election. Despite the dire state of our nation, however, you can rest assured that none of the problems that continue to undermine our freedoms will be addressed in any credible way by the presidential candidates—certainly not if doing so might        ... MORE

Two Years After Edward Snowden's Exposure, The NSA To End Bulk Collection Of Data From American's Phone Calls

At least, that is the official line.   The NSA is ready to end later this month collecting Americans' domestic call records in bulk. It will move to a more targeted system, meeting a legislative deadline imposed earlier this year, according to a government memo seen by Reuters. The memo, sent on Monday from the NSA to relevant committees in the U.S.   ... MORE